EDITORIAL 09.11.09

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Editorial

 

month november 09, edition 000345, collected & managed by durgesh kumar mishra, published by – manish manjul

 

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

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THE PIONEER

1. 20 YEARS AFTER THE FALL
2. A HAREBRAINED SCHEME
3. HOLDING COUNTRY TO RANSOM - ARUN NEHRU
4. A SONG CAN'T SHAKE FAITH! - TRINA JOSHI
5. CHICKENS OF CHICANERY - PREMEN ADDY
6. VORTEX OF VIOLENCE - SHIKHA MUKERJEE
7. LOOKING BACK AT KANDHAMAL - SASWAT PANIGRAHI
8. 20 years after the fall of Berlin Wall - Dmitry Babich

MAIL TODAY

1. REGIONAL CHAUVINISM MUST BE FOUGHT
2. TOAST TO THE ECONOMY
3. HER GREEN LEGACY - BY MAHESH RANGARAJAN
4. THE NEW ROAD TO POWER - PRABHU CHAWLA

TIMES OF INDIA

1. FULL STEAM AHEAD
2. NET RESULT: FRIENDS
3. ASTONISHING ANTHROPOLOGIST - DILEEP PADGAONKAR
4. 'INDOLOGY IS VERY DEAR TO US, SO IS STUDYING MODERN INDIA'
5. SUCH A THANKLESS JOB - BOB HERBERT
6. PICTURE PERFECT  - HARSH KABRA

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. NOT A HEALTHY SIGN AT ALL
2. THE PUNDIT - ONE HINDUSTANI
3. A TRYST WITH DESTINY - FREDERICK TAYLOR
4. BJP PROPOSES, RSS DISPOSES - PANKAJ VOHRA
5. PATIENCE PAYS - MASTER CHIN KUNG

INDIAN EXPRESS

1. MEETING OF MINDS
2. STATES OF THE BJP
3. THAKSIN AGAIN
4. SCATTERED BRICKS - PRATAP BHANU MEHTA
5. A FORGOTTEN 4,000 KILOMETRES - NIMMI KURIAN
6. 'THERE'S NO QUESTION OF PUBLIC CAMPAIGNS TO CHOOSE THE CHIEF INFORMATION COMMISSIONER'

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. WHAT FELL WITH THE WALL
2. SWEET TOOTH
3. WHY BERLIN WAS A WIN FOR ALL OF US - MEGHNAD DESAI
4. PREPARE A COFFIN FOR THE GLOBAL TREATY - RENUKA BISHT
5. THIS IS IT - SURABHI AGARWAL
6. REPORT CARD

THE HINDU

1. DISHONOURABLE TO THE CORE
2. SETBACK TO SCIENCE
3. WILL THE MINDSET FROM THE PAST CHANGE? - AMIT BHADURI & ROMILA THAPAR
4. ECOSYSTEM IN PERU IS LOSING A KEY ALLY - SIMON ROMERO
5. THE 'LULA' HOAXER - TOM PHILLIPS

THE ASIAN AGE

1. TELECOM BATTLES TO GET TOUGHER
2. WHEN THE WALL FELL IN '89... - PATRALEKHA CHATTERJEE
3. INDIA'S RESOURCE CURSE - PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA
4. KARNATAKA CRISIS: A LESSON IN GOVERNANCE - JAYANTHI NATARAJAN

DNA

1. NEEDLESS DEATHS
2. TASKS CUT OUT
3. THE KILLING FIELDS - NILOTPAL BASU
4. FOR MUSLIMS, THE ENEMY LIES WITHIN - ANIL DHARKER
5. DUBAI: CITY OF GOLD - MALLIKA SARABHAI

THE TRIBUNE

1. PARTNERSHIP WITH EUROPE
2. INDEPENDENTS' DAY
3. ANOTHER MISHAP IN HP
4. KASHMIR HOPES RISE ABOVE TERROR - BY B. G. VERGHESE
5. THAT MAN IN WHITE - BY K. J. SINGH
6. HOW SERIOUS IS WEST BENGAL IN TACKLING MAOISTS? - OUT OF POWER, A DIFFERENT BUSH – BY DEVI CHERIAN

THE ASSAM TRIBUNE

1. BLOW TO ULFA
2. SAVE DEEPOR BEEL
3. DISASTER MANAGEMENT AND EARTHQUAKE - G SHARMA
4. ALTERNATIVE MODE OF SETTLING DISPUTES - IKRAMUL HUSSAIN

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. REFORM POLITICS
2. GOOD WORK, TOYOTA
3. ENDGAME FOR REALITY
4. INVESTING IN ATTRACTIVE MIDCAP, SMALL STOCKS CAN ALSO BE RISKY - MADHU T
5. INVESTORS MAY USE REVIVAL TO BOOK PROFITS  - NISHANTH VASUDEVAN
6. THE EXPECTATION EFFECT -  MARGUERITE THEOPHIL
7. SCRAP INSURANCE AGENT COMMISSION?
8. 'STEEL DEMAND MAY DOUBLE IN 6 YEARS' - SUBHASH NARAYAN
9. 'INDIA, CHINA HAVE IMMENSE GROWTH HEADROOM' - RATNA BHUSHAN
10. INDIA IS THE SCENE OF ALL TELECOM ACTION: ALCATEL CHIEF - JOJI THOMAS PHILIP
11. TARIFF WAR JUST CAN'T BE SUSTAINED, SAYS AIRTEL'S JOSHI -  JOJI THOMAS PHILIP
12. 'MOST INDIAN FIRMS DESERVE PREMIUM' - DEEPTHA RAJKUMA

DECCAN CHRONICAL

1. WHEN THE WALL FELL IN '89...  - BY PATRALEKHA CHATTERJEE
2. SOMETHING SCARY IN THE PANTRY  - BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
3. HAUNTING TALE OF A BALLET DANCER - BY MAUREEN DOWD
4. SOMETHING SCARY IN THE PANTRY -  BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
5. HAUNTING TALE OF A BALLET DANCER  - BY MAUREEN DOWD

THE TELEGRAPH

1. MUTUAL BENEFIT
2. DOUBLE AGENT
3. STRANGELY AT ODDS - KANTI BAJPAI
4. ACT BEFORE IT'S LATE - GWYNNE DYER

DECCAN HERALD

1. DRIVE TO DIVEST
2. GET THIS RIGHT
3. DAVUTOGLU'S DOCTRINE - M J AKBAR
4. SHIFT IN US POLICY HURTS PALESTINIANS - BY MICHAEL JANSEN
5. THE DAILY GRUDGE - BY PADMA GANAPATI

THE JERUSALEM POST

1. WASHINGTON CHILL
2. THE MYTH OF '08, DEMOLISHED - CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER
3. THE REGION: THE 'WAIT AND BLAME' GAME - BARRY RUBIN
4. BORDERLINE VIEWS: BORDERS EVERYWHERE YOU TURN - DAVID NEWMAN
5. A PERSONAL LETTER TO THE MODERN-ORTHODOX READER - YONATAN GHER

HAARETZ

1. NO WALL IN ITS MIDST
2. THE ISRAELI PERVERSION  - BY AKIVA ELDAR
3. STUDY MUST PRECEDE THE LEGAL TSUNAMI  - BY ZE'EV SEGAL
4. AN IMPRUDENT MISSILE UMBRELLA  - BY AVIGDOR HASELKORN
5. OF AUTHORITY AND DUTY  - BY AMIR OREN

THE NEW YORK TIMES

1. IMPRISONING A CHILD FOR LIFE
2. ALBANY AND THE BUDGET
3. RODY ALVARADO'S ODYSSEY
4. LAST ACT FOR THE BLUEFIN
5. PARANOIA STRIKES DEEP  - BY PAUL KRUGMAN
6. LIFE AFTER THE END OF HISTORY - BY ROSS DOUTHAT
7. 20 Years of Collapse  - By SLAVOJ ZIZEK

I.THE NEWS

1. TARGETING FEMALE TEACHERS
2. THE FEAR WITHIN
3. PROVINCIAL POWERS
4. IS PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY FOR REAL? - MIRZA SHAHZAD AKBAR
5. REMEMBERING IQBAL'S LEGACY - DR RIFFAT HASSAN
6. PAKISTAN'S AMERICAN ADDICTION - AYESHA IJAZ KHAN
7. LET'S BE OUR OWN 'FRIENDS'  - SHAMSHAD AHMAD
8. STEPS TO A SOFT LANDING - ASIF EZDI
9. UNDER SIEGE - CHRIS CORK

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

1. POWER CRISIS: ENCOURAGE LOCAL INVESTORS
2. PLIGHT OF MUSLIMS IN US
3. SUGAR CRISIS WORSENING
4. THE POET, PHILOSOPHER AND VISIONARY - MOHAMMAD JAMIL
5. INDIA'S BLAME GAME REVISITED - FATIMA SYED
6. ARM THE AFGHANS AND GET OUT - AIR MARSHAL AYAZ A KHAN (R)
7. A NATO WITHOUT TURKEY? - DAVID SCHENKER
8. THE INNER LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS..! - ROBERT CLEMENTS

THE INDEPENDENT

1. DHAKA-THIMPHU TIE
2. DISPUTE RESOLUTION
3. WHO IS YOUR NEIGHBOUR?
4. DEVELOPING TOURISM INDUSTRY - DR. MIR MUHAMMAD HASSAN
5. BANGLADESH-MYANMAR RELATIONSHIP - KAWSER AHMED
6. GLOBALISATION AND DEFORESTATION - OBAIDUR RAHMAN

THE HIMALAYAN 

1. SECURITY STOCK-TAKING
2. STICK THEM UP
3. NEPAL-INDIA TRADE ACCORD UNRAVELLING CONTENTIOUS ISSUES
4. BOOST CHILDREN'S MORAL IQ - SUVECHCHHA POUDEL
5. WHAT'S LEFT AFTER 1989? - IAN BURUMA
6. CREDOS;CREATE A WINNING ATTITUDE — II - ROBERT KNOWLTON

THE AUSTRALIAN

1. CLIMATE OF FEAR AND LOATHING
2. A TERROR ACT BY ANY OTHER NAME
3. NO NEED TO RUSH AS RUDD GOES GLOBAL

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1. THE ABUSE OF SCEPTICISM
2. CAUGHT IN A MIND FIELD
3. SCHOOL REPORTS WELCOME BUT ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
4. AUSTRALIA IS RIGHT TO KEEP THE PRESSURE ON FIJI

THE GURDIAN

1. OBAMA AFTER A YEAR: KEEP THE FAITH
2. TELEPHONE HACKING: CURSORY AND COMPLACENT

DAILY EXPRESS

1. RISK-TAKING IMMIGRATION POLICY ENDANGERS US ALL
2. HEROISM MUST BE HONOURED EVEN IF THE WAR IS FUTILE - BY LEO MCKINSTRY

THE KOREA HERALD

1. WALL AND FENCES
2. A NEW WORLD ARCHITECTURE OF MULTILATERAL SYSTEM  - GEORGE SOROS
3. ABOVE THE LAW?

THE JAKARTA POST

1. FIGHTING COURT MAFIA
2. DEALING WITH NATIONAL TERRITORY - I MADE ANDI ARSANA
3. ELINOR OSTROM AND REDD - SIWI NUGRAHENI
4. BOOSTING EU-INDONESIA RELATIONS - CARL BILDT

CHINA DAILY

1. BUILDING ON SUCCESS
2. PROTECTING WATCHDOGS
3. DALAI LAMA SUSPENDED TALKS BUT DOOR STILL OPEN
4. HOW TO HANDLE GLOBAL ECONOMIC IMBALANCES

 THE MOSCOW TIMES

1. RUSAL ACCUSED OF 'TERROR' CAMPAIGN - BY ALEX ANISHYUK
2. POLICEMAN MAKES YOUTUBE APPEAL TO PUTIN  - BY ALEXANDRA ODYNOVA
3. THE DAY THE BERLIN WALL CAME DOWN AND CHANGED HISTORY

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THE PIONEER

EDIT DESK

20 YEARS AFTER THE FALL

CHECKPOINT CHARLIE IS NOW DISTANT MEMORY

On March 5, 1946, when Winston Churchill declared that "from Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent" few realised the import of his words. For more than half-a-century after that speech in the US, an 'Iron Curtain' divided the world in two blocs pitted against each other in what came to be known as the Cold War. The 'Iron Curtain' may have descended across Europe, but it separated countries across continents, forcing them to choose between the US-led Western Bloc or the USSR-led Eastern Bloc; some made a show of neutrality and hence was born the Non-Aligned Movement whose partiality, however, was never in doubt. Nor did anybody believe that the Soviet Empire, built on the foundation of Communism, would ever collapse. Till Moscow's hold began to waver and when it happened, the world was taken by surprise, as were the Soviet Republics and the USSR-backed regimes of eastern Europe. The autumn of 1989 — now referred to as 'Autumn of Nations' — witnessed the fall of ruthless Communist Governments like nine pins. First came the upheaval in Poland, followed by Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Romania: People's power triumphed over Moscow's evil puppet regimes. But the event that shook the Soviet Empire and brought it tumbling down, leading to the USSR's demise and the end of the Cold War in 1991, was the fall of the Berlin Wall this day 20 years ago.

The Berlin Wall had come to symbolise the barrier between the 'free world' and the 'Communist world', a marker that constantly reminded people of those who were denied rights taken for granted in a democracy; it became a metaphor of the times. But it's not that the Berlin Wall came up as the 'Iron Curtain' descended across Europe; Berlin was divided at the end of World War II but the formal division of the city — really the spoils of the war — happened in 1961, and quite unexpectedly so. While there were fears that German Democratic Republic, as East Germany under Communist rule was ironically known, would raise a barrier to prevent people from migrating to West Berlin, Walter Ulbricht, the First Secretary of the Socialist Unity Party and GDR State Council chairman, had famously declared, "Niemand hat die Absicht, eine Mauer zu errichten!" (No one has the intention of erecting a wall!). Two months later, the wall came up.

And along with the Berlin Wall came a particularly tense period of the Cold War as both Moscow and Washington worked over-time to emerge as the sole superpower. The wall also spawned amazing legends of East Berliners braving 'death strips' and 'fakir beds' to escape to West Berlin; many, if not most, died in the process. The most popular legend attached to the Berlin Wall, of course, was that of Checkpoint Charlie where West and East would meet to swap spies. All that became history, along with the Berlin Wall, when it was brought down, literally block by block, with hammers and pick axes and whatever else Berliners could lay their hands on as East German guards who would earlier shoot at sight joined the milling crowds in a sudden surge of defiant rage on November 9, 1989. Berlin was united, so was Germany. And the world has never quite been the same again.

 

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THE PIONEER

A HAREBRAINED SCHEME

TAXING NCR COMMUTERS WOULD BE SILLY

The proposal of the Delhi Government to introduce taxes for non-commercial vehicles from other States coming into the national capital is ridiculous to say the least. The Government plans to set up toll collection plazas at entry points into Delhi to collect this tax. Although the modalities are yet to be specified — hopefully they never will — Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, speaking at a recent event, said that the funds so generated would be used for infrastructure development! There can be no denying that upgrading the infrastructure of the national capital is a priority. However, this should be done in a planned and systematic manner. By taxing non-commercial vehicles coming into the city, the Government will actually be complicating matters and adding to the existing chaos on Delhi roads. This is because putting up toll plazas at every entry point to the city will only worsen the city's infamous traffic jams. The loss of productivity and harassment to commuters this will result in is surely not worth it. Besides, such a move could potentially sour relations between Delhi and its neighbouring States. One must admit that the tone Ms Dikshit adopted while putting forth her proposal — she is reported to have said that cars coming in from Noida and Gurgaon "use Delhi's roads for free" — was totally uncalled for. People from Noida and Gurgaon contribute to Delhi's economy which would have otherwise gone for a toss.

There is another reason why the proposal is unacceptable. The National Capital Region was envisaged as a composite area that would help disperse Delhi's burgeoning population. Although some of the areas under NCR fall under the jurisdiction of neighbouring States, it was hoped that they would act as Delhi's suburbs. This is exactly what has happened over the last few years with outlying NCR regions emerging as Delhi's satellite townships. But if the Delhi Government starts taxing non-commercial vehicles from these areas, it will be contrary to the urban planners' expansion plans for the national capital. In fact, such policies might actually deter residents of Delhi from moving to NCR areas. What makes the issue even more complex is that the economy of the NCR and that of Delhi are interlinked. Thus, the proposal, if implemented, would actually hamper the economy of Delhi. It is true that over the last few decades Delhi has emerged as a major destination for migrants from other States. This is one of the main reasons why the pressure on the city's infrastructure is so high. But the solution to this problem lies in creating more urban centres across the country so that people are not forced to flock to cities like Delhi and Mumbai to look for jobs. The solution definitely does not lie in taxing those who keep Delhi going. Ms Dikshit's idea should be dumped into the nearest dustbin.

 

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            THE PIONEER

COLUMN

HOLDING COUNTRY TO RANSOM

ARUN NEHRU

The political trend continues to be in favour of the Congress. The Opposition, on the other hand, both at the Centre and in the States, continues to be fragmented. I sometimes wonder if this weakness will lead to a re-alignment of political forces. In spite of the Rajdhani fiasco, the Trinamool Congress-Congress combine is going strong in West bengal. The situation in Kerala too favours the Congress with the Left making little progress. The BJP is facing a crisis in Karnataka and the same situation will plague the party in Madhya Pradesh in the coming months. The Congress cannot be blamed for the chaotic condition of either the Left or the BJP. It is not the responsibility of the ruling party to strengthen the Opposition.

The only State where the Congress is in trouble is Andhra Pradesh, and if money power negates political authority, then the TDP and Mr Chandrababu Naidu have an opportunity to return to governance. The Congress in the State is in static mode as the current Chief Minister is at best a temporary appointee. The party still has to deal with Mr Jagan Mohan Reddy and his group of MPs and MLAs.

Even though the Assembly elections in Maharashtra and Haryana are over, the battle over portfolios continues. The Maharashtra situation is complicated. But the Congress as the senior partner in the Congress-NCP alliance is perhaps justified in demanding additional portfolios. Coalition politics is all about available options and even though NCP chief Sharad Pawar may lack the numbers, he more than makes up for it through his political linkages. There are many who can rally around the NCP chief in Maharashtra and in other parts of the country. Hence, a compromise between the Congress and the NCP must be worked out at the earliest as 'political accidents' are common in charged situations.

Mr Pawar also has a succession problem to deal with. This cannot be wished away as time and opportunity does not wait for anyone in politics.

The Haryana Cabinet will no doubt be powered by the six independents —all will most likely be Ministers — but stability will only come through a compromise with Bhajan Lal and his team of six MLAs. The reality is that if Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda had delayed the election, he would have had difficulty in getting even 20 seats instead of the 40 seats he has secured. It is no secret that all the three major groups in the Congress opposed him and had even put up rebel candidates. The revival of the INLD surprised everyone and has certainly given the Congress much to think about. The latter ignored political priorities for real estate benefits. Mr Hooda is alone not responsible for this as the Congress 'high command' has much to do with internal politics in the State.

 

The by-elections in West Bengal are another test for both the CPI(M) and Ms Mamata Banerjee, and of the 10 seats up for grabs the Trinamool Congress holds Bongaon, Contai, Alipore, Eegra and Srirampore, the Congress has Sujapur and Malda while the Left has Kalchini, Rajgunj and Belgachia. But the Left seem to have conceded defeat even before the elections are held and reports suggest that there is a clear lack of effort on its part to try and retrieve the lost ground in these seats.

The CPI(M) cadre seem to have melted away as public support is strongly in favour of the Trinamool Congress. This is the first time we are witnessing a situation where the ruling party and the administration are conceding defeat even before the political battle has taken place!

The depressing news from Jharkhand where former Chief Minister Madhu Koda and his aides are being investigated for corruption is truly disturbing. One can only hope that the CBI will be able to prosecute Mr Koda, his cronies and those bureaucrats who have made a mockery of governance and literally plundered the State.

The situation is equally grave with respect to the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court and his disproportionate land assets. I wonder what would happen to the faith of the people in the judiciary if he is found guilty of these indiscretions. Credit goes to the lawyers who are protesting against the Chief Justice's promotion to the Supreme Court. Sadly, the whole judicial system has been put under a cloud by the senior judge and is there any reason why the law of the land should not apply to him? I am surprised that he has yet to resign from his position.

The apex court judges, by declaring their assets, have set a very healthy precedent. I think it is time we took asset declaration by all those in governance seriously and in the immediate future all assets beyond normal considerations must be subject to both internal and external probes. I have no doubt that a very small minority within the judiciary is giving a wrong impression to the public. The assets of the Supreme Court judges as declared by them reveal a very high level of integrity. This is the best thing that has happened in the last few months.

It is sad that the political leadership in the country is being held hostage by financial powers. We see this in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Jharkhand. The CBI raids on the Communications and Information Technology Ministry are yet another example. The corrupt and the tainted, though miniscule in numbers, are holding the entire system to ransom. This cannot be allowed to go on.

 

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THE PIONEER

COLUMN

A SONG CAN'T SHAKE FAITH!

TRINA JOSHI

The issue we thought had been settled six decades ago is back with a bang. Vande Matram has been dogged by controversies ever since it was adopted by the Congress for having verses glorifying idol worship and likening the motherland to goddess Durga. Following the protests by Muslims the disputed verses were dropped in order to make the composition 'secular' in letter and spirit before declaring Vande Mataram as the National Song in 1937. But, 60 years later, Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind and other orthodox Islamic organisations are still not pleased.

At its 30th general session in Deoband, Jamiat passed 25 resolutions that were essentially primeval, to say the least. One of its resolutions endorsed Darul Uloom, Deoband's reported fatwa directing the community not to sing Vande Mataram as it is 'incongruent' with the tenets of Islam. The organisation contends that the phrase, 'Vande Mataram', meaning 'worship the motherland', violates the community's faith in monotheism. The resolution states: "We love and respect the mother, but do not worship her. Patriotism does not require the singing of Vande Mataram."

Jamiat is splitting hairs by objecting to a symbolic phrase — Vande Mataram — as there is no imagery of the motherland and no one is ever expected to offer prayers and perform any ritual while signing the song. Singing an ode to the motherland is just a way of expressing loyalty to the nation as we express love for our parents by saying, "I love you". To worship ones parents certainly does not mean offering prayers!

The case in point is not about religion but nationalism. If the issue is revisited from a nationalist angle, the concerns for religion will appear too trivial to be raised as patriotism transcends such narrow concerns. By raising this impertinent objection, Jamiat is guilty of mixing patriotism with religion, which should always be kept separate. There is no identity of a citizen in the absence of a nation. One can't be a Hindu, a Sikh or a Muslim in a no-man's land. Islamic fanatics, who claim to represent the entire Muslim community, need to decide whether they owe allegiance to the nation or the umma.

Jamiat's contention that singing an ode to the motherland does not establish one's patriotism can be reversed and argued as singing the National Song will not make a follower of Islam any less a Muslim. Faith cannot be shaken by singing of a song.

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

CHICKENS OF CHICANERY

THE ANGLO-AMERICAN ALLIANCE ALLOWED ISLAMISM TO STRIKE ROOT DURING THE COLD WAR AS THIS SERVED ITS PURPOSE. ISLAMISTS FROM AROUND THE WORLD FOUND A SAFE HAVEN IN LONDON AND BRITAIN DIDN'T CARE WHAT THEY DID ABROAD. THE CHICKENS OF BRITISH CHICANERY ARE NOW COMING HOME TOROOST

PREMEN ADDY

Dreams of the imperial past have an abiding resonance as the present nightmare shows little sign of loosening its clammy grip. The British public travelled down memory lane yet again in the company of a BBC television film of World War II, when Winston Churchill withstood the trials and tribulations of its darkest hours to emerge triumphant in the sunlit victory. It was something to savour amid the depressing figures of the country's continuing economic downturn and the rising toll of the British dead and wounded in Afghanistan that drips tragedy in the style of Chinese water torture.

Five British soldiers were killed recently by a member of an Afghan Army unit with whom they were billeted in a training exercise. The assassin disappeared into the night, leaving British officers to sort out the mystery: Was he a Taliban agent or simply a disaffected human settling a personal score? Vendettas, after all, have been the staple of Afghan life through the centuries of stony sleep.

 

Mr Kim Howells, a former Labour Minister at the Foreign Office, has called for an immediate British withdrawal from Afghanistan and for investing much of the money saved in domestic surveillance of potential terrorists at home. It was a reflexive reaction, no doubt, but it does reflect the growing public disenchantment with military adventures in distant parts. The slippery slope began with the UK's enthusiastic participation in the 78-day Nato bombing of Serbia leading to the break-up of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. Labelled a 'humanitarian' endeavour, it opened the gates of the hell that is today Iraq and Afghanistan. The velvet glove of pious democratic intent concealed the cloven hoof of the imperial predator.

Returning to the terrorist danger within Britain's shores, Whitehall descended to a Bertie Wooster-type caper when it drafted a Treasury official, one Azad Ali, to join its counter-insurgency panel to advise Mr Keir Starmar, the Director of Public Prosecutions, on cases involving Muslim suspects with extremist leanings. It wasn't as if the man was a closet jihadi. He operated in the open, his blog praised the spiritual head of Al Qaeda and denied that the 26/11 Mumbai attack, which claimed 173 lives, was an act of terrorism.

The appointment of a man such as this to help guide policy on terrorist prosecutions has alarmed some of Mr Starmar's senior legal colleagues. Quite so. They are clearly not in the business of making an ass of the law. This lunacy is surely rooted in history. Islamism was for long a hand-maiden of empire and an Anglo-American ploy in the Cold War. There is every likelihood that, in the closing decades of the 20th century Islamist groups from around the world were permitted to hibernate in the safe haven of London courtesy the nation's great and good provided they kept the peace. What they did abroad was permissible free enterprise.

Small wonder that Mr Charles Pasqua, a senior French Minister at the time, dubbed London 'Londonistan'. He had a point. But the chickens have come home to roost in Britain's Time of Trouble. Throwing money at Pakistan or covering up for its errant rulers with questionable Scotland Yard autopsies into the death of the country's cricket coach Bob Woolmer and the assassination of its leading Opposition politician Benazir Bhutto offers no respite. The murderous show goes on.

The setting is a revolving stage of complementary narratives. On the eve of British Foreign Secretary David Miliband's visit to Russia — the two sides last had a civil exchange some five years ago — Mr Tony Brenton, Britain's former Ambassador in Moscow, dwelt on "Five ways Britain can get the most from Russia." While showing some understanding of the Yeltsin purgatory in the 1990s and the restoration of Russian fortunes under Mr Vladimir Putin, Mr Trenton sought salvation in the battered mantras of his sainted Foreign Office: "We should not, with our more pusillanimous European partners (read Germany principally and France), be ready to turn a blind eye to bad behaviour....we should make it clear when Russian external behaviour becomes unacceptable..(like)..the unilateral Russian recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia....To let such behaviour pass is simply to invite more of the same. If we are clear where the limits are, we strengthen the hand of those inside Russia who argue that it should observe international norms more carefully." He had no recollection of Mr Tony Blair's warlike search for Saddam Hussein's elusive "weapons of mass destruction." Mr Brenton tone echoed Lord Curzon at his hectoring best with the Nawab of Bhopal in the halcyon days of the Raj.

Mr Brenton's 'pusillanimous' Germans, united from east to west and north to south, are Russia's partners and will be the richer and more secure for it. Others in the EU are likely consult their national interests and follow suit. John Bull, like a beached whale, will splash and struggle in the shallows of the past; like the French Bourbons, learning nothing and forgetting nothing.

And so Foreign Secretary David Miliband arrived in Moscow for talks with his Russian counterpart, Mr Sergei Lavrov. They were photographed at their Press conference, the Moscow chill writ large on their faces. Time to get real.

I did. In Patrick Tyler's absorbing title A Great Wall, Six Presidents and China: An Investigative History, I revisited Mrs Indira Gandhi's finest hours in December 1971 as she faced down the US and China during India's war with Yahya Khan's Pakistan. Time was when Mr Henry Kissinger suggested slyly to Huang Hua, Beijing's UN representative, that China open a front against India to draw off pressure from their common client, Pakistan. Any such move would be sympathetically received by the Nixon Administration, since China's own survival was at stake in the crisis, he said. Ships from the Seventh Fleet would be at hand in the waters off the Indian coast. China balked, with Soviet forces massed on its border, so Mr Huang informed his US interlocutors that Beijing had decided to work for a diplomatic solution at the UN.

Mr Tyler concludes: "The episode was a humiliation for Nixon and Kissinger... Nixon and Kissinger were left like brides at the altar waiting for China to act. When a cease-fire took effect, West Pakistan's Army limped home. East Pakistan emerged as independent Bangladesh, and India's hegemony over South Asia was significantly enhanced.

"If anyone besides Gandhi was the winner in this regional power struggle, it was Brezhnev... (who) could argue that his investment in the military buildup along China's northern border had paid off by preventing Mao from acting against India."

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

VORTEX OF VIOLENCE

W BENGAL BURNS AS MARXISTS, MAMATA SLUG IT OUT

SHIKHA MUKERJEE

All this fuss about peace is meaningless. Violence is fast, it works and votes get delivered. Peace is propaganda. A peace offensive must begin with crushing the enemy, smashing through and reclaiming the territory — for normalcy, law and order, democracy and civil rights. If West Bengal is doing it, so have others with greater moral indignation fuelling the offensive; Afghanistan, Iraq, the badlands of Pakistan are shining examples of how the tocsin of peace ends up as a bloody war.

West Bengal's murderous peace offensive has touched new peaks, because it is election time. And this is the rehearsal for the big one in 2011 that will deliver a change of Government because voters want to eject the ruling Communist Party of India(Marxist)-led Left Front and install the Trinamool Congress, according to the "general public," as the Bengalis say. Given that West Bengal has been in rehearsal mode since the panchayat elections in 2008, no pundits are required to read the pulse of the people and to anticipate that the pace of the offensive to establish peace will touch ever newer peaks.

Since 2006, the CPI(M) has been on a losing spree and the Trinamool Congress has been on a winning surge. If the CPI(M) is a poor loser, the Trinamool Congress is a lousy winner. Neither has an iota of grace. Election time is when this becomes most evident; the nature of the contest provides the excuse for baring every tooth, nail and claw because turf has to be guarded or annexed. That the political class are all engaged in the same game is obvious because nobody has called for an end to the violence. The CPI(M) is busy showing off its wounds and the Trinamool Congress is busier calling for retribution via premature ouster of the State Government and imposition of President's rule even as its supporters are giving back as good as they get.

For, the simple truth is that a clash that ends up as bloody requires two sides to exert force in order to overwhelm the enemy. If the CPI(M) is on a peace offensive in Khanakul-Arambagh-Tarakeshwar in Hooghly and in Nanur in Birbhum then the Trinamool Congress is no less on the defensive. The difference between earlier times and now is that the capacity of the Trinamool Congress to defend its newly gained turf and its contingent of voters matches that of the CPI(M). In certain places, such as Nandigram, it certainly exceeds the capacity of the CPI(M) to launch a reclamation offensive.

In fact, the CPI(M)'s capacity to start and sustain a reclamation exercises has dwindled as the territory that it can claim as its turf or 'red bastion' has crumbled away. If East Midnapore is now Trinamool Congress turf, West Midnapore is part of the 'Red Corridor'. The difference between then and now is that the 'Red' in possession of the West Midnapore corridor is no longer the Marxists. The Maoists have arrived and taken over.

Having established a different 'Red' bastion, the Maoists have challenged not just the authority of the Indian state by setting up their own version of authority, they have erased the legitimacy of the CPI(M) to speak on behalf of the poorest and most disadvantaged populations in West Bengal and by extension in the rest of India. The Trinamool Congress has, therefore, acquired a dangerous champion with an appetite for violence and the means to deliver it.

As the CPI(M)'s West Bengal leadership has reluctantly acknowledged it has grown alienated from its voters, especially in the rural areas. The lengthening death roll testifies to this. It also reveals the weakness of the CPI(M) as an organisation; its lower ranks can no longer engage in a two-way communication, which includes feedback, with local voters. The infirmity has grown to the point that voters are no longer prepared to grant benefit of doubt; the formula of better the devil we know to the devil we do not no longer applies.

If large chunks of voters are alienated and there are at least three different political actors claiming their loyalty, can Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee apologise enough? Can he, on a whirlwind tour of West Midnapore, put humpty-dumpty together again? Can he ensure, with the Maoists in opposition, absentee babudom, corruption, sloth and waste, delivery of ration, functioning health centres, NREGA implementation, delivery of Government schemes and a courteous, sensitive and sensitive administration? More to the point, can his local party or any other party leaders follow up with a dysfunctional administration every file that contains delivery of benefit to the target population? Or are they all the same; shifty, feckless shirkers?

The point is that no political party wants peace for its own sake. Every party wants peace on terms that are most advantageous to it in guarding or annexing turf. Politics is, therefore, reduced to confrontation. Feeding blood lust to win is easy. It allows political parties to avoid doing what they know they can no longer do: Deliver on promises through painstaking effort backed by the hard labour of persuasion and dialogue. Winning elections is the priority and violence serves the purpose. If it were not so, then Maoists would have no space in West Bengal.

Voters have split three ways — some swear and some are compelled to swear fealty to the Maoists, others crowd under the Trinamool Congress banner willingly or for reasons of their own and still others remain steadfast in defending the CPI(M)'s tattered flag. A truce will not happen; the Trinamool Congress won't attend an all-party meeting where the CPI(M) is present. And that's the way it shall remain.

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

LOOKING BACK AT KANDHAMAL

A YEAR AFTER KANDHA TRIBALS ERUPTED IN FURY, THE REAL ISSUES BEHIND THE CONFLICT REMAIN UNADDRESSED. AN INDIFFERENT ORISSA GOVERNMENT REFUSES TO RECOGNISE THE REALITY

SASWAT PANIGRAHI

One year on, the agony of Kandhamal is refusing to simmer down. At a time when Kandhamal's real problems are being disregarded and there is a deliberate miscalculation in handling the crisis by secular fundamentalist media and political parties which pin blame on 'Hindu groups', comes a report which not only exposes the allegations against the much-touted 'Hindu hand' but also depicts the authentic source of tribal anger.

The report, titled Kandhamal: A Fact File by Michael Parker, published by India Foundation, reveals that the violent upheaval in Kandhamal is rooted in its socio-demographic history. "A social chaos, similar to that experienced by American tribes threatened the cultural stability of the entire region," the report says.

Kandhamal has two distinct inhabitants -- the tribal Kandhas and the Schedule Caste Panas - their relations have a history of turbulence and the report has brought its genesis. It was during the British period the Panas made a 'momentous choice' of coming closer to the Christian missionary and eventually converted to the Christianity. However, for Kandhas, Christianity was closely identified with the British colonial powers that they have battled in at least eight different wars.

The problem arises, says the report, when Christian Panas are unwilling to forgo the benefits of being a member of Scheduled Caste. "Not only have the Christian Panas obscured their religious identities as Christians, they have submitted fake certificates identifying themselves as members of the Kandha tribal community," the report says. Alienation of tribal land is the foundation of the Kandha-Pana turmoil.

"Adding yet another layer of turmoil to the situation, the Christian Panas began a movement demanding official recognition as a Schedule Tribe," the report says on Kui controversy. Kui is the native language of Kandhas. The amended central Scheduled Tribe list included the 'Kui community' in the ST category. Parker report quotes two schools of thoughts in dealing with the controversy. A section of experts on tribal affairs says Kui means Kandha and there is no need to add Kui in the Central Scheduled Tribe list, where as another section says the word Kui is used not in terms of language but in reference to a tribe.

"The records and the facts prove that Panas are not and have never been a tribe in accordance to the guidelines set by the Indian Constitution," Parker says.

"Thus the Kandhas are understandably in an uproar over the loss of opportunity. A system that was designed to alleviate their poverty and social stagnation has been hijacked and their woes compounded," the report states.

Another ominous side of Kandha-Pana divide, as brought out by the report is the shadow of the Maoists in the region, who take advantage of the situation. "The tension between the Christian Panas and Kandhas is so tangible that it has been identified as a strategic opportunity for the Maoists," the report says.

The report has taken note of foreign sources of funding which continue to pour into Christian coffers. The Odisha Government record says an amount of Rs 4,215, 585,000 (approximately $100 million) of foreign funds went to such groups from 1999 to 2003 which are allegedly being used to convert people away from their native faiths.

The report quoted the documental evidence of the murder conspiracy of Swami Laxmananda Saraswati, who fought against fraudulent conversion and cow-slaughter, by the evangelists, uncovered by Ashok Sahu, senior Odisha BJP leader and former Assam ADGP.

The report has also brought out the State of Odisha's miscalculation in handling of the violence that followed the Swami's killing in which both Kandhas and Panas were affected.

Further, the report has brought out the Kandhamal nun rape accusation and media's 'carte blanche' acceptance while promoting the allegations as proven facts. Parker has raised some moot questions in his report that suggest that the claims of the nun were in a constant state of flux. In her initial complaint the nun did not mention the rape, but it was added to her testimony a full 24 hours later. Forensic evidence revealed that the nun was sexually active, no vaginal injuries signifying rape was found yet semen was recovered and no evidence of rape was found upon the clothes of the nun in the tests conducted by Odisha State Forensic Science Lab.

India has survived repeated onslaughts of foreign forces. Kandhamal is an example. In Parker's word, "Various Leftists commentators, empowered by the Globalist-controlled media outlets added their illogical rationales to India's anti-indigenous combine. It has been suggested that some among these powers have a definite role to play in the Kandhamal violence." Time will reveal the conspiratorial roles in Kandhamal mayhem.

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

20 years after the fall of Berlin Wall

Few admit that Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian democrats played an important role, writes Dmitry Babich

The border between East Germany and West Germany was opened 20 years ago, on November 9, 1989. Germany's reunification became inevitable that day, although Germany now celebrates it on October 3, the day when the two states reunited in 1990.

The majority of the world's media today present that event simplistically. They write that East Germans, who could no longer tolerate the Soviet occupation, embraced their rich western brothers, which made the free West happy. Subsequently, reunited Germany was invited into Nato to protect it from the potential encroachments by the unreformed 'Russian bear'.

They say little, if anything, about the role of Mr Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian democrats. Was it a clear victory of Western civilisation over Eastern barbarians?

The situation was much more complicated. The reunification of Germany in 1989-1990 would have been impossible without the goodwill of the Soviet Union's leadership and the people who could influence the country's policy through the first freely-elected Congress of People's Deputies in 1989.

In the early-autumn of 1989, the leaders of West Germany and East Germany could not imagine that their countries would reunite so quickly. Even the East German Government's decision of November 9, 1989 to allow Germans to travel to West Germany and West Berlin without special passes was effective only 'until the

doption of a new law on foreign travel,' which was never adopted.

In September 1989, the East German authorities expressed their disappointment to the Government of Hungary through which East Germans were then escaping to Austria and on to other Western countries. The East German leaders even complained to Gorbachev, who never responded.

So, it was Moscow which initiated democratic change in Germany in 1989, including the reunification of the two German states. Moscow's role was at least as big as that of Western Europe and the United States. It was not the East German authorities who allegedly wanted change but feared Russia's reaction, but Russia, where Mr Gorbachev had launched perestroika, that encouraged the East Germans to start democratic reforms.

In short, it would be wrong and unfair to present the history of Russian-East German relations as a period of Soviet occupation and unbearable pressure. "It became clear to me during the celebration of East Germany's 40th anniversary in October 1989 that German socialism was doomed," Mr Gorbachev said recently, "Erich Honecker missed the time when reform was still possible without breaking the system."

Initially, many Western countries did not want the two German states to reunite or were wary of the possibility. For example, the US approved the idea only when it had become clear that its allies would rule a united Germany.

Central European countries, above all Poland and Czechoslovakia, actually feared the reunification of Germany because they still remembered what the Nazi Germany did to them, and also because they had seized parts of Germany following its defeat in World War II in 1945.

American historian Mark Kramer wrote in The Washington Quarterly in April 2009: "In Poland, Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki and other leading political figures across the spectrum were so alarmed about the prospect of a reunified Germany that they publicly called for the Warsaw Pact to be bolstered and for Soviet troops to remain indefinitely on Polish (and East German) soil until the status of Germany and of the German-Polish border could be resolved." At that time, Mr Mazowiecki, an anti-Communist politician, headed Poland's first non-Communist Government.

In late-1989, the leaders of the new East European regimes did not consider withdrawing from the Warsaw Pact or joining Nato. The West European and American leaders' conservatism was also buttressed by uncertainty as regards the East Germans' choice. Many Western newspapers wrote that East Germans, who for 40 years lived amidst anti-capitalist propaganda, would again vote for the Communists or their reformed successor, the Party of Democratic Socialism.

The situation changed overnight on March 18, 1990, when the Alliance for Germany, an Opposition coalition, won the parliamentary election. It consisted of the Christian Democratic Union, Democratic Awakening and the German Social Union, all of which demanded immediate reunification with West Germany, and was supported by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl.

 

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MAIL TODAY

 COMMENT

REGIONAL CHAUVINISM MUST BE FOUGHT

 

MADHYA Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan's call, later retracted, to keep " Biharis" out of jobs in the state was not an idle slip of the tongue. It is a manifestation of a serious malaise with the country's politics and its politicians.

 

Some months ago, Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, too, made a similar remark when she claimed that Delhi's infrastructure was being overwhelmed by labourers from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

 

Such remarks point to the extent to which the national idea of India is being undermined by short- sighted politicians.

 

In their hope of retaining political power by hook or by crook, they think nothing of inciting feelings against people from other parts of the country or of people belonging to other faiths and ethnicities. This used to be the specialty of the Shiv Sena, but now it seems that other politicians too seem to have caught on to the idea.

 

Coincidentally, Malaysia, the country that implemented a policy of race- based favouritism, or bhumi putra , is now backtracking because of the backlash among non- Malay races as well as the fact that quotas don't work. States like Penang have completely done away with racial quotas, and other states have removed them in many sectors.

 

India, too, needs to take on this " sons of the soil" issue frontally. Seen at one level the idea is seductive, especially to politicians in search of votes. But at the end of the day, its working usually leads to the target community becoming complacent and dependent, while the communities that are excluded are provided an extra incentive to excel or to migrate to a more friendly environment. Either way, the original aim of the policy— to help the allegedly deprived natives— is not achieved.

 

It would have been easy to nip the idea in the bud. But our national parties, both the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party have found it convenient at various points in time to ally with chauvinistic formations. It is no accident that today if the Shiv Sena is with the BJP in Maharashtra, the Maharashtra Navnirman Sena plays the role of the Congress stalking horse.

 

It is downright short- sighted for parties that otherwise oppose separatism of the Kashmir or North- East variety to encourage the separatism of the Thackerays in Maharashtra. Promoting pride in one's state is a good thing, but that pride must be based on residency, not race, ethnicity or religion.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

TOAST TO THE ECONOMY

 

NORMALLY, the fact that the Indian institutes of management — arguably India's most prestigious management schools — managed to place all their students for summer internships would hardly have made news. But these are not normal times. Not so long ago, the IIMs were struggling to place their graduates in jobs, with most employers having frozen hiring plans after the global financial crisis. So the fact that this year, all the IIMs have managed to place their classes in summer internships, that too after some tough, competitive bidding by potential employers is cause for cheer. Not just for the students, but for the economy itself. That the top employers include some of the biggest names in investment banking, management consulting and global brands, points to a deep and wide economic recovery, not just in India, but elsewhere too.

 

This is in contrast to the picture last year, when the cream of talent from the IIMs struggled to find suitable placements. Companies invest in talent only when they are positive in their expectations for the future.

 

The sell- out placements in the internship programme points to a strong revival in demand for talent, come final placement.

 

The fact that these global employers, with the option to choose from the cream of talent worldwide, are once again knocking on the doors of the IIMs, is also an endorsement of India's skill and advantage. The government might do well to sit up and take note. There have been several moves launched in recent months aimed at diluting the autonomous and independent nature of many top centres of academic excellence. The IIMs have demonstrated time and again that they are a national asset. They deserve the government's support and encouragement.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COLUMN

HER GREEN LEGACY

BY MAHESH RANGARAJAN

 

Indira's personal interest in conservation made the country sensitive to its environment

 

IN THE flurry of articles and programmes on the twenty fifth anniversary of Indira Gandhi's death, there is one glaring omission. Much of what the critics speak of is about three key issues— the Emergency, Sanjay Gandhi and Operation Bluestar, though not always in that order. In turn admirers refer to Bangladesh, Pokhran and the Green Revolution. Either list could be longer or shorter.

 

Yet, in a new century where nations large and small grapple with how to moderate the human impact on a small planet, hers is a record worth a second and closer look. She came of age in the 1930s at a time when the human mastery of nature was a benchmark of progress. By the time of her assassination, there was little doubt that along with the issue of poverty and peace, the environment was an issue nobody could possibly ignore.

 

But the environmental legacies of her time are still very much with us. In the run up to Copenhagen, North and South are engaged in debate about how to apportion rights to the global commons, the atmosphere today, the oceans tomorrow. Experts and citizens alike fiercely debate how best to move ahead.

 

Many of these are issues that first came to centre stage during her long innings at the top. Global warming is a case in point. Her keynote addresses in Stockholm in September 1972 referred to poverty as the greatest polluter. What it went on to say was that to ameliorate poverty required technology and science and these had to be shared equally by all nations.

 

LEARNING

She did not dispute that there were limits to waste on a crowded planet, or the need to moderate human the adverse impact on nature. What she did was to lay down a minimal stance wherein developing nations would not forgo growth or simply despoil their ecologies.

 

" Unless we are in a position to provide for the daily necessities of tribal people" she argued, " from poaching and despoiling the vegetation. When they themselves feel deprived, how can we urge the preservation of animals?" The salience of these observations does lead one to ask how such deep engagement arose. It is commonplace to attribute the environmental awakening to the events of the late Sixties and Seventies.

 

But there was deeper awareness of the complexity of the relations of nature and science among more than one Indian nationalist leader.

 

Celebrating the transformation wrought by technology, a young Indira Nehru wrote to her father excitedly from Switzerland of a new substance, nylon, that was , " Elastic, strong, transparent and opaque, it can be made into anything from tooth bristle to women's sheer stockings." Technology, she averred years later, the steps had been taken to launch the nation wide effort to save the tiger from extinction.

 

The creation of a network of reserves to protect the species in its forest home was sign of a commitment to save nature. In the process, India's nationalism also took on a different, greener hue than seeing revenue and production of wealth as the be all and end all.

It also meshed well with the larger politics. Many shikar companies were run by the princes who lost their privy purses. The campaign against smugglers of rare animal pelts and skins ran parallel to the drive against black marketeers and hoarders of grain.

 

CONSENSUS

It was also possible to make space for nature due to a historic shift that many of today's Greens feel uneasy with: the spread of high yielding varieties of grain. By the early Seventies, the spread of the Green Revolution had done more than end India's crippling dependence on American largesse. It also made it possible to accelerate output without clearing more grassland, forest and marsh. This was a possibil- could give human products not just equal to but superior to nature. But she also wrote a week later about the oneness of life and of how, " the life all living things was bound together." Such early clues indicate a wider appreciation of nature, especially in the aesthetic sense, than her more erudite father. As Prime Minister her interest at times bordered on a passion for nature. The eminent botanist T. N. Khooshoo recalled how she had asked him about the migratory path of the Siberian cranes during the summit of the non- aligned nations in February 1983.

 

Earlier still, writing from Shimla in 1972 where she was getting set to negotiate with Bhutto of Pakistan, she asked the chief minister of Bihar to ensure that a canal did not cut across a path of forest land.

 

As with so much else in her career, many of these ideas actually emerged full blown in 1969, the year when her party underwent a historic split and she moved leftward in her politics.

 

November 1969, the very month when she addressed chief ministers on the urgent issue of land reform, also saw a landmark speech on nature conservation. It also saw government act to end the exports of tiger skins: three ity written about extensively by the parent of the Green Revolution Norman S. Borlaug, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970.

 

Higher yields meant a lease of life for the forest.

 

The acreage of parks and sanctuaries grew more than ten- fold in 20 years ending in 1989. More than that, the idea that a river or mountain could have intrinsic worth and not be measured in rupees or dollars was new to Indian forester. It is doubtful it would have had wide ranging policy impact without support from the very top.

 

Nothing was better testament to the endurance of her conservation legacy than what happened in the Janata Party period in 1977- 79. One of her old adversaries, finance minister H. M. Patel steered the wildlife programme while as Deputy Prime Minister Jagjivan Ram ally- turnedrival inaugurated a global tiger symposium. With even her adversaries signalling continuity, this was one part of her legacy that was to endure then as now.

 

Of course, legacies call not just for celebration but critical reflection. Her own deep engagement did not allow for a strengthening or overhaul of institutions.

 

Some of the intense nationalism that enabled nature reserves to get protected on shoe string budgets also led to an unwilling ness to engage with biological science especially if it was from outside of India.

 

Even more so, conserving via coercion deepened the rift with forest reliant people, with wounds on a body politic that fester to this very day.

 

IMPRINT

In this, as in so much else, India Gandhi's is a complex legacy defying easy labels and categories.

 

Often, it is difficult to disentangle the visionary and the prosaic.

 

There is no doubt her far sightedness on ecological issues drew from vibrant debates in India among scientist and citizen alike.

 

It was also part of a maturing of Indian nationalism where it could look beyond urgent subsistence issues to mitigating long term consequences of growth on the web of life.

 

Conversely, the forest bureaucracy in particular and the Union government, in general, saw an accretion of powers that would in the long run make it difficult for conservation to develop deep local roots.

 

But in a new century where the fate of the planet and its life forms is of such importance to us all, hers is a record that calls for closer perusal. She was more than India's second longest serving head of government.

 

She left an imprint on human- nature relations that are central to the quest for a better future.

 

The writer teaches history in Delhi University

 

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MAIL TODAY

POWER & POLITICS

THE NEW ROAD TO POWER

PRABHU CHAWLA

 

APART from the fact that both are governors, there is little that S.C. Jamir and H.R. Bhardwaj share in common. The former, despite being a popular leader of Nagaland, a four-time chief minister of the state and previously governor of Goa, has always remained on the periphery of Congress politics. Bhardwaj, on the other hand, has no mass base, has always opted for the safer route to Parliament through the Rajya Sabha, has been a minister at the Centre for nearly 15 years and is blessed with a sharp legal brain which has made him indispensable to the ruling establishment and particularly 10 Janpath.

 

Jamir presides over a state where a government took almost two weeks to take oath after the results gave the Congress-NCP coalition a simple majority; the other is in charge in Bangalore where inner party turmoil has brought the ruling BJP to the brink. This being the scenario, you would expect the 79-year old Jamir whom Jawaharlal Nehru had handpicked as his Parliamentary secretary in 1961, to play by the rules.

 

And we wouldn't have batted an eyelid if Bhardwaj had lived up to his reputation and started fishing in Bangalore's troubled waters on behalf of his benefactors in Delhi.

 

Quite the contrary is happening. Last week Jamir met the caretaker chief minister Ashok Chavan and the NCP's Chagan Bhujbal and later in an unprecedented act of constitutional impropriety issued an appeal "to both the NCP and the Congress to respect the opinion of the people and form a government as soon as possible". The statement came after it became clear that despite two weeks of haggling over portfolios, the leaders of the two parties were nowhere nearer to reaching an agreement on ministry allocations. Curiously, neither the Congress nor any of the opposition parties had staked claim for government formation. Also interesting is the fact that both Sonia Gandhi and Sharad Pawar who were expected to step in to resolve the crisis did not intervene at all and instead left it to the old fire fighter A. K.

 

Antony to resolve the issue. Jamir's conduct continues to raise eyebrows. Normally, a newly elected assembly is constituted before the expiry of the previous House, but Jamir allowed the crisis to persist to the point when the life of the last assembly ended before the newly elected one could be constituted. Technically, this means that the government cannot continue and Chavan should have stepped down, but since the Congress leadership had full faith in Jamir, it chose to remain silent on the many allegations of impropriety that the opposition parties continued to make even as the Congress struggled for an early resolution of the niggling differences between the coalition partners.

 

In giving the sparring partners a space that has clearly breached convention, Jamir has clearly gone far beyond his call of duty. His defence was that an incumbent chief minister could continue if the time lapsed between the last date of meeting of the previous assembly and the first meeting of the next assembly was less than six months.

 

Cut to Bangalore where the BJP government of B. S. Yedyurappa has been in crisis for nearly a week now. The party leadership in Delhi has always viewed Bhardwaj with more than a tinge of suspicion which isn't surprising considering his proximity to the Congress establishment. In Bhardwaj, the BJP sees a throwback to the bad old days when every occupant of every Raj Bhavan was seen as a hatchet man of the party in power at the Centre, whose brief is to destabilise and dethrone nonfriendly governments.

 

When the crisis in Bangalore showed no signs of resolution, the BJP appeared resigned to the ace backroom operator getting down to his tricks to bring down the Yeddyurappa government and install an alternate " secular" government.

 

Strangely this hasn't happened so far, and last Friday, when journalists in Bangalore asked the governor about the impasse, his response, uncharacteristically low key, was :" I am merely watching the developments.

 

It is for the MLAs to sort out the problem that they themselves have created". Is it a sign of a new, less aggressive Bhardwaj or of a new strategy the Congress is slowly adopting? My hunch is it is the latter.

 

There was a time when at the mere hint of differences within a non- Congress government, Akbar Road would dispatch cloak and dagger specialists to cajole and threaten non- Congress MLAs into supporting an alternate Congress government. Indira Gandhi pursued with this tactic till her very end and so did Rajiv. Sonia seems to be following a different path from her husband and mother- in- law.

 

After engineering two back- toback victories at the Centre, she clearly believes it's the people who put you in power, not those who sit in Raj Bhavans. All credit to her.

 

ROSAIAH HAS A GAME PLAN FOR JAGAN

 

K. ROSAIAH is a soft spoken mild mannered man who swallowed much humiliation at the hands of supporters of the highly ambitious Y. S. Jaganmohan Reddy. Not in the last 50 years has a regional leader held the Congress high command to ransom as Jagan did in the days following YSR's death, openly defying New Delhi's diktat and blatantly asking his supporter ministers to keep away from cabinet meetings. But as they say, even a worm will turn, and it appears that the 70- year- old has suddenly seized the initiative away from the young Reddy. With the mass hysteria that followed YSR's death now ebbing, there are signs that Jagan may not be unassailable after all.

 

Last weekend, Rosaiah arrived in the Capital with half his cabinet in tow. The visit was ostensibly official, but that he chose to come on a weekend when government was on holiday was proof that everything about it had to do with intra- party politics.

 

Among those he called on were Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Sonia Gandhi, Pranab Mukherjee and P. Chidambaram.

 

To each of them, he conveyed the same message: that he had sewed up an arrangement with filmstar Chiranjeevi's Prajarajyam Party. With 151 of the 294 seats in the assembly, the Congress is just past the half way mark in the house, and though Jagan continues to claim that a majority of the MLAs are with him, it now appears that his numbers are vastly exaggerated. The fact that more half the cabinet accompanied him to New Delhi — many of them had earlier refused to attend cabinet meetings chaired by Rosaiah — is an indication that the ground is slipping from under Jagan's feet. Congress circles reckon now that Jagan's support among YSR's hardcore followers is not expected to get into double digits which can easily be offset with the support of the 18 MLA's of the Prajarajyam Party.

Sonset in the South?

 

POLITICS AND CRICKET CANSERVE UP A SPICY DISH

TO SAY don't mix sports with politics is like asking the waiter to keep the masala out of the tikka . Last week, three cabinet ministers feuded over whether the two should mix or not. When Farooq Abdullah proposed, Sharad Pawar just disposed by allowing the BCCI to disqualify the Services cricket team from this year's Ranji trophy championships for refusing to play its scheduled match against Jammu & Kashmir in Srinagar. Defence minister A. K. Antony could do nothing but sit back and suffer the ignominy of his men in uniform being humiliated and derided as weak. The damage caused to the reputation of our forces is immeasurable and could have been avoided.

 

Farooq, we all know is a leader of impeccable patriotic credentials, but in this instance he chose to play politics. The fault lies squarely with the BCCI. An office bearer tells me that the Services team did write to the secretary, BCCI about its inability to play in Srinagar citing security reasons and asked for alternative dates and a change of venue.

 

When the BCCI sat over it, the Services took it as approval. The Services Sports Control Board ( SSCB) could not have taken the decision to seek alternate venue without the concurrence of the ministry and I understand that inputs from various agencies including military intelligence had advised that the team not play in Srinagar. Pawar being a former defence minister should have known that the forces have their own reasons.

 

But instead of taking action against erring officials, the BCCI punished the team. Now questions are being raised about the failure of the J& K Cricket Association to construct a modern stadium with proper crowd control and security systems during the last decade. The JKCA has already received over Rs 25 crore from the BCCI and IPL as its share from TV rights. But nobody has a clue where the money has gone. If proper facilities were available at Srinagar or Jammu, this embarrassment could have been avoided. But in the BCCI, it is the vote of each state association that is precious. Security be damned.

 

MOST of us thought until now that caste labels are important only in politics. It now appears that it is equally important in government, particularly in post retirement sinecures for babus. There is much titter and some heartburn after some recent appointments saw retired babus belonging to the same caste monopolising the membership of a Central commission.

 

Last week's appointment of M. L. Tayal, the former principal secretary to Haryana chief minister B. S. Hooda as a member of the Competition Commission ( the successor to the MRTPC) makes the panel virtually the exclusive preserve of the one caste( Vaishya). Most of its current members were chosen when Prem Chand Gupta, another caste mate, was minister for corporate affairs.

 

The commission is headed by Dhanendra Kumar,( again a Vaishya) who was earlier India's executive director at the World Bank and has as members H. C. Gupta, former coal secretary and Ratneshwar Prasad, ex- chairman of CBDT and Anurag Goel, former secretary ministry of corporate affairs. All of them are from the same caste and belong to the Haryana or Uttar Pradesh cadres and take up five of the seven seats on the board, the odd ones out being Geeta Gauri and Prem Narayan Parashar.

 

Strange it is that even civil servants are raising questions on the selection of their colleagues even if they have been chosen by a powerful selection panel headed by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court.

 

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MAIL TODAY

INTERACTIVE

[1] Koda, Reddys are a mockery of democracy THE COMMOTION over the 2G telecom scam has evoked a strange silence from the Congress- led UPA government.

 

Another murky chapter has been added in the political annals of this country with the expose on Madhu Koda, the former Jharkhand chief minister who was propped up by the Congress after his falling out with the BJP. These events are indubitable evidence of how present- day politics is a mixture of manipulation and moral hollowness, especially when it comes to governments formed by political alliances.

 

Politicians plunder national wealth while their tribal constituents are deprived of the basics of life. Is it any wonder that these have- nots run to Naxalite leaders such as Kishenji for succour? It is an affront to the voters' intelligence to suggest that Mr Koda's patrons in New Delhi were blissfully unaware of the loot that he perpetrated and was recently unearthed by the Enforcement Directorate and the Income Tax department.

 

But is political perfidy limited to only state- level allies and not inherent within national parties themselves? More prevalent maybe, but by no means limited, as is now proved by the Bellary crisis where the relationship between money and politics was perhaps never more obvious.

First Jaganmohan Reddy in Andhra Pradesh, and now the Bellary Reddy brothers, have mocked at the very basis of our democracy. If pre- election money power wasn't enough, the verbal dance over election victories is followed by mockery a called the formation of the cabinet of ministers.

Maharashtra and Haryana could not have a government for close to two weeks after election results were declared only because the allies and inparty contenders were haggling over " plum" portfolios.

 

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TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

FULL STEAM AHEAD

MAKE DIVESTMENT A KEY THEME OF ECONOMIC POLICY

 Under a government-approved plan, all listed profitable state-owned PSUs are to have a minimum 10 per cent public shareholding. And unlisted firms with a three-year run of net profit and positive net worth must get listed on the bourses. This is inarguably the UPA's first major policy formulation on disinvestment. Even without a Left-sponsored clampdown, PSU share sale has so far been pushed in timid fits and timorous starts. Forward movement with some state-owned firms notwithstanding, divestment hasn't figured in any clearly enunciated, consistent resource mobilisation blueprint. Apart from sprucing up the government's reform-friendly credentials, the UPA's policy plainspeak is, therefore, a welcome departure from the past.

The bourses stand to gain. Recent secondary market rallies have largely been fuelled by FII inflows. Public offerings, targeting retail investors in a big way, should deepen the market while increasing people's stake in national assets. Listing of unlisted PSUs will, meanwhile, improve their governance and profitability. There'll also be benefits from the timebound removal of limits on use of disinvestment funds. To finance social sector projects, the government now has access not just to income from proceeds parked in the National Investment Fund, but the entire corpus of money raised. The aim is to trim dependence on market borrowings for social sector spending. It's estimated that nearly all of social sector capital expenditure this fiscal could be met this way.

With a food security law and urban job guarantee set to add to the fiscal burden of ongoing commitments like NREGS or rural health, the policy shift is wise. But it may be asked why use of disinvestment proceeds to retire government debt appears to have been ruled out. We're staring at a 16-year high fiscal deficit of 6.8 per cent of GDP. Fiscal consolidation is urgent. All the more so since low interest rates, so necessary right now to fuel economic activity, are beyond a point incompatible with high yields in a jittery bond market.

The finance ministry says that cutting fiscal deficit to 3 per cent may take till 2014-15. This being an overindulgent timeframe, rapid disinvestment is the best bet for restoring fiscal sanity. Official hints notwithstanding, cutting power and fertiliser subsidies substantially will be harder to do politically. The awaited 3G spectrum auction – hopefully better designed than the 2G spectrum sale – will give a one-time revenue boost. It's obvious, then, that PSU stake sale must be an enduring theme of economic policy. In this context, the government must stand firm against pressure from allies like the Trinamul. India's crisis-hit economy is in recovery mode. We can no longer afford reforms to be held to ransom by politics.

 

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TIMES OF INDIA

COMMENT

NET RESULT: FRIENDS

CONTRARY TO POPULAR WISDOM, TECHNOLOGY ISN'T TURNING US INTO HERMITS

 In the last five or so years that the internet, in the form of Web 2.0, has transformed our lives, naysayers have argued that social networking sites like Facebook and Orkut are in danger of turning us all into anti-social, friendless people who live their lives in the severe isolation of the internet, with little human contact. Now there is evidence to the contrary. According to a recent study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, the internet has not caused people to withdraw from society.

The study actually found that people who use the internet, including social networking tools, have more diverse physical social networks than those who do not. People who regularly use digital technologies are more likely to visit the great outdoors and volunteer for local organisations. We may have new modes of communication but, the study points out, we still prefer face-toface contact with our loved ones over a text or an instant message.

 It is a truism that any technological development on the scale of the internet would have a significant impact on the way people live their lives. The world changed when Guttenberg invented the printing press, then changed again with Alexander Graham Bell's invention of the telephone, and yet again when televisions were let loose on the world. Indeed, the widespread popularity of TV still causes many commentators no small amount of angst, with the so-called idiot box having been held responsible for turning children and adults into couch potatoes uninterested in any form of physical activity more strenuous than the slide of a finger over the remote control.

 But it would be fair to say that many of these fears have been greatly exaggerated. And, it seems, so it is with the internet. Just as technology, by itself, cannot offer a solution to the many ills plaguing the world today, it is not single-handedly responsible for the destruction of life as we know it, either. The internet has revolutionised knowledge sharing and democratised access to information to a degree unprecedented in recorded human history. Sure, like any other technology, there are downsides. The pressures of modern life are no doubt many and varied. But one thing the internet hasn't done is to make people hole up in their pajamas and become modern Howard Hughes-like recluses, any more than other technologies had in the past.

 

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TIMES OF INDIA

TOP ARTICLE

ASTONISHING ANTHROPOLOGIST

CLAUDE LEVI-STRAUSS CHANGED THE WAY TO STUDY 'PRIMITIVE' SOCIETIES

DILEEP PADGAONKAR

 More than a week after his death in Paris at the age of 100, Claude Levi-Strauss, the internationally-acclaimed anthropologist, continues to receive wide coverage in the French press. The amount of space devoted to a discussion of his life and work, and the plaudits heaped on him by politicians, academics and well-known writers, do appear to be odd. For, unlike other thinkers who dominated the French intellectual scene after the WW II – Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and Raymond Aron among others – he was seldom embroiled in the political and ideological debates of the day.

 Add to this the limited appeal of his books. With the exception of Tristes Tropiques, an autobiographical account of his travels, mainly in Brazil, his output was highly technical in nature. His exquisite prose did not facilitate easy understanding either. Its metaphors, allusions, intricacies and poetic flights were beyond the grasp even of a reasonably well-educated reader. At any rate, for close to a quarter of a century, until he turned 100, he remained out of sight and indeed out of mind.

 So what explains the intense and sustained interest of the French media in him? The reason could well be that despite all the dumbing down of their intellectual and artistic life over the past two decades and more, the French have not altogether jettisoned their fascination for artists and intellectuals. Thinkers might not command the awe and respect they once did. But they haven't been relegated beyond the margins of public life either.

The writer Sanche de Gramont has referred to the phenomenon as the "endemic French illness". The reputation of serious thinkers in France, he argues, spreads in mysterious ways way beyond the small circle of experts for whom his works are intended. This often leads to bizarre consequences. "The thinker is afflicted with disciples he never wanted, preaching a gospel he never taught. He is hailed by worshippers who have never read a line of his work. He spends his time denying the paternity of deformed off-spring bearing his name. If the movement persists, he must finally imitate Marx, who denied being a Marxist."

 This is precisely what Levi-Strauss did when he was gracious enough to receive me in his office in the College de France on a damp and clouded day in May 1989. During the hourlong conversation – an account was published in these columns back then – he made it clear again and again that he had not propounded any doctrine. Nor had he initiated any movement. Those who called him the father of structuralism did not realise how much they discomfited him.

 He explained to me with admirable clarity the nature of his anthropological endeavour. He said he had devised no hard-and-fast method to understand the workings of a given society. The best he could do was to grasp certain aspects of that society by relying not on history but on abstract rules that govern the interaction between man and man, man and nature, man and myth. Such rules, he said, underlie games. They are also at the heart of linguistics. It is in this sense that every society, regardless of its level of progress, can be said to be 'programmed'.

To focus tightly on these abstract rules, Levi-Strauss said, the anthropologist needed to cultivate a robust sense of detachment. He could not afford to feel 'at home'. He would always be, psychologically speaking, an amputee. At the same time, he must lay emphasis on doubt as a philosophical attitude. Doubt does not merely mean knowing that one knows nothing. It means exposing to the fullest what one knows, including one's ignorance, to the insults and denials inflicted on one's dearest ideas and habits by those ideas and habits which may contradict them to the highest degrees.

    I asked him whether his quest to discover abstract rules shaping a society helped settle a contentious issue: are there values intrinsic to a given society and other values which claim to have universal relevance? He said he was sceptical on both counts. All so-called intrinsic values contain an element of universal relevance. That is why he opposed discrimination on ethnic, racial or religious grounds. But those values that claimed to have a universal appeal are flawed too. Western concepts of human rights, for example, focus entirely on one living species – the     homo sapiens – when it is necessary     to defend the rights of all living species.

 It was imperative, he said, to restore the balance between man and nature. Man cannot be regarded as the absolute master of all creation but only as one living creature among others. (This was said long before climate change and environmental degradation gained currency in international discourse.) Equally important was the need to link up the present with myths of antiquity. The West, unlike Asia as a whole, and unlike India in particular, had lost this extraordinary sense of genealogy. It therefore had no anchor points left. It is for such prescience that Levi-Strauss deserves to be read with all the care he so richly merits.

 

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TIMES OF INDIA

Q&A

'INDOLOGY IS VERY DEAR TO US, SO IS STUDYING MODERN INDIA'

THE GOETHE INSTITUT, THE GERMAN CULTURAL CENTRE BETTER KNOWN IN INDIA AS MAX MUELLER BHAVAN, IS SET TO CELEBRATE ITS GOLDEN JUBILEE IN INDIA. KLAUS-DIETER LEHMANN, PRESIDENT OF THE GOETHE INSTITUT WORLDWIDE TALKS TO FAIZAL KHAN:

What are the plans as the Goethe-Institut/Max Mueller-Bhavan completes half a century in India?
 A variety of programmes will be held in all our institutes in India from November 10 until April 2010. In Delhi, we are having a German film festival followed by a big electronic music festival in December. A 10-member jazz band from Berlin will be touring Indian metros. More programmes, especially in dance and theatre, are to be expected next year.

Doyouseeanychangesinthe orientation of the institute's vision for India now?

 I don't think there is reason to change the course drastically. We do realise that India has changed dramatically over the last 10 years or so. Massive transformations are taking place, especially in the urban centres. We try to react to these changes in different ways: by expanding our network in India with new affiliated language centres, for instance in Chandigarh, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, and Thiruvananthapuram, by entering into long-term partnerships with cultural institutions in India, by exploring new areas and spaces for cultural presentations outside the walls of museums and galleries. And, of course, we will have to find answers to the growing demand for German in schools all over India and develop new models for training the teachers.

Germany has a long tradition of promoting Indology studies. How relevant are these connections today?

 Since all our institutes carry the name of Max Mueller, who we consider as one of the founding fathers of modern Indology, the topic is very dear to us. There will be a new interest not only in classical Indian studies but in studying modern India as well. Universities in Germany have already reshaped their courses in Indology.

Berlin is planning a new cultural institution: the Humboldt Forum, a place of museums, libraries and research for non-European cultures. Indian culture will have a major presence.

Culture isrecognisedasanimportant aspect of a country's soft power. How do you see the role of culture in bilateral cooperation?

 Despite globalisation, the world has not become more homogeneous, but rather more perplexing. We cannot successfully organise human coexistence without strengthening the arts and education. Here, India and Germany have a special opportunity because of their mutual respect, because they have long-term cultural relationships and because they are interested in intercultural dialogue.

 In my view, we are a learning community in the best sense of the word, enabling participation and putting dialogue into practice. As globalisation has triggered re-segmentation and as it demands of people a high degree of adaptability and willingness to change and puts societies' integration abilities to a hard test, initiatives of this kind are especially valuable and efficient.

 

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TIMES OF INDIA

SUBVERSE

SUCH A THANKLESS JOB

BOB HERBERT

The authorities will deal with Nidal Malik Hasan, the army psychiatrist who is accused of bringing the nightmare of mass murder into the sanctuary of a military base on American soil. But the rest of us need to look very closely at the stress beyond belief that is being endured by so many other men and women in the armed forces – men and women who are serving gallantly and with dignity, who have not taken out their frustrations on one another, and who deserve better from the broader society.

 

 Simply stated, we cannot continue sending service members into combat after combat without paying a horrendous price in terms of the psychological wellbeing of the troops and their families, and the overall readiness of the armed forces to protect the nation.

 

The breakdowns are already occurring and will only get worse as the months and years pass and we remain engaged in the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. None of this is the military's fault. There have not been nearly enough people willing to serve in the all-volunteer armed forces to properly staff two wars that have already gone on for the better part of a decade.

 I spent some time on the West Coast recently interviewing doctors and researchers studying the enormous problem of troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq with some form of mental health disorder, most commonly depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. The caseloads are off the charts, and very often the PTSD or depression (or both) are accompanied by substance abuse, problems with anger management, domestic violence and family breakdown. These are not weak men and women we are talking about. This is the toll that the horror of combat, especially repeated doses of it, takes on people – even those who are young, physically fit and mentally sound.

 "These invisible wounds of war are profound and relatively common," said Dr Charles Marmar, a psychiatrist and one of the nation's leading experts on stress-related disorders. "Pound for pound, they may be more disabling than physical wounds. People often don't seek treatment for PTSD or depression or psychosis, and they are very disabling without proper treatment."

 The military has been trying to cope, but the challenge is enormous and there are significant institutional obstacles to overcome. Recently, defence secretary Robert Gates spoke publicly about the widespread fear among military personnel that they will be stigmatised if they seek help for psychological problems. And he criticised the military and government bureaucracy for often complicating the efforts of individuals who are trying to get help.

The fallout from the mental health challenges facing America's fighting men and women is vast, and it descends most immediately on close relatives. We have laid an unconscionably heavy burden on the volunteers and their families. The wives, husbands, children and parents bleed emotionally right along with those who are sent into the war zones.

 

 This small sliver of the overall population has carried the burden of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, mostly without complaint, for years. It's time to reassess what we're doing to them. By the end of last summer, the army was reporting the highest tallies of soldier suicides since accurate record-keeping began. We're getting saturation media coverage of last Thursday's outburst of horror at Fort Hood, but we haven't heard a lot about the scores of suicides at that same base – the highest of any US military installation – since the invasion of Iraq in 2003.

 

 If we're going to fight wars as a nation, then we need to draw our warriors from a wider swath of the population and give them the full and complete support that they need and deserve. We'll no doubt be analysing the twisted psychological state of Hasan every which way. But we'll continue to give short shrift to the daily struggles and frequent horrors of the honourable men and women who have taken on the thankless task of fighting our wars. – NYTNS

 

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TIMES OF INDIA

P H OTO S H O P P E D R E A L I T I E S

PICTURE PERFECT

HARSH KABRA

 Whoever said pictures don't lie obviously had no inkling of the game-changing graphic design technologies of our times. Digital retouching has become a pervasive instrument of doctoring reality in photographs to remove imperfections and exceptions in people, objects and occurrences, and replace them with manufactured appeal. So much so that some weeks ago, a French member of parliament proposed a Bill making it mandatory for altered images in newspapers or magazines, and subsequently billboards, product packaging, and campaign and artistic images, to carry a disclaimer acknowledging touchups. The argument is that photographs that lead people to believe in realities that don't actually exist — in this case, chiselled bodies and supernatural features — breed negative self-images and damaging complexes. More recently, a clothing label admitted to using a digitally altered photograph of an unusually emaciated model in Japan, even as it fired her in real life for being 'too large'. Sometime ago, the world's largest software maker was forced to issue a public apology for a race-swap when eagle-eyed Web users found that the company had pasted a white man's head on to a black man's body to make a promotional photo on the Polish version of its website work better with the locals. A Toronto activity guide had earlier drawn flak for pasting a black man into a group family shot on its cover to project an image of ethnic inclusiveness.

 Digital alterations have given us the power to orchestrate pictorial realities by masking or accentuating certain aspects of situations and people for reasons ranging from perfection to political correctness. What we haven't realised, perhaps, is how this obsessive quest for perfection and political correctness is making us ever more disillusioned, intolerant and selfloathing. Strange dichotomies and double standards are at play: we struggle inside to accept individual peculiarities, but want to be seen by the world as embracing social diversity. To understand how this duality lends itself to inauthentic representations, look at the social networking and dating sites on the Web, where 'photoshopping' one's photograph for flawless and dainty features is as de rigueur as singing paeans to intrinsic beauty, honesty and open-mindedness in the accompanying text. In times of wrapper worship, the self, together with its sensibilities, must also become a commodity to improve its shot at acceptance. Is it any wonder, then, that we are possibly at our sceptical best today, pictures or otherwise?

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

OUR TAKE - NOT A HEALTHY SIGN AT ALL

 THE DENGUE OUTBREAK SHOWS ONCE AGAIN THAT WE NEVER LEARN FROM PAST MISTAKES

 

At the risk of sounding facetious, the only thing one can say about the dengue epidemic that seems to visit us regularly is that no one seems to be able to pronounce it properly. But the appalling lack of concern that the municipal officials in Delhi have shown to a problem that has become an annual cause of concern, is worrying.

Sacking an official who seems to have come up with startling figures of 23 deaths and 826 cases in both government and private hospitals seems to suggest that attempts are on to cover up the problem rather than deal with it. In areas where there have been deaths, there seem to have been many calls by residents to the municipality to undertake fogging. But, in all instances, there was no response.

 

We have often despaired of our government hospitals, which routinely seem to turn away patients because they are overcrowded. But it would turn out that private hospitals, too, are not averse to doing the same. Every time there is such a crisis upon us, there seems to be blame game. Here we see that the premier medical institution in India has denied reports of deaths on its premises.

The Delhi health minister has called a meeting to review the situation today. But, the crux of the matter is that action should have been taken at the first report of the fever. In the past, too, there has been the tendency to quibble with figures on any communicable disease, be it dengue or swine flu. There has been precious little effort to beef up our medical system, which seems to be collapsing even in the capital. That it is in a shambles in smaller metros and villages does not bear repeating. Basic medical care is the right of every citizen. In the summer, we have all manners of communicable diseases which have now come to be taken for granted. The official response, if there is one, is that there was delay in fumigation.

 

If the medical system is unable to cope with the overload, it is vital that these small measures are undertaken to prevent illnesses. There also needs to be much greater public awareness of what precautions need to be taken in medical emergencies. It is not enough to say that there are no beds or testing kits in hospitals, whether public or private. In sprawling metropolises like Delhi, it is near impossible to be able to document such ailments.

The only thing, even though clichéd, is to adhere to the dictum that prevention is better than cure.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

THE PUNDIT - ONE HINDUSTANI

 

Forty years ago last week, Big B was unrecognisable.How life comes full circle for Amitabh Bachchan

It's one of those things. Like the rotary telephone dial, cyclostyle machine and Campa Cola, it's very, very difficult to imagine that a nonsuperstar Amitabh Bachchan ever existed. But even as creationists continue to argue that evolution is bunkum and a white-bearded god made the world some 6,500 years ago, the truth is that Big B was a very Small A 40 years ago last week. Released on November 7, 1969, Saat Hindustani wasn't much of a hit. It was only natural that the lanky Amitabh Srivastava, who took up the nom de guerre Amitabh Bachchan after his poet father's nom de plume, didn't quite stand out in the midst of six other `Hindustanis' that included names like Utpal Dutt, A.K. Hangal and Jalal Agha.

 

But Bachchan managed to get a national award for `best newcomer' for his role as a Muslim poet from Bihar who joins a mission to `liberate' the Portuguese-ruled Goa and is captured. Filmwallas will now, of course, position themselves as a Nostradamus, making comments about how the 27-year-old Bachchan already bore the seeds of a superstar. Perhaps at that time, they didn't want to upset the reigning monarch of Hindi fillums Rajesh Khanna or the iconic Dev Anand and thus kept themselves from gushing about this new chap. Or perhaps they had no clue that India would be waiting for an angry young man, something that the mild-mannered chap in Saat Hindustani or the character that Bachchan played in his next film, Anand -- would have hardly fit.

 

Forty years down the line, Big B, in the publicity shots of the forthcoming film, Paa, where he plays the role of a giant kid, is looking like what he did in 1969: unrecognisable.

Oh these talented, naïve NRIs roaming about the motherland! Don't they know that when in Rome they should wear their togas tight?
Indian-American scientist-entrepreneur Shiva Ayyadurai may be the best thing for Indian science and innovation since sliced idlis, but he decided to take on the Brahmins of the Indian science establishment. He had to pay the price.

Mr Ayyadurai was hired to work for the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) with the single task: of creating a new centre of excellence. His job was also to maximise the talent and research in India -- that he found to be world-class -- and make CSIR the next Bell Lab or CERN. Now, as all of us conversant with the quantum dynamics of Indian scientific excellence know, the way of building a world-class institution is to start with the premise that it's already a world-class institution with no blemishes at all -- you know, the `We invented the zero so everything else is a cakewalk' principle. Mr Ayyadurai tapped the wrong button. In a chapter of a report he submitted to the CSIR top brass, he made the fatal error of pointing out `challenges'. Now if he was a thoroughbred desi, our man from MIT would have realised that keeping the `challenges' in the airy-fairy domain would have sufficed. But no. He had to go on record about "lack of professionalism" and how some CSIR scientists felt a "loss of faith in leadership". Hmm, Houston, we have a problem.

In a hierarchy-obsessed culture like ours, Mr Ayyadurai's candid feedback amounted to making a lunch pack out of the hand that feeds you. Thus, a termination of his services ensued citing the NRI's demand for what serves as Mammon for all NRIs: more money. CSIR scientists supposedly crossed their fingers and hoped that Mr Ayyadurai's quantum leap in pay would create a domino effect in salary slips across the Indian scientific firmament. No such luck. In any case, Indian scientists don't need the money; they work to make their country proud. Right? Right.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

A TRYST WITH DESTINY

FREDERICK TAYLOR

 

On the morning of November 9, the sun shone fitfully in East Berlin. The thermometer crept slowly to ten degrees Centigrade. That morning, an article appeared in Neues Deutschland, commenting on the continuing mass exodus from the GDR (German Democratic Republic) via other countries. It was not written by some party hack, but by a group of reformers. They pleaded with East Germans not to leave their country in its hour of need:

"We are all deeply uneasy. We see the thousands who are daily leaving our country. We know that a failed policy has reinforced your mistrust of any renewal of our community life until the last few days. We are aware of how helpless words are against mass movements, but we have no other means but our words. Those who leave diminish our hope. We beg you, stay in your homeland, stay with us!"

 

On the first day of November, Egon Krentz, the GDR Politburo's man in charge of security, rescinded the ban on travel to Czechoslovakia, opening the floodgates once more. With East German leader Erich Honecker gone and the new rulers clearly unwilling or unable to enforce their will in the traditionally forceful post-Stalinist fashion, more than 20,000 East German citizens had crossed to Czechoslovakia into Austria during the 24 hours preceding November 9. Now it was the Czechs' own communist government that was coming under pressure. They were threatening to close the border. The East German ambassador in Prague had been brusquely informed that the Czech government "did not intend to build refugee camps for East German citizens".At 7.O5 pm, Associated Press spelled its interpretation out in a simple but sensational sentence: 'According to information supplied by SED Politburo member Günter Schabowski, the GDR is opening its borders'

 

On November 6, half a million citizens of what satirists were now calling the 'German Demonstrating Republic' attended the 'Monday Meeting' in Leipzig. Speakers pointed out the new catches in the new 'thirty day' travel regulations and criticised the tiny foreign currency allowance. They called not for a modification of the travel laws but for their abolition. "In dreißig Tagen um die Welt — Ohne Geld!" (Around the world in thirty days — but how to pay?) chanted the crowd.

 

At the Interior Ministry on the Mauerstrasse in East Berlin, a working party of four officials, including two Stasi officers, had been given the task of temporarily modifying existing laws to deal with the current crisis. On the morning of November 9, they were due to draft at the Politburo's behest a resolution 'For the alteration via the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic'. They had decided to entitle it 'Immediate Granting of Visas for permanent exit' but, one said later, as they laboured at the draft they felt less and less happy with the concept.

 

"We were charged with coming up with a regulation for those citizens who want to leave the country permanently. But were we then supposed to not let out those who just wanted to go and visit their aunty? That would have been schizophrenic."

The final draft stipulated that, so long as East German citizens were in possession of a passport and visa, no restrictions should be placed on either permanent emigration or private visits. People were allowed to leave the GDR via any border crossing point between East Germany and either West Berlin or the Federal Republic. It added rather feebly that exits were to take place "in an orderly manner".

 

The first reports from DPA and Reuters, which came over the wires at a couple of minutes after 7 p.m., simply said that any GDR citizen would be entitled, from now on, to leave the country via the appropriate border crossing points. Low-key stuff. Then, at 7.05 p.m., Associated Press pulled ahead of the pack and spelled its interpretation out in a simple but sensational sentence: "According to information supplied by SED Politburo member Günter Schabowski, the GDR is opening its borders."

 

The storm broke. Within half an hour, all other agencies had picked up the phrase. As did the news bulletins on West German television stations. The generally trusted State-financed network, ARD, led its eight o'clock bulletin with those exact words: "The GDR is opening its borders."

 

By the time the news bulletin was over, a total of 80 East Berliners had already arrived at the Bornholmer Strasse, Heinrich-Heine-Strasse and Invalidenstrasse checkpoints and were requesting permission to cross to West Berlin. The border officials sought advice. They were instructed to tell would-be border-crossers to come back tomorrow. The GDR's leadership had been caught completely off guard.

 

At around 10.40 p.m., ARD's late-night news discussion programme 'Themes of the Day' (Tagesthemen) began with the announcement: "This ninth of November is a historic day: the GDR has announced that its borders are open to everyone, with immediate effect, and the gates of the Wall stand wide open."

 

The strange thing was that when the programme went live to the Invalidenstrasse checkpoint to illustrate its claim, the border was clearly not open at all. The contradiction made no difference. It was at this point, largely in response to the ARD programme's sensational assertion, that the mass storming of the checkpoints began.

Between 1 and 2 a.m., human swarms from East and West push their way through the Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. Some are still in their sleepwear, ignoring the November cold. Thousands luxuriate in the sensation of walking around the nearby Pariser Platz — embassy row — an elegant city landmark closed for 30 years by barbed wire, concrete blocks and tank traps, turned by State decree into a deadly no-man's land. People are clambering on top of the Wall to caper and dance and yell their heart's out in liberation and release and delight.

A mix of hype and hope has defeated bureaucratic obfuscation. A little over six hours after a fumbled press conference and a Western press campaign that took the fumbled ball of the temporary exit-visa regulation and ran with it, a revolution has occurred. One of the swiftest and least bloody in history. A revolution that has most certainly been televised.

 

It will be followed by the biggest, wildest street party the world has ever seen.And, perhaps inevitably, by one of the biggest hangovers, too. But that is another story.Frederick Taylor is a historian.

 

This is an edited extract from his book, The Berlin Wall: 13 August 1961-9 November 1989 (Bloomsbury)

The views expressed by the author are personal

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

BJP PROPOSES, RSS DISPOSES

PANKAJ VOHRA

 

RSS sarsanghchalak Mohan Bhagwat's reiteration that none of the four Delhi-based second-generation leaders of the BJP was in consideration for the position of the saffron party's presidentship provides clear indication that L.K. Advani's coterie is fast losing its grip. Although Bhagwat had hinted at this even in his last interview to a TV channel, sections of the media had tried to turn the news around by stating that one of the four may be the party president after Rajnath Singh, whose term ends next month.

 

In fact, misinterpretation of most of the developments within the BJP has been deliberately done over the last few months to give more time to Advani, whose tenure as leader of opposition in the Lok Sabha may also come to an end shortly. But it appears now that the RSS has conveyed to Advani that he should announce his retirement plan with a specific date. This concession has been granted keeping in view Advani's long service to the party.

 

If sources in the RSS are to be believed, Advani, who turned 82 yesterday, had wanted that he be allowed to continue as the leader of opposition till the end of the winter session. While conceding his demand, the RSS had also told him that he should announce his date of retirement before the session began. In addition, he should not name any successor as this would have to be decided by the BJP parliamentary party.

 

It is no secret that Advani wants Sushma Swaraj, his deputy in the Lok Sabha, to succeed him. By doing so, he wants to ensure that his main rival Murli Manohar Joshi, the senior-most BJP leader after him, does not replace him. However, the choice of the new leader of opposition obviously will have to be made in consultation with the RSS. It will be surprising if Swaraj gets the job as she isn't even being considered for BJP presidentship.

 

In other words, it is unlikely that any of the four — M. Venkaiah Naidu, Arun Jaitley, Ananth Kumar and Sushma Swaraj — will enjoy their present importance after the party's apparatus is overhauled during the next two months. Had any of them been in contention for any important position, Bhagwat would not have been so categorical in dismissing their claim for the presidentship. Thus, if none of them is being found to be suitable to hold the BJP's president's post, it is very doubtful that they would be part of the new scheme of things. There is no doubt that all four have their qualities and are capable in many respects. But the RSS, for some reason, seems to take a dim view of their virtues, at least for now.

 

Bhagwat's latest interview has also broadly outlined the non-negotiable agenda for the party as well as rest of the sangh parivar. He has said there could be no compromise on commitment to Indian nationalism and unity, the demand for Article 370 being abolished, the uniform civil code and the construction of the Ram temple. That clearly means the RSS wants the BJP to return to its basic ideology.

 

Bhagwat is also keen that a younger leader who works closely with the Sangh to further its ideology heads the party. But he has not advocated at any place that the leaders of the opposition in both the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha should be from the younger lot. It implies that the RSS is prepared to settle for experience and may not insist on an age bar for the new incumbents.

 

Many political analysts critical of the RSS for stating that it would not interfere in BJP affairs while playing a

pro-active role in party affairs have to understand one basic thing: most BJP cadres are drawn from the RSS. Therefore, when the RSS chief has a wish-list, all the cadres are expected to honour it. This is how politics in the Sangh works.

 

Between us.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

PATIENCE PAYS

MASTER CHIN KUNG

 

Sometimes, it becomes difficult to handle things, and it gets more difficult to handle people. Then how do we go about?  'Patience' is the word.

 

There are three categories of patience. The first one is to tolerate the injuries of the physical and verbal abuses. To be patient is not a sign of your weakness, it is a virtue. With patience, we will have a quiet and pure mind. In such a state, it will be easier to attain deep concentration and achievement. When we successfully practise patience, we will gain the greatest good fortune.

 

Secondly, we would do well to be patient with variations of the natural elements, hot and cold, summer and winter, hunger and thirst, as well as unnatural disasters.

 

And third, be patient in the ardous course of your practice. Before attaining the joy of cultivation, and before your cultivation becomes strong, you may encounter many obstacles. However, once we get through this phase, we attain happiness. Why? Because we are on the right path. This is like the thrill of driving on an expressway after going around through difficult ways to get an entrance.

 

The Chinese word for 'diligence' consists of two characters, meaning perseverance in a specialised field and progress. The two need to work together. And there is the saying," Once we achieve in one, we achieve in all."

 

That is to say, if we try to practise many methods before we are enlightened, they will become obstacles. Therefore, one has to stay put with one method of practice until one is excellent in it. Once that stage is over, then it would be good to advance to the next method.

 

Some people are fortunate that they have to spend only a few years to get to the right method. Others are not so fortunate, and may have to take 10 to 20 years or even a lifetime in their attempt. Even then it is worth it.

 

(Edited extracts from the author's book, 'Buddhism: The Awakening of Compassion and Wisdom')

 

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INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

MEETING OF MINDS

 

In a moment of plain-speaking that is all-too-rare at summits of this sort, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown declared at the G-20 meeting of finance ministers this weekend that "we are only about halfway through dealing with the causes of the crisis." Brown's firmness that the troubles in the international economy that began with the collapse of Lehman Brothers over a year ago are not over is welcome — troubles that have, not too coincidentally, hastened the rise of the

 

G-20 as the major location for international co-ordination. That coordination was most on display whenit came to questions of whether it was time to exit the stimulus. There have been calls to do so in many major economies — the US, in particular, has seen some favourable numbers recently. But the release of more nuanced unemployment figures for that country, putting the real jobless rate in excess of 17 per cent, and the continuing struggles of several other members of the G-20 — especially Britain — stiffened the ministers' spines. The sole exception? India; Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, speaking at the India Economic Forum on Sunday morning, clearly indicated that "next year" India will "wind this down."

 

India simply does not have the resources that many other G-20 economies do. Yet stimulus packages should be thought of not just as government spending, but as monetary easing — which should be maintained for the foreseeable future — and reform, which can get production on a high-growth path again. India has much to learn from everyone else's view of the international economic landscape. It also has much to learn, and painfully little to contribute, to discussions about international capital flows. The growing belief that some sort of "Tobin tax" — a miniscule levy on international short-term flows, used to stabilise international finance — is necessary, found many takers at the G-20. (The US' Tim Geithner continued to sound unconvinced by the need for reform, though.) India's stunted financial sector, and its limited openness, means that it should listen more and brag less as these discussions take place.

 

So consensus on the most basic structural response to the crisis — reforming international finance — doesn't yet exist. But the G-20 has, nevertheless, had a reasonable year as an international body; it has been able to come to decisions and hammer out real agreement better than most such ineffective talking shops. Naturally much talk at the St Andrews meeting revolved around whether the G-20, and not the unwieldy assemblage due to meet at Copenhagen in December, might be the best location to deal with international action on climate change.

 

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INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

STATES OF THE BJP

 

It is a sign of the isolation in which the Bharatiya Janata Party's state units are beginning to perceive their political self-interest that Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan created a controversy where none need have existed. At a function in Satna last week, he said: "Locals should be given preference in employment in the industries being set up in the state. It should not happen that people should come from outside...

 

Bihar and get the jobs here." Predictably, and naturally, there was a political uproar. And the only thing that can be said for Chouhan is that he tried, however clumsily, to backtrack: he didn't intend to shut the state's welcome to people from any other state, he submitted, but to make the point that locals need to be provided skill training too, to take advantage of new employment opportunities.

 

Chouhan's clarification, however, carries little conviction. It is too soon after Raj Thackeray's anti-outsider campaign perverted Maharashtra politics, with other parties (including the BJP and the Congress) failing to frame an alternative political narrative. Skilling local populations is in any case part of a government's mandate , and Chouhan is too experienced a politician not to know that mention of Bihari migrant workers would be seen as a ploy to stoke anxiety. Why Chouhan, who last year bucked anti-incumbency, would resort to, and be seen to be resorting to, such crude parochialism is intriguing. But for the BJP, the question posed by such incidents is much larger.

 

Is the BJP becoming a conglomeration of state units, with its

 

regional satraps privileging narrow self-interest over the party's national ambitions? It has this past decade reaped significant returns by allowing its state units to think local on political agendas. But when the central leadership loses confidence, this independence can turn into isolationism. Chouhan was forced to backtrack after outrage from Bihar, where the party is part of the ruling coalition. However, for the BJP, which for all its internal feuds is the second largest party in Lok Sabha, the takeaway must be more urgent.

 

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INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

THAKSIN AGAIN

 

Thailand and Cambodia do squabble often. Their current spat centres around the fugitive former premier of Thailand, Thaksin Shinawatra. Cambodian PM Hun Sen has invited Thaksin — convicted for corruption charges, and living under self-imposed exile — to be his economic advisor, irking Thai nationalists. Thai officials allege that Thaksin's involvement not only jeopardises national interests but also complicates an already complex relationship. What's more, calls from the Thai government for Thaksin's extradition may be fruitless as no formal extradition treaty exists between the countries.

 

The dispute has built up over the past few days with both countries re-calling their respective ambassadors. Further it strains a crucial memorandum of understanding (MoU) between Thailand and Cambodia on overlapping maritime boundaries. The MoU signed in 2001, when Thaksin was PM, enables Thailand and Cambodia to develop oil and gas projects on their shared 26,000 sq km maritime area. Members of the government of Abhisit Vejjajiva have gone as far as suggesting the deal be "torn up." This is particularly harmful for development of the resource-rich Mekong Delta, the "last frontier of an emerging Asia."

 

Though Thaksin no longer holds the reins in Thailand, he is hardly a spent force. Cambodia serves as a powerful base for his political ambitions. Elections are scheduled for the coming year and Cambodia borders Thaksin's core support base: the vote-rich northeastern provinces. His banned Thai Rak Thai party has been reincarnated as the Puea Thai Party and has begun mobilising support, angering the Bangkok elite. Thaksin's new stint has the capacity to both thrust Thailand into political chaos yet again as well as disturbing the already fragile relationship with Cambodia.

 

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INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

SCATTERED BRICKS

PRATAP BHANU MEHTA

 

The fall of the Berlin Wall marked endings in so many interlinked narratives that its meaning seems too over-determined. At a basic level it ended the division of Germany, restoring to it a unity that seemed all but inevitable. But that a unified Germany could be contemplated without inciting fear was a testament to how much Europe, and Germany, had moved beyond the abominable histories of the 20th century. In a wider canvas, the fall restored the project of a European identity. As much as the EU is a politically hobbled entity, the fall of the Berlin Wall gave the idea of European unity a new momentum. Eastern Europe with alacrity jumped to participating in the European project.

 

Moving eastward still, the fall represented the collapse of the Soviet Empire. It marked the end of a recurrent Russian ambition: to be a major European power. And

 

Russia has been struggling to find its strategic identity ever since. But most importantly, the fall marked the symbolic collapse of that most astonishing of 20th century utopian projects: communism. The character of communism as an ideology and reality can be debated. But there is little doubt that its collapse was seen, rightly, as a form of emancipation. The fall of the Berlin Wall was an episode in the history of freedom. But with the collapse of communism the central axis around which world conflicts were organised also disappeared. The Cold War, a singular fact that impinged upon every nation, ended. Even more radically after the fall of the Berlin wall, Francis Fukumaya pronounced the end of history itself. There appeared to be finality to the ideological triumph of liberal democracy.

 

The event itself was extraordinary. The Wall was itself the best example of what Orwell had correctly prophesised as the inversion of language communism would produce. It was described by East German rulers who built it as "an anti-fascist protective rampart". The sight of citizens tearing down the wall that had been built by oppressive rulers was a moment of great euphoria. The chain of events that led to destruction of the Wall had long been in the making. The proximate cause was the fact that several East European countries were already beginning to allow East Germans to escape to the West. In the first week of November, tens of thousands of people began their protests.

 

But for all the heroism of civil society under communism, this was not a revolution in a conventional sense. It has to be said, in retrospect, that this was not a revolution engineered by the people. It was more a product of a rarity in world history. The governing classes that held together the Soviet empire simply lost the will to hold and to power and to rule. Quite why this happened is a complex story. But the singularity of the moment was not simply that change occurred. It was that leaders in power like Gorbachev decided they could not or did not want to stand in the way. This ensured that this most momentous of transitions took place with relatively little bloodshed.

 

What exactly triumphed in 1989 is still a matter for debate. Was it the idea of freedom? Was it the allure of prosperity? Was it simply the fact that military dimensions of the Cold War took their toll? And the verdict on the aftermath is also debated. Certainly there should be no doubt about just what a disfiguring experience communism was to most people who survived it. It is not only that the promise of utopia was never redeemed. The sense of self and society that communism created only exacerbated the triple alienation it had promised to overcome. The alienation of human beings from one another is nowhere more starkly on display than in society of fear that files of communist states bear witness to; the alienation of human beings from their work was nowhere personified better than in the drudgery of work under communism; and the dualism of man and nature was rendered even starker in the drive to mastery that communism unleashed. Instead of the ecstasy of self-creation, communism came to represent the abridgment of human possibilities.

 

East Germany was rapidly integrated, and Berlin itself has now become one of the most interesting cities in Europe. The rest of Eastern Europe joined the post-historical utopia known as the EU. Russia itself is still coming to terms with immense loss. It experienced a precipitous decline on so many measures of power. But even the form of capitalism and democracy it has spawned stands in the same relation to market society that Soviet communism did to Marxism: as a kind of odd perversion. Being in the ideological vanguard of a global movement was its identity; and after that dissipated what is left is a sense of the old tragic, and somewhat cynical, Slavic exceptionalism, a sense of being beleaguered, buttressed by the bravado of energy revenues. Russia is still to find itself.

 

Fukuyama's critics were quick to blast his characterisation of 1989 as the "end of history". After all, did not the eruption of irredentist nationalism, religious fundamentalism, new forms of imperialism and the crisis of capitalism itself prove him wrong? Nor was the march of democracy as seamless as many had thought. And Communist China has improvised its own form of social existence not captured by either the terms communism or liberal democracy. There is some truth to this. But it can be exaggerated. Nationalism remains a powerful force, but is by no means an alternative to liberal capitalism. Religious fundamentalism exists, but already profoundly marked by the secular context it seeks to overturn. Capitalism has serious problems, but these are very far from being system threatening. Fukuyama's point was not that there will not be conflicts or crises. It was deeper. It was that the horizons within which we now view human possibility and the yardsticks of progress are broadly defined by liberal capitalism. What died in 1989 was bondage and unfreedom. And that was a good thing. But what also died was the legitimacy of any more expansive conception of freedom beyond that offered by liberal capitalism. But it is hard to deny the fact that underlying euphoria of the fall of the Berlin wall, there was as much wistfulness as there was triumphalism. The fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of a politics of illusion, one that was profoundly destructive. But it has also left us a question we are still struggling with: can there be a critique without some yearning for utopia?

 

The writer is president, Centre for Policy Research, Delhi

 

express@expressindia.com

 

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INDIAN EXPRESS

COLUMN

A FORGOTTEN 4,000 KILOMETRES

NIMMI KURIAN

 

The controversy over the Dalai Lama's visit to Arunachal Pradesh shows why it doesn't take much for India-China conversations to break down. Both countries have all too often preferred to exhaust themselves by quibbling over trifles and in the process missing the big picture. Each stumble has taken relations into tiresomely familiar terrain and brought with it fresh panic attacks. It has also been embarrassing to watch both sides pat themselves for showing tact and restraint after every high-strung rerun. As they lurch from crisis to crisis, the question is: can India and China begin a bold new conversation of change?

 

This will depend on whether they can raise the bar on a possible new border imaginary. This will not be easy since territory has become something of a conversation-stopper. A limited territorial imagination has reduced the borderlands into being geographies of loss. This perhaps explains the incongruity that, despite the compelling immediacy of a 4000 km long border, when we think of India and China we typically think of New Delhi and Beijing and not locations across the border. So entrenched has this imagined reality been that border regions have become virtually invisible today in India-China relations. The repeated invocation of rigid notions of territoriality have meant that any talk of new border discourses to transcend this logic to mutual benefit have remained just that.

 

Some of this reductive logic is also more than evident in the fact that, even as bilateral trade is expected to surge to $60 billion by year-end, much of it has passed the borders by. Despite the fanfare that greeted the resumption of border trade at Nathu La after 40 years in 2006, two-way trade has not even reached a quarter-million dollars. India-China collective imaginations remain caught in a time warp with

 

border trade struggling with an archaic list of items that hark back to another era. Yet another example of our continuing fascination with the symbolic over the substantive.

 

If these fractured geographies are to be restored, creative ways of thinking out of the territorial trap has to be a first. It will mean appreciating that there is more to borders than lines of control or establishing hotlines and holding flag meetings. These will call for recasting ageing agendas and releasing the borderlands from the freeze frame of securitised narratives. Unbundling the idea of cooperation will for instance mean looking at shared co-governance challenges that a shared neighbourhood brings. The India-China borderlands are witnessing a huge developmental thrust and China's goal of developing its south-western holdings coincides with India's own domestic imperative, rapid development of the Northeast. These raise larger questions of micro-level governance, livelihood and poverty — which find no place within politico-military frames of decision-making, that offer solutions suboptimal at best. It will also call for exploring a common analytic framework within which promising new ideas on trade, tourism, conservation, climate change and resource governance can be addressed.

 

This will also be an opportunity to decentre some of these debates since these are not challenges that can hope to be solved long-distance, from distant capitals. The mainstream discourse has been one of micro-managing and parachuting problem-solving models, with local and regional action plans conspicuous by their absence. For instance, how will changes in ecosystem and biodiversity loss affect the life chances of border communities finds no mention in the discourse. This also brings the need to recognise the social license to operate so that local communities can obtain a fair share in the resource value of developmental activities and not end up becoming collateral casualties.

 

If handled well, asking some of these questions will offer policy communities in India and China a richer and wider repertoire of learning processes to experiment with. These will be particularly valuable in situations marked by high levels of public alienation, such as the India-China borderlands. It will also help take the edge off the shrill rhetoric that passes as dialogue between the two countries. It will then matter far less where the Dalai Lama travels, and begin to speak to his core concerns over identity, culture, language and local ownership over development issues. Such a conversation of change will also do more to tackle the trust deficit between the two countries than all the hand-holding at high-level summits can hope to achieve.

 

The writer is a Fellow of the India-China Institute at the New School in New York express@expressindia.com

 

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INDIAN EXPRESS

OPED

'THERE'S NO QUESTION OF PUBLIC CAMPAIGNS TO CHOOSE THE CHIEF INFORMATION COMMISSIONER'

 

Hello and welcome to Walk the Talk. I am Shekhar Gupta, at Delhi's St. Stephen's College with another of its very proud alumni, and I must say the venue was chosen by him. Wajahat Habibullah, welcome to Walk the Talk.

Thank you, thank you.

 

All you old Stephanians are happy to come back to college.

Always. It sort of gives one a feeling of peace, being at home.

 

Because many of us who sort of went to school and college in rougher environments are quite happy to have escaped.

Well I suppose at the time when actually one left one felt that everyone is moving on, but I don't think that we'd really describe it as an escape. I greatly enjoyed my stay here, and made many friends who have turned out to be lifelong friends and I think it was a time of great creativity, time that I remember with a great deal of nostalgia and a great deal of happiness.

 

Because many of the people you studied with, you've then worked with in public life or in your social life over the past four decades.

Yes, but I haven't really, I don't remember my association so much in terms of public life but I do remember my continuing private association with people.

 

Because you were also active in theatre.

I was, and I had a number of people who acted with me in plays and, when I wasn't acting, I was also involved in backstage.

 

So I believe Kapil Sibal and you.

Kapil Sibal and I acted together.

 

Brinda Karat?

Brinda Karat, and as such she was not in a play with me, she was in those days Brinda Das, we weren't in a play together. But I was somewhere working backstage. Radhika, now Roy. Various people. We worked…Shailaja Chandra, who was former chief secretary of Delhi, and Manju Dubey, her sister Anita, now Anita Shourie. We were all together at that time.

 

But you know, maybe there is a little less in there, because Wajahat made a habit of playing backstage very early, and done a great job of that through his life.

Well, I don't know if I did a great job of that because I then came onto the stage and started playing more important roles.

 

Isn't it like your life in the civil service? Because as long as you were an active civil servant, you were backstage and as RTI commissioner… you were in the front.

I don't know if I am very much in the front, but I tried to remain backstage. But you are right. The law being such, so revolutionary, I probably attract more attention than I deserve.

 

It's also a law that is tested all the time because it's so new.

And the limits have not yet been tested. The limits are still being considered. There are number of cases in which you've given decisions, which Justice Shah, the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, has mentioned as having extended the boundaries of the right to information. But those are actually being tested because the courts are now scrutinising them, particularly the High Court of Delhi.

 

Right. Because one of those… you know this process of pushing at the boundaries, has actually now led to judges declaring their assets… Supreme Court judges.

Well, that has been a consequence. Although we of course had not declared that they must declare their assets.

 

So Supreme Court has done the right thing?

And not only that. Now as a result of that, because of what has happened, people are asking these same questions regarding other political leaders and so on.

 

So, I would put a simple proposition now. After the judges, why not at least central services officers: IAS, IPS, Central services, senior gazetted officers. Because they are also paid with public funds. Why should their assets not be made public?

The question of whether they should be made public or not is not the question anymore. They can be.

 

And they should be?

Not only should be, they can be under the law. But the question is whether they should be actually placed in the public domain. That means placed on the website for any one to see. There are pros and cons, arguments for and against…

 

So, the nuances… whether I as a citizen want to know what are Wajahat Habibullah's assets, I have the right to get that information?

Correct, correct.

 

The question is should that be available on somebody's website so anybody can see.

Right, that is the question.

 

What are the pros and cons?

In fact it has been mentioned… the pros and cons have been very ably examined by Justice Ravinder Bhatt in this particular case that I mentioned to you… that they can be used to harass people and so on. Because you could pick up something from that, which is otherwise innocuous, blow it up and then use that as a form of harassment. So these things may require for you to see why the person is asking that information, although under the law it is not correct — you cannot ask a person why he is asking for information. Information has to be given and unless it happens to be exempted information in which case public interest, public activity — and this would fall in that category. This could amount to intrusion of privacy. But if it has nothing to do with public activity or public interest? To establish that, some reasons may have to be gone into.

 

What's your own view?

My own personal view is that, as one of my colleagues said, we are so transparent I hope you are not going to ask us to wear transparent clothing. If this law means that you can go so far, you can even demand that you want to have transparent clothing, obviously all my accoutrements, as you may say, have to be transparent. There is no way that I can hide portions. In my case, in the case of the information commissioners, the protection of privacy also abates. You may allow the protection of privacy in the case of your colleagues, in the case of others, but in your own case I think to be true to the Right to Information Act, one cannot really plead privacy.

 

So would you then appeal to your fellow IAS, IPS officers not to fear this. Because this is inevitable. This has to come now.

Certainly. It's not a question of fearing it at all. This is actually a means of strengthening governance. Strengthening government, strengthening my work.

 

So what are some of the things that you have noticed — areas of weakness and areas of strength.

Well you see for example, Delhi has made a great deal of progress in opening up and they have had a law called Right to Information law for several years — as 2002 in fact. Ration cards, these have started opening up. Initially, the argument was that we don't want to give this information because it may lead to law and order situations, meaning many of the ration cards have been issued to people who they were not supposed to be issued to… But putting this now onto the website demanding that it should be public knowledge, means if I feel that you should not have got a ration card, and your name is on the list, I can go and ask how has Mr Shekhar Gupta got his ration card, how is he a person who is BPL.. You remember the Blueline buses were causing a great deal of agitation among people. You would not have heard about it recently, because of the fact that all the information regarding the Blueline buses is now available on the department of transport — who are the drivers, how experienced are the drivers, what are their licenses, what are the models, how old is it, all this is available… With the result, when this information becomes available, I, as head of the transport department, will initially be able to say all this information shows these are old vehicles, please get rid of them.

 

Right. So it actually becomes a force multiplier in his hands?

Yes.

 

Whereas the initial fear of the civil service was: this will weaken our authority.

That is true. Why? Because our mindset has been conditioned around the Official Secrets Act. When I was trained, we were taught: information that you hold is held in trust… In trust for whom? The government, and therefore never disclose it... Now of course you ask yourself: is it holding trust? It is holding trust, but for whom? The government, yes, but who is the government? The public is the government in a democracy.

 

So you know, interesting you talk about, when you went to the academy and were taught this. But then you headed that academy… What were you teaching the new students?

By then, of course, my attitudes had altogether changed because I had been tempered by a lifetime of service. So, because I went there only in the 2000s, I had already been in the service for more than 40 years. So at that time, every time at the valedictory, when the children would pass out — I'd refer to all of the officers and trainees as my children, I am a father of hundreds, and proud of it. I would say now you are going out. We have taught you to be public servants. When you go out into the field, ensure that you remain public servants and that you do not convert the public into your servants. That always used to be my advice. Because we have been talking of public service, but we have construed public service, to mean service of the government. Yes, service of the government, no doubt. But then what is a government in a democracy? In a democracy, the people are the government.

 

And how did you find the response? Because I will ask you the inevitable question — what was the basic difference in attitude that you saw from times when you were a trainee at the academy and you were training trainees at the academy?

Well, you see trainees at the academy are much older for one thing.

 

Many MBAs, engineers, MBBSs.

Many MBAs, yes and many engineers, some IIT graduates, some doctors actually wanted to serve in the services. So far as the sense of commitment was concerned, that was certainly there. But they were much more realistic in their attitudes. What they could achieve and what they could not achieve. We all joined the service thinking now we are going to change the country.

So, you obviously don't buy, you know, the cynical belief that bureaucracy is a basket case now?

No, I must say I had those apprehensions when I was becoming director of the academy because I had heard all these stories. And everybody got married for dowry and things. There are dowry marriages there. But strongly looked down upon by people in the services. And it's not that people have joined the services to see how much money they can make out of it. There are such cases also. In fact, in my time, I actually had to dismiss one of the officer trainees on grounds of corruption having been established… All these things happen. But that is not the general trend. The commitments are high, but the demographic background has changed. We were, many of us, large numbers of us, children of those in the service. My own father was in the army, and number of ICS officers… their children were my colleagues, my batchmates and so on. But now you find very few people who are children of those who are from the civil services.

 

RTI, the office of the Chief Information Commissioner has become such an iconic thing that we even have a public campaign now, almost a celebrity run campaign, to choose your successor. Have you been watching it?

Yes, yes. I watched one of your NDTV programmes the other day, talking about nomination of who should be there and who should not, who should choose and who should not. One young gentleman virtually suggested a referendum all over the country or a plebiscite or something. I mean, that's going a bit far. I am rather flattered that such a lot of importance is given to this particular position, but the importance is not to that position.

 

You would not agree to the idea of public campaigns?

No, no. Because there's no question of public campaigns. There is a committee, a very high-level committee — not only a high level, the supreme political authority of the country. The prime minister, the leader of the opposition, and another minister.

 

Wajahat, you rue the fact you had to spend too much time on your desk. We know you are going to Kashmir after almost a decade now. Your job is defined as a desk job there as well, but we all know you are not going to be confined to your desk. How do you look at your new assignment in Kashmir?

Well, you see, I'll be there for only a year. Because I have to retire at the age of 65. I will try and actually set up the mechanism to the right to information. That is all I am aspiring to do. I do not wish to bring about a revolution in terms of the information that becomes accessible. I can try and do as much as I can.

 

But you know that Omar Abdullah wanted you there.

Omar had asked, he asked me to be there and this was quite some time ago. Then he wrote a formal letter actually inviting me to be Chief information Commissioner because the law has been recently passed. I had been sharing my experience. When their law was being evolved, when their rules were being evolved… I had tried to give my contribution. Happy to say that they have taken some of that. Not all of it, but some of it and therefore once the law came into being then this is what he asked that I may come…

 

There is also a view that he is inexperienced; he needs an experienced mind around him. So do you see yourself playing some of that role?

I don't know. I am sure there are lots of experienced minds around him. But if I can offer my… because I have always been friends with the family. I have not really worked under his father, except for a very brief period. But I have worked under his grandfather who I greatly admired also. And his grandmother was a lady who I greatly admired. And who was very very fond of me, I might say. When I had this accident in '93, when I nearly died outside Hazratbal, she had all three sons...

 

It was a terrible accident...

Because I had suffered injuries on the skull which were so bad. I mean the whole of my right side, punctured lung and hip had become… but the doctors here did a very good job. And then I went on to the US and I got further psychological treatment for that because I was suffering from what is called post-traumatic stress disorder which I hadn't heard of before. Now I know all about it. It took a long time to recover because brain injuries… you don't recover very rapidly. It's taken a long time. So to that extent, yes I don't know about brave, I like to live. Like all of us do.

 

That's a very good takeaway from this conversation. As always all the very best to you. We know, wherever you are, there will be action and there will also be calm.

You remind me of the Bhagavad Gita, which talks of thirtha — the centre remains calm, but contributes to action all around.

 

Thank you Wajahat. All the very best to you.

 

Thank you.

 

Transcript prepared by Sharika C.

 

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FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

WHAT FELL WITH THE WALL

When communism faced its greatest crisis in Berlin exactly 20 years ago, it folded up as a system almost as quickly as the Wall, which divided West Germany and East Germany, was broken down by an East German populace that saw freedom more clearly than ever before on the other side. Now, capitalism is perhaps facing its greatest crisis in a long time. But we can be rest assured that the capitalist system, even in its worst times, will never even get close to folding up like communism did 20 years ago. Capitalism, unlike communism, is an open system amenable to correction. And the fact of the matter is that we have different variants of capitalism operating successfully all over the world—Anglo-American capitalism is different from continental European capitalism, which is different from Scandinavian capitalism, which is different from Asian capitalism. What unites them is the systemic ability to generate impressive levels of growth and prosperity to people within. Communism, at least in its Soviet and East European avatar, just ended up distributing poverty and much hardship, including depriving citizens of basic political and human rights. That is why most parts of Eastern Europe embraced democracy and free markets with a fervour not seen in other parts of the world. The former republics of the Soviet Union, including Russia, have had rather less successful transitions, with authoritarianism and state control of the economy still rampant. No wonder they trail their European counterparts on every indicator.

 

Of course, history has not ended in the sense that Francis Fukayama had meant it to end in his seminal work at the end of the Cold War. Democracy and free markets are not the only game in town—plenty of authoritarian regimes (even outside the ex-Soviet Union) with less than free economies still thrive in many parts of the world, and also consider the rise of Islamic fundamentalism as an alternative ideology with pockets of support. But the plain fact of the matter is that capitalism and democracy have proved to be the best available games in town, and have become an aspirational goal even for people who continue to live under oppressive regimes. In India, we did a remarkably good job of responding to the collapse of communism. The economy was extensively liberalised in 1991 and foreign policy focus shifted away from the ex-communist countries to the US, Europe and East Asia. Twenty years later we continue to prosper as a result of those strategic shifts. Obviously much remains to be done in terms of lifting poverty and accelerating growth. The answer to that are more markets and better functioning democratic institutions. At least on the former, even the Chinese and Vietnamese communist parties will agree.

 

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FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

SWEET TOOTH

On Friday, wholesale sugar prices in Kolhapur—one of the biggest trading centres in India—touched Rs 34.43 per kg, a jump of almost 2% in a single day. Cumulatively, sugar prices have risen by around 97% in 2009, a huge problem for both consumers and policymakers. The trigger for the latest round of price spikes is the ongoing standoff between sugarcane growers and millers in Uttar Pradesh, the country's second-largest producer, which has threatened to delay crushing of the already sparse cane crop. Farmers are agitating against the Centre's new Fair and Remunerative Price (FRP) policy, which guarantees a higher base price than the statutory minimum price, but robs states of their liberty to set a higher price for cane through the state-advised price (SAP) mechanism. On the one hand, growers are arguing that by fixing a lower FRP than SAP, the central government is de-valuing their produce, while on the other hand states are questioning the Centre's authority in stopping them from setting the price at which sugar mills should purchase the commodity. Uttar Pradesh along with Punjab has openly come out against the Centre's FRP. Uttar Pradesh has in fact gone to the extent of restricting the movement of imported sugar into the state to maintain law and order after a group of farmers burnt a cargo containing imported raw sugar.

 

Now the government faces a tricky situation, given the huge political constituency that sugar farmers command both in UP and elsewhere. The basic problem, as we have argued before, lies in the fundamental dynamics of the sugar trade. Controls at every stage, right from the fields, down to the retail consumption level, has crippled the sugar sector so much that even a slight change in the demand-supply situation shakes it from within. Imports could slowly become the norm if the policy changes don't even out the cycle of boom and bust. To do so, government intervention should be brought down to a minimum so that trade distortions are minimised. Large-scale changes in the Sugarcane Control Order (1966) should be invoked, which will do away with many regulations. Once the determining factor in sugar production and trade is the price mechanism in the free market, protests such as the one in UP will fizzle out. Even now the best hope to end the stalemate is the market—millers and farmers will face the brunt from competing industries like jaggery units very soon. Sugar needs the discipline of the market.

 

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FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

WHY BERLIN WAS A WIN FOR ALL OF US

MEGHNAD DESAI

 

Of all the innovations that have shaped our lives in recent years, none has been more influential than the destruction of the Berlin Wall. The Wall did not fall as is often described. It was taken apart stone by stone by people angry about their enslavement behind it in the so-called German Democratic Republic. It was the final curtain on the ridiculous notion of people's democracy and the pretence that Bolshevism was the future. It was the best example  of creative destruction as Schumpeter labelled the innovations of capitalism.

 

The destruction of the Wall ended the sad history of an experiment that lasted 75 years during the 20th century. It was an experiment in devising an economic system that promised to do better than capitalism in terms of both bread and equality. Much of the debate during that time had intellectuals, especially in the colonies, climbing on the Soviet Union bandwagon and hoping to ape its policies as and when they had the chance to do so. Pandit Nehru was the most prominent among them. The prestige of the Communist Party of Great Britain and later of India was enormous. They had 'history' on their side.

 

The stranglehold of the Leninist model on economic imagination has now been loosened everywhere else, except in India. The Mahalanobis model was India's offering to the Soviet model, and it mired the Indian economy in stagnation for 30 years. Only after the Wall fell was it possible for Manmohan Singh to break out of the old prison of Soviet style planning models with command and control.

 

But it was not just India that benefited though, indeed to this day, there is some nostalgia for the old USSR. The Eastern European countries, havens of socialism (which were recording a 5% per annum growth for many years according to the UN Economic Survey of Europe)  chose to abandon their economic system with indecent haste. China had begun the process in 1978 but it had the choice as it did not come under the USSR's yoke. In the case of Poland, the policymakers such as Balcerowicz preferred massive loss of output as the price for total restructuring. No 'Socialist' country in Europe stuck to that model. The subject known as Economics of Socialism, that is, trying to make sense of the economic trends in Eastern Europe and USSR, disappeared.

 

If the generations of the 1930s to 1960s looked upon Soviet Union as an example to emulate and perhaps the beacon of anti-Americanism, the generations of the 1980s and 1990s find it hard to believe that such a system could ever exist. It is forgotten more completely than the workings of Feudalism. There were two competing systems between 1945 and 1989, if not between 1917 and 1989. Now there is only one game in town and it is capitalism. Even during the latest crisis no one flew the flag for  a return to Soviet-style planned economy. People had seen the Emperor had no clothes and would not change their minds.

 

Globalisation began its latest phase with technological changes in transport and telecommunications—Comsat, for example, and computing. But its reach was still partial until the late 1980s. The Wall was literally a barrier to the spread of globalisation. Its removal meant that across Europe markets would define the logic of  economic life. Citizens were free to move for jobs, free to make money and dispose of it as they chose and prosper, rather than live under spartan conditions. Once Europe was conquered, even ramshackle African dictatorships, which pretended to be Socialist, lost their subsidies from the USSR and had to come to terms with their responsibilities. Who now recalls that Ethiopia was to be a Marxist haven?

 

Globalisation has just been through its first global crisis and come out of it. Capitalism has the capacity to renew itself and advance from strength to strength. It can do so because it is not a monolithic system. No one 'runs' capitalism. Only the fevered imagination of its detractors see a conspiracy by Imperial powers or some secret cabal of Multinationals as running it. Once Western Europe and America had the lead in capitalism. But Asia has just shown that it can play the game even better. There are no religious or racial preconditions for success in capitalism.

 

That is why it was after China abandoned the silly Soviet model and India also lost its illusions that the largest drop in the number of people living in poverty occurred. It was not Soviet Socialism but good old capitalism that delivered growth and a promise to end poverty. The collapse of the Wall brought to an end a wasted half century of human misery.

 

The author is a prominent economist and labour peer

 

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FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

PREPARE A COFFIN FOR THE GLOBAL TREATY

RENUKA BISHT

In a recent study of GHG emissions by selected cities this year, Barcelona proudly did the best —with the lowest per capita emissions. Its population density is high, but electricity requirements low—thanks to the climate gods' goodwill. Even so, power consumption has been steadily climbing since Spain ratified the Kyoto protocol. By 2007, emissions had risen to 53.5% above 1990 levels. As climate treaty debates further degenerate into developed vs developing countries' hostility, big players like the US, India and China draw most of the heat. But there are plenty of others lurking in the shadows of both the 'rich' and 'poor' camps, who noiselessly emit away while waiting for their frontmen to win them the best possible deal.

 

One group blazed its way to the front last week. Barcelona was playing host to the last of the five parlays in advance of next month's UNFCC summit in Copenhagen, which is supposed to lay down a post-Kyoto protocol. The summit had barely begun before 55 African nations staged a walkout. They were demanding that rich countries cut their emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2020. This would obviously include Spain, and Spain is obviously not up to the task. This is of course what Indian negotiators have said so often that Bollywood should have had hit a song about it by now—if it lived in the real world.

 

Actually, although many headlines suggested that the whole of the African continent had stood up to protest, it was just a handful of representatives who truly made their presence felt in Barcelona. One was Kabeya Tshikuku of the Democratic Republic of Congo delegation, who accused 'other' groups of not taking the climate talks seriously enough, urgently enough. The cursed other would no doubt have the US at the head, but it would be delusional to imagine India doesn't figure somewhere in the mix too. We may prefer to spin the 'poor' and 'emerging economic power' tracks to suit our own interests, but it doesn't take a rocket scientist to decode such self-interest, or replicate its rhetoric.

 

Talk is spreading about how the next global treaty on climate change may not emerge in Copenhagen, but at a December 2010 meeting in Mexico. What happened in Barcelona suggests even that may be too optimistic.

 

If the narrative of mistrust keeps growing not just between 'rich' and 'poor' camps but within the camps themselves (with the US and the EU growing more belligerent with each other), and economic considerations keep driving individual countries in distinct directions, we should start buying coffins for the global climate treaty in general.

 

A second African delegate who made his presence felt in Barcelona was Sudanese Lumumba Stanislaus-Kaw Di-Aping, who argued that anything south of a 40% emissions reduction by rich countries would mean the destruction of Africa's population and land mass. What would our forests and environment minister Jairam Ramesh have said? He has, in the sound context of realism, suggested accepting a rich countries' emission reduction target of 25% by 2020. Wait, Ramesh wasn't there at Barcelona. Some commentators have suggested this absence was enforced by the PMO, which didn't take kindly to Ramesh's letter suggesting that India move away from the developing countries' bloc to accept emission cuts (Kyoto mandates these for developed countries alone). As other commentators on this page have noted, such concessions are part and parcel of India's ascension into the big league. But they would put India at an arm's length from some in the 'poor' bloc.

 

Today, as about 1,000 giant dominos topple along the former path of the Berlin wall, to commemorate the 20th anniversary of its fall, let's remember that it didn't go down because of some single grand plan, but because of many, disparate individuals taking a visionary stance. What that says about climate diplomacy is that, even if our appointed leaders let us down, even if no global treaty gets signed—remember the signing of Kyoto was no guarantee of emission reduction—there is still reason to hope that things can get fixed, Armageddon averted.

 

Last weekend, there was snow blanketing Beijing and this weekend Delhi was dealing with a dastardly smog. The Beijing snow was the earliest the city had seen since 1987. Affected people, whether enjoying the sight of picturesque white drifts across temple tops or cursing their flight delays, had to thank the weather modification office that had overdosed the atmosphere with silver iodide, or pulled off cloud-seeding. Last year, it was the Olympics that were the occasion for a huge antipollution effort. Either ways, Beijing has been turned into a vast climate fixing lab. Delhi too had carried out a similarly vast experiment when it put CNG vehicles on the road some years ago. Neither of these measures is directly related to either the Kyoto protocol or its successor. But it's likely that we will be relying on such independent—innovative and technologically advanced —measures to take care of our climate in the future.

 

renuka.bisht@expressindia.com

 

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FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

THIS IS IT

SURABHI AGARWAL

 

After a deep lull, the Indian IT industry is buzzing with talk of mergers & acquisitions. The writing on the wall is clear: consolidation in the industry is good and much-needed. The pecking order of the country's top IT companies has not changed much in the last decade. The reason is simple: there are such huge gaps between the revenue figures of these companies that most of them have been safe at their respective spots for years now.

 

But the consolidation drive that almost started with the acquisition of India's erstwhile fourth-largest software company—Satyam Computer Services (now Mahindra Satyam) by the sixth-largest—Tech Mahindra—promises a great deal of shake-out. Consider this: the difference between revenues of India's third-largest (Wipro IT business), fourth (HCL Technologies) and fifth-largest (Tech Mahindra) software firms, is stark. At Rs 19,166 crore, Wipro's revenues are more than double of what HCL Tech reported (Rs 10,229 crore) for the last financial year. And the latter's revenues are more than double of what Tech Mahindra clocked (Rs 4,464.7 crore) in FY 2008-09. Of course, the merger with Satyam (whenever it happens) will surely catapult TechM closer to HCL Tech, if not above it, in the pecking order.

 

Consider the next in the row, Patni Computer Services, the difference between revenues of Patni and TechM is over Rs 1,300 crore. As reported by FE, the company is in advanced talks with L&T Infotech for a buy-out. L&T Infotech, which is at the eleventh spot currently with revenues of Rs 1,975 crore, has been struggling to climb up the ladder. If the deal goes through, the duo will usurp TechM to grab the fifth spot. Even global IT giants from Japan, Europe and the US, which want to up their India presence, are keenly looking at mid and small-tier Indian IT companies. That's not all, many private equity majors are also in talks to cash out their investments in BPO and IT firms. Several of them could be merged to form bigger entities that can fight competition better. Even several captives of big MNCs in India, who have found it difficult to sustain themselves during the downturn, are on the block.

 

surabhi.a@expressindia.com

 

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FINANCIAL EXPRESS

REPORT CARD

 

Using firm-level data, this paper* analyses the transformation of India's economic structure following the implementation of economic reforms:

 

Between 1986 and 2005, Indian growth put to rest the concern that there was something about the 'nature of India' that made rapid growth difficult. Following broad-ranging reforms in the mid-1980s and early 1990s, the state deregulated entry, both domestic and foreign, in many industries and also hugely reduced barriers to trade. While liberalisations are believed to transform economies through competition and removal of distortions, the effects of liberalisation may not be uniform. Some industries may be better equipped for change while others are not. Within industries, new entrants may gain market share, while incumbents go bankrupt. The focus of the study is on publicly-listed and unlisted firms in manufacturing and services industries. We analyse firm characteristics shown by industry before and after liberalisation and investigate how industrial concentration, number, and size of firms evolved between 1988 and 2005. We find great dynamism displayed by foreign and private firms as reflected in their growth. Yet, closer scrutiny reveals no dramatic transformation in the wake of liberalisation. The story rather is one of an economy still dominated by the incumbents (state-owned firms) and to a lesser extent, traditional private firms (firms incorporated before 1985).

 

—* Laura Alfaro, Anusha Chari; India Transformed? Insights from the Firm Level 1988-2005, Working Paper 15448, October 2009, National Bureau of Economic Research

 

This paper* has attempted to comprehend the nexus between migration and urban poverty in India:

Decision to migrate is mostly a choice—except in compelling circumstances—and, therefore, needs to be examined in terms of its economic outcomes. This paper deals with migration decisions to urban areas that are backed by economic rationale and attempts to understand gains accruing to individuals from migration, in terms of poverty outcomes. The analysis is based on the 55th round survey data on Employment-Unemployment Survey 1999-2000 provided by the National Sample Survey Organisation. We undertake a broad socio-economic profiling of the migrant households in urban India and explore the dynamics of poverty among inter-state as well as intra-state migrants to urban destinations. The analysis reveals that migrants disadvantaged in terms of caste, education and residence earn poorer returns to migration. While returns to migration have proved to be positive with increased duration at the destination, the characteristic endowment like education and social group identity seem to make a further difference. From our empirical analysis it is evident that low-income states were major senders of inter-state migrants and high-income states were major receivers. These low-income states are characterised by low levels of intra-state migration indicating that migration is linked with disparity in regional development.

 

* William Joe, Priyajit Samaiyar, US Mishra; Migration and Urban Poverty in India, Some Preliminary Observations, Working Paper 414, September 2009, Centre for Development Studies

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

DISHONOURABLE TO THE CORE

 

An inglorious capitulation by the central leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party to political blackmail by a mining lobby spearheaded by the Reddy brothers has paved the way for a resolution of the Karnataka crisis – for now. The brothers, G. Janardhana Reddy and G. Karunakara Reddy, who are Ministers in the BJP government and claim to have the support of about 50 Members of the Legislative Assembly, made common cause with political discontents having their own amb itions. They got all they wanted – except the removal of Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, who despite being denuded of his constitutional authority and thoroughly humiliated has been obliged to participate in the farce of a triumphant denouement in New Delhi. Some of the terms of capitulation: upright officials, including the Chief Minister's Principal Secretary V.P. Baligar, have been transferred; Rural Development Minister Shobha Karandlaje, one of the more dynamic faces in the Cabinet against whom no wrongdoing has been established, is to be dropped; the transfer of officials in Bellary and Gadag districts believed to be close to the Reddy brothers will be partially rolled back; the proposal for a tax of Rs. 1,000 per truck-load of iron ore or other minerals will be abandoned; and a core committee headed by Sushma Swaraj and including the Chief Minister as well as the elder Reddy brother, will be constituted. Having used the financial muscle of the brothers to win over independents and engineer defections from other parties last year, and to fight the Lok Sabha election this year, the BJP was in no position to take the moral high ground. On the other side, whatever the shortcomings of the Yeddyurappa government, most recently spotlighted by its handling of the flood crisis, the fact is that it took some steps to check the unrestrained ways and greed of the mining lobby.

 

What was the honourable course open to the BJP? The party that summarily expelled Jaswant Singh for writing a book on Jinnah should have taken swift, no-nonsense disciplinary action against the Reddy brothers, first by backing their dismissal as Ministers. It should have done a quick appraisal of the views, motivations, and real intent of the MLAs in the rebel camp. It should have made it clear to them that while it was willing to take up the genuine complaints and grievances of those who were unhappy with the style of functioning of the Yeddyurappa government, there was no question of surrendering to political blackmail. Above all, the BJP central leadership should have strengthened the Chief Minister's hand by making it clear to the rebels that the party was not afraid of going to the people, if need be, by opting for dissolution of the State Assembly. Since most MLAs do not want to face an election at mid-point of the five-year term, a firm, principled stand and swift action would probably have quelled the rebellion. But given a compromised central leadership, there was no question of the 'party with a difference' taking anything but the moral low ground.

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

SETBACK TO SCIENCE

 

The career of the disgraced South Korean stem cell researcher, Hwang Woo Suk, came to an intriguing end when a court handed down a two-year sentence (suspended for three years) for embezzling government money ($700,000) and buying human eggs for research in violation of bioethics law but cleared him of the fraud charges. In South Korea, science fraud becomes illegal only if the fraudulent data are used to gain funds. Dr. Hwang admitted fraud in January 2006 and his governm ent promptly withdrew his licence to conduct stem cell research. This was for conducting fraudulent research and also for bioethical transgressions — paying women to donate eggs and using eggs donated by two junior scientists working in his laboratory. It became clear by the end of 2005 that the two 'landmark' papers published in Science that catapulted Dr. Hwang to fame contained nothing but fabricated data and manipulated images. The 'breakthrough' paper, published in March 2004, reported the first stem cell line produced from a cloned human embryo. It was followed by a 'seminal' paper in May 2005 where the researcher reported the creation of 11 stem cell lines that genetically matched nine patients with spinal cord injury, diabetes, and an immune system disorder. The journal retracted both papers in January 2006.

 

An unintended but positive consequence of Dr. Hwang's notoriety has been a tightening of the rules and closer scrutiny of images submitted by researchers for publication. The committee that examined the two papers at the behest of Science suggested that it would no longer do to work on the assumption that there would be no misrepresentation by the authors, and proposed some changes in the verification process. There is also a greater understanding among young researchers of what constitutes misconduct in science and its costs. Seoul National University, where Dr. Hwang worked until he was dismissed, even started an undergraduate course on misconduct. But science fraud and misconduct are likely to occur as long as the following conditions persist — a pressure cooker situation of having to publish in high-impact journals, ready access to simple tools to falsify data, and the race by science journals to publish path-breaking results, at times in fast-track mode.

 

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THE HINDU

LEADER PAGE ARTICLES

WILL THE MINDSET FROM THE PAST CHANGE?

THOSE THAT HAVE GOVERNED IN TRIBAL AREAS MUST SHARE THE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE NEGLIGENCE OF THE ADIVASIS. THE PROPOSALS FOR A MULTI-LATERAL DIALOGUE SHOULD BE SET IN THAT CONTEXT.

AMIT BHADURI & ROMILA THAPAR

 

There has been a flurry of concern as also vituperation over the activities of the Maoists in the forests that are mostly home to tribal society. There is a confrontation between the state and this society through the intervention of the Maoists. One pauses while reading the speeches of those in authority and thinks back to the past. The texts of the past represent the people of the forest, the forest-dwellers, largely as "the Other" – the rakshasas, and those who moved like an ink-black cloud through the forest with their bloodshot eyes, who ate and drank all the wrong things, had the wrong rules of sexuality and, as strange creatures, were far removed from 'us.'

 

Kautilya in the Arthashastra condemns them as troublemakers and Ashoka threatens the atavikas, the forest-dwellers, without telling us why. The interest of various kingdoms in extending control over forests has an obvious explanation. The forests supplied elephants for the army, mineral wealth including iron, timber for building, and by clearing forests the acreage of cultivable land increased and the consequent agriculture brought in revenue. In later times, even when there were situations of dependence on forest people, the conventional attitude towards them was that they were outside the social pale and had to be kept at a distance.

 

So is this pattern essentially different from the present?

 

Naxal activity started in the 1960s and gained some support in the rural and later urban areas of West Bengal and subsequently Bihar and Andhra. It raised the ire of the state but did it make the state more sensitive to problems of the adivasis? It was treated as a law and order problem and put down although sporadic incidents kept occurring to remind 'us' that 'their' problems have remained. So this activity is not new but there is an increase in anger and with attacks from both sides. This makes it far more palpable even in our big cities, as yet far away from the 'jungle areas.'

 

The government's anxiety over Maoist activity has at this point increased and needs explanation. Violence on both sides has been stepped up. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) was banned. Now the Maoists are being threatened with Operation Green Hunt but at the same time are also being invited to cease their violence and negotiate. The Maoists have slowly cut a swathe through the sub-continent and the fear is that this may expand. Would this be sufficient reason for a "hunt" or could there be other factors changing the equations from 40 years ago?

 

The current violence on both sides is fierce enough but what happens if the state launches a semi-military offensive trying to snuff out the Maoists and the Maoists retaliate, as they are likely to? It would displace and kill many hundreds of our people, villagers and tribals living in areas of Maoist activity, including those who are not sympathetic to the Maoist ideology or objective. Any "hunt" would have to be on an enormous scale since groups claiming to be Maoists are now widespread in over 200 districts in the country in contiguous areas. Has this kind of hunt helped solve our problems elsewhere? Manipur, Assam, and Kashmir continue to remain areas of on-going civil strife.

 

Perhaps we should look at it less as an 'us' and 'them' situation and more as an 'us' and 'us' situation. At the end of the day, we are all involved as people who live in this country and what is more, as people who have to go on living in this country. Even those whose lives have not been remotely touched by what goes on in 'tribal societies' will find themselves ill at ease with expanding civil strife.

If we see it as an 'us' and 'us' situation, then the need for a dialogue with all the groups involved becomes the most immediate concern. The question is who should be talking to whom and about what. If the state has to start the dialogue — as the strongest party in the conversation — it should be conversing with several groups:

 

1. Those living in the rural areas and the forested areas affected by the current civil strife, frequently referred to as 'the people.' This should be the primary and most important dialogue. It is not about who is right and who is wrong but about what is it that is leading to people becoming embroiled in revolts. People do not support insurgent groups or get imposed upon by such groups unless there is a reason. The adivasis live in areas where the benefits of development hardly ever reach them. Education, health care, communication, access to justice are mentioned sotto voce, since in most places they don't exist. Our Prime Minister and Home Minister have had long tenures in earlier governments as finance ministers and have been well aware of patterns of development. Did they and their colleagues not recognise the injustice of unequal "development" and the anger it could produce? The same applies to the State governments of these areas who have not exactly distinguished themselves in addressing the problems of the adivasis. The situation now demands attention because it has turned violent.

 

2. Then there is the state. What has the state done in these areas to annul the terror of poverty over the last 60 years? Perhaps terrorism and its victims should be redefined to include many more varieties of terror than the ones we constantly speak of. The spectacular increase of wealth despite the recession has still done little to make poverty less immanent in much of the country. As the arbiter of Indian citizens, it might explain what it would propose to change in order to remove the injustices that encourage poverty. For example, what should be the terms and conditions that should prevail in a transfer of land between adivasis and others?

 

3. Many areas under Maoist control are those that the corporate world would like to "develop." These have rich mineral resources — once again, almost as in earlier times, the attraction is timber, and water, and also mineral wealth such as coal, iron, bauxite. There is of course a history to such "development" since colonial times: except that it has now been intensified given the increase in the number of corporates and more importantly, their hold on the state. Are the corporates the new factor, as some would argue? The state acquiring land to hand over to private corporations is not identical with the appropriating of the land and resources of the forest-dwellers in earlier times, but there are some echoes. Both the appropriators and the appropriated have to have their say in any dialogue with due respect to PESA (Panchayat Extension to Scheduled Areas Act, 1996), which recognises the right of the adivasis to decide on the use of their land. For any successful dialogue, the state has to be neutral without biases in favour of corporations in its notion of "development" in these areas.

 

4. The Naxals/Maoists. Are they a unified party with a common programme? And is their programme tied to development for the people only through a revolution accompanied by bloodied violence? Do they reflect immediate demands related to the daily life of the people that sustains them or an ambiguous promised utopia that may never come? Discussions between the state, the Maoists, and the people on the implementation of development are far too compelling to be ignored.

 

If there is such a dialogue, what should the corporates be concerned with? Clearly land is the key issue and most of it is in forested areas. Is all and any land up for grabs? Surely there should be some categories of land that should be left alone if we are to survive on this planet. Is the demand for large tracts of land in these areas not a subversion of the much-vaunted Forest and Tribal Act of 2006, which promised 2.5 hectares to every tribal family that had rights to the land? And what does the forest dweller get in return for selling his land? He cannot use the money to secure his future income since there are no such facilities available to him. He is left with money with which to buy hooch — the pattern that was followed all over the colonial world in North America, Australia, and Africa. Are we now internalising a colonial history to repeat it on our own citizens?

 

And where lands have already been sold to corporations, one does not hear of the corporate organisations first setting in motion the essentials of development in education, health care, communication, and access to justice among the displaced or resettled communities, before they actually start working for profit on the land they acquire. Should this not be considered as part of the sale deeds, particularly as the state is the broker? Corporates are good at drawing up contracts so there should be contracts with the people, vetted by lawyers representing the people where agreements can be examined and negotiated, and those that have been pushed around can still make demands with the possibility that they might be heard.

 

Such actions may be more effective, certainly in the long run but even in the short run, than an Operation Green Hunt. Violence is a dead end even for the Maoists. When practised by the state on its own citizens, its collateral damage is unacceptable in a democracy; lasting civil strife escalating into a civil war in these areas will create its own demons of the arbitrary repression of ordinary citizens. An alternative form of intervention ushered in through a multi-lateral dialogue involving all the concerned parties is not merely an option, it is imperative.

 

(Amit Bhaduri is an economist and Professor Emeritus at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Romila Thapar is a historian and Professor Emeritus at JNU.)

 

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THE HINDU

NEWS ANALYSIS   

ECOSYSTEM IN PERU IS LOSING A KEY ALLY

THE DEPLETION OF THE HUARANGO IS RAISING ALARM AMONG ECOLOGISTS.

SIMON ROMERO

 

A small grove of huarango, the storied Peruvian tree that can live over a millennium, rests like a mirage amid the sand dunes on the edge of Ica, a Peruvian city. The tree has provided the inhabitants of this desert with food and timber since before the Nazca civilisation etched geoglyphs into the empty plain south of here about 2,000 years ago.

 

The huarango, a giant relative of the mesquite tree of the American Southwest, survived the rise and fall of pre-Hispanic civilisations and plunder by Spanish conquistadors, whose chroniclers were astounded by the abundance of huarango forests and the strange Andean camelids, like guanacos and llamas, that flourished there.

 

Today, though, Peruvians pose what might be a final challenge to the fragile ecosystem supported by the huarango near the southwestern coast of Peru. Villagers are cutting down the remnants of these once-vast forests. They covet the tree as a source of charcoal and firewood.

 

The depletion of the huarango is raising alarm among ecologists and fostering a nascent effort to save it.

 

"We don't realise that we are cutting off one of our own limbs when we destroy a huarango," said Consuelo Borda, 34, who helps direct a small reforestation project here, explaining how the tree's pods can be ground into flour, sweetened into molasses or fermented into beer.

 

But many Peruvians view the huarango as prime wood for charcoal to cook a signature chicken dish called "pollo broaster." The long-burning huarango, a hardwood rivalling teak, outlasts other forms of charcoal. Villagers react to a prohibition by regional authorities on cutting down huarango with a shrug.

 

"The woodcutters come at night, using handsaws instead of chainsaws to avoid detection," said Reina Juarez, 66, a maize farmer in San Pedro, a village of about 24 families near a grove of huarango on the outskirts of Ica. "They remove the wood by donkey and then sell it."

 

That the huarango survives at all to be harvested may be something of a miracle. Following centuries of systematic deforestation, only about 1 per cent of the original huarango woodlands that once existed in the Peruvian desert remain, according to archaeologists and ecologists.

 

Few trees are as well suited to the hyperarid ecosystem of the Atacama-Sechura Desert, nestled between the Andes and the Pacific. The huarango captures moisture coming from the west as sea mist. Its roots are among the longest of any tree, extending more than 150 feet to tap subterranean water channels.

 

The resilience of the huarango and its role in taming one of the world's driest climates have long beguiled this country's poets. Schoolchildren here, for instance, recite the words of Jose Maria Arguedas, a leading 20th-century writer: "The huarangos let in the sun, while keeping out the fire."

 

But poetry is one thing. The necessities of human civilizations, and their capacity to wreak havoc on the ecosystems on which they depend, are another.

 

A team of British archaeologists described in a groundbreaking study this month how the Nazca, who etched their lines in the desert a thousand years before the arrival of the Spanish, induced an environmental catastrophe by clearing the huarango to plant crops like cotton and maize, exposing the landscape to desert winds, erosion and floods.

 

David Beresford-Jones, an archaeologist at Cambridge University who co-authored the study, said that perhaps the only fragment of old-growth huarango woodland left is in Usaca, about a five-hour drive from Ica, where there are still some trees that were alive when the Incas conquered the southern coast of Peru in the 15th century.

 

"It takes centuries for the huarango to be of substantial size, and only a few hours to fell it with a chainsaw," Beresford-Jones said. "The tragedy is that this remnant is being chain-sawed by charcoal burners as we speak."

 

With support from Britain's Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew and Trees for Cities, a British charity promoting tree planting in urban areas, Borda's reforestation project seeks to reverse the damage by the charcoal harvesters, whose mud ovens dot the desert landscape in villages around Ica.

 

It is an uphill struggle in an impoverished desert. The black market for huarango in raw firewood form thrives. A carbonero, or charcoal seller, can sell a kilogram of charcoal made from the tree for about 50 cents, or a bushel of huarango as firewood for about $1 — bargains in a place where a gallon of natural gas costs more than $10.

 

So far, Borda's arduous project has planted about 20,000 huarangos in Ica and nearby areas. It also teaches schoolchildren about the history of the huarango in Peruvian culture and its significance as a keystone species for the desert, its roots fixing nitrogen in poor soil and its leaves and pods providing organic material as forage.

 

But researchers say the project is a trifle of what must be done to reforest Peru's deserts.

 

"Peru needs a massive rethink about its development trajectory," said Alex Chepstow-Lusty, a paleoecologist with the French Institute of Andean Studies who worked on the Nazca study with Beresford-Jones, the Cambridge University archaeologist, analysing pollen that showed the transformation of Nazca lands from rich in huarango to fields of maize and cotton to the virtually lifeless desert that exists today.

 

"With Peru's glaciers predicted to disappear by 2050, the Andes need trees to capture the moisture coming from Amazonia, which is also the source of water going down to the coast," said Chepstow-Lusty in an interview from Cuzco, in Peru's highlands. "Hence a major program of reforestation is required, both in the Andes and on the coast."

 

Nothing on this scale is happening around Ica. Instead, the growth that one sees in poor villages are of shantytowns called pueblos jovenes, where residents eke out a living as farmhands or in mining camps.

 

Outside one village, Santa Luisa, the buzz of a chainsaw interrupted the silence of the desert next to an oven preparing charcoal.

 

The chainsaw's owner, a woodcutter from the highlands named Rolando Davila, 48, swore that he no longer cut down huarango but focused instead on the espino, another hardy tree known as acacia macarantha. "But we all know huarango is the prize of the desert," he said. "For many of us, the wood of the huarango is the only way to survive." — © 2009 The New York Times News Service

 

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THE HINDU

NEWS ANALYSIS   

THE 'LULA' HOAXER

TOM PHILLIPS

 

When Brazil's notoriously interview-shy president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, offered journalists from Angolan state radio an exclusive telephone chat, they should probably have smelled a rat.

 

When Lula appeared on air claiming to be speaking live and direct from one of Rio's most notorious slums, they might also have wondered what was going on.

 

And when the rattle of machine-gun fire began pounding down the phone line, they should surely have realised something was wrong. They didn't.

 

Instead the Brazilian government was starting on Saturday a formal investigation after a Sao Paulo radio comedian pretending to be the leftist leader took to the airwaves across Africa in a supposed attempt to improve Rio's overseas reputation.

 

Talking to Angolan National Radio, the impostor claimed to be speaking "direct" from a Rio favela that is at the centre of a drug turf war that has left dozens dead.

 

"Everything they have invented is nonsense," the satirist, from Sao Paulo's Metropolitana FM station, said, claiming the violence was the result of a dispute between competing sweetshop owners. The chirp of singing parrots could be heard in the background.

 

"You can bring your laptops, bring your cameras, you can bring what ever you want [to Rio]. You can leave it all on the floor," the comedian added, imitating Lula's raspy north-eastern accent. "Rio is one of the calmest places on earth. Not even [those from] the Gaza Strip will believe how peaceful it is," he added.

 

At one point the comedian interrupts the interview, asking an aide for a shot of Brazilian rum: "Bring me a little dose ... to wet my throat."

After tricking Angola, the prankster moved on to Mozambique and Cape Verde, where Lula said developing nations were chasing economic success like "rabbits running after spiders."

 

The hoaxer also unveiled plans to build a pink, bulletproof motorway in Rio and suggested hiring monkeys to beef up security during the Olympics. "Any part of the city where there is a problem will always have a monkey looking down from a tree," the comedian told the bemused interviewer, adding: "If there are any problems during Rio's Olympics, my name isn't 'Lula.'"

 

The prank finally unravelled on Saturday morning, when a journalist from Australia's SBS radio network sent an official complaint to the Brazilian government.

 

"As a result of ... the seriousness of this fraud and the possibility of serious diplomatic repercussions ... I believe that the case requires a police investigation," the journalist wrote, according to one political blog.

 

The investigation will be led by Brazil's Office for Institutional Security. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2009

 

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  THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

TELECOM BATTLES TO GET TOUGHER

 

Competition in the telecom industry is proving tough for industry players, and it could soon become a struggle for survival. Some see a bloodbath and consolidation, but others feel this competition can be met halfway through innovation. For instance, the per-second billing started by old CDMA players such as the Tatas and Reliance Communications started only because of the desperate need to attract more subscribers. And other players are catching up. The Tata company introduced unlimited talk time, which is yet to be copied by any other service provider. The telecom watchdog body had been advocating "per second" billing for years, but the telecom regulatory authority turned a deaf ear. One view holds that there is still considerable room for profits. For instance, Bharti Airtel makes a profit of 40 per cent before "earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation", or EBITDA, and this might come down to 35 per cent after EBITDA, though some say 20 per cent or even sub-20 per cent. Even in 20 per cent, players can still see profits because the telecom regulator had fixed 16 per cent as a fair return in 1998, when the licensing system came in. In future, for their profitability, companies will have to go in for value-added services to make their operations profitable. For instance, since Indian subscribers are more entertainment-oriented and would like more entertainment on their mobile phones, companies will have to programme services accordingly and cash in on this hunger for entertainment. The winner is going to be the subscriber because of this competition, which will be both in tariffs and value-added services. The beneficiaries will be those who offer minimum talk time. For instance, the newest telecom service provider has come out with half-paise-per-second billing. This sort of competition will drive tariffs further down. The new players have realised that the real markets are in the rural areas, and that is where they are going to ensnare subscribers.

 

The total  wireless subscriber base is now at 471.7 million, compared to 456.74 million in August, and quite a chunk of this has been taken by Tata Teleservices because of its innovative billing features. Players will now have to play on volumes, and these volumes can now come only from rural areas as the metros and mini-metros look saturated. It will be even more challenging times for new players to acquire marketshare and make reasonable profits. The old players have already recovered their costs, but they too will be affected as their margins will come down and there will be pressure on them as they roll out 3G networks. The 2G profits were cross-subsidising the 3G rollout. The churning in the telecom industry will become more evident when portability is ushered in sometime next year, and the big boys, however popular, will face a greater attrition rate. Some feel that there will be a bloodbath and consolidation as profits take a hit. The new operators will be hit the hardest by the dwindling tariff structure, particularly because when they designed their project plans, higher tariffs of 75 paise were in vogue. The two profit areas are ARPU (average return per user) and minutes of use, and both these have been ravaged in the new tariff structures. ARPU has been declining every month: according to one study it was Rs 350 a year ago, while today it is between Rs 182-220. It will go down further now, with the per minute and per second billing structure.

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

OPED

WHEN THE WALL FELL IN '89...

PATRALEKHA CHATTERJEE

 

Witnessing history as it is happening is a thrilling experience. But standing in front of the crumbling Berlin Wall that memorable winter afternoon 20 years ago, I wished I had a hammer or the height. All around me, men, women, children chipped away at what was once the most potent symbol of the Iron Curtain. The  fall of the Wall had brought a  crush of euphoric tourists to the spot. Many squealed in excitement at seeing their first "Communist" — the East German policemen who stood on the other side, and happily posed for photo-ops. Souvenir hawkers had descended on the site in droves. Bits of concrete wrapped in cellophane sold as Wall memorabilia, at the speed of Heiniken beer cans on a hot, summer day.  Some of it was authentic, some of it not. A middle-aged tourist couple from the United States clambered atop the great divide and scribbled "We came, we saw, Suzy and Jack…". Suzy and Jack was followed by a tall, hefty, British school girl. She swung her hammer and yelled in delight "It is like slicing a marriage cake!" At that moment, it became blindingly obvious to me what I had to do to take home that slice of history. Never mind the lack of hammer or height... "May I have a few pieces", I asked the girl in a soft voice, picking up a couple of bright chunks that fell on the  ground as her hammer struck The Wall. "Of course", she replied sweetly. The sun shone brightly.

 

I was an accidental witness to the dismantling of The Wall. In the autumn of 1989, I found myself in Paris, along with 30 odd journalists from all over the world, ready to embark on a nine-month media fellowship intended to improve our knowledge of Europe. The good luck was courtesy a scholarship from  the French government and the Paris-based journalists in Europe Foundation.

 

For someone like me, who had not travelled outside her country, this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get to know Paris and Europe. In the early days, we,  the Anglophones on the course, struggled with French, hung around James Joyce bars and savoured the many delights of  Paris. That languid rhythm, however, soon came to an end. On November 9 1989, there was a bang which changed everything:  the East German authorities, trying to ease the the pro-democracy pressure that was building up, opened up several checkpoints for visits. East Berliners, first by dozens, and soon by the thousands, swept through the opening in the Wall. The Soviets under Gorbachev did not offer any military help. The rest is history. Soon Berliners were dancing on top of the Wall, breaking pieces sometimes with their bare hands. The Berlin Wall, which had separated East and West Berlin since 1961, had been breached, paving the way for the reunification of the two Germanies. It was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire.

 

I missed the dancing atop The Wall. At that time, I was in Hungary where they were singing Winds of Change and planning to pull down the red star from public buildings. But in the days,  weeks, and months that followed, I travelled through East Berlin, the now defunct East Germany, and post-Communist Eastern Europe, watching the collapse of communism and old certainties.

 

Former East Germany was mesmerising. I did not speak German but found it easy to understand their reflexes. Growing up in an  India which was yet to embrace the global marketplace, I could relate to the awe and craving for consumer goods and foreign brands which "Ossies" (East Germans) felt in the early days of freedom.

 

An incident from March 1990,  when the German Democratic  Republic (GDR) of yore was preparing for its first free elections, is etched vividly in my mind. I was in the eastern city of Leipzig where the pro-democracy demonstrations had started which led to the eventual toppling of the Berlin Wall. My hosts were Sabine and Gerhard Leinkeit, friends of friends, who loved the idea of having an international house guest. At the dinner table, one evening, Gerhard said he was planning to buy a car, "You already have one". I said. "I do not have a car, I have a Trabant", he quipped. The Trabant, an east German car, I later discovered  was the butt of many jokes, a bit like our Ambassador — cheap and devoid of conveniences. 

 

Sabine, his wife, was warm and welcoming, sharing many of her embarrassing moments after the Wall came down. On her first visit to a West Berlin supermarket  with her two sons, she had been hugely confused by the astounding choices. Her sons could not control their excitement at seeing the sheer variety of toothpastes and soap. "Mama, mama, look, look, so many things… they screamed. The West Berliners were looking at us and laughing. We must have come across as country bumpkins", she said. I could relate to that moment instinctively...

 

But along with the euphoria of freedom, there were disturbing signs. Communist East Germany had junked Marx and embraced  democracy. But freedom and free thought had also opened the floodgates of racism. Everything was changing — rules, regulations, currency, social systems. The future looked uncertain. Many could not cope. The changes were too fast and the man on the street was groping for an anchor. I saw a shaven east German in saffron chanting Hare Rama, Hare Krishna in the middle of a market in Leipzig. On the walls, there were graffiti screaming "Auslander raus" (Foreigners  Out). At the bust stop, at the cafes, one heard vicious racial jokes, especially against the Vietnamese and Africans. Constantino, a Mozambican worker in a meat factory in East Berlin, one of the thousands of foreign workers, told me he was afraid to travel in the train amid rising xenophobia. An Indian student who had studied in Eastern Germany said it was time to organise and demand rights for foreigners who were the most vulnerable group in this fluid situation.

 

Twenty years on, the postcards and old photographs bring back a flood of memories of those turbulent times.

 

November 9 dealt a knock-out blow to Communism. But brash capitalism and the consumerist paradise did not always bring a better tomorrow to all who rejoiced. The defeat of the old enemy has not ended fear. Only its shape and form have changed. At the end, those who learnt how to live through the chaos, those who knew how to cope with uncertainties, did well. Those who did not, fell by the wayside. For me, that is the compelling message from those moments in history.

 

Patralekha Chatterjee writes on contemporary development issues, and can be contacted at patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com

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THE ASIAN AGE

OPED

INDIA'S RESOURCE CURSE

PARANJOY GUHA THAKURTA

 

What is common between the disgraced former chief minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, and the bosses of Bellary, Karnataka — the "Gali" Reddy brothers, Janardhan, Karunakar and Somashekhar, whose political influence extends beyond their party (the Bharatiya Janata Party) and their state (Karnataka)? Answer: The mineral wealth that lies beneath the earth's surface. What is common amongst developing countries scattered across different parts of the planet, countries (in no particular order) such as Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Russia, Angola, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Congo, Botswana, Sudan, Chad, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Indonesia? At some point of time or the other in the past, ordinary people belonging to each and every one of these diverse nation-states have failed to benefit from the presence of valuable natural resources in their soil. What is common between parts of Nepal, Bihar, Jharkhand, West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Orissa, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh, the so-called "red corridor" that stretches from Pashupati to Tirupati, from the Himalayas to the Bay of Bengal? Is it coincidental that these stretches of the country and the subcontinent also happen to be those areas that are richest in mineral wealth and forest resources? Is it just a matter of chance that inequalities of income and wealth are at their starkest worst in these tracts?

 

Are you surprised that in this belt reside some of the economically weakest and socially underprivileged sections of the population, most of them tribals? Is it then out of the ordinary that the Union government and state governments have focused on "eradicating" the "menace" of Maoists and Naxalites from precisely those areas in the country that are being eyed lasciviously by mining magnates and corporate conglomerates of all varieties — public and private, Indian and foreign, domestic and multinational?

 

Each and every question raised is rhetorical in nature. In other words, the answers to the questions are obvious. Some of the "richest" parts of India and the world also paradoxically happen to be the poorest because of the presence of scarce (and hence, very valuable) natural resources that have attracted the most corrupt and venal to these areas. These mercenaries of the modern world invariably collude with powerful local elites to greedily grab the gifts of nature, in the process exploiting local populations, in particular indigenous peoples.

 

The phrase "resource curse" was reportedly first coined and used by Richard M. Auty in Sustaining Development in Mineral Economies: The Resource Curse Thesis (Routledge, 1993) and thereafter deployed widely in academic texts and popular journalism to signify a widespread phenomenon: the presence of natural resources in developing countries, whose economies depend on such minerals or forests, have contributed to corruption, conflict and absence of democratic governance.

 

Joseph Stiglitz, in his book, Making Globalization Work (Allen Lane/Penguin, 2006) has devoted an entire chapter to the topic entitled "Lifting the Resource Curse". He says the problem is simple and uses an analogy of a pile of diamonds sitting in the middle of a room. Everyone makes a grab for the goodies. "The biggest and strongest are most likely to succeed, and will be reluctant to share it unless they absolutely have to — such as when someone else, even bigger and stronger, tries to grab it away from them, and they need to spend money to buy political support and arms in order to maintain their power".

 

As Stiglitz and others have documented, the resources are both the object of the conflict and the source of the financial wherewithal that enables the conflict to go on: "Sadly, in the struggle to get as big a share of the pile as possible, the size of the pile itself shrinks as wealth is destroyed in the fighting. Nowhere is this aspect of the resource curse more evident than in parts of Africa, exemplified by the heinous fighting between government and rebels in Sierra Leone during the 1990s that killed 75,000 people and left 20,000 amputees, two million displaced people, and large numbers of children psychologically damaged by having been forced into combat, or worse".

 

Unlike countries like Angola or Congo that have been racked by conflict almost continuously since these countries became politically independent, typically all sides to the conflict over natural resources claim to represent the will, the wishes and the best interests of ordinary people. The conflict in Sierra Leone was an exception in the sense that there was hardly any pretence of higher motives. It was only greed that mattered.

 

Will India go the way of some of these African nations? Hopefully not. Can India learn from the mistakes of others and ensure that resources that belong to the people — from natural gas in the Krishna-Godavari basin (over which the Ambani siblings are squabbling) to bauxite in Niyamgiri, Orissa, where the Vedanta Resources/Sterlite group wants to set up the world's largest aluminium manufacturing complex — do not benefit only a select few?

 

This is as good a time as any for Manmohan Singh and P. Chidambaram to re-read what Stiglitz has written, even if he is not exactly their favourite economist although he was once the chief economist of the World Bank and headed the council of economic advisers set up by US President Bill Clinton. They could then realise that it is perhaps still not too late to make amends and place the ludicrous "guns-versus-development" debate in its proper context.

 

Is it that Maoists don't want roads and schools in Dantewada and Bijapur, Lalgarh and Gadhchiroli, because that would erode their base of supporters? Then, roads and schools would never be built till cops and paramilitary forces matched Left-wing extremists bullet for bullet, which might never happen despite Mr Chidambaram's best intentions. Can we get out of this vicious cycle of conflict? Can the bounties of Mother Earth become a blessing not a curse?

 

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta is an educator and commentator

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

COLUMN

KARNATAKA CRISIS: A LESSON IN GOVERNANCE

JAYANTHI NATARAJAN

 

The last month has been traumatic for the people of Karnataka. Fierce floods have inundated over 15 districts of the state, and nearly 200 people have lost their lives as a result. The damage to crops and cattle has been mammoth, and the process of rehabilitation is bound to be long, arduous, and difficult. However, in this most difficult of times for Karnataka, the government of the state, which is the most important player, in terms of providing relief and rehabilitation to the people, is nowhere to be seen. Half the elected Bharatiya Janata Party MLAs are holed up in five-star hotels in Hyderabad, and the remaining are floating around other five-star hotels, or in Delhi. Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa emerges from negotiations from time to time, to announce defiantly that he will not quit as chief minister, and at equally periodic intervals, the other protagonists, the famous Reddy brothers emerge to announce that they have not agreed to any formula, and Mr Yeddyurappa must go. The hapless "high command" of the BJP, watches helplessly from Delhi, unable to even predict the next move, leave alone, crack the whip.

 

The Yedyurappa government, was a tainted one, to start with. It did not have a proper majority, and no sooner than the Assembly elections were over, Mr Yeddyurappa, swung into the unholy task of horsetrading, and barter, lured away MLAs, encouraged and formented defection, and created a wholly artificial majority with the help of money power, and the lure of office. However, notoriously forgetful, and forgiving, public memory may be, it would be difficult to forget what happened, just a short while ago, when Mr Yeddyurappa used every move, in the dirty tricks department to bribe MLAs, foster defection, and somehow cling to power. Today, those very tactics have turned back to bite the Yeddyurappa government, in what must be a perfect illustration of poetic justice. However, this poetic justice is cold comfort to the suffering people of Karnataka, and a dismayed nation.

 

As a party, the BJP is obliged to immediately set its house in order, and render governance to the flood-affected and suffering people of Karnataka. If not, they should accept defeat, and face the consequences. The unseemly public wrangling between the powerful Reddy lobby and Mr Yeddyurappa brings no credit to our democracy, and although the blame is to be laid squarely at the door of the BJP, and its bankrupt policies, lack of integrity and utter inefficiency, the mud and slime, somehow taint the entire political class, and brings shame and discredit to our democracy.

 

The drama in Karnataka, equally, underlines the need to create zero tolerance for unprincipled politics. The best traditions of democratic governance, cannot be hijacked to serve the narrow and selfish ambitions of one party or one group of people. It is at times like this when the political class as a whole would do well to reflect upon the basics of good democracy. When we look around us, especially at states, where democracy has already failed, or is teetering on the brink of collapse, we feel proud that despite all our warts, Indian democracy has weathered the storms and travails of all the contradictions that beset us, and has remained a vibrant democracy, through the worst of times. We are the largest democracy in the world, with vastly different geography, language, religion and economic status. Yet, when tragedy befalls one part of India, every Indian's heart beats as one, and the entire country rises to help the afflicted. Be it the Kargil war or the earthquake in Latur, Indians in the most remote village of our country contributed their mite to help and ameliorate to some extent the tragedy that had befallen their brothers and sisters, in far away states. Time, and time again, the Indian voter has voted out governments, and brought in new ones, sending each time an unmistakable message to the political class, even when the mandate was a fractured verdict.

 

However, it would be too facile to blame the political class alone, for the level to which our polity has sunk. Sections of the judiciary is equally to blame, as are corrupt bureaucrats, and corrupt industrialists. One of the most unfortunate trends in recent times has been the discovery that the judiciary, who were till now the heroes of the people-as opposed to politicians who were generally considered villainous, also have feet of clay. The enduring tragedy of our public life is the fact that politicians introduced the Right to Information Act, to make governance transparent and ensure accountability, and the judiciary, which should have been first in line to ensure compliance with the RTI Act, has found it so difficult to apply the act to itself.

 

The other great tragedy, especially at the time of elections, is the commercialisation of the media. During the last Parliament elections, we witnessed the emergence of "package journalism' — an innocuous sounding term which describes one of the most dangerous trends in modern India, where that pillar of democracy, namely, a free press, goes on sale to the highest bidder. Intersted parties may buy a "package" which means they get, not an advertorial, which would have been the case in more honest times, but news coverage, slanted in their favour.

 

The issue of corrupt bureaucrats, of course, needs no further elaboration….from the poorest, most disadvantaged citizen, who does not get his benefits under NREGA, or flood relief, to huge industries who have to bribe their way to swing policy their way, it may or may not be the politician who gets the flak, but one may count on the fact that a couple of bureaucrats are back there, enjoying some of the benefits, but staying out of the limelight.

 

The Karnataka crisis is clearly not the beginning or end of corrupt administration. Nor is the Karnataka BJP solely responsible for the omissions and commissions of judges and bureaucrats. This is merely a particularly eloquent example, of why it is important for us, as a society, to collectively examine our conscience, and wake up to the reality, that our wonderful vibrant democracy will rot away from inside unless every single one of us wakes up and takes a stand. The first and most important step is to implement zero tolerance to corruption. Thereafter, we may reclaim our lost ideals and restore our democracy to its early glory.

 

Jayanthi Natarajan is a Congress MP in the Rajya Sabha and AICC spokesperson.The views expressed in this column are her own.

 

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DNA

EDITORIAL

NEEDLESS DEATHS

 

The idea of suicide has been explored in literature and films and has been studied closely by psychologists, sociologists and counsellors for a long time. Still the question continues to intrigue: why would someone want to take their own life? Despair, hopelessness, guilt, shame; all are cited as plausible reasons but there is no real answer. A million people commit suicide every year in the world and it is a leading cause of death among teenagers and those under 35. Many more try and fail.

 

India is said to account for 10 per cent of the world's suicides and the rate has been increasing steadily. A wide cross section, from teenagers to now farmers is among those who die this way. Students are known to kill themselves because of failure in exams.

The incident in which an 18-year old boy from IIT Bombay Siddharth Singh Charan killed himself at his home in Jodhpur with his father's gun is fairly typical. He was doing poorly in his studies in a high pressure academic environment though his cousin's death had also depressed him. Indeed, the IITs have seen many suicides in the past three years or so, more often than not because of the victim's inability to cope with the academic course.
Studies could not have been the reason why a young Mumbai businessman Dinesh Jain allegedly killed himself after killing his wife and small daughters in the wee hours of Friday last. Jain comes from a well off background and lived in a joint family. The 10-member family reportedly were all residents of a one-bedroom apartment in a city suburb.

 

Interestingly, in both cases, friends and relatives have claimed that neither was visibly upset or in a depressed mood.

 

The race for success can be brutal and the expectation levels of peers, friends and family can create an intense environment. Experts have long pointed out how the existing social order in India is dissolving and the certitudes of yore -- family support systems, traditional values -- have disappeared. Regrettably, we have not yet put together a system where professional help is easily available by way of counsellors and psychiatrists. With no one to turn to, taking one's own life may be the easiest and quickest way out.

 

Every life lost this way is a life wasted. But when the victim is in the prime of their life, it is a double shame. Our policy makers, societal experts and educationists need to think of ways to create systems which can help troubled people cope and prevent their suicides.

 

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DNA

EDITORIAL

TASKS CUT OUT

 

For the people of Maharashtra, Saturday night was the "thank god it's done" moment. After all the grandstanding and negotiating and lobbying of the last three weeks, the state has a government at last. Both sides claim victory in getting what they wanted from the negotiations but that is hardly the point. There are no winners or losers, only the undeniable fact that the coalition partners frittered away good two weeks haggling over the number of ministries and portfolios each one would get. That is not an auspicious beginning to the third government of the Congress-NCP combine.

 

The two parties have tried to incorporate legislators from all areas of the state, although western Maharashtra appears to have an advantage. Narayan Rane, even a hopeful chief minister in waiting, has been thwarted for now and even his supporters have not made it. The new arrivals in the legislature from the Congress party have presumably been told to follow the Rahul Gandhi principle of learning the ropes first and aspiring for posts later.
This government has a lot of work to do. First and foremost, we are staring at the first anniversary of the November 26, 2008 attacks on Mumbai. While the trial of Ajmal Kasab, the one terrorist caught alive, has been progressing at a reasonably satisfactory pace, where are we on increasing security, bolstering the police force with new weaponry, securing the coastline, getting the commandoes settled and improving disaster management?

 

And the record here is hardly edifying. Sadly, compensation has not been paid to all the victims of the attacks, in spite of the spotlight being on the authorities at all times. Doubts about the apparently faulty communication lines within the police and between the police and the intelligence agencies remain. And with new threats being mentioned by the intelligence agencies and the central government, can we in Mumbai honestly say we feel safe and secure? What the government says on this in the next few days will set the tone for its performance on the crucial question of security. There are other state-level issues too, from the agrarian crisis to power and infrastructure. Chaven has promised to get on with the job, but the first few months will show if this is going to be a qualitatively different government than during the past 10 years. The two parties have to take care that this mandate is not frittered away.

 

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DNA

COLUMN

THE KILLING FIELDS

NILOTPAL BASU

 

The temperatures are up. There is a growing sense of confrontation palpable. Union home minister P Chidambaram is appearing to be firm in dealing with the ultra Left wing Maoists. Some sections of the media are reporting that a comprehensive plan is being put together to take on these Maoists. Such a course of development appears to echo an earlier assertion by the prime minister that "Maoists constitute the single largest threat to the internal security of the country".

 

The other side of the divide are the Maoists who are, of course, unrelenting in their campaign of unabashed violence. And they have no pretensions. They have made their pronouncement. In the run up to the Parliamentary elections they had extolled the people to boycott by issuing a statement titled, 'Parliamentary Democracy is an illusion for the masses! Revolution is their reality'. Their assessment is that in the wake of the global financial meltdown and the subsequent economic recession, India is ripe for a 'Revolution'. To buttress this argument they issued a 14 page document titled, 'Post election situation: our tasks' on June 12, where they detailed their strategy, claiming to have set up an alternative administrative structure in the Dandakaranya region of Chhatisgarh. They have also claimed to have set up a number of guerrilla bases in Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Maharashtra. That they have been able to put together a significant force of armed cadres who have in their possession modern and sophisticated weapons is also borne out by the widespread attacks that they have launched against the security forces and political opponents.

 

Still, the Maoists have not been able to become a nationwide force. And the fact that the home ministry itself admits that they are active in about 175 districts of the country is little misleading in gauging their magnitude of influence on the people. And that is an important criterion -- because ultimately the 'Revolution' cannot be carried out by a band of well-armed men and women, howsoever brave they may be. Revolution is an act of collective rising of the people, who are disgusted with the injustice and exploitation of an extant system.

 

This is not to say that the Maoists are easily gotten rid off. Because they are essentially far removed from the reality and their principal weakness lies in their absolute lack of comprehension of the concrete reality of Indian conditions. That Maoist activities are mainly in areas which are on the parameters of the forests are prompted by the military requirements of their guerrilla forms rather than the fact that these constitute some of the most backward regions in socio-economic development terms. But these coincidences do help the Maoists.

 

This linkage is the source of a misunderstanding about the role of the Maoists and their methods. A focused scrutiny of the Maoist activities will reveal that unlike the revolutionary process that Mao Ze Dong led in pre-revolutionary China where emphasis was not on the armed struggle per se but uniting the people on specific issues of feudal and colonial exploitation, Indian Maoists have an obsessive preference for violence. And it is this very same disregard for the concrete situation that has landed Indian Maoists to frontally attack Prachanda and the Nepali Maoists.

 

Sections of liberal intellectuals, parts of well-meaning civil society and human right movements also because of coincidence of Maoist presence and backwardness, tend to uncritically express sympathies with them. They are totally unmindful of the havoc that such ultra left wing forces wreaked in the past and continue to do so. The Maoist obsession with exercising revolutionary power and control make them prone to a fascist unilateralism which cannot tolerate any difference let alone opposition. As a result they have no remorse for individual killings and physical elimination of opponents.

 

It is this approach which has historically made the ultra Left disrupt the organised Left movement, which is aimed at painstakingly mobilising the people against injustice and exploitation. And it is in this that the importance of a political and ideological campaign lies.

 

Chidambaram in particular has to realise that banning the Maoists and treating this battle essentially from a 'law and order' point of view is not enough. Socio-economic development with a decidedly pro-poor dimension is an absolute must. Political isolation of the Maoists is another imperative. The ideological exposure of the Maoists bankruptcy and the widening disconnect between their claims and deeds are yet another urgent requirement. This is the minimum which is necessary to stop the bloodletting and violence that we face.

 

West Bengal was the cradle of 'Naxalbari'. But it fizzled out in that state. And that lesson should be assimilated here and now.

 

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DNA

FOR MUSLIMS, THE ENEMY LIES WITHIN

ANIL DHARKER

 

Who are Islam's worst enemies? Not the west, not the United States of America, not Jews, not extremist Hindus.... Islam's worst enemies are Muslims.

 

I am not a religious scholar, but people whose opinions I respect and who have studied the Koran and Islam, talk of it being an enlightened religion, and also speak highly of its reiteration ofuniversal human values.

 

Yet Islam is constantly being misinterpreted in the most grotesque way. First, there are the extremists who themselves are safely ensconced in hiding places in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq but brainwash poor young men into 'martyring' themselves in the cause of Islamand while doing so take a huge toll of innocent lives (many of them Muslim).

 

Read the chilling conversations between Kasab and his fellow terrorists with their Pakistani handlers: "Allah ke pyare ho jao" the handlers cynically tell the young terrorists sending them to their doom.

 

Their terrorism has reached such a scale worldwide that the ordinary non-political Muslim has felt compelled to come out in the open to voice their protests. This was particularly evident after 26/11, when every march denouncing the atrocities always contained a sizeable number of Muslims, and every television discussion featured prominent Muslims expressing their denunciations as angrily and vehemently as everyone else.

 

A very important voice that was added to these was the voice of the cleric culminating in the DarulUloom at Deoband, issuing a fatwa against terrorism on February 25, 2008. ("Islam rejects all kinds of unwarranted violence, breach of peace, bloodshed, killing and plunder and does not allow it in any form"). Then comes the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind's 30th General Assembly at Deoband last week held to usher in social and educational reforms. But for some reason, theconference reiterated a resolution it had passed in 2006, saying that Muslims should not recite Vande Mataram as "parts of the song are against the tenets of Islam".

 

Why did they do it? Three years ago the resolution had caused a furore and given the Hindutva brigade something to shout about.Was there a compelling reason to bring up the question again? Or are the Deobandis deliberately making life difficult for the ordinary Muslim by bringing up provocative resolutions?As it happens, the 10,000 clerics gathered there, gave even more evidence to the rest of the nation that they are determined to keep India's Muslim population as backward as possible. They opposed the women's reservation bill, advocated a special syllabus for girl students, made it compulsory for even young girls to wear the purdah, opposed the government's effort to reform the madrasa system of education, etcetera, etcetera. In short, they made it clear that they want to ghettoise Muslims and make it impossible for them to join the mainstream life ofa modern vibrant India.

 

What are the credentials of these clerics?What gives them the authority to speak for all Muslims? They have been described as 'scholars' but have they studiedany of the subjects that a 21st century citizen of the world must know? How many women are there in that 10,000 strong gathering? If none, what empowers these men to speak about what women should do? The Muslim community which came out in such strength against terrorism must now publicly distance itself from the reactionary fatwas of the Deoband conclave. They have already made it amply clear that they belong to India,something they did not have to do. Now they must make it equally clear that they want to belong to a modern India.

 

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DNA

DUBAI: CITY OF GOLD

MALLIKA SARABHAI

 

In 1971, it was a dry and dusty bowl of sand and sand dunes, peopled by the Bedouins, those travellers and wanderers of the desert. With the vision of a sheikh, it became the Mecca of commercialism, of buying power, of opulence, and of dreams. People came from the poor countries of world, to toil and build their own dreams. The rich made it their playground, the ultimate in lotus-eating.

 

Nature was turned around here. And today, rivers and ponds have replaced the sands. Full-grown imported trees green the roads; superb highways pulsating with the newest and fastest cars, daring pedestrians to cross at their own peril.

 

This is Dubai, where the locals are outnumbered nearly a hundredfold by the others - the white and light brown amidst the glitter, the others amidst the squalor. Two worlds in total disconnect. Those who have built the city, the skyscrapers, the highways, the pools, the underwater homes, have never slept anywhere expect in their overcrowded rooms. Those who dine at the lush restaurants pretend that they were placed there as if by magic, that no hard labour and sweat of unseen hands built them. And after all, why should they think differently in a city that has shopping as its mantra?

 

And what of the others, those whose passports get taken away? Those for whom the barometer readings stop at 45 degrees because admitting it is hotter would mean them getting a day off? Those who work 24 hours a day, seven days a week in the salubrious homes of the superrich and are beaten or worse for breaking a cup, whose salaries are withheld and often never paid, who fear for their lives but do not know how to escape?

 

The two Dubais seem to be slowly coming together because they are coming unstuck. The bubble has burst. The world's fastest growing real estate machine has ground to a halt. And as always, the greatest sufferers are those who came with little possessions, but with great dreams, of roads paved with gold, of pulling their families forever out of debt and poverty, dreams of working hard for a few years and returning home never having to worry about how to send their children to school or their mothers to hospital.

 

The greatest problem for them is loneliness and isolation. Each of these workers feels adrift, alone and unable to share their feeling of being cheated in life. They feel stifled, for their lives are so patterned - camp, work, again camp, grocery shops and mall or dance bar and back to the camp and work. However poor and desperate in India they were, they could roam free, go where they pleased, meet and talk with whomever they chose. Now they are controlled, watched.

 

The problem, of course, starts earlier, with the false promises made by unscrupulous agents. Families build their dreams on these promises, and the hard reality is difficult to swallow. For embarrassment or shame, the workers do not share the realities with their families and continue living two lives, one in reality and one imagined that they create for their families.

 

With the recent sting operations of the BBC, the real horrors of the workers' lives in Dubai were transmitted to the world. The government and the embassies are becoming proactive in improving basic living and working conditions. But, unscrupulous players still abound, there as well as in the form of their agents here, and the need to escape poverty is so great that people continue to flood the market. Without effective and timely poverty-reduction schemes in the third world, this is one form of exploitation that will continue to flourish.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

PARTNERSHIP WITH EUROPE

PROMISING FOCUS ON N-ENERGY, BILATERAL TRADE

 

The 10th India-European Union summit, held in New Delhi on Friday, was very fruitful in the sense that it resulted in the signing of a civilian atomic energy cooperation accord between the two sides and taking forward the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) negotiations, continuing for a long time.

 

 The agreement on nuclear power generation will go a long way in helping India in its efforts to ensure energy security, though it is basically aimed at facilitating India's entry into the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project. The 10-billion-euro fusion reactor, the costliest project of its kind, will become operational by 2016 with the participation of the EU, the US, Japan, China, India, South Korea and Russia. India will share 10 per cent of the cost like China, Russia and South Korea. The EU will bear the maximum — 34 per cent of the total cost — whereas the US and Japan will contribute 13 per cent.

 

The joint statement issued at the end of the talks, which included summit-level discussions between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and EU President and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, reflected the understanding between India and the EU that their cooperation will in no way undermine the cause of nuclear non-proliferation. India has an impeccable track record in the area of non-proliferation, which helped in the signing of the civilian nuclear deal with the US. The EU can help India considerably in wind energy generation, too, though it was not discussed during the summit.

 

It is encouraging that India and the EU have succeeded in putting their negotiations on a fast track for signing the FTA between the two sides next year. There is immense potential to increase bilateral trade to $200 billion by 2013 from what it is at present —- less than $100 billion. India, however, does not want non-trade issues like child labour and environmental laws to be brought in during the next round of discussions on the FTA. The 27-nation European bloc must understand India's sensibilities on non-trade issues, one of the factors for the FTA having failed to become a reality despite seven rounds of discussions so far.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

INDEPENDENTS' DAY

HOODA HEMMED IN BY COMPULSIONS

 

Coalition politics has returned to Haryana with a bang and has changed the whole dynamics of government formation. When Team Hooda was sworn in on Saturday, the largest chunk of the pie went to the Independents, whose support is crucial for the survival of the government.

 

All of the precious seven have been accommodated, one as Cabinet Minister, three as Ministers of State and three as Chief Parliamentary Secretaries. In the process, the small state has for the first time is saddled with as many as nine Chief Parliamentary Secretaries. Out of the 40 MLAs that the Congress has, five have got Cabinet rank while six have become Chief Parliamentary Secretaries. The Haryana Janhit Congress has not yet fallen in line and to facilitate the process, four Cabinet berths have been left dangling, ready to be gifted.

 

The chances of inclusion of heavyweights like Kiran Choudhry, Savitri Jindal, Dr Raghubir Singh Kadian and Sampat Singh are slim if the ministry has to accommodate the HJC at the same time. What is remarkable is that all the posts have gone to those said to be Hooda loyalists while his detractors have been left out in the cold. That this exclusion can cause a lot of disquiet in future is another matter. The end result is that only two ministers from the previous Cabinet figure in the present one, with the six-time MLA, Capt Ajay Yadav, being the virtual number two. He has got important Finance, Irrigation, Forests and Environment portfolios.

 

With the focus firmly on appeasing the allies, the practice of giving representation district wise has been given a go-by. Many districts like Jind, Hissar, Ambala, Yamunanagar, Kurukshetra, Karnal and Bhiwani have no representative in the Council of Ministers. But the community and caste matrix has been taken care of considerably. That is an odious way to carry out the selections, but that is the way politics works in Haryana with caste getting preference over merit and experience.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

ANOTHER MISHAP IN HP

GOVERNMENT INDIFFERENCE IS SHOCKING

 

Once again, a bus accident has taken place in Himachal Pradesh. The people die. There is a routine inquiry and the announcement of a sort of compensation. There the matter ends. The state government — irrespective of which is the ruling party — seems to have little concern for the frequent loss of human lives. It seems to have become shock-proof. 

 

Preventive measures are almost unheard of. Preliminary reports say the cause of the latest accident near Haripur in Kangra district on Friday is rash driving and overcrowding. These two factors are quite common and responsible for many accidents in the absence of law enforcement. Checking by the traffic police is almost non-existent in Himachal — certainly outside Shimla.

 

Since roads are narrow and ill-maintained, traffic is growing at an alarming pace and the mountainous terrain is treacherous, vehicle driving in a hill state like Himcahal is risky and requires extra care. Still drivers can be callously indifferent to passenger safety, often speeding and fiddling with music instruments while driving. Although government buses and drivers are not above blemish, private bus owners in particular care little for the traffic rules. Driven by greed, they often employ untrained and unqualified drivers at low salaries and disregard the road worthiness of the buses they deploy to transport people. The practice is to pack as many passengers in a bus as possible and others are asked to climb on to the roof. Such lawlessness is often responsible for frequent bus mishaps in Himcahal.

 

According to official figures, 4,000 persons have died and 45,000 injured in road accidents in Himachal Pradesh in the past eight years. This would have made any government sit up and do something effective. Since the government refuses to learn any lessons, courts will have to come to the rescue of the harried commuters. They should fix responsibility for negligence and make the erring government and private bus companies pay exemplary compensation to those who lose their family members. 

 

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

KASHMIR HOPES RISE ABOVE TERROR

PAKISTAN CONFRONTS ENDGAME

BY B. G. VERGHESE

 

The contrast could not be more striking. Pakistan made a further descent into chaos and terror recently, with its Interior Ministry ranting wildly against India even as Dr Manmohan Singh spoke in firm but conciliatory tones in Srinagar about pushing for reconciliation and development in J&K through dialogue.

 

 He separated "humanitarian" from "political" issues while keeping open the door for Pakistan to join the process by abandoning cross-border terrorism. The horrendous Peshawar carnage is a message Pakistan must heed, namely, those that play with fire risk being incinerated. The very future of Pakistan is today the core issue, with "Kashmir", a long irrelevance, becoming an albatross around its neck.

 

The Prime Minister spoke of facilitating enhanced trade and movement across the LoC in J&K with the provision of banking and trade facilities, trade fairs, an expanded list of tradable commodities, quicker travel clearances and speedy release of prisoners on either side who have completed their sentences. This is what people want, not jihadi hate and terror perpetuated by vested interests who desire conflict in the name of barren ideology. He also referred to creating conditions to encourage a reverse brain drain to J&K and creating constructive openings for talent and energy through better connectivity and the guarantee of more firm power during winter. Restoration of the Mughal Road and further extension of the Anantnag-Qazigund railway, just inaugurated, were also mooted.

 

Not mentioned but worthy of consideration would be liberal operationalisation of the Srinagar international airport and broadband connectivity to promote the development of two or three new growth poles along the valley's railway corridor and in the Jammu region for returning Pandits and Muslim youth who fled the state and went to study and work in other parts of India in the 1990s to avoid forced marriages and extortion or being press-ganged into militancy.

 

FICCI has just taken a group of high-powered industrialists to the valley to showcase possibilities of investment and joint ventures that could give a boost to employment and income generation in the state. IT-assisted services and agro-processing hold out great promise, and there is no reason why such ventures or special economic zones should not receive counter-guarantees in respect of certain heads and for a limited period in order to provide the initial stimulus. This should be accompanied by training facilities for upgrading technical and managerial skills.

 

Prior to the Prime Minister's visit to J&K, the Union Homer Minister announced the government's intention to promote quiet talks with all sections of opinion in J&K that abjure violence so as to build a consensus leading to an internal settlement in J&K. The emphasis on quiet talks is important as previous deliberations under the full glare of publicity have short-circuited the talks and led to futile grandstanding and blackmail by ideological spoilers at home and terrorists and Pakistani agencies across the LoC. These elements will, of course, need to be confronted as soon as the ground is well prepared. The Hurriyat has been invited to talk and can no more equivocate or claim a veto.

 

Pakistan can have no role in these internal talks, which could cover issues of human rights, reconciliation, disappearances, compensation and justice where due, centre-state relations and regional autonomy. Pakistan's own constitutional relationship with Pak-Administered Kashmir, let alone the newly designated Gilgit-Baltistan region, is abysmal and blatantly colonial as a reading of the two constitutions imposed on them by Islamabad amply reveal. But it is up to Pakistan to order its own relationships with the areas under its control across the LoC.

 

As far as an international settlement is concerned, busybodies must be firmly told that there is no "dispute" over J&K other than UN-admitted aggression by Pakistan. The US, too, should be reminded that it has recognised India's sovereignty over all of J&K (refer Warren Austen in the Security Council), a position unilaterally changed by it after Pakistan became a "frontline" state around 1949, and further compounded by its gratuitous cartographic fiddling in the Siachen area post-1967 through the US Defence Mapping Agency.

 

The framework of an international settlement has in principle been agreed to in the Manmohan-Musharraf formulation "making boundaries (the LoC) irrelevant" without derogating from either country's sovereignty. An extension of the LoC beyond NJ 9842, the last point demarcated under the Karachi Agreement of July1949, "thence north to the glaciers" without admitting of any no-man's land, constitutes an unambiguous and sanctified delineation of the northern terminus of this boundary.

 

The highly glaciated area beyond Pakistan's fictitious latter-day "claim line" from NJ 9842 NE to just the west of the Karakoram Pass, and the region west of the Indian AGPL up to K2, should then be converted into a Peace and Science Park for international glaciological, hydrological and meteorological studies in order to study potential impacts of climate change and take appropriate counter-measures.

 

Participation in two recent high-level Track II dialogues with Pakistan has once again shown how empty and uninformed their rhetoric is about India's alleged evil designs on their share of Indus waters and the Indus Treaty generally. The future now lies in moving to joint cooperation in the investigation, development and management of projects in the upper three western rivers of the Indus, whose headwaters lie in India, under Article 7 of the IWT.

 

The way forward is clear. J&K is not an "Islamic" problem and the OIC has absolutely no role to play. More jihad over J&K may hurt India but threatens to destroy Pakistan which confronts an endgame.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

THAT MAN IN WHITE

BY K. J. SINGH

 

I was nervous as a well-built, imposing man in white glared at me and at my application in the Indian Express office. He fired one question after another at me. Why would a student of literature want to be a journalist, he asked. I told him I was a student of the English language. He smiled, baring his upper jaw, and again glared at me.

 

I had begun to feel he was finding something of interest in me. List your favourite authors, he asked, probingly. None, I said. Surely, men and women of eminence could not be seen as "favourites", could they? Only parrots, purses, watches or dogs could, may be. He smiled indulgently, looked at News Editor D. N. Singh and scribbled something on a piece of paper. From a distance, I could make out the noting was bilingual, in his typical half-Hindi and half-English. "When can you report for work, Singh Sahib?" This was a pleasant surprise. Clearly, I had met a man who, without editor-airs and without much ado, accepted that there could be just another point of view.

 

By and by, I discovered much more about him. Prabhash Joshi was a grand motivator. His man-man-management skills and sharp intelligence made sure everybody walked with him. It was because of him that "Singh Sahib" would be present in office, sometimes as early as 9 am — the shift started at 12 — and got down to sorting heaps of copy and hand-editing, sitting in the open outside the editorial long room on winter days. Often, he would walk by, look at me, say a cheerful "Good Morning!" and lope his way toward his office. No ado, no airs.

 

Yes, no airs indeed. SMA Kazmi , now with The Tribune, saw a stranger sitting all by himself behind half-cut grass, absorbed in watching a friendly cricket game between schoolboys at the CSIO grounds. No one knew who the lone spectator was. After the match, he left as quietly as he had come. It was only five years later that Kazmi was called for an interview and recognised the man who sat in front of him. Prabhash Joshi said he had gone to watch his son, Sandeep , play for his team, Government Model School, Sector 19. (The boy later played in the Ranji Trophy.) Ever the self-effacer, he said nothing more.

 

We quite liked the way Prabhash Joshi was. Today, away from us, he is the same, we are sure, that he always was — a big man with a big heart, in his trademark white, the spotless white of cricket that he dearly loved.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

HOW SERIOUS IS WEST BENGAL IN TACKLING MAOISTS?

 

Is the West Bengal government serious about tackling the Maoists or is it just big talk and a public charad? That was the key issue Karan Thapar explored with senior CPM politburo member and Rajya Sabha MP Sitaram Yechury in CNN-IBN's Devil Advocate proramme on Sunday. Here are excerpts:

 

Karan Thapar: Mr Yechury, let me start with a blunt question. Is your government in West Bengal serious about tackling the Maoists?

Sitaram Yechury: Very serious.

 

Karan Thapar: In which case, how do you account for the pusillanimous deal that you have done with Kishanjee to secure the release of Atindranath Dutta? Both The Indian Express and The Hindu report that your police forces were surrounding and closing in on the Maoists when inexplicably the government called them off.

Your government, at a critical moment, threw in the towel?

Sitaram Yechury: No. That is not the fact of the matter. In fact, the people whose release was obtained were actually, if you look at the photographs – which the same papers have published – were middle-aged hapless tribal women and not hardened Maoists for which any deal has been done.

 

Karan Thapar: I will come to the people who were released in a moment's time but first come back to my opening point. Two newspapers, which your government has not contradicted so far, have said that in fact your forces had surrounded the Maoists at a time, when suddenly and inexplicably, they were called off?

Sitaram Yechury: See, no government will contradict or affirm when operations of this nature are going on. The media can speculate.

 

Karan Thapar: But this is an embarrassing revelation.

Sitaram Yechury: It is no revelation, it is just speculation.

 

Karan Thapar: It is not speculation. Top police officers confirm that they had surrounded the Maoists squad that had abducted Atindranath Dutta. Then they got a call from Kolkata to call off the operation.

Sitaram Yechury: Who? Who are those top police officers? The fact of the matter is that many a time in such operations we have seen such red herrings being put forward, and the media also--honestly--need to cooperate in dealing with such dangers.

 

Karan Thapar: The media also needs to expose the government. When senior police officers are going out of their way to tell the press that the government was in a position to surround the Maoists before the Chief Minister called it off, that is embarrassing.

Sitaram Yechury: Who are these officers?

 

Karan Thapar: Officers don't give their names as they are worried about their jobs but they are revealing, like whistle blowers, the truth.

Sitaram Yechury: No. Why is it that only these two newspapers have done it? In case there are other officers who have been going around and giving such information, then why other media has not picked it up?

 

Karan Thapar: Okay. That's your ground: why haven't more newspapers reported this, therefore I don't believe it? It is a dubious explanation but I will accept it and I won't argue with it?

Sitaram Yechury: It's not dubious at all.

 

Karan Thapar: For the simple reason that your government has not contradicted what the two newspapers have said, the police officers are not contradicting it, that is why it stands?

Sitaram Yechury: There is no need for contradiction. The logic is you do not contradict such things when operations are on. That's precisely what we told (not clear what is said).

 

Karan Thapar: Let's go beyond the operations. Lets move a step beyond. It's not just that you are perceived to have thrown in the towel, what is even worse is the message that you sent out to the Maoists. That every time they are under pressure all they have to do is kidnap a government official, the government will buckle and that will lead to a blaze of publicity.

Sitaram Yechury: That Chief Minister has said it very, very clearly and he said that it was only in this particular case. This is not going to happen again.

 

Karan Thapar: But there is no guarantee that it won't happen again. There was no need for it to happen here, therefore it can happen again.

Sitaram Yechury: There was a need because these were hapless tribal women – taken, kidnapped virtually to be used as shields. We rescued them.

 

Karan Thapar: Let's come to that issue then. This is the second time you are raising this claim that this was done to secure the release of what you called hapless tribal women.

Sitaram Yechury: Of course, the same newspapers you pointed published photographs of them.

 

Karan Thapar:Let's come to those people then. These Maoists sympathisers, the Chief Minister says, it doesn't matter that they were released (a) because the charges against them were minor misdemeanors and secondly he says they would anyway have been granted bail in 15 days.

Both those points are not true: they were actually charged with waging war against the state and attempted murder--a far more serious charge than he admits--and secondly bail was no means likely. So the Chief Minister is misrepresenting the situation.

Sitaram Yechury: If that is the case, you have to ask the state government, I don't know any such details.

 

Karan Thapar: So you are backing off now.

Sitaram Yechury: No, I am not backing off. I don't think that is an issue at all.

 

Karan Thapar:You made it the issue.

Sitaram Yechury:The issue is these people were used as shields, they are continued to be used as shields in order to procure whatever demands the Maoists want.

 

Karan Thapar: I am going to quote FIR No. 137/ 2009 and FIR No. 78/ 2009 of September 3. These 22 Maoists sympathisers were accused of waging war against the Centre and the state and also attempt to murder.

Secondly, and this is equally important, the public prosecutor, Chandicharan Mahapatra, had on two separate occasions refused bail. He said he was against bail and he said he has strong evidence and suddenly he then had to change his position because your government forced him to.

 

Sitaram Yechury: Why should the public prosecutor change positions?

 

Karan Thapar: Because they come under pressure from your government. The government wished to withdraw the case.

Sitaram Yechury: I have been charged with sedition, acting against the state on a large number of incidents when I was in student politics. So this is not something unnatural and you know attempt to murder, acting against state, dacoity –

 

Karan Thapar: But these are not minor misdemeanors, as Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said.

Sitaram Yechury: This is the nature and manner how police works. For a student demonstration you charge me with dacoity?

 

Karan Thapar: This is not a student demonstration. These are people who are accused of waging war against the state

Sitaram Yechury: I am giving you that illustration only to prove the point that they are ways in which the Indian Police acts under the Indian Penal Code.

 

Karan Thapar: In which case please explain to me, why the defence lawyer, the one man whose interest is to act on behalf of these 22 Maoists, he said when the bail was granted: "even I was surprised the district court granted them bail". The only reason it happened is because your government inexplicably and suddenly wished to withdraw charges.

Sitaram Yechury: Again you are jumping to conclusion without any basis. If the defence lawyer makes that statement, from there to conclude that the government put pressure and therefore this was done, I think you are letting your imagination take hold of you.

 

Karan Thapar: It's a fanciful defence you have put up. Let the audience hear it and judge for themselves whether what you are saying is credible or less than credible

Sitaram Yechury:Yes, please.

 

Karan Thapar: Meanwhile the problem with the attitude of the Marxist government of Bengal to the Maoists goes much further back than what happened last month. West Midnapore police records show that since 2002 – that is seven years ago – over 170 people have been killed by Maoist death squads. Sixty-six per cent of those are in fact CPI-M cadres, and yet not one Maoist operative has been shot dead and no one of significance has been captured.

 

Your government has given them a free-hand.

Sitaram Yechury: We are tackling the Maoists. Their main leader (Chhatradhar Mahato) is arrested.

 

Karan Thapar: He is not a Maoist, he is of PCPA – there is a distinction. He said so himself.

Sitaram Yechury:Who told you? Why are you advocating for them?

 

Karan Thapar: Let's come back to the fact how you handle the PCPA, which is a clear proof of how pusillanimous you been. In November –.

Sitaram Yechury: Now you've come to the conclusion that there is clear proof.

 

Karan Thapar: Ok, let me give you the proof. In November, the PCPA demanded that police posts and police camps be shut down. You shut down 13 camps on November 27 and two camps on December 1. Both of those happened on deadlines set by the PCPA – they demanded and you gave in.

Sitaram Yechury: No, I am sorry. The operations that are being conducted jointly both by the Central and the state forces – if you want to discuss the details of those operation no state is ever going to give it to you.n

 

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THE TRIBUNE

CHATTERATI

OUT OF POWER, A DIFFERENT BUSH

BY DEVI CHERIAN

 

George Bush, former President of America, was in the capital recently. At one time the most powerful man of the world was quite a pleasant change from when he was the President. More relaxed, a good sense of humour and looking much younger. Friendly to all and making wisecracks even at himself.

 

Addressing the nation's who's who at The Hindustan Times Summit, he made the right noises. Right from "Namaskar India" to calling Manmohan Singh his buddy. He praised the nation and was really politically correct for a change.

 

Bush had a one-to-one luncheon with the Prime Minister. As he sauntered across to the home of his pal, Manmohan Singh, who famously declared this nation's "deep love" for Bush.

 

At the friendly lunch, Bush clearly reciprocated in full measure. Singh was as "chirpy" as Bush. The conversation was light and sparkling. There was a lot of laughter and banter. So when Singh talked about how much he appreciated the huge gesture of the nuclear deal, Bush quipped, "Yeah, it was a big deal and to get it we had to break a bit of China".

 

Bush is a health freak and very careful with his diet. He made his own coffee and heated his own milk in the morning. He asks everyone: "How are you guys today?". Right from the durbans to the lift operator. He also asked about the 26/11 victims and their families.

 

He said he had been brought up by a strong woman, his mother. He has a strong wife and now has two very strong daughters. So he has a lot respect and admiration for women of all ages and nationality. At the outset, Bush disarmed all by thanking them for coming to see a "retired guy".

 

RAHUL TAKES ON MULAYAM

Congress heir apparent Rahul Gandhi went head on to Mulayam Singh Yadav's bastion, Ferozabad, seeking votes for Raj Babbar against the SP chief's daughter-in-law. This is a significant political move. Rahul is the first in 32 years for taking on the Yadav chieftain directly.

 

He astutely slipped in a long-term strategy for UP as he focussed on the next assembly elections, a good two years away.

 

A byelection would not really matter but Mulayam has chosen to field his apolitical "bahu" against Raj Babbar, who was a part of the SP at one time.

 

The Congress has chosen the development plank, realising that direct attacks on Mulayam's family could prove counter-productive. Rahul played to the script. And then of course, Amar Singh pointed it out that the Samajwadi Party never fields a candidate against Sonia or Rahul.

 

HALLOWEEN IS HERE

The capital celebrated Halloween at pubs and restaurants having Halloween-theme parties. It may not be as big as Diwali or Holi, but Halloween, primarily an American festival, is certainly becoming a big business here.

 

Shopkeepers were not even aware of Halloween till last year but this year the demand for costumes is so high that they had to order more products. Even schools are celebrating and parents are ordering horns, long nails and masks.

 

Restaurants had corpses and coffins at the entrance, creepy sounds and bloody red cocktails. Dishes were named angry prawns, sticky ribs, snakes on the sticks and mud and worms. They also had gory body paint, fortune tellers, contests, stalls with Halloween merchandise and screens showing horror films. Many had vampire balls and the place was turned into a Gothic castle.n

 

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THE ASSAM TRIBUME

EDITORIAL

BLOW TO ULFA

 

The arrest of Foreign Secretary Sasha Choudhury and Finance Secretary Chitraban Hazarika can be termed as a major blow to the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) and the Government of India must take advantage of the situation to bring the militant outfit to the negotiation table for a peaceful and long lasting solution to the problem of insurgency. The change of heart of the Government of Bangladesh is also evident as for the first time, the Government of the neighbouring country started yielding to pressure from Government of India and if such pressure continues, it will be tough for the ULFA leaders to keep using the territory of Bangladesh as a safe haven. After the Operation All Clear launched by Bhutan Government in 2003, in which, the camps of the ULFA, NDFB and the Kamatapur Liberation Organization (KLO) were busted, the senior leaders of the ULFA started staying mostly in Bangladesh and with the improvement of relations between India and Bangladesh, the ULFA leaders have started facing a tough situation. Sasha Choudhury is a key figure in ULFA as according to police reports, as the Foreign Secretary, he played a key role in maintaining foreign links of the outfit and his arrest will definitely affect the functioning of the outfit to a great extent. The arrest of the Finance Secretary will definitely have demoralizing effect in the minds of the rank and file of the ULFA as the unilateral cease-fire by the A and C companies of the 28 battalion, the strongest arm of the outfit, already reduced the strength of the outfit. Of course, in the past, the ULFA managed to bounce back after suffering setbacks including the operations in Bhutan, but the situation has changed now and it will be tough for the outfit to fill up the void created by the arrests of senior leaders.

The improvement of relations between India and Bangladesh is the key to deal with the militant groups including ULFA as in the past, the Government of the neighbouring country even refused to admit the presence of leaders of militant groups in the territory of that country, but now the militants are under real pressure. It is apparent that Sasha Choudhury and Chitraban Hazarika were picked up by Bangladesh security forces before they were handed over to the Border Security Force (BSF) and the possibility of more such arrests before the proposed visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister to India in December cannot be ruled out. The ULFA Commander in Chief, Paresh Baruah is also not in a position to stay in Bangladesh as he has been named as an accused in the arms haul case of 2004, while, it is reported that the ULFA chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa is also under scanner in the neighbouring country. If the move to set up a joint task force by India and Bangladesh to deal with insurgency becomes a reality, it will be impossible for any militant leader to use the territory of the neighouring country as a safe haven.  

 

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THE ASSAM TRIBUME

EDITORIAL

SAVE DEEPOR BEEL

 

The biggest factor behind the unabated destruction of forest and wildlife in the State, unquestionably, is the sheer insensitiveness of the Government towards the environment. We do not need to look far to realize this. Deepor Beel, a bird sanctuary and the State's lone Ramsar Site, is literally gasping for survival, with pollution levels in the water-body rising to alarming levels. One can see a coat of blackish oily substance – a result of continuous discharge of untreated toxic wastes through the Bahini and Bharalu rivers and dumping of solid wastes by the Guwahati Municipal Corporation close to the Beel's periphery – spreading over to more and more areas of the wetland's core area. The once-pristine wetland is made to bear the brunt of many ills – from large-scale encroachment and heavy siltation from the denuded hills to growing industrial activities including stone quarrying and brick making within its periphery. Regrettably, the vandalism being perpetrated on this natural heritage is visible for anyone except the Government. A Planning Commission delegation last year made a number of recommendations for restoration of the Beel eco-system, but those are gathering dust in official files with not a single recommendation being implemented. Given this destructive trend, it is only a matter of time before the wetland turns into a wasteland.

A natural wetland harbouring a rich variety of flora and fauna including over 200 species of birds and 50 species of indigenous fish, Deepor's significance lies on many counts. It is a major storm-water storage basin for Guawhati, which experiences severe water-logging every monsoon. It recharges groundwater, and is the best indicator of the city's environmental status. The entire Deepor-Rani-Garbhanga belt, endowed with diverse wildlife and spectacular scenery, needs to be developed as a protected area with thrust on eco-tourism. For restoring Deepor, anthropogenic and industrial pressures on the wetland must be checked, as long-term survival prospects of the wetland are intrinsically linked to reducing human interference on its fragile ecosystem. The immediate task before the Government is to prevent the flow of toxic wastes into the water besides shifting the garbage dumping site. With the declaration of the Beel as a bird sanctuary, it should have been easier for the Government to ensure some protective measures but the prevailing situation belies any such effort. Extending protection to the green cover on the city's hills is also critical to Deepor's survival because widespread deforestation on the hills invariably leads to accumulation of huge deposits of earth and silt on the Beel bed.

 

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THE ASSAM TRIBUME

EDITORIAL

DISASTER MANAGEMENT AND EARTHQUAKE

G SHARMA

 

While the hazard profile of India tells us that about 58 per cent of its land is vulnerable to earthquake, the entire land area of the North East India falls in the highest seismic zone (i.e. Zone-V) of the country. The major reason of earthquake occurrence has been the tectonic movement of various plates of the earth. Looking at the locations of occurrence of earthquake in the world, it is found that these events are generally occurring along some specific regions or the Seismic Belts, namely, Circum-Pacific Belt, Alpide Belt, Atlanic Belt. Occurrence of earthquake in Indian sub-continent is triggered mainly by the tectonic activities along the Alpide Belt (i.e., Himalayan Belt). The North-North-Easterly movement of the Indian Plate into the Eurasian Plate has been observed by the scientific community, with an estimated rate of 4.7 cm every year. An earthquake is a phenomenon related to strong vibrations occurring on the ground due to sudden release of energy. Several moderate to great earthquakes have occurred in India during the last two decades. The building up of stresses along the fault planes and subsequent release of energy in the form of earthquake is a continuous process, which keeps on repeating under the geological time-line. Occurrence of frequent moderate earthquakes and infrequent great earthquakes suggests that episodic slippage is continuing. These ongoing processes also imply that future great earthquakes can be expected in the unruptured parts of the Himalayan front. Major uncertainties, however, remain regarding the recurrence interval of great earthquakes. Earthquake prediction is not yet scientifically possible with reasonable accuracy in terms of its location, time and magnitude.

We all are aware that earthquake and other natural hazards are occupying a significant place, when we talk about the process of physical development, process of planning (land use, building planning etc.), design and construction of various man-made facilities, including buildings, bridges, roads, dams, tunnels and other commercial, social and utility infrastructures etc. in the whole country. The whole of NE Region, including Assam, is in such a geological location of the country that we have to keep ourselves abreast of the latest know-how on earthquake-resistant design, construction- technology, managing earthquake- risks, retro-fitting and rehabilitation etc.

Earthquake engineering can be defined as the branch of engineering devoted to mitigating earthquake hazards. In the broad sense, earthquake engineering covers all the investigations(geological, geotechnical, construction-materials etc.) and then, solution of the problems created by damaging earthquakes and consequently, the work involved in the practical application of these solutions, i.e. in planning, designing, constructing and managing earthquake-resistant structures and facilities.

Ground shaking from earthquakes can damage buildings and bridges; disrupt gas, electric, and phone services; and sometimes, trigger landslides, avalanches, flash floods, fires, huge and destructive ocean waves (tsunamis). Buildings with foundations resting on unconsolidated landfill and other unstable soil, and those not properly anchored to their foundations are at total risk, because they can be shaken off during an earthquake. It is for this reason, it is often said that earthquake do not kill people, but buildings do.

The dynamic response of a building to earthquake ground motion is the most important cause of earthquake-induced damage to buildings. The damage that a building suffers primarily depends not upon its displacement, but upon the acceleration. Whereas displacement is the actual distance the ground and building may move during an earthquake, acceleration is a measure of how quickly they change speed as they move, thus signifying the importance of soil– amplification on damages during earthquake. The conventional approach to earthquake resistant design of buildings depends upon providing the building with strength, stiffness and inelastic deformation capacity which are able to withstand a given level of earthquake generated force. This is generally accomplished through the selection of an appropriate structural configuration and the carefully detailing of structural members, such as beams and columns, and the connections between them.

In contrast, the new approach underlying more advanced techniques for earthquake resistance is not to strengthen the building, but to reduce the earthquake-generated forces acting upon it. By de-coupling the structure from seismic ground motion, it is possible to reduce the earthquake-induced forces in it.

Earthquake-resistant design is essentially a multi-disciplinary subject, demanding the expert-inputs from geologists, seismologists, geotechnical engineers and structural engineers for a variety of problem solutions. The extent of discipline-wise expertise may, however, vary depending on the type, size, location and importance of the structures. IS-1893 (2002) has incorporated the views of all the three disciplines – firstly, by revising the seismic zoning map based on the data (past and future potential) from regional and local seismic activities; secondly, by revising and making specific inclusion of clauses for soil and foundation for aseismic design; thirdly, by modifying the dynamic analysis procedure through use of the effective peak ground acceleration (EPGA), taking into account the maximum considered earthquake (MCE) during the service life of structures in each seismic zone. The Code has particularly drawn attention to the fact that intensity of shock due to an earthquake could vary locally at any place due to the variation of soil conditions.

There are 7 Indian Standard Codes, as published by Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS), which are being presently followed for the purpose of earthquake resistant design of structures in India, apart from following the National Building Code (NBC), 2005.

The study on micro-zonation is similar to the macro-level hazard evaluation, but requires more rigorous input about the site- specific geological conditions, ground responses to earthquake motions and their effects on the safety of the constructions taking into consideration the design aspects of the buildings and ground conditions which would enhance the earthquake effects like the liquefaction of soil, the ground water conditions and the static and dynamic characteristics of foundations or of stability of slopes in the hilly terrain.

Damage to structures may be different depending upon the soil conditions. Variations in seismic damage-intensities were observed during the great Assam Earthquake of 1950 at different distances from the epicentre, higher in the overburden and lower in rocks. The structures built on loose water-soaked areas suffered nearly 10 times more damage than those built on rocky foundations.

Disaster-Management Act, 2005 (DM Act, 2005) has laid down some institutional and coordination mechanisms for effective disaster management (DM) at the national, state, and district levels. That is how a National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) has been established in the country to tackle the earthquake-disaster management issue through a more proactive, holistic and integrated approach for strengthening disaster preparedness, mitigation and emergency response.

Earthquake-disaster management is a holistic subject and its application through proper co-ordination of all the stakeholders can only yield effective result on to the field.

Proper application of Earthquake-resistant design features in constructions of buildings and all other infrastructures, especially in the high seismic zones of the country, is a part of the total coordination needed for effecting a successful earthquake-disaster management plan for an urban locality or a city.

(The writer is former Professor of Assam Engineering College)

 

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THE ASSAM TRIBUME

EDITORIAL

ALTERNATIVE MODE OF SETTLING DISPUTES

IKRAMUL HUSSAIN

 

ADR or Alternative Dispute Resolution is the latest mechanism added to our justice delivery system to settle the disputes between the parties and to reduce the huge pendency of cases in our country. We are living in a democratic country where the Government runs its administration as per Constitution which provides our country a welfare State. One of the main responsibilities of the Government in a welfare State is to provide equal justice to all its citizens within a short span of time. Access to justice and fair trial is a constitutional obligation of the Government under Article 14 and 21 of our Constitution. Out of the three pillars of a democratic country, judiciary is holding the justice delivery system. Douglas M Gane in his article The Birth of new Equiy has said – "The course of justice is like the alteration of the seasons. There is the hope and inspiration of Spring and the achievement and reward of Summer, and there is the descent and sacrifice of Autumn and the moral and intellectual destitution of Winter, and the changes in our jurisprudence will come accordingly in spite of us, however much we may be the appointed instruments in their consummation".

To evolve such a system, the discussion was held as far back as in 1906, when the American Bar Association adopted the precise title of Roscoe Pound in its conference held at St Paul Minnesota. Pound had then criticized the "sporting theory of justice", "exaggerated contentious procedure" and "archaic system of Courts" which led to adoption of "Rules Enabling Act & Uniform Federal Rules of Civil Procedure" in America. Prof Frank EA Sander suggested in his speech that dispute resolution requires a process to meet the systematic needs of entire categories of certain types of cases and also the unique circumstances presented in a particular case. His remarks are often credited as making the birth of the modern ADR movement.

ln a country like us where population is more than a crore and judges are not sufficient as per ratio with the population, it becomes difficult to provide justice in a short period of time. So, the pendency of cases in our country has piled up to around 2.75 crore. To reduce such a huge pendency Government has constituted the Committees to make suggestion on this aspect. Upon such suggestion, the Government has amended the Civil Procedure Code by adding Section 89 which provides different modes of Alternative Dispute Resolution system. This amendment of CPC referring pending Court matters for settlement through ADR has been challenged before the Apex Court, where the modalities for effective implementation of the Section also came under scrutiny. Supreme Court delivered a landmark judgment in "Salem Advocate Bar Association, Tamil Nadu Vs Union of India" where it was held that reference to mediation, conciliation and arbitration are mandatory for court matters. This judgment can be termed as a real turning point for the development of mediation.

This new provision has made it compulsory to try and dispose special types of cases outside the Court. Under the provision of this Section, when the Court is of opinion that there is reasonable possibility to compromise a case under certain conditions, then the Court's duty is to prepare the conditions and handed over to the parties for their consideration. If the conditions are acceptable to both the parties or they want any modification, then the Court has to reframe such accepted conditions and forward the case for disposal through any one of the following processes: by arbitration, by conciliation, through Lok Adalat and by mediation.

Rule 4 of Alternative Disputes Resolution and Mediation Rules, 2003, provides that the Court has to give guidance to the litigant public when they opt for any kind of ADR by drawing attention to the relevant factors to be taken in to account before they exercise their opinion as to the particular mode of settlement, namely: It will be the advantage of the parties to save time and expense by opting one of these modes of settlement instead of seeking for trial. Parties may seek reference of the matter to arbitration under clause (a) sub clause (1) of Section 89 when there is no relationship between the parties and requires to be presented. Parties may seek reference of the matter to conciliation or mediation under clause (b) or (d) sub clause (1) of Section 89 when there is relationship between the parties and requires to preserve it. Disputes arising in matrimonial, maintenance and child custody matters shall come under the provisions of Section 89(1)(b) or (d) of the Rule. Parties may seek reference of the matter to judicial settlement including Lok Adalat under clause (c) sub clause (1) of Section 89 when the parties are interested in a final settlement through compromise.

Arbitration was the first method of ADR recognised by statute in India ie. Arbitration Act 1940. But, this Act failed to fulfil the essential function of ADR. Because in arbitration, proceedings are generally delayed for taking time by the parties and cost also become higher than other ADR process, thereby failed to attract the poor litigants.

Conciliation brought the rival parties in to a negotiation table. It differs from other ADR method. A neutral third party is appointed as conciliator with the consent of both the parties, whose duty is to try for settlement of disputes between the parties. He is not bound by the rules of evidence. Hence, the conciliation or the process of conciliation is not legally binding.

Lok Adalat is one of the methods of ADR, which acts under different provisions of Legal Services Authorities Act,1987. The main object of this Act is to provide free and competent legal services to the weaker sections of the society. Lok Adalat provides speedy and inexpensive justice in both urban and rural areas. To implement the different provisions of this Act and to provide justice on the basis of equal opportunities, a statutory body called National Legal Services Authority has been constituted at the national level. In the State level, State Legal Services Authority is constituted and to co-ordinate with the poor litigant public in the subordinate judiciary, District Legal Services Authority has been constituted. These authorities not only provide legal aid to the poor litigant public but also take steps to create awareness among the public.

(Published on the occasion of Legal Services Day).

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

REFORM POLITICS

 

What is common between the BJP's virtual surrender before two Reddies come lately, the delayed swearing-in of the Congress-NCP alliance in Maharashtra and the postponed cabinet expansion in Haryana? The capture of power by pelf. Politics has become alienated from its basic function of mediating between the people and the state to advance the public good, and been reduced to increasing the wealth of the people's representatives who get to wield power.

 

The piteous sight of not just veteran politician and Karnataka CM Yeddyurappa but also the top leadership of the BJP buckling under the money power of the Bellary mining magnates shows the extent of deterioration. It would be a mistake to think the malaise affects only the BJP. The tussle between the NCP and the Congress over ministerial berths, and the one in Haryana, hardly derive from any passion to serve the people.

The social justice champions' assets disproportionate to their known means of income, the Madhu Kodas and spectrum Rajas are all symptoms of the same disease: perversion of democracy to rule of the people by the moneyed for money. Power is used to prey upon the citizenry and to sell patronage. This is how politicians amass money. And the system has come about from an idyllic notion of politics, that it doesn't require much money, that ideals light up the path while passion fuels the process.

This simpleminded assessment of politics might have been valid for the Congress during the freedom struggle and the Communists before they acquired a bourgeois taste for power. Politics in the real world needs funding. And this funding must have an institutional basis. In the absence of an institutional source of funding, diverting funds from the exchequer, predatory practices and patronage have become routine forms of moibilising funds for political parties.

Politicians do the mobilising and keep a good part of what they collect to themselves. In the process, they also suborn the bureaucracy, without whose collusion neither predation nor patronage can work.
Political funding has to change. Funding must become broadbased, state-aided and transparent. Auditing of political party accounts must cease to be cursory. We need reform, and need it fast.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

GOOD WORK, TOYOTA

 

Toyota has decided to adopt 40 more industrial training institutes (ITIs), in addition to the 16 they already work with, in order to upgrade the talent pool from which it will draw its workforce. It is commendable. What is not so commendable is that companies have to scrounge for skills. One might argue that what Toyota is doing is not unique.

Some 10% of India's 5,000 odd ITIs have been adopted for upgradation, with industry chambers CII and Ficci taking forward the then FM P Chidambaram's 2007 Budget initiative to upgrade 1,396 ITIs into centres of excellence in partnership with the private sector. Toyota's scheme had started even before this initiative and follows its worldwide practice. Subsequently, the prime minister launched a national skills mission, in which various ministries of the Centre, industry associations, state governments and training institutions are supposed to collaborate to make India the skills capital of the world.

New Delhi is getting skilled, indeed, in launching ever new schemes but whether Indians are getting skilled where it matters remains a matter of conjecture. The robust proposal for the government to periodically report to the nation the progress it has made in implementing various schemes, contained in the President's June 4 address outlining the new government's policy perspective, yet remains to be put into practice.

Fast growth, competitiveness and social stability depend on skill development. India's industrial growth is picking up at a time when industry's ability to absorb unskilled rural migrants has been lost in history. To compete in the open domestic economy, leave alone the global market, companies need to achieve standards that can be delivered only by trained manpower working on sophisticated machines that run to precise algorithms.

Even in the service sector, workers need a whole lot of skills to become part of the modern economy, even if it is confined to social graces and discipline. Untrained, unemployable youth can easily turn to crime or be mobilised by political parties that thrive on hatred of 'the other.' Skill development is a national priority.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

 

ENDGAME FOR REALITY

 

Technology, like much else in life, seems to come with a built-in 'dual use' possibility. Take computers, and all else associated with them: the internet, gaming et al. There is, of course, the information revolution, the educational benefits, or just plain downright entertainment that comes with this. And then there's the dark side.

 

The world of pervasive online porn, of cyber terrorists, of even computers or the net so taking over people's lives as to over-rule the real. A recent report has it that among the plethora of existing execrable violent games , which seem to have legions of addicts across the globe, a new one is based on the 'raping skills' of players.

This, truly, would take the milking of human depravity to a new level altogether. A lot of these games, or such virtual worlds, are reportedly created in the US or Japan. That could explain a lot in itself. Two hyper-real fonts of technological capitalism, with an attendant — and documented — portion of the population for whom life outside the window is a pale shadow of what they can 're-live' on their comps.

Thus the stories of young people in Japan who become literal recluses, hardly ever stepping out of their rooms for months and years, wilfully lost to the world, while playing out personas and fantasies on their desktops. Or the tales of relationships breaking down elsewhere because new, and unreal, ones are formed in virtual worlds.

Some would blame unfettered, uncontrollable 'market-logic'. And pornography would constitute it at its worst. The base marketing and sale of the most intimate human activities and the most degraded aspects of mankind. True, there's always been forms of titillation, illicit or otherwise, around. But not on such a massive industrial scale.

Never before would games and virtual worlds based solely and purely on the ambidextrous ability to mow down people, slaughter nations, rape and pillage be so freely and widely a part of many people's lives. And already, signs are the virtual is stepping out into the real. Time to protect the latter.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

INVESTING IN ATTRACTIVE MIDCAP, SMALL STOCKS CAN ALSO BE RISKY

MADHU T

 

MUMBAI: Dalal Street is agog with talks about multi-baggers — stocks that go up in price multiple times of the initial investment — in small and midcap segments.

 

Talk to any pundit and you would hear about how attractive certain stocks in the small and midcap segments appear, even as the frontline stocks are showing signs of fatigue. Probe a little further and they would confess that despite the so-called promise these stocks hold, they have not been buying them in large quantities as they think these stocks could prove too risky if the market gets into a comatose mode.

''We are extremely cautious about the market. It is true that some stocks are very attractive in the small and mid-cap space. However, we are not buying them as much as we would love to because of the risk involved,'' said the research head of a leading broking firm. ''Large-cap stocks seem to have run out of steam. That is why many people are increasingly looking at medium and small segments,'' he adds.

In the last year, both small and mid-cap indices have outperformed the sensex, the broad benchmark for the market. For example, the sensex rose 54% in the last one year, whereas both small and mid-cap indices soared 79% in the same period.

The trend is clearly reflected in the mutual fund space as well. The small and midcap category has outshone every other sectors with an outstanding 94% and 92% returns respectively in the past one year.

However, don't let the blinding returns influence your investment decision. According to experts, investors should keep in mind that small and mid-cap category stocks are far riskier than large-cap stocks. They also carry other risks like price manipulation, lack of buyers in a bear market and high volatility. ''Investors can get into small and medium cap stocks provided they understand the risk involved in investing in them,'' says Devendra Nevgi, an independent financial expert.

''They should understand that in a bull market, especially a liquidity-driven one, money starts flowing into mid-cap from the large-cap and then to small-cap stocks. They should not forget that the reverse process also takes place quickly in a bear market,'' he adds.

 

According to experts, the biggest worry in these categories is the possible price manipulation by a set of operators, as these stocks would have a limited floating stock in the market. Promoters mostly hold a large percentage of shares in these stocks. ''Investors only look at the jump in prices, but they don't realise that with limited stocks available a group of traders can ramp up the price in a few days,'' says a broker, who doesn't want to be named.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

 

INVESTORS MAY USE REVIVAL TO BOOK PROFITS

NISHANTH VASUDEVAN

 

MUMBAI: The possibility of stocks retreating this week looks more likely than a sustained rebound, as investors are wary that the recent bounce has been driven by short-covering rather than renewed purchases. Analysts don't rule out stocks adding a bit more gains early this week. But they feel investors may book profits, while traders are likely to create short positions on further upsides.

"The Nifty is likely to face resistance at 4850-4900 levels, and once again, test the 4300 level, which coincides with the 200-DMA," said Antique Stockbroking manager-technicals Shruti Meghani Vora, who attributes last week's rebound to 'technically oversold conditions'.

On Friday, the Nifty ended at 4796.15. The index had touched 4538.50 earlier this week, sliding almost 12%

rom mid-October. The market bounce, in the previous week, was mainly led by short-covering after the Fed in the US indicated its preference for holding rates near 0% for a longer period.

But, market participants said these comments from the US central bank have just temporarily relieved the markets, but concerns over American government withdrawing the stimulus package earlier-than-desired remains. Investors fear that an early revoking of the stimulus, which is credited to have boosted the US economy growth to 3.8% last quarter, would scuttle early signs of recovery in the world's largest economy and importer.

"An early withdrawal of the stimulus package is certainly a big risk for the stock market, but we do not expect authorities to take any step that cuts off a recovery," said Bharti AXA investment managers' head-equity Prateek Agrawal.

He remains optimistic about equities, contrary to many in the street, who are cautious about the market's near-term outlook. "The way to look at it is the risk to upside is higher than the risk to downside," added Mr Agrawal.

Market participants said the direction of the US dollar will play a key role in determining the market direction. Any rebound in the dollar against the rupee could result in foreign institutions booking profits in Indian stocks, as a weaker rupee reduces the value of their local stock exposure.

Amid a cautious outlook, analysts expect investors to shuffle their porfolios in favour of the so-called defensive
sectors such as consumer goods and healthcare. Antique's Ms Vora is bearish on automobile, metals and bank shares, while expects consumer foods and healthcare shares to outperform in a weak market.

           

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

THE EXPECTATION EFFECT

 MARGUERITE THEOPHIL

 

How we believe the world is, and what we honestly think it can become, have powerful effects on how things turn out. Nothing demonstrates this more

 

clearly than the experiments conducted by Harvard's Robert Rosenthal. School teachers were given names of children in their classes who showed up in his assessments as late bloomers, about to dramatically spurt in their academic learning. In actual fact, these names were just randomly selected.

When, at the end of the term, the classes were tested, the results were eye-opening. The 'listed' children not only performed better in the eyes of their teachers, something the psychologists had expected — but surprisingly also scored significantly higher on standardised IQ tests. Their teachers' expectations had improved the academic performance of their students.

Rosenthal's 'expectation effect' has important implications for us. All too often, our negative expectations do come true; people turn out to be just as untrustworthy, unfriendly, unethical as we imagined them. And when this happens, we interpret this as a sign that our expectations are accurate. We fail to see that most often, people begin to behave in accord with the expectations we have of them.

So, the study and its results teach us that the best way to avoid receiving the worst from people is to make a conscious effort to expect the best. To me it is interesting that this works in other connected ways too. Feldman & Prohaska performed a later experiment to study the effect of student expectations of teachers. One group was told their teacher was "quite effective," and another was told their teacher was "somewhat incompetent."

Students with a negative expectation rated the lesson as being more difficult, less interesting, and less effective. Students with a positive expectation even scored higher on actual tests. Overall, it was found, the expectation about the teacher does affect overall learning outcomes.

This does not mean overlooking genuine problems, or even, indeed, pushing or driving others beyond limits because we have 'high expectations' for them; that would miss the whole point and in fact be counter productive and downright cruel. It simply means that we are invited to treat people as if they were already what they could be, and so help them become what they are capable of being.

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan perhaps said it most beautifully — that we need to uphold that aspect of the person which is the real person, and the soul beyond their own self-doubt.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

SCRAP INSURANCE AGENT COMMISSION?

THERE'S NO JUSTIFICATION FOR PAYING COMMISSION

When the agent's income is directly linked to sales, it is inevitable he will look after his own interest rather than that of the consumer and is likely to withhold the information that may jeopardise the closure of a transaction. This structure of commission encourages agents to sell policies that give them the highest commission.

Generally, the agent lacks the qualifications and expertise of an adviser to assist consumers in evaluating and identifying a suitable product according to his requirements. Hence, the concept of commission-based agent is fundamentally flawed as it shortchanges consumers.

Hitherto, the primary focus of the legal framework governing financial products was to ensure that companies dealing in them do well and not go bust. The product design, cost structure and marketing incentives are built in a manner so as to maximise sales but shift the risk and cost on the unsuspecting, and often, ill-informed, buyer.
Australia, Japan, Netherlands and Singapore have moved to a 'fee-for' model as opposed to commission-based model and numerous other countries, including the US, are thinking about it. The UK will go no load from 2012.

In India, Sebi found that commission to agents selling mutual funds was not justified and made it load-free this year. Recently, PFRDA introduced the New Pension Scheme (NPS) that has no load. In the insurance sector, commissions are still very high as they determined by policies that were enacted way back in 1938. The scenario today is completely different.

There are dozens of insurance companies offering a wide range of products from plain vanilla to complex insurance-cum-investment schemes. Evaluating them requires information, time and expertise. In such a scenario, the utility of the agent to a consumer is greatly reduced to mere service provider, at best, and gives way to a qualified adviser.

This necessitates segregating the role of agents and financial adviser. Those consumers who want advise should pay for it and a regulatory framework for advisers would be desirable. Insurance companies can re-train their over one million agents if they want their services. There is no justification to make an exception, for commission, for insurance products.

(*Midas Touch Investors Association)

 

AGENT HAS TO BE COMPENSATED BY HIS PRINCIPAL

It has been argued that insurance companies should shift to a model where investors pay fees after negotiations instead of commissions. One must understand that this changed pattern, applicable to mutual funds (MFs), is only a few months old. MFs have a very limited retail base with 75% of investments coming from corporates/high networth Individuals. MFs are not mandatorily required to sell products in rural areas. Their collections are from 16 major cities. Even the New Pension Scheme (NPS) has negligible retail participation.

These entities have to deal with literate urban investors, with financial awareness. Even in these sectors with limited retail and predominantly urban presence, the new model is yet to prove successful. MFs have already increased exit charges even for existing customers who entered the schemes after paying full entry load including commissions (load free structure?).

Life insurance companies, on the other hand, have a huge retail base of 30 crore policies with a statutory obligation to sell 18% new policies in rural areas. Does one seriously expect people with low levels of literacy and awareness to decide and negotiate fees with agents and arrive at an informed decision?

Changeover is being recommended due to a mistaken belief that commissions and not customer's interest drive the entire sales process. If that be the case, how does one explain the fact that insurers collected more than Rs 1,25,000 crore as new premium over the last four years at a commission of 1.5 to 2%, less than the entry load then prevailing for mutual funds. Agents would have earned much more even if half this amount had been diverted to other insurance schemes with a higher commission structure. One also needs to ask why mutual funds did not capture this business as they could pay higher entry-loads.

Insurance companies are also different from entities selling other financial products as they carry additional risks on liabilities side. One bad risk would entail huge claim outgo. An agent plays a pivotal role in risk assessment process and therefore represents only one company and has to be compensated by his principal and not the investor.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

THERE'S NO JUSTIFICATION FOR PAYING COMMISSION

 

When the agent's income is directly linked to sales, it is inevitable he will look after his own interest rather than that of the consumer and is likely to withhold the information that may jeopardise the closure of a transaction.

This structure of commission encourages agents to sell policies that give them the highest commission.

Generally, the agent lacks the qualifications and expertise of an adviser to assist consumers in evaluating and identifying a suitable product according to his requirements. Hence, the concept of commission-based agent is fundamentally flawed as it shortchanges consumers.

Hitherto, the primary focus of the legal framework governing financial products was to ensure that companies dealing in them do well and not go bust. The product design, cost structure and marketing incentives are built in a manner so as to maximise sales but shift the risk and cost on the unsuspecting, and often, ill-informed, buyer.

Australia, Japan, Netherlands and Singapore have moved to a 'fee-for' model as opposed to commission-based model and numerous other countries, including the US, are thinking about it. The UK will go no load from 2012.

In India, Sebi found that commission to agents selling mutual funds was not justified and made it load-free this year. Recently, PFRDA introduced the New Pension Scheme (NPS) that has no load. In the insurance sector, commissions are still very high as they determined by policies that were enacted way back in 1938. The scenario today is completely different.

There are dozens of insurance companies offering a wide range of products from plain vanilla to complex insurance-cum-investment schemes. Evaluating them requires information, time and expertise. In such a scenario, the utility of the agent to a consumer is greatly reduced to mere service provider, at best, and gives way to a qualified adviser.

This necessitates segregating the role of agents and financial adviser. Those consumers who want advise should pay for it and a regulatory framework for advisers would be desirable. Insurance companies can re-train their over one million agents if they want their services. There is no justification to make an exception, for commission, for insurance products.

(*Midas Touch Investors Association)

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

'STEEL DEMAND MAY DOUBLE IN 6 YEARS'

SUBHASH NARAYAN

 

The Indian steel sector has not only started to show signs of growth, but has also given enough indication that it would pick up pace in the coming months. In an interview with ET, the Union steel minister Virbhadra Singh says that unless the country creates a capacity of nearly 124 million tonne in the next 3-4 years, it may be difficult for it to meet the demand in the country. Excerpts:

The steel ministry has set up an ambitious target of achieving 124 million tonne steel production by 2012. Do you think, in the current economic situation, the target is achievable?

The global crisis has failed to dampen the spirit of economic growth here. Particularly, the steel sector here had started showing signs of recovery somewhere in January, when positive growth in steel demand in the country was visible. During the first six months of 2009-10, steel consumption here has shown 7% growth. Steel demand here continues to be strong and is likely to double within the next 5-6 years. Unless we build capacity of nearly 124 million tonne by the next 3-4 year, it may be difficult for us to meet the demand for steel in the country.

What do you plan to do to see that the proposed steel projects come up on time?

A few greenfield projects have already made substantial progress in critical areas such as land acquisition and allocation of mineral resources. One of the major reasons impeding the early establishment of greenfield steel projects is the land acquisition, combined with rehabilitation and resettlement. Adequate compensation for land and effective rehabilitation, in my opinion, are two solutions to overcome this obstacle. The major steel investors must find ways to include the project-affected people as stakeholders in their concerned projects.

Foreign investment remains sluggish mainly due to problems faced by proposed projects of Posco, ArcelorMittal...

Taking the current status of progress, I believe Posco project in Orissa would be able to take off soon. ArcelorMittal has been allocated mineral resources. The land acquisition of the company in Orissa and Jharkhand has also made some progress. An Inter Ministerial Group has been constituted and is already functioning under the chairmanship of secretary (steel) to monitor the progress of the projects.

Do you think there is a need for government intervention to check rise in steel prices?

The market prices are stable and there is no need to take any kind of restrictive action. However, the government is continuously monitoring the international price movement vis-a-vis the situation in the domestic market. As and when necessary, we will initiate appropriate actions.

After SAIL, which other PSUs has the ministry lined up for disinvestment?

Apart from SAIL, the steel ministry has identified MOIL and NMDC as the other potential PSUs which would be taken up for divestment.

Do you think that companies like SAIL should be given a chance to expand globally?
SAIL is in the midst of an expansion plan whereby its capacity will increase to 20 million tonne of saleable steel by 2012. Hence, a company like SAIL, with strong fundamentals, should definitely be given a chance to expand beyond domestic boundaries.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

'INDIA, CHINA HAVE IMMENSE GROWTH HEADROOM'

RATNA BHUSHAN

 

Saad Abdul-Latif, CEO of PepsiCo's Asia, Middle East and Africa (AMEA) division, which generates nearly $6 billion in annual revenues, oversees operations of over 100 countries across the region. ET caught up with the PepsiCo veteran of 27 years, Mr Latif, for an exclusive chat at the India Economic Summit. Excerpts:

 

You've been to India several times. But now, with India topping growth in the PepsiCo system globally, it must be different?

I couldn't be happier, though it's always good to be here. Business aside, I like the people. But this time, it's particularly gratifying because we are getting good growth across the board—carbonated drinks, juices and water, snacks. There's a motivated set of people here which is good to see.

What about the India division revenues?

India is in the growth stage. It would be probably unfair to compare India's revenues with that of developed markets, which are in revenue stage.

Where does India rank versus China in terms of growth and scope for expansion?

I'm lucky to have both India and China—two big markets—with me. Both countries have immense headroom for growth, considering their per capita consumption. Second, both countries have very varied consumer preferences in terms of foods. That itself is a challenge.—how to meet needs of different consumers in different regions within these countries. Both countries have a lot of youth population. Additionally, households coming under the affordable income bracket are in excess of 800 million people.

The company has talked of commitment to portfolio transformation to healthier products. How relevant is that in a market like India, where aerated drinks sales are now in double digits?

We are following a two-fold strategy—grow the core and secure the future. The core is carbonated drinks, which has huge growth potential. We want to transform ourselves into a total beverages and snacks company. So there's water, Tropicana, Slice, Nimbooz, Aliva and Quaker. With the kind of portfolio of beverages and snacks we have, the consumer can have something for the morning, afternoon and night. So it's a good place to be in, actually. The focus is on growing the core business as much as it is on diversifying to other products.

 

Coca-Cola is putting detailed calorie information on front label packs. Is PepsiCo planning a similar initiative – or any other such 'responsible communication'?

As a consumer, I support the (Coca-Cola's) initiative. PepsiCo already gives out calorie and nutrition information on all packs. We are talking to our stakeholders and if it's an industry initiative, we would be happy to be part of it. Our initiatives at responsible communication already include not targeting advertising to children less than 12 years of age, activation with school kids, and ingredient information on packs.

Starting January 1, '09, in India, beverages and snacks foods were aligned under a common leadership. What gains have been made from that restructuring?

The great thing about coming together is that we are cross-utilising our resources very effectively, which is reflecting in the business. The benefits are to be seen in areas such as human resources, IT, public affairs, and various back-end operations. Growth is also coming from investments and innovations like lemon drink Nimbooz and Aliva snackers.

 

Going by market researcher AC Nielsen, the top two soft drink brands in India are with Coca-Cola. Your comment?
Over the last two years, our business is growing faster—certainly faster than our competitor's. That's what we know.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

INDIA IS THE SCENE OF ALL TELECOM ACTION: ALCATEL CHIEF

JOJI THOMAS PHILIP

 

NEW DELHI: On the global stage, the world's second-largest telecommunications equipment maker Alcatel-Lucent SA, has been fighting falling sales even as it is confronted with deepening losses. But, in India, the company has seen a turnaround in the past 24 months. In the last year alone, its headcount in India has tripled to 10,000. Its global CEO Ben Verwaayen talks to ET on the Indian market, the global outlook and the way forward for the company. Excerpts:

 

In India, you have been seen as one of the players who may bid for state-owned telecoms manufacturing company ITI.

If it (ITI) adds value to our topline and bottom line, then we will consider it. We will consider something if we feel it is important to us and provided we get it at the right valuation. They (ITI) have been our valued partner for a number of years.

You have seen a turnaround in the company's performance in India over the last two years. What led to that difference considering that you now bag a more projects here?

India is a very important market for us and this is illustrated by the fact that our headcount here has gone up to over 10,000 from 3,000 earlier. This has been possible through two JVs—one with Reliance Communications and the other with Bharti Airtel. Drawing on our experience here, we have however been able to replicate similar contracts in Latin America and in some parts of Europe. Our focus here is to upgrade our existing customer base, expand the services portfolio of our business and also enhance our footprint by serving new clients. About 20% of our revenues come from Asia and about 40% of what we do in Asia is related to India. Besides, this market is also seeing a lot of new players. As operators here transform their networks to IP-enabled, this is huge opportunity for us because this is what we do best.

After you, top executives from all other global vendors - Ericsson, Nokia Siemens & ZTE are in India? Is that a coincidence?
This is no coincidence. I come to India three or four times every year. This is the market to be in and this is where the growth is. All vendors have to fight for their share in this market. You want to be here not just for revenues, but for the talent pool that is available in India. A lot of our R&D now comes from here. I would be India even if we don't sell a single Dollar here.

Has competition from Chinese vendors — ZTE Corp and Huawei — hurt your business? Some sections in India see Chinese vendors as a security threat. Do you agree?

I am not the right person to comment on our competitors. We don't care about competition and as long as we have the will and the capacity to win and the capability to walk, we should do well. In the past, we have looked too much on the other side - so far, about 60% of our R&D was spent on things that were more than two-years old, but next year nearly 70% of our funds will be on new products and services.

Globally, telecom vendors are now looking at services and not just hardware.

Yes, services now accounts for about 25% of our revenues. This is a fast growing part of our business, especially in Asia.

In the current fiscal, you had said that market for telecoms gear will be down by 8-12%. What about next year?

The market will return to growth but it will be around 5% or less.

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

TARIFF WAR JUST CAN'T BE SUSTAINED, SAYS AIRTEL'S JOSHI

 JOJI THOMAS PHILIP

 

NEW DELHI: Eight months can be a long time in India, the most competitive telecom market in the world. In the eight months since Shireesh Joshi left PepsiCo China to join Bharti Airtel as its marketing head, the landscape of the country's mobile space has changed considerably. A slew of new operators have launched services, Bharti's market share in terms of new customer additions have reduced and the ongoing price war is threatening to eat into profits and revenues of the sector. Mr Joshi talks to ET on Bharti Airtel's strategy to grow its brand and take on competition. Excerpts:

 

By being late to introduce per-second billing plan, do you feel you have lost out on the mind recall on a tariff offering that is the talk of the town?

If you are talking about one particular tariff plan, then yes. Are we on top of the mid recall for a certain tariff plan? Maybe, not always. The actual tariff is a commercial decision and nothing to do with the brand. We may have been late by a week to introduce the (per second) plan, but that is not a weakness of the brand. At Bharti, we introduce a new tariff structure only when we are convinced about its sustainability. The way I see it, the Airtel brand cannot be diluted or impacted by our response to one tariff offering. Our brand represents more than just the per second billing plan – it represents the largest network in terms of the number of customers, coverage, service centres and distribution. It represents innovations and unique offerings like we were the first to introduce Twitter on the mobiles.

But, in the current scenario, all telcos are trying to identify themselves with certain tariffs. Agreed that Airtel is more than just tariffs, but are you conceding space on this front?

All the new players cannot compete with so many facets of a brand like us. Their only option is to play the tariff game which is precisely the reason why their campaigns and communications revolve around price. Our stance is that while Airtel will be competitive on the tariff front, we also have several other strengths that make us more attractive.

In the smaller towns and rural areas, none of the new entrants is there. In these places, the network reach is most important factor for the customer and we are, therefore, very strong. What differentiates us in such places is that we are more than just a mobile connection. For instance, our partnership with IFFCO helps our customers to get a lot of local information relevant to the agriculture and the markets on their mobiles.

Considering low viewers' interest, do you think Champions League T20 championship was not a right event to partner with? What are the other sport you want will associate with?

We don't see the Airtel Champions League T20 as a failure. That may be a perception, but the event was in line with our estimates and it fit our valuation. For us, it was a tactical choice to be associated with the Champions League T20 and this is choice is not measured by the perception towards the event. We will participate in any sport which we think adds value to our brand. This is the reason why we were part of the Delhi half marathon although it was a local event. The same is with football. We see that there is a huge interest, especially amongst the youth for this game. This is a space we are investing in because it is for the future.

 

Bharti is slowly repositioning itself as a lifestyle company. But, most of India still associate Airtel with mobile phones. Can Airtel ever represent more than being a mobile phone operator?

We have a 15-year history with mobility and it is, therefore, natural that we are associated with being a mobile phone company. Our other businesses such as broadband, DTH and IPTV are new offerings. But, we have started capturing the mind share in these segments too. Our internal surveys show that while we were the fifth to launch DTH services, we already have top of the mind recall with regard to this product and service. Similarly, our MCheck offering, a mobile based payment system, which customers can use to pay all their bills, is very popular and enjoys a very high mindshare.

Apart from the ongoing tariff war, what are the other challenges? Last quarter witnessed the highest churn amongst your customer base. Will this continue?

When mobile number portability (MNP) is introduced, the strength of our brand will become evident as we will attract those customers who want superior quality. Our revenue market share already indicates where we stand and MNP is just one more test that will see us emerge stronger. Yes, churn may continue, but this is not related to the brand 'Airtel'. If some operator were to come up with a crazy tariff plan, the trend may continue. People will always experiment. It does not imply that we have to react. We will always take a balanced view. We cannot stop people from experimenting when new offers come along. What is important is that, we don't see this price war being sustained.

Despite your ads with Apple, the joint launch of the iPhone was a failure. What went wrong?

Cost was the only reason. In India, we cannot enforce a contract like other mature markets. Therefore, the scope of selling the iPhone was limited. But, we will continue to partner with Apple in future.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

'MOST INDIAN FIRMS DESERVE PREMIUM'

DEEPTHA RAJKUMA

 

Indian equities appear expensive at this stage, but some of the premium is justified, given the robust returns on capital that Indian firms generate, says Hugh Young, managing director, at Aberdeen Asset Management, Asia. He is bullish on Asian emerging market economies, but cautions that Asia is still dependent on final demand from developed economies. In an interview with ET, he says interest rates in India could rise shortly, but margins of key banks won't be affected as long as they stick to prudent lending norms.

 

What is your current exposure to Indian equities, relative to other emerging markets?
We are quite heavily exposed to Indian equities in comparison to other emerging markets. Given the market's strength in the past five years or so, that position has been very beneficial. Admittedly, we prefer to invest in what we believe are the safer, more conservative companies, and they, or rather their shares, have not been the best performers in the bull market of 2004-2007.

There is a lot of noise about valuations having gotten expensive. Do you share that view?

Indian equities are certainly more expensive than they were eight months ago, with price-to-earnings ratios now in the low-20s. So, perhaps, a pullback should be expected. But many of your companies generate excellent returns on capital in what is a high growth economy. So, maybe, they deserve a premium. We're very comfortable with our position in India and have no plans to increase or decrease it.

Has the Satyam experience changed your outlook towards the IT sector in any way?

The Satyam episode could have happened in any industry. It has not changed our views on the Indian IT story, which we still very much believe in. IT is an area in which India has a clear and sustainable competitive advantage, thanks to a well-educated, English speaking, price-competitive workforce.

The Reserve Bank of India has indicated that rates could rise. How does that affect your investments in the financial space?

I, certainly, expect a hike in interest rates. But this is a good thing, as it indicates that there is too much strength in the economy. True, much of the rise in wholesale prices is due to the weather, which is causing supply problems due to not too much demand. But the manufacturing sector is also recovering nicely which is very encouraging. As far the impact of higher interest rates, this may slow loan growth for banks.

Some time ago, you said that investors should not overestimate stock market returns to be gained from emerging economies in the short term. Does that view still hold?

While there is little doubt that emerging economies tend to grow at high rates over the long term, the ride is rarely a smooth one. Capital inflows can be large and volatile, distorting both economies and markets. The past eight months have seen money flowing back into emerging markets. The premise here is that developing economies are generally in good shape and do not have the debt-related problems of the West, which is why they are recovering faster (and in the case of India avoided outright recession). But Asia is still dependent on final demand from the West. If, when fiscal stimulus fades, that demand doesn't seem to be improving, stock markets everywhere could suffer.

Has this perception prompted you to realign your portfolios?

To some extent, 'yes'. We have made three changes to our regional funds in the past six months, all of which reflect a slightly more cautious stance. The first was the sale of Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, which runs the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This is a very "high beta" stock, as its fortunes vary with the level of equity markets. The other two changes were the purchase of BHP Billiton in Australia and your very own Hindustan Unilever.

Both companies are very well managed. But beyond that, they both operate in areas where we feel demand is more reliable. BHP is benefiting from insatiable demand for commodities from China and other emerging economies, what we think is a long-term secular trend. Hindustan Unilever is seeing very stable demand for fast-moving consumer goods, as urban and rural incomes in India rise.

 

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                                                                                                               DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

WHEN THE WALL FELL IN '89...

BY PATRALEKHA CHATTERJEE

 

Witnessing history as it is happening is a thrilling experience. But standing in front of the crumbling Berlin Wall that memorable winter afternoon 20 years ago, I wished I had a hammer or the height. All around me, men, women, children chipped away at what was once the most potent symbol of the Iron Curtain. The  fall of the Wall had brought a  crush of euphoric tourists to the spot. Many squealed in excitement at seeing their first "Communist" — the East German policemen who stood on the other side, and happily posed for photo-ops. Souvenir hawkers had descended on the site in droves. Bits of concrete wrapped in cellophane sold as Wall memorabilia, at the speed of Heineken beer cans on a hot, summer day.  Some of it was authentic, some of it not. A middle-aged tourist couple from the United States clambered atop the great divide and scribbled: "We came, we saw, Suzy and Jack….". Suzy and Jack were followed by a tall, hefty, British school girl. She swung her hammer and yelled in delight, "It is like slicing a marriage cake!" At that moment, it became blindingly obvious to me what I had to do to take home that slice of history. Never mind the lack of hammer or height... "May I have a few pieces," I asked the girl in a soft voice, picking up a couple of bright chunks that fell on the  ground as her hammer struck The Wall. "Of course," she replied sweetly. The sun shone brightly.

 

I was an accidental witness to the dismantling of The Wall. In the autumn of 1989, I found myself in Paris, along with 30 odd journalists from all over the world, ready to embark on a nine-month media fellowship intended to improve our knowledge of Europe. The good luck was courtesy a scholarship from  the French government and the Paris-based journalists in Europe Foundation.

 

For someone like me, who had not travelled outside her country, this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance to get to know Paris and Europe. In the early days, we,  the Anglophones on the course, struggled with French, hung around James Joyce bars and savoured the many delights of  Paris. That languid rhythm, however, soon came to an end. On November 9 1989, there was a bang which changed everything:  the East German authorities, trying to ease the the pro-democracy pressure that was building up, opened up several checkpoints for visits. East Berliners, first by dozens, and soon by the thousands, swept through the opening in the Wall. The Soviets under Gorbachev did not offer any military help. The rest is history. Soon Berliners were dancing on top of the Wall, breaking pieces sometimes with their bare hands. The Berlin Wall, which had separated East and West Berlin since 1961, had been breached, paving the way for the reunification of the two Germanies. It was the beginning of the end of the Soviet Empire.

 

I missed the dancing atop The Wall. At that time, I was in Hungary where they were singing Winds of Change and planning to pull down the red star from public buildings. But in the days,  weeks, and months that followed, I travelled through East Berlin, the now defunct East Germany, and post-Communist Eastern Europe, watching the collapse of communism and old certainties.

 

Former East Germany was mesmerising. I did not speak German but found it easy to understand their reflexes. Growing up in an  India which was yet to embrace the global marketplace, I could relate to the awe and craving for consumer goods and foreign brands which "Ossies" (East Germans) felt in the early days of freedom.

 

An incident from March 1990,  when the German Democratic  Republic (GDR) of yore was preparing for its first free elections, is etched vividly in my mind. I was in the eastern city of Leipzig where the pro-democracy demonstrations had started which led to the eventual toppling of the Berlin Wall. My hosts were Sabine and Gerhard Leinkeit, friends of friends, who loved the idea of having an international house guest. At the dinner table, one evening, Gerhard said he was planning to buy a car, "You already have one," I said. "I do not have a car, I have a Trabant," he quipped. The Trabant, an east German car, I later discovered  was the butt of many jokes, a bit like our Ambassador — cheap and devoid of conveniences. 

 

Sabine, his wife, was warm and welcoming, sharing many of her embarrassing moments after the Wall came down. On her first visit to a West Berlin supermarket  with her two sons, she had been hugely confused by the astounding choices. Her sons could not control their excitement at seeing the sheer variety of toothpastes and soap. "Mama, mama, look, look, so many things… they screamed. The West Berliners were looking at us and laughing. We must have come across as country bumpkins," she said. I could relate to that moment instinctively...

 

But along with the euphoria of freedom, there were disturbing signs. Communist East Germany had junked Marx and embraced  democracy. But freedom and free thought had also opened the floodgates of racism. Everything was changing — rules, regulations, currency, social systems. The future looked uncertain. Many could not cope. The changes were too fast and the man on the street was groping for an anchor. I saw a shaven east German in saffron chanting Hare Rama, Hare Krishna in the middle of a market in Leipzig. On the walls, there were graffiti screaming "Auslander raus" (Foreigners  Out). At the bust stop, at the cafes, one heard vicious racial jokes, especially against the Vietnamese and Africans. Constantino, a Mozambican worker in a meat factory in East Berlin, one of the thousands of foreign workers, told me he was afraid to travel in the train amid rising xenophobia. An Indian student who had studied in Eastern Germany said it was time to organise and demand rights for foreigners who were the most vulnerable group in this fluid situation.

 

Twenty years on, the postcards and old photographs bring back a flood of memories of those turbulent times.

 

November 9 dealt a knock-out blow to Communism. But brash capitalism and the consumerist paradise did not always bring a better tomorrow to all who rejoiced. The defeat of the old enemy has not ended fear. Only its shape and form have changed. At the end, those who learnt how to live through the chaos, those who knew how to cope with uncertainties, did well. Those who did not, fell by the wayside. For me, that is the compelling message from those moments in history.

 

Patralekha Chatterjee writes on contemporarydevelopment issues, and can be contacted at
patralekha.chatterjee@gmail.com [1]

 

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

SOMETHING SCARY IN THE PANTRY

BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

 

Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It's a synthetic oestrogen that US factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies – to the tune of 6 pounds per American per year.

 

That's a lot of oestrogen.

More than 92 per cent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it – though not conclusively – to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.

 

Now it turns out it's in our food.

Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbell's condensed chicken noodle soup and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans.

 

The magazine also says it found BPA in the canned liquid version of Similac Advance infant formula (but not in the powdered version) and in canned Nestle Juicy Juice (but not in the juice boxes). The BPA in the food probably came from an interior coating used in many cans.

 

Should we be alarmed?

 

The chemical industry doesn't think so. Steven Hentges of the American Chemistry Council dismissed the testing, noting that Americans absorb quantities of BPA at levels that government regulators have found to be safe. Hentges also pointed to a new study indicating that BPA exposure did not cause abnormalities in the reproductive health of rats.

 

But more than 200 other studies have shown links between low doses of BPA and adverse health effects, according to the Breast Cancer Fund, which is trying to ban the chemical from food and beverage containers.

 

"The vast majority of independent scientists – those not working for industry – are concerned about early-life low-dose exposures to BPA," said Janet Gray, a Vassar College professor who is science adviser to the Breast Cancer Fund.

 

Published journal articles have found that BPA given to pregnant rats or mice can cause malformed genitals in their offspring, as well as reduced sperm count among males.

 

For example, a European journal found that male mice exposed to BPA were less likely to make females pregnant, and the Journal of Occupational Health found that male rats administered BPA had less sperm production and lower testicular weight.

 

This year, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that pregnant mice exposed to BPA had babies with abnormalities in the cervix, uterus and vagina. Reproductive Toxicology found that even low-level exposure to BPA led to the mouse equivalent of early puberty for females. And an array of animal studies link prenatal BPA exposure to breast cancer and prostate cancer.

 

While most of the studies are on animals, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported last year that humans with higher levels of BPA in their blood have "an increased prevalence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and liver-enzyme abnormalities." Another published study found that women with higher levels of BPA in their blood had more miscarriages.

 

Scholars have noted some increasing reports of boys born with malformed genitals, girls who begin puberty at age 6 or 8 or even earlier, breast cancer in women and men alike, and declining sperm counts among men. The Endocrine Society, an association of endocrinologists, warned this year that these kinds of abnormalities may be a consequence of the rise of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and it specifically called on regulators to re-evaluate BPA.

 

Last year, Canada became the first country to conclude that BPA can be hazardous to humans, and Massachusetts issued a public health advisory in August warning against any exposure to BPA by pregnant or breast-feeding women or by children under the age of 2.

 

The Food and Drug Administration, which in the past has relied largely on industry studies – and has generally been asleep at the wheel – is studying the issue again. Bills are also pending in Congress to ban BPA from food and beverage containers.

 

"When you have 92 per cent of the American population exposed to a chemical, this is not one where you want to be wrong," said Dr. Ted Schettler of the Science and Environmental Health Network. "Are we going to quibble over individual rodent studies, or are we going to act?"

 

While the evidence isn't conclusive, it justifies precautions. In my family, we're cutting down on the use of those plastic containers that contain BPA to store or microwave food, and I'm drinking water out of a metal bottle now. In my reporting around the world, I've come to terms with the threats from warlords, bandits and tarantulas. But endocrine disrupting chemicals – they give me the willies.

 

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

HAUNTING TALE OF A BALLET DANCER

BY MAUREEN DOWD

 

Some movies you have to watch whenever they're on. One of those, for me, is The Red Shoes. Like its doomed heroine, I'm pulled inexorably along by the bewitched crimson ballet slippers into a lush, swirling landscape that turns into an inescapable, bloody hell. There are many great works of art about obsession, from Heathcliff's wailing to Ahab's whaling, but this is surely the most gorgeously haunting.

 

The destructive obsession portrayed here is not with a lover or outside object of desire. It's about the tyranny of creativity. As the white-skinned, blue-blooded ballerina Vicky Page, Moira Shearer dons the red slippers and is forced to choose between love and art.

 

There was never a screen pairing more magical than Moira and Technicolor. The flame-haired Scottish dancer is so radiant in the Criterion DVD of the 1948 classic directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger that it's impossible to believe she could glow more brightly.

 

But in the lovingly polished version of the British movie that debuted at Cannes and is now showing at Film Forum in New York, Moira is even more incandescent.

 

The original backers of the movie had so little confidence that a stylised tragic ballet film could do well that they didn't even give it an official London premiere. Now Martin Scorsese calls The Red Shoes "one of the true miracles of film history". He long ago began an obsessive campaign to restore Powell's reputation. His Film Foundation and the UCLA Film and Television Archive have taken the lead in digitally alchemising the movie from cracked, shrunk, mouldy negatives. Scorsese fell in love with the movies of Powell and Pressburger when he was an asthmatic kid living in a four-room tenement apartment in New York, watching Million Dollar Movie on TV and going to theatres with his dad.

 

"They have a flair and flamboyance you don't usually find in films being made at that time," he told me. "And a fearlessness about emotion. They create worlds that take no prisoners."

 

In Black Narcissus, their 1947 movie about a lustful nun in the Himalayas, played by Deborah Kerr — they seemed drawn to redheads for Technicolor — the sister faints from sexual desire and the screen goes orange. "That's such a wonderful way to express desire", Scorsese marvelled. In a letter to Kerr in the early '40s, Pressburger laid out their manifesto, including: "No artist believes in escapism. And we secretly believe that no audience does. We have proved, at any rate, that they will pay to see the truth, for no other reason than her nakedness".

 

In the early '70s, Scorsese tracked down the broke and discredited Powell in London and took him to a pub. "Michael was very surprised to hear that his films had thrilled a younger audience and given fuel to the imagination of myself and Brian De Palma and Francis Coppola," Scorsese once recalled. "He went home that night and recorded in his diary that he felt his blood course through his veins again after meeting us in the bar."

 

In 1980, Coppola invited Powell to become a consultant at Zoetrope Studios. He moved to America and married Scorsese's film editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. It is interesting that Powell twice counselled Scorsese against the colour red. He didn't like the red boxing gloves in the early rushes of Raging Bull and urged Scorsese to switch to a black-and-white film. (He did.) Powell told him Mean Streets had too much red lighting and he should take some out. (He didn't.)

The Red Shoes is based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name about a little girl who becomes vain about her red shoes and gets confused about her priorities. As in the movie, the shoes force the girl to dance day and night, and then she dies. But the fable has an even grimmer coda: The girl asks an executioner to cut off her feet.

 

"To be constantly associated with that one film is really quite dismaying," she once said. "It's as though I'd done nothing else in my life. I mean, it's odd, when you're 61, to be haunted by something you've done when you were 21!"

 

She resisted doing the movie, finding the script "silly and banal"; she feared it would deflect her from a classical ballet career. And when she died at 80 in 2006, her husband dismissively called her film work "a bit of a distraction".

 

Shearer said she faced hostility when she returned to the ballet world from some who considered her overnight movie fame frivolous. She always worried that she was succeeding more for her looks than her dancing. She wrote a book about her experiences with George Balanchine. As Clive Barnes wrote in Dance Magazine, "She had a disappointing and disappointed dance career." In later years, Shearer was asked to give her occupation in "Who's Who". "Writer," she replied.

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

OPED

SOMETHING SCARY IN THE PANTRY

 BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

 

Your body is probably home to a chemical called bisphenol A, or BPA. It's a synthetic oestrogen that US factories now use in everything from plastics to epoxies – to the tune of 6 pounds per American per year.

 

That's a lot of oestrogen.

More than 92 per cent of Americans have BPA in their urine, and scientists have linked it – though not conclusively – to everything from breast cancer to obesity, from attention deficit disorder to genital abnormalities in boys and girls alike.

 

Now it turns out it's in our food.

Consumer Reports magazine tested an array of brand-name canned foods for a report in its December issue and found BPA in almost all of them. The magazine says that relatively high levels turned up, for example, in Progresso vegetable soup, Campbell's condensed chicken noodle soup and Del Monte Blue Lake cut green beans.

The magazine also says it found BPA in the canned liquid version of Similac Advance infant formula (but not in the powdered version) and in canned Nestle Juicy Juice (but not in the juice boxes). The BPA in the food probably came from an interior coating used in many cans.

 

Should we be alarmed?

 

The chemical industry doesn't think so. Steven Hentges of the American Chemistry Council dismissed the testing, noting that Americans absorb quantities of BPA at levels that government regulators have found to be safe. Hentges also pointed to a new study indicating that BPA exposure did not cause abnormalities in the reproductive health of rats.

 

But more than 200 other studies have shown links between low doses of BPA and adverse health effects, according to the Breast Cancer Fund, which is trying to ban the chemical from food and beverage containers.

 

"The vast majority of independent scientists – those not working for industry – are concerned about early-life low-dose exposures to BPA," said Janet Gray, a Vassar College professor who is science adviser to the Breast Cancer Fund.

 

Published journal articles have found that BPA given to pregnant rats or mice can cause malformed genitals in their offspring, as well as reduced sperm count among males.

 

For example, a European journal found that male mice exposed to BPA were less likely to make females pregnant, and the Journal of Occupational Health found that male rats administered BPA had less sperm production and lower testicular weight.

 

This year, the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found that pregnant mice exposed to BPA had babies with abnormalities in the cervix, uterus and vagina. Reproductive Toxicology found that even low-level exposure to BPA led to the mouse equivalent of early puberty for females. And an array of animal studies link prenatal BPA exposure to breast cancer and prostate cancer.

While most of the studies are on animals, the Journal of the American Medical Association reported last year that humans with higher levels of BPA in their blood have "an increased prevalence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes and liver-enzyme abnormalities." Another published study found that women with higher levels of BPA in their blood had more miscarriages.

 

Scholars have noted some increasing reports of boys born with malformed genitals, girls who begin puberty at age 6 or 8 or even earlier, breast cancer in women and men alike, and declining sperm counts among men. The Endocrine Society, an association of endocrinologists, warned this year that these kinds of abnormalities may be a consequence of the rise of endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and it specifically called on regulators to re-evaluate BPA.

 

Last year, Canada became the first country to conclude that BPA can be hazardous to humans, and Massachusetts issued a public health advisory in August warning against any exposure to BPA by pregnant or breast-feeding women or by children under the age of 2.

 

The Food and Drug Administration, which in the past has relied largely on industry studies – and has generally been asleep at the wheel – is studying the issue again. Bills are also pending in Congress to ban BPA from food and beverage containers.

 

"When you have 92 per cent of the American population exposed to a chemical, this is not one where you want to be wrong," said Dr. Ted Schettler of the Science and Environmental Health Network. "Are we going to quibble over individual rodent studies, or are we going to act?"

 

While the evidence isn't conclusive, it justifies precautions. In my family, we're cutting down on the use of those plastic containers that contain BPA to store or microwave food, and I'm drinking water out of a metal bottle now. In my reporting around the world, I've come to terms with the threats from warlords, bandits and tarantulas. But endocrine disrupting chemicals – they give me the willies.

 

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

DECCAN CHRONICAL

OPED

HAUNTING TALE OF A BALLET DANCER

BY MAUREEN DOWD

 

Some movies you have to watch whenever they're on. One of those, for me, is The Red Shoes. Like its doomed heroine, I'm pulled inexorably along by the bewitched crimson ballet slippers into a lush, swirling landscape that turns into an inescapable, bloody hell. There are many great works of art about obsession, from Heathcliff's wailing to Ahab's whaling, but this is surely the most gorgeously haunting.

 

The destructive obsession portrayed here is not with a lover or outside object of desire. It's about the tyranny of creativity. As the white-skinned, blue-blooded ballerina Vicky Page, Moira Shearer dons the red slippers and is forced to choose between love and art.

 

There was never a screen pairing more magical than Moira and Technicolor. The flame-haired Scottish dancer is so radiant in the Criterion DVD of the 1948 classic directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger that it's impossible to believe she could glow more brightly.

 

But in the lovingly polished version of the British movie that debuted at Cannes and is now showing at Film Forum in New York, Moira is even more incandescent.

 

The original backers of the movie had so little confidence that a stylised tragic ballet film could do well that they didn't even give it an official London premiere. Now Martin Scorsese calls The Red Shoes "one of the true miracles of film history". He long ago began an obsessive campaign to restore Powell's reputation. His Film Foundation and the UCLA Film and Television Archive have taken the lead in digitally alchemising the movie from cracked, shrunk, mouldy negatives. Scorsese fell in love with the movies of Powell and Pressburger when he was an asthmatic kid living in a four-room tenement apartment in New York, watching Million Dollar Movie on TV and going to theatres with his dad.

 

"They have a flair and flamboyance you don't usually find in films being made at that time," he told me. "And a fearlessness about emotion. They create worlds that take no prisoners."

 

In Black Narcissus, their 1947 movie about a lustful nun in the Himalayas, played by Deborah Kerr — they seemed drawn to redheads for Technicolor — the sister faints from sexual desire and the screen goes orange. "That's such a wonderful way to express desire", Scorsese marvelled. In a letter to Kerr in the early '40s, Pressburger laid out their manifesto, including: "No artist believes in escapism. And we secretly believe that no audience does. We have proved, at any rate, that they will pay to see the truth, for no other reason than her nakedness".

 

In the early '70s, Scorsese tracked down the broke and discredited Powell in London and took him to a pub. "Michael was very surprised to hear that his films had thrilled a younger audience and given fuel to the imagination of myself and Brian De Palma and Francis Coppola," Scorsese once recalled. "He went home that night and recorded in his diary that he felt his blood course through his veins again after meeting us in the bar."

 

In 1980, Coppola invited Powell to become a consultant at Zoetrope Studios. He moved to America and married Scorsese's film editor, Thelma Schoonmaker. It is interesting that Powell twice counselled Scorsese against the colour red. He didn't like the red boxing gloves in the early rushes of Raging Bull and urged Scorsese to switch to a black-and-white film. (He did.) Powell told him Mean Streets had too much red lighting and he should take some out. (He didn't.)

The Red Shoes is based on a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale of the same name about a little girl who becomes vain about her red shoes and gets confused about her priorities. As in the movie, the shoes force the girl to dance day and night, and then she dies. But the fable has an even grimmer coda: The girl asks an executioner to cut off her feet.

 

"To be constantly associated with that one film is really quite dismaying," she once said. "It's as though I'd done nothing else in my life. I mean, it's odd, when you're 61, to be haunted by something you've done when you were 21!"

 

She resisted doing the movie, finding the script "silly and banal"; she feared it would deflect her from a classical ballet career. And when she died at 80 in 2006, her husband dismissively called her film work "a bit of a distraction".

 

Shearer said she faced hostility when she returned to the ballet world from some who considered her overnight movie fame frivolous. She always worried that she was succeeding more for her looks than her dancing. She wrote a book about her experiences with George Balanchine. As Clive Barnes wrote in Dance Magazine, "She had a disappointing and disappointed dance career." In later years, Shearer was asked to give her occupation in "Who's Who". "Writer," she replied.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

MUTUAL BENEFIT

 

The honourable justices of the Supreme Court passed a resolution in 1997 that they would declare their assets to the Chief Justice of India. An applicant asked the chief information commissioner under the Right to Information Act whether they were doing so; the CIC referred the question to the CJI. The justices demurred, but the Delhi High Court upheld the CIC's direction on September 2. On November 1, all the judges declared their assets, excluding H.S. Bedi. The assets they have declared are, on the whole, reassuringly reasonable. The declaration shows that their misgivings about public opinion were unjustified. The calmness, bordering on boredom, with which the people have taken the declaration, should give the judges assurance that they can be bolder. They will no doubt wish to sustain the public confidence they have generated; the best way to do so is to keep the asset statements updated. Most income-tax payers estimate their assets annually when they prepare their accounts for income tax authorities; the justices are no doubt no exception. It would require no additional effort if they declare their assets whenever they submit returns.

 

Many judges hold shares, which is not surprising. Some hold shares in Reliance Industries, which is also understandable since the company has a reputation for rewarding its shareholders well. All Indians are allowed to hold its shares without anybody's permission; the honourable justices are no exception. The dispute between Mukesh Ambani, who in essence controls Reliance, and his younger brother, Anil Ambani, over the division of their family assets has travelled through the courts to the Supreme Court. At least two judges have recused themselves from this matter on grounds of conflict of interest. The presumption is that they or their family members own Reliance shares, and that they fear that a judgment in the matter might be construed as having been influenced by their material interest in the company.

 

These recusals are voluntary and gratuitous; no one asked for them. The fear on which they are based has no basis in fact; no one, not even Ram Jethmalani, has ever suggested that a judge cannot judge fairly a case relating to a company in which he holds shares. Even if some legal vulture were to make the allegation, the judges can be sure that the people of this country will dismiss it with the contempt it deserves. If, nevertheless, a judge is concerned, it is open to him to sell his Reliance holdings, for which there is a ready market. Since the justices have been concerned about public opinion, it would not be a bad idea if all judges moved away from investing in individual companies; there are many mutual funds that can serve their needs equally well. Since their qualms should be those of every civil servant, the government should perhaps set up a portfolio of kosher mutual funds for them.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

DOUBLE AGENT

 

In the final years of George W. Bush's presidency, Muslims in the United States of America complained of being victimized as agents of evil. Then Americans elected their first black president, a man with a Muslim middle name who is trying, at least in theory, to rekindle some sense of racial fairness. Formerly a lawyer, the president's quest for justice has been absolute — he has even distinguished the good Taliban from the bad. Barack Obama may thus hope to earn some credibility in the Muslim world by extending a hand of friendship, but not much of his good faith has rubbed off on the US army. Recently, a Muslim psychiatrist with the army went on a shooting spree in the country's biggest military base, just a day before he was to leave for Afghanistan. Apparently, Nidal Malik Hasan, now critically hurt after being shot down by an officer, was deeply shaken by his patients, who had returned from battlefields overseas. Moreover, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was informed at least six months ago of Mr Hasan's supposedly jihadist tendencies after he started posting pro-Muslim messages on the internet. But the FBI never started a probe.

 

While the blame-game among the FBI officials goes on, a few tiny details seem to have slipped out of the picture — that Mr Hasan was routinely bullied by the soldiers for his Muslim faith, or the fact that people had thrown diapers at his house with the message "This is your head cover", and scrawled "camel jockey" on his car. Perhaps Mr Hasan, like countless ordinary American Muslims, was only trying to be a good citizen and do his duty by his country. Yet, whatever be the provocation, his outburst cannot be condoned under any circumstances. Still, his was no ordinary wager with fate. Mr Hasan chose to be a part of the army — where many of his co-religionists would fear to tread, even in Mr Obama's America.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

STRANGELY AT ODDS

CHINA'S BEHAVIOUR TOWARDS INDIA CAN BE INTERPRETED VARIOUSLY

KANTI BAJPAI

 

India's relations with China have become increasingly confusing. For more than 20 years, the two countries have maintained a high degree of military stability along the border. After the diplomatic spat in 1998, over India's nuclear tests, Delhi and Beijing have been very civil in public. The past two years, however, have been worrying. China has increased the number of troop incursions across the line of actual control; and its diplomacy has hardened. The Indian government has reacted calmly, for the most part, but has also hardened its stand. What is going on with China?

 

Since 1988, India and China have assiduously built a diplomatic and military architecture designed to normalize relations. There have been four pillars to this architecture: summitry, border negotiations, confidence-building measures, and trade. Indian and Chinese leaders at the highest levels have met more times in the past 20 years than in the previous four decades. The two countries have held border negotiations continuously over that time. They have initialled and implemented a series of very sensible CBMs. And they have taken bilateral trade from less than $200 million in the 1980s to over $50 billion in 2008.

 

On the other hand, since 2007, Chinese military moves have rung alarm bells. The Indian press has reported and the Indian military has reluctantly confirmed a growing number of incursions by the Peoples' Liberation Army across the LAC. Fortunately, these have not been militarized — the two sides have not fought each other or stood eyeball-to-eyeball on the line. In addition, Beijing has signalled that it is preparing to push its navy into the Indian Ocean and that it does not recognize this as an Indian "lake". The Chinese navy's suggestion to Admiral Timothy Keating of the United States of America that the US and China should divide the Pacific Ocean between them and leave the Indian Ocean to Beijing sent New Delhi a reminder that competition might be extended to the oceans as well.

 

More disconcerting have been a series of diplomatic provocations. The most serious have related to Arunachal Pradesh. Beijing has objected very publicly to calling the state a part of India. It has opposed loans from the Asian Development Bank for projects in Arunachal. It has also criticized visits to the state by the Indian prime minister and by the Dalai Lama. Also galling to India has been Beijing's attitude recently to Sikkim and Kashmir. In 2003, it had seemingly accepted India's integration of Sikkim. In recent pronouncements, it has once again raised questions about it. After years of staying aloof from the Kashmir issue, it has begun to irk New Delhi by representing the state as an independent political unit.

 

How can we make sense of these seemingly contradictory forms of behaviour and action? If we discount the idea that recent reports on India-China relations are alarmist or motivated, three interpretations suggest themselves.

 

The first is that Beijing is seeking to strengthen its hand in the border negotiations and would like to bring those talks to finality. Here the main goal is Chinese control of the Tawang monastery in Arunachal Pradesh which is important for Tibetan Buddhism, particularly in the succession politics after the Dalai Lama's passing from the stage. New Delhi must, in this view, be brought round to giving up Tawang, if not larger portions of Arunachal Pradesh.

 

The second interpretation of recent Chinese behaviour is that Beijing, in its nervousness over its internal weaknesses, specifically in Tibet, is attempting to intimidate India. Thus, China needs to humiliate India in order to demonstrate to the Tibetan resistance that it has no succour and that its putative allies are weak. In addition, Beijing is warning India not to take advantage of China's troubles in Tibet — or else risk serious consequences. Another explanation tied to internal politics points to the role of the PLA. The hardening of China's behaviour, it may be argued, can be traced to the more nationalist view of the armed forces which is suspicious of India and less accommodative of rising Indian power. Yet another perspective is that India is part of an internal squabble over leadership which will climax in 2012 at the 18th Communist Party congress.

 

Third, Chinese behaviour may be traced to global geopolitics. At the heart of this geopolitics is the issue of a rising India and New Delhi's relationship to China's other strategic concerns — principally the US and Japan. The Chinese are beginning to take seriously the possibility that India will be a power of some scale and substance, even though its progress is hobbled by bad governance, internal unrest, and a noisy democracy. India's demography twinned to its economic and military surge have caused Beijing to sit up. In league with American and Japanese power, India could constitute a threat well before it becomes a threat all on its own.

 

China's various moves over the past two years, from this vantage point, could be regarded as a series of probes — military and diplomatic. Beijing may well be attempting to gauge how India will react to a military challenge by China, particularly in the borderlands but perhaps also in the Indian Ocean. The probe may be intended to discern whether or not New Delhi is serious about being an autonomous centre of power and following its own course. Or is New Delhi drifting into an anti-China alliance structure, however loosely and informally, with the US and Japan? At the same time, the probe could be a device to measure very carefully the US and Japanese reactions to Chinese provocations and stances. Do the two powers show signs of coming to India's defence, at least diplomatically? Beijing may be trying to assess who, apart from the US and Japan, would offer India any kind of support — the European Union, East and Southeast Asia, Australia, or others in the developing world.

 

Which of these interpretations is right? It is, of course, hard to be definitive. Clearly, though, Beijing has shown no hurry in settling the border. The notion that it is seeking to move things along more quickly is therefore not terribly persuasive. That China's moves over the past two years relate to internal instabilities is an attractive thought because it suggests that there is nothing that India has done to trigger Chinese behaviour. However, M. Taylor Fravel of MIT, in his fine study of Chinese policy towards its territorial conflicts, has suggested that Beijing tends towards concessionary rather than aggressive policies when it is internally weak.

 

The geopolitical argument may well be the best interpretation of China's motives. Judging by the reactions of India, the US, and Japan, Beijing should be reassured. India has reacted fairly coolly to China's provocations and probes, and the US and Japan have not uttered a single word in India's support (nor has anyone else). Indeed, the Obama administration's courting of China and the new Japanese government's more conciliatory disposition towards the Chinese have left New Delhi in a rather lonely spot strategically — which is exactly what Beijing may have wanted to bring home to South Block.

 

The author is Professor in the Politics and International Relations of South Asia, Oxford University

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

ACT BEFORE IT'S LATE

FIFTH COLUMN -GWYNNE DYER

 

There must be a better way to rig an election. First, the Western powers occupying Afghanistan let President Hamid Karzai stay in the job for months after his term actually expired, on the grounds that an election in the late summer would be easier to arrange. They finally held the election in August and declared it a shining success: Karzai, Washington's man in Kabul, had been re-elected, even though the turnout nationally was only 30 per cent.

 

President Barack Obama, who was already under great pressure to send more troops to Afghanistan, declared that "This was an important step forward in the Afghan people's effort to take control of their future." And then it all fell apart. As the evidence emerged that up to a third of the votes allegedly cast for Karzai had been fraudulent, the United States of America backed away from celebrating his "re-election." Indeed, the fraud was so blatant and massive that even the Afghans began to choke on it, and various American emissaries bullied Karzai into accepting a run-off vote against his closest rival in the first round, Abdullah Abdullah.

 

That vote would have been held on November 7, but Abdullah knew that he would lose again. He belongs to the Tajik ethnic group, and there are twice as many Pashtuns (Karzai's ethnic group) in Afghanistan as there are Tajiks. So Abdullah complained that the election officials conducting this run-off would be exactly the same men who had rigged the first round — which was quite true — and demanded their resignation.

 

Karzai refused to remove them; Abdullah used that as an excuse to withdraw from the election, and on November 1 the run-off was cancelled. Karzai was proclaimed president once again on the basis of the discredited first-round vote, and the whole sorry mess was abandoned. But there is a silver lining: if Obama wants to bail out of Afghanistan, he now has an excellent excuse for doing so.

 

Best chance

 

Actual Western military casualties in Afghanistan have not been very high. But the loss rate has been mounting steadily, as has the sense of futility back home. In the US, the declining popular support for the war is driven largely by a growing perception that it is unwinnable. If the US army is losing ground in Afghanistan after eight years in the country, and four previous invading armies from the industrialized world (three British and one Russian) have been forced to withdraw, why should we believe that this time is going to be any different? But the constantly repeated assertion that withdrawal from Afghanistan would lead to a surge in terrorist attacks on the West is also losing credibility.

 

It was always nonsense: terrorists don't need "bases" to plan their attacks. Regular armies need bases, but all terrorists need is a couple of safe houses somewhere. Controlling Afghanistan is almost entirely irrelevant to Western security, and that reality is also beginning to seep out into the public discussion in the US.

 

If Obama can extricate himself from the tactical minutiae about whether to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, or 20,000, or none, and focus on the larger question of why the US is occupying the country at all, he can still save himself. Now is his best-ever chance to pull out, because the political train-wreck in Kabul gives him an ideal opportunity to renege on his foolish promises to pursue the war in Afghanistan until victory.

 

If he misses this opportunity, he may never get another, for it will inevitably, inexorably become "his" war, and the Americans who are killed there from now on will have died on his orders. Once that kind of burden descends on a politician, it becomes almost impossible for him to change course and admit that those deaths were futile. In that case, the Afghan war will eventually destroy him.

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

DRIVE TO DIVEST

'GREATER PUBLIC HOLDING MEANS BETTER GOVERNANCE.'

 

The UPA government's decision to disinvest at least 10 per cent of its stake in all Central public sector undertakings and list all profit-making and unlisted PSUs is bold and timely. The move follows the recent announcement of a five per cent stake sale in NTPC and 10 per cent in Satluj Jal Vidyut Nigam, and the NHPC and Oil India public issues. These had not, however, convincingly proved the government's commitment to its declared goal of a high level and speedy pace of PSU disinvestment which would fetch an annual revenue of Rs 25,000 crore. A denial by the heavy industries minister of any plan to dilute the government holding in BHEL had strengthened doubts about the government's plans. But the prime minister recently sought to clear these doubts and the latest announcement lays down a fairly clear disinvestment road map. It also pushes the economic reform agenda to a new stage.

The present plan is different from the UPA-I's decision, taken under pressure from the Left parties, to park the disinvestment proceeds in a national fund and use only its interest for funding social sector programmes. The sizeable corpus of the proceeds, and not just the interest, will be used to meet capital expenditure of social sector schemes. This can ease the pressure of fiscal deficit, which is likely to hit a 16-year high of 6.8 per cent this year. In fact there should be greater flexibility in the use of the proceeds, which can be deployed for servicing and retirement of public debt too.

The programme has been announced when the environment is congenial, with the economy showing strong signs of recovery. The positive response from the stock market is a good augury and might indicate that the government will get the right price for its PSU stake in the market. This is important because many of the companies whose stakes will be sold are the nation's family silver and cannot be sold cheap. Greater public holding in the companies, after disinvestment, will lead to better corporate governance and accountability in their management. It will also give more depth and stability to the capital market. About 25 per cent of the BSE's market capitalisation is now accounted for by the PSUs. The PSU share in the market will go up after disinvestment and this can shield it better from extreme volatility. The plan has only been announced. It should be implemented without delay.

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

GET THIS RIGHT

'CIC SHOULD BE TOUGH ENOUGH TO ENFORCE THE RTI.'

 

With the post of Chief Information Commissioner falling vacant following Wahajat Habibullah's resignation, hectic lobbying is on for the job. Among the names doing the rounds is that of former IPS officer Kiran Bedi, who is being backed by an eclectic group of social activists, artistes and eminent personalities. The high-decibel, very public campaign being waged by those supporting Bedi has drawn attention to the opaque process that the government adopts while appointing information commissioners. Those waging the campaign in support of Bedi have said they are doing so in public to ensure the process of selection is open. While transparency in appointments to all posts is essential, it is all the more imperative in the case of the CIC's post. After all, the CIC is in charge of furthering the cause of transparency in governance. If his appointment is shrouded in secrecy and clouded by a questionable process, it would undermine his authority.

The current method of appointing the CIC and other information commissioners violates several articles of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. Posts that are to be filled are never advertised, so selection is restricted to a small circle of officials and ex-bureaucrats with connections in Delhi. In the process, people who have made immense contributions to public life in a variety of fields and with unimpeachable credentials are not considered. This has to change if we want an effective CIC. Advertising the post as is done in countries like the UK will widen the pool for selection and introduce an element of transparency in the selection process.

It is four years since the RTI came into force. It has provided the common man with a powerful tool but it is still a long way off from ensuring good governance. A recent study into the conduct of information commissioners across the country indicates that only 27 per cent of RTI applicants receive the information they asked for and only two per cent of those who violate the RTI are penalised. Clearly, bureaucrats continue to hold back information, raising questions about the quality of the information commissioners.

Do the information commissioners lack the perseverance and the integrity that is essential to make the RTI work? It is important that information commissioners are enthusiastic about chasing the truth and are tough enough to enforce the RTI. This needs to be borne in mind while appointing the next CIC.

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

DAVUTOGLU'S DOCTRINE

'TURKEY DISTANCED ITSELF FROM WARRIORS IN ISRAEL, WITHOUT BREAKING TIES OF TRADE AND COOPERATION.'

M J AKBAR

When Turkey's President Abdullah Gul visits India early next year he will be representing a nation that has reinvented its geostrategic role through an independent foreign policy in barely eight years. I hope he brings along Ahmet Davutoglu, who shaped the theory and then structured the practicals, first as principal adviser to Prime Minister Recip Tayyab Erdogan, and now as foreign minister. He must be one of the few academics fortunate enough to get a chance to make ideas work.

The starting point was 2002, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) won the elections and ended the monopoly on power exercised by a military-bureaucratic-civilian Istanbul-centric elite which claimed the inheritance of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and his European-style secularism which still prohibits a Turkish woman from wearing a headscarf to university. This elite protected Ataturk's secular vision, but, somewhere along the way lost sight of Ataturk's independence.

The wives of Erdogan and Gul wear headscarves, but that is not the point: the wives of many cabinet ministers and high officials do not, and are not required to. What is relevant is that AKP subtly shifted a policy that had become synonymous with America's, without the angry rhetoric that has become a regrettable hallmark of so many who strut as lead actors on the anti-American stage. AKP proved that change was possible without compromising an amicable and mutually beneficial relationship with Washington. Their predecessors had America's friendship. AKP has America's respect as well.

Turkey has played a pivotal role in two of the three great wars of the 20th century. It was an ally of Germany and the Central Powers in the First World War, but refused to declare war on the United States even when the latter joined the Anglo-French alliance. Even though it lost its empire in the fighting, Turkey did not permit a single enemy soldier on its territory during wartime. Istanbul was occupied only after truce. Ataturk, victor of Gallipoli, was the great hero of this conflict; but took his true place in his nation's history after 1918, when the vainglorious trio of Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Clemenceau, leavening their intent with anti-Muslim crusader sentiment, armed and financed a Greek invasion of Turkey. Their aim was to partition the country and leave Turkey as a rump Anatolian state. Ataturk mobilised a proud army and people, and shocked the victors of World War I by destroying the Greeks after they reached the outskirts of Ankara.

Ataturk, protecting his nation's independence, kept Turkey neutral in the Second World War. Historic fears of next-door Russia, later Soviet Union, drove Istanbul into Washington's embrace in the Cold War. But when in the 1980s flexibility became an option, and in the 1990s a necessity, Turkey remained rigid. When it looked south it could only see Israel; when it looked east it could see nothing more than Pakistan. Both were American allies. Turkey did not have a policy or a vision for the 21st century.

NEW PLAYERS

Davutoglu selected the moment of departure with uncanny vision: George Bush's war on Iraq in 2003. It gave an early sign of change, when it refused to let American troops pass through Turkey on their way to Iraq. It also realised, fairly early, that America would be weakened by Bush's Iraq folly, creating space for new players, since the Soviet Union was too weak to play any role at all.

Israel and Iran have sufficient muscle to fill a regional vacuum, but both were inherently belligerent. They would be able to intervene, but as destabilisers rather than stabilisers. Iran had a natural advantage in Shia-majority Iraq, but it simultaneously provoked deep suspicions in the Arab world. Turkey set itself up as the region's centre of stability. Ironically, this was its role during the days of the Ottoman Empire; but this time around, it could create an arc of influence only through diplomacy and harmony, not imposition.
Turkey set about strengthening its relations with Arab nations. It distanced itself from warriors in Israel, without breaking ties of trade and cooperation. It criticised Israel's Gaza war unambiguously. But it realised that a critical key to peace lay in the amelioration of its own antagonisms with its neighbours. This was, given the emotionalism that is attached to the past, difficult.

But Turkey has now signed historic protocols with Armenia, warmed icy relations with Syria to the point where visa has been abolished, lifted ties with Iran and become a vital partner of Iraq in the reconstruction of the country. In October Erdogan signed 48 MoUs covering energy, commerce and security (among other things) with Baghdad. Davutoglu paid a visit to the Kurdish regional government in northern Iraq, which is equivalent to an Indian foreign minister dropping in on Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. Not too long ago, Turkey's air force was bombing this Kurdish region as punishment for being a base for terrorism. Turkey, America and Iraq are working together to bring the long and bitter Kurdish war against Turkey to an end — another sign of Washington's new respect for Istanbul.

Pakistan has recognised the change as well, but done so in its India-centric manner. It has asked Turkey to help solve the Kashmir problem. Istanbul is not so green as to try and do so; and certainly Delhi will be frosty towards any such misguided initiative. But Turkey has found its role on the world stage. A stem in the Cold War greenhouse has flowered in the fresh air of an open mind.

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

SHIFT IN US POLICY HURTS PALESTINIANS

PRESSURE IS ON PRO-AMERICAN LEADERS TO DISENGAGE, WHILE TIES BETWEEN ISRAEL AND THE US REMAIN TENSE.

BY MICHAEL JANSEN

The announcement by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas that he does not wish to stand in next January's presidential election has put an end to Washington's faltering attempt at peace-making between Palestinians and Israelis.

Abbas' decision came on the heels of what Palestinians saw as a shift in US policy announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last weekend. She employed the word 'unprecedented' to describe a pledge by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to 'restrain' growth in Israeli colonies in the West Bank by completing only 3,000 housing units over the next 9-12 months. However, the annual average for such units is 1,400, according to Israel's own Peace Now.

Therefore, Netanyahu is promising to more than double the rate of construction to accommodate colonists who now number half a million among 2.8 million Palestinians. Since the 1993 Oslo peace process, the number of settlers in the West Bank alone grew from 1,09,000 to 3,00,000.

Clinton's endorsement of Netanyahu's position amounted to reversal of her May demand for a "stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not 'natural growth' exceptions."

CAREFUL MOVE

Although Abbas previously negotiated while colonisation continued, Palestinian Authority media chief, Ghassan Khatib said, "Palestinians are trying to avoid repeating this mistake.. conducting negotiations while settlement expansion is taking place amounts to indirect encouragement and a legitimisation of illegal settlement activity."

It was hardly surprising, therefore, that beleaguered Abbas should dismiss as 'illogical' Clinton's call for an unconditional resumption of negotiations. He reiterated his demand for a total construction freeze as a pre-condition for talks. Clinton put Abbas in an intolerable situation. When he was elected in 2005 to succeed Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, Abbas was seen by Israel, the US and the international community as the best possible interlocutor.

Unlike Arafat, who proffered an olive branch in one hand and a gun in the other, Abbas had renounced violence in favour of negotiations. However, succeeding Israeli governments have refused to make a deal he can accept while continuing to construct colonies on Palestinian land, shrinking the area which Palestinians claim for their state.

Abbas has been weakened by corruption in the Palestinian Authority, the split between his Fateh faction and Hamas.

Abbas' weakness poses two dangers. First, any violent incident between Palestinians and Israelis could spark a third Intifada, a fresh uprising. Second, a political vacuum in the West Bank and East Jerusalem will be exploited both by Fateh opportunists and Hamas.

A power struggle would fragment the already divided Palestinians. Clinton's false claim outraged Arab leaders and citizens alike. Particularly angry are pro-western rulers who took seriously President Barack Obama's overtures to the Muslim world. His effort to court the Muslim world was torpedoed last by one word: 'unprecedented.' Jordan's King Abdullah and Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak warned of the "catastrophic consequences for the region's stability and security" of the deadlock in the peace process.

STRAIN IN RELATIONS

US-Arab relations are likely to deteriorate. Pressure is rising on pro-US Arab leaders to disengage from the US while ties between Israel and Washington are tense. The Arabs are likely to dismiss US efforts to isolate and punish Iran for refusing to freeze its nuclear programme. Tehran is certain to capitalise on Arab popular disillusionment with Obama. In the absence of a nuclear deal with Tehran, Israel could attack Iran with horrendous consequences for US-Muslim relations.

The world-wide Muslim community initially embraced Obama and praised his call for change in US policy on Palestine, the origin and core of the Muslim dispute with the West. Unless, Obama wrings a settlement freeze out of Israel and launches serious negotiations, he will be regarded by Muslims with the same hatred and contempt as is George W Bush. Perhaps more because Obama promised 'change' but is following Bush's policies in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.

Stasis is a boon to Muslim militants bent on hitting at US interests and allies. India, a favourite victim of Pakistan-based militants, could suffer further outrages by militants striking at the most convenient target. The Pakistani Taliban, which is bombing Pakistani cities at present, could even export operations across the Indo-Pak border.

One US commentator observed that the administration does not know what it is doing.  It has 'no strong, capable person' in charge. "It all seems unprofessional, a policy drifting in different directions... projecting weakness... This is very dangerous and full of implications for Iran and Af-Pak policy."

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

THE DAILY GRUDGE

I AM ENAMOURED OF MY OWN COOKING, EVEN IF OTHERS AREN'T.

BY PADMA GANAPATI

 

 "There's no salt in the sambar." "Why is the palya so spicy?" "The rasam is so sour it sets my teeth on edge." "Aren't there vegetables other than gourds and squashes in the market?" "And can't we have some variety?" Such comments are commonplace in a family with a discerning palate and a critical attitude. With food prices escalating by the hour, one must be grateful for three square meals (and more) a day. At least, that's what I believe. But my lofty principles go largely unshared.

Fed up with this daily grudge and on the recommendation of a friend who said I'd be helping a needy person, I engaged a lady to do the cooking. Not to have to listen to my culinary shortcomings everyday was something to rejoice about.

The flip side, I soon realised, was that it tied me down, especially as the lady in question rarely arrived at the fixed time. If it suited her, she'd arrive early. If inconvenient, she'd be late. So either she caught me unawares or kept me waiting. It wasn't easy for me to reschedule at short notice or no notice. Frailty is a common failing so I just grinned and bore it.

By the time lady fair showed up, I had to decide the menu and have the vegetables ready. Some days, very little cooking would be needed. But because she was coming, I had to find enough work for her to do. And then, to avoid waste, I'd find ways and means of disposing the cooked stuff.

To give the lady her due, her range and expertise were amazing. My admiration was a bit forced and tinged with resentment for an outsider taking full control of my fiefdom, as it were. I am no gourmet cook and complicated recipes with a metre-long list of ingredients put me off. But I am enamoured of my own cooking, even if others aren't. I specialise in simple, easy-to-cook, wholesome food for which I give myself credit simply because no one else does.

 

It wasn't before long that I began to chafe at the bit. The ways of providence are strange. A family member's inadvertent remark about the lady's culinary skill (apparently, it was a bad meal day for her) so piqued her that she upped and left. So I have been reinstated and now, I call all the shots!

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

WASHINGTON CHILL

 

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is scheduled to be the keynote speaker this morning at the UJC/Jewish Federations of North America 2009 General Assembly.

 

As Netanyahu made his way to Washington, there were those bent on exacerbating tensions between our premier and President Barack Obama. The Economist, for instance, taunted: "Is Israel too strong for Barack Obama?" illustrating its story with a cartoon depicting Netanyahu driving a bulldozer straight at the American leader.

 

Much was made of the fact that even as he embarked on his journey Netanyahu still did not have a firm appointment to see the president. One US Jewish leader described Obama as leaving Netanyahu to "twist in the wind."

 

We do not know if ineptitude in Netanyahu's bureau or political machinations in the White House precipitated this unnecessary storm.

 

The president's schedule was anyway torn asunder in the aftermath of the terror attack at Fort Hood, Texas. His appearance at the GA was canceled so that he could attend a memorial service in Texas tomorrow.

 

COMINGS and goings aside, the administration has been fundamentally misreading the situation here on the ground, allowing its own initial poor judgment to be reinforced by unrepresentative voices in Israel and on the margins of the American Jewish community.

 

Thus the White House insisted on an unconditional settlement freeze everywhere over the Green Line - a demand with which Israel could not possibly comply. This trapped Mahmoud Abbas in an untenable position: he could not resume talks with Israel without appearing "softer" than Obama. When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tried to reverse out of this dead end, asserting the US remained opposed to all settlement activity, but that a freeze should not be a precondition for resumption of talks, Abbas was left aggrieved.

 

Now he's bogged down by his own bluster and Obama's miscalculations. The Palestinian leader has called for

elections on January 24 though Hamas, which controls Gaza, adamantly refuses. When his empty threat to resign failed to get much of a rise out of anyone, his advisers began talking about dismantling the Palestinian Authority and declaring a virtual Palestinian state - a-la their November 15, 1988, declaration of independence made in Algiers; the one the UN General Assembly "acknowledged" decades ago.

 

Arab sources, with a little help in Europe, are now engaged in a disinformation campaign claiming Obama is party to a "secret deal" that would see the US recognize a new declaration of Palestinian independence and jettison Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338. In other words, rather than negotiate with Israel, the Palestinians are still fantasizing that Obama will impose a solution and deliver Israel on bended knee.

 

Another obstacle to peace is the mendacious Goldstone Report, which poisons the political environment. On Friday, only 17 out of 192 countries stood with the Jewish state in the UN General Assembly as it essentially codified robbing Israel of its practical right to self-defense. While the US did not abandon Israel, neither did it offer overwhelming moral support. US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice did not even attend.

WHICH BRINGS us to the doors of the White House. From Eisenhower to Bush II, past administrations have intermittently cold-shouldered Israel or sought to drive a wedge between the Jewish state and its supporters in the United States. In this regard, the Obama administration is breaking no new ground.

 

Nevertheless, if Obama buys into the insidious canard, as Thomas Friedman promotes it, that the Palestinian leadership "wants a deal with Israel without any negotiations" while Israel's leadership "wants negotiations with the Palestinians without any deal," he will invariably spend the remainder of his term veering from one dead end to another.

 

Through a multitude of blunders - failure to dismantle illegal outposts among them - successive Israeli governments have empowered the West Bank Palestinian leadership to frame the current stalemate as resulting from Israel's preference for settlements over peace. In reality, it is persistent Palestinian intransigence combined with the fragmentation of their polity that has made progress impossible.

 

No one wants peace more than Israel. Most Israelis support a demilitarized Palestine living side-by-side with the Jewish state of Israel - the very vision articulated by Netanyahu in his seminal June 14 Bar-Ilan address.

 

Rather than giving Netanyahu a cold shoulder, Obama should warmly embrace this viable blueprint for peace.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

THE MYTH OF '08, DEMOLISHED

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER

 

Sure, Election Day 2009 will scare moderate Democrats and make passage of Obamacare more difficult. Sure, it makes it easier for resurgent Republicans to raise money and recruit candidates for 2010. But the most important effect of Tuesday's elections is historical. It demolishes the great realignment myth of 2008.

 

In the aftermath of last year's Obama sweep, we heard endlessly about its fundamental, revolutionary, transformational nature. How it was ushering in an FDR-like realignment for the 21st century in which new demographics - most prominently, rising minorities and the young - would bury the GOP far into the future. One book proclaimed The Death of Conservatism, while the more modest merely predicted the terminal decline of the Republican Party into a regional party of the Deep South or a rump party of marginalized angry white men.

 

This was all ridiculous from the beginning; 2008 was a historical anomaly. A uniquely charismatic candidate was running at a time of deep war weariness, with an intensely unpopular Republican president, against a politically incompetent opponent, amid the greatest financial collapse since the Great Depression. And still he won by only seven points.

 

Exactly a year later comes the empirical validation of that skepticism. Virginia - presumed harbinger of the new realignment, having gone Democratic in '08 for the first time in 44 years - went red again. With a vengeance.

 

Barack Obama had carried it by six points. The Republican gubernatorial candidate won by 17 - a 23-point swing. New Jersey went from plus 15 Democratic in 2008 to minus four in 2009. A 19-point swing.

 

What happened? The vaunted Obama realignment vanished. In 2009 in Virginia, the black vote was down by 20 percent, the under-30 vote by 50 percent. And as for independents, the ultimate prize of any realignment, they bolted. In both Virginia and New Jersey they'd gone narrowly for Obama in '08. This year they went Republican by a staggering 33 points in Virginia and by an equally shocking 30 points in New Jersey.

 

WHITE HOUSE apologists will say the Virginia Democrat was weak. If the difference between Bob McDonnell and Creigh Deeds was so great, how come when the same two men ran against each other statewide for attorney-general four years ago, the race was a virtual dead heat? Which made the '09 McDonnell-Deeds rematch the closest you get in politics to a laboratory experiment for measuring the change in external conditions. Run them against each other again when it's Obamaism in action and see what happens. What happened was a Republican landslide.

 

The Obama coattails of 2008 are gone. The expansion of the electorate, the excitement of the young, came in uniquely propitious Democratic circumstances and amid unparalleled enthusiasm for electing the first African-American president.

 

November '08 was one-shot, one-time, never to be replicated. Nor was November '09 a realignment. It was a return to the norm - and definitive confirmation that 2008 was one of the great flukes in American political history.

 

The irony of 2009 is that the anti-Democratic tide overshot the norm - deeply blue New Jersey, for example, elected a Republican governor for the first time in 12 years - because Democrats so thoroughly misread 2008 and the mandate they assumed it bestowed. Obama saw himself as anointed by a watershed victory to remake American life. Not letting the cup pass from his lips, he declared to Congress only five weeks after his swearing-in his "New Foundation" for America - from remaking the one-sixth of the American economy that is health care to massive government regulation of the economic lifeblood that is energy.

 

Moreover, the same conventional wisdom that proclaimed the dawning of a new age last November dismissed the inevitable popular reaction to Obama's hubristic expansion of government, taxation, spending and debt - the tea party demonstrators, the town hall protesters - as a raging rabble of resentful reactionaries, AstroTurf-phony and Fox News-deranged.

 

Some rump. Just last month Gallup found that conservatives outnumber liberals by 2 to 1 (40 percent to 20 percent) and even outnumber moderates (at 36 percent). So on Tuesday, the "rump" rebelled. It's the natural reaction of a center-right country to a governing party seeking to rush through a left-wing agenda using temporary majorities created by the one-shot election of 2008. The misreading of that election - and of the mandate it allegedly bestowed - is the fundamental cause of the Democratic debacle of 2009.

 

Charles Krauthammer is a syndicated Washington Post columnist.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

THE REGION: THE 'WAIT AND BLAME' GAME

BARRY RUBIN

 

The Obama administration has no idea what is about to happen. After all, it has won hasn't it and done something positive for the Palestinians, right? It demanded that Israel freeze all construction on West Bank settlements. Israel agreed, save only that it finish the approximately 3,000 units already begun. So the US government can deem itself successful, having delivered something along the lines of what it originally promised the Palestinians.

 

Moreover, this agreement was ultimately gained without any corresponding Palestinian or Arab concessions. It will be remembered that for some months the US tried to get the Arab side to budge. It failed. Nor did the US government give anything to Israel in exchange for the freeze.

 

So objectively, what happened? Israel made a big concession; Israel got nothing; the Arab side gave nothing. Isn't this a sort of Palestinian or Arab victory, proof of President Barack Obama's leverage with Israel, an example of Israeli flexibility?

 

And, after all, when the current apartments being constructed are finished, there will be a construction freeze. So all that's necessary is to wait a few months, right?

 

Take a step back, clear your mind, look at it. Of course that's what happened. The Palestinians and the Arab states "should" be happy.

 

But this is the Middle East, a place where even if all Arab or Iranian demands are met, this only triggers anger, blame, complaint and still more demands.

 

And you can't solve the problem using Western rules. Hillary Clinton, stung by Arab criticism that she praised Israel's plan too highly, did a bit of a turnaround two days after proclaiming Israel's concession to be amazing: "This offer falls far short of what we would characterize as our position or what our preference would be. But if it is acted upon, it will be an unprecedented restriction on settlements and would have a significant and meaningful effect on restraining their growth."

 

Nope, that won't do. You are saying a nice, rational, carefully calibrated Western-style statement: We want more but it's a step in the right direction, so it should be praised and it is a good thing.

 

That isn't how things work here. In the eyes of the Palestinian and Arab leadership Israel cannot ever do anything good. You can praise Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs every day of the week but you aren't allowed to ever say anything positive about Israel or do anything for that country.

 

As for Clinton saying it is a step in the right direction, this is also unacceptable. Israel can make endless concessions and show infinite flexibility but this can never be accepted as such. Each step is portrayed as a trick since not everything is surrendered at once. Every concession is just a reminder that not everything has been handed over.

 

AND WHAT, by Hillary Clinton's behavior, is the US government communicating to Israel? That when Israel makes a big concession and reaches an agreement with the US, should the PA or an Arab state complain about the terms, the US government will then criticize its own deal! So how can Jerusalem trust Washington?

As if in proof, Al-Hayat al-Jadida, the closest thing to an official PA newspaper, attacked Clinton with these words: "Why, Mrs. Hillary? How much did the Zionists pay you as a bribe?" The editorial went on to say that the secretary of state was wallowing in a swamp of lies and ran a cartoon showing Uncle Sam looking into a mirror to see a big-nosed Orthodox Jew wearing a hat with a Star of David on it, as nasty a cartoon as ever graced the pages of a Nazi newspaper in the 1930s.

 

Indeed, also on the hat is a globe surrounded by barbed wire, indicated that the international Jewish conspiracy holds the entire earth in its evil hands. And this is Fatah, the PA, the people who get all that US aid, military training and diplomatic support. And this is not the Bush administration they're talking about either but the Obama administration. You just can't please some people. And that's precisely the point.

 

If you want to understand how things work in the Middle East consider this scenario. Suppose someone says that they want to sell you a house. They demand $500,000. You offer $400,000. They say, "No." You offer $450,000, saying that if both sides give some that a mutually beneficial deal can be reached. Again they say, "No." Finally you offer $500,000, smug in the belief that you've made a purchase. And then they say once again: "No! How dare you! What a cheat! How about changing the financing to my benefit, putting the full amount down in cash, and buying me another house?" You are incredulous. How could your reasonable, apologetic, empathetic, confidence-building, flexible strategy have failed?

 

Answer: They never intended to sell. For them, Palestine is Arab or Muslim or both forever. It's not for sale at any price. Anyone who indicates a real interest in selling will be disgraced, or fired, or even killed. To sell your land is to be a sell-out.

 

And the fact that their title is questionable and they never actually had national ownership, that someone else who has a previous claim has long ago returned and built it up with all sorts of additions and improvements is irrelevant to this thinking.

 

So instead they prefer to wait. What does the suffering matter? What do the years matter? The deepest principle of blood, and honor, and religion, and right is at stake. So they wait. They wait for the other side, Israel, to collapse. Or for the West to throw Israel to the wolves, persuading themselves that this is happening. Or they wait for all Arabs - more recently the favored formulation is all Muslims - to unite and wipe out the evil usurper. Or perhaps when Iran gets the bomb or the mahdi, the Islamic messiah, comes, or something will happen and then total victory will be theirs.

 

And if passersby shout out: "Yes, you are in the right! Your suffering is intolerable and we want to help you!" that doesn't erode but only reinforces their determination to remain steadfast.

 

Obama's speeches, UN votes, Goldstone report, leftist chants, growing Muslim migration to the West, Iran defiant and going nuclear and Western concessions do not inspire eagerness to compromise but an enthusiasm for fighting on.

 

SOUND STRANGE to you? Well it sounds normal for millions in the Middle East. And even if part of their brains say something different - Israel is strong, Israel won't go away, Arabs and Muslims always bicker among themselves, why continue following a strategy that always fails, wouldn't it be nicer to have higher living standards - the siren song of militancy overrides it.

 

At least that's true in public, no matter how in private much many deride these notions as pure foolishness, and no matter how much a few brave souls reject the whole mess publicly and point out how it has in the past and will in future lead the Arabs to disaster.

 

But now Palestinians and Arabs need someone to blame. Of course, that someone is Israel. Yet also, as always, that someone will be the US.

 

In this view, Obama has sold them out. He's like all the others. He didn't give them everything they wanted; everything they said they wanted and more; everything at no price whatsoever to themselves. He is, they say and will say more in the days to come, is just like all the other presidents who came before.

 

For they - the Arab dictatorships that need the conflict to stay in power, the Palestinian leadership that still believes in total victory, the Islamist opposition that wants to use the conflict to prove its enemies to be Western puppets and to use the Palestinian issue to seize state power - can never blame themselves.

 

To blame yourself a bit is the first step to fixing one's worldview and policy. Unfortunately, this possibility is rejected and there is no glimmer of hope that it will change over the next few years, dare I say decade or decades?

 

Indeed, $2 billion in annual US aid to Egypt buys no leverage.

 

Knowing that they tremble in fear of a nuclear Iran buys no leverage either. Liberating Kuwait from the hands of Iraq and Iraq from the fists of Saddam Hussein doesn't solve the problem either. Remember the sanctions on Saddam Hussein's Iraq? The elite didn't reduce its truffle consumption and just told the masses that they were suffering due to America. Ditto for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. And the Western left will agree with them.

 

Equally, no matter how many apologies, how many statements made about the glories of Islam and the sufferings of the Palestinians that Barack Hussein Obama makes, it will not matter. Now he is the enemy.

 

Does that sound bleak? Well, sorry, reality is bleak, bleakest of all for the Arabs themselves - and pity for the victims of this system - who follow that path. Why do you think there is so much hatred, violence, miscomprehension, tyranny and pure stagnation in this region?

 

Meanwhile, Israel goes on developing its society, pioneering in technology and science, maintaining democracy, showing flexibility and surviving the hatred and slander that's all-too-common in today's world.

 

Mr. President, welcome to the real Middle East.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

BORDERLINE VIEWS: BORDERS EVERYWHERE YOU TURN

DAVID NEWMAN

 

Precisely 20 years ago today, November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall came tumbling down. Foreseen by no one, the fall of the wall also marked the crumbling of the Soviet empire which, within a few short years, had all but disappeared from the world scene. A new global order emerged, with the US becoming the single dominant world superpower in what had previously been a bipolar world. Germany underwent a quick reunification, while the EU expanded eastward, incorporating countries which had previously been under Soviet influence, opening up and erasing all the intervening borders along the way.

 

To mark the occasion, Ben-Gurion University is today hosting an international seminar which will look at the impact of the fall of the Berlin Wall on the role of borders and boundaries in the contemporary world. Four of Europe's leading border scholars will discuss the role of borders, walls and fences in today's world, drawing on diverse examples from North America, Europe and, of course, our own backyard in Israel/Palestine.

 

This is one more meeting in what has been a half year festival of Berlin Wall related conferences which have been taking place throughout the world by border scholars and practitioners - from the ABORNE (African Borders Network) in South Africa, to IBRU (International Boundaries Research Unit) in the UK, to BRIT (Border Regions in Transition) in South America and, just last week, French-speaking scholars at a major international meeting in Montreal.

 

But the present discussions of borders are very different from those which took place 10 years ago, when we were marking a decade since the collapse of the wall. Fresh from the break-up of the Soviet Union, pre-9/11 and influenced by the arguments of globalization, there was a conviction that we were heading toward a "borderless" world, a world in which the flow of capital and information, as well as the movement of people, from one place to another, was becoming open and free, as the physical restrictions of walls, fences, visas and entry permits were gradually being removed altogether.

 

It wasn't true at that time; it is even less true today. Borders may have been disappearing in some places, such as in Western Europe or, for a short while, between the US and Mexico, as a result of economic pressures and open markets. But borders continued, even then, to constitute the lines that separate states from each other in a complex international system.

 

MANY POSSESSING more than one passport or making a living through the Internet and cyberspace may have felt, like today, as citizens of the world with fewer and fewer restrictions on their movement and access to information. But this remains today, as then, the luxury of the few, as millions of people still hardly ever leave the village or region in which they are born, let alone their country.

 

International migration from poor to rich countries increased significantly during this period, but a combination of economic recession, national xenophobia and racism, the renewed focus on security post 9/11 and a desire to keep "alien threats" outside has also served to make such movement across borders much more difficult in recent years.

 

The events of 9/11 served to refocus the world's attention on borders. Borders were once again seen as a means through which external threats could be kept out. Nowhere has this been more evident than along the thousands of kilometers separating First World US from Third World Mexico, or closer to home in Israel/Palestine. In both cases, physical walls and fences have been constructed as a means of preventing the influx of "global terrorism" or suicide bombers, regardless of the many other negative social, economic and human rights consequences of enforced and imposed separation between peoples and families.

 

It doesn't take someone living in Israel to know that absolutely everything can be done when it is in the name of security, even if some of the negative consequences of such actions may, in the long term, outweigh the short-term security benefits.

 

And in a world in which the gap between the haves and have nots is increasing daily, borders and fences are proving to be a very convenient method of physically separating groups from each other. The borders inside the EU may all have disappeared, but the external Shengen borders which governs movement into the EU from other countries have become even more difficult to cross, as Western European countries try to limit the influx of poor migrants seeking menial employment and a better life.

 

The economic boom period has been replaced by economic recession and, it is argued, there is no longer a supply of jobs or a demand for labor as in the past. Moreover, the events of 9/11, followed by the bombings in Madrid and London, have made Western governments increasingly suspicious of Third World immigrants, automatically suspecting all of them of harboring terrorist motives simply by virtue of the fact that they are different.

 

Just over a year ago, at a meeting of border scholars and government practitioners at the University of New Mexico in Las Cruces, a senior official of the US Department of Homeland Security put it to us as follows: "As far as we are concerned in Washington DC, each and every one of a million Mexicans crossing in and out of the US on a weekly basis is a potential terrorist until proven otherwise."

 

This is reflected in the hundreds of miles of fences, walls and surveillance cameras along the US-Mexican border, assisted by private militias, known as the Minutemen who, in a fit of overzealous patriotism, patrol sections of the border in Texas and Arizona. They even donate money to an "Adopt a Post" project, much in the same way that other organizations adopt sections of highway throughout the country. For as little as $200 you can fund the next few meters of border fence and dedicate the next border post to a loved one, a departed pet or, as is commonly the case, to an individual killed by an "illegal alien."

 

My colleagues in the US tell me that if they were seeking funds for border-related research projects in the 1990s, they would apply to NAFTA (North America Free Trade Association) or other related organizations interested in making borders more flexible and easier to cross.

 

Today, these same scholars send their funding applications to the Department of Homeland Security and related security organizations interested in the exact opposite question - how to seal the borders and to make them impenetrable.

 

THIS IS, of course, all very familiar to us here. We have spent much of the past five years constructing a physical barrier between us and the Palestinians of the West Bank and Gaza. Although depicted throughout the world as a concrete wall, less than 10 percent is actually concrete, but even where there is fence it is an impenetrable barrier of international proportions, with electronic surveillance, border crossing points and electrified fencing which none can cross.

 

I often travel from Beersheba to Jerusalem via the West Bank and the Hebron bypass road. During the course of my journey, which shortens the route from 130 kilometers (via Kiryat Gat) to only 75 kilometers (via Hebron and Gush Etzion), I have to pass through two strongly fortified and patrolled boundaries at Metar and south of the Jerusalem tunnels, show documents and speak in Hebrew to prove I am not a security threat.

 

In the other direction, no Palestinians are allowed to cross the border, while even the few who have permits to work in Israel have to leave their cars on their side of the boundary and either walk to their places of work or wait for their employer to pick them up.

 

This border simply did not exist five years ago. The government argues that it was constructed only as a security measure, but to all effects it is an international border, constructed by Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert which, with some possible changes to its route will, sooner or later, become the international boundary between independent Israeli and Palestinian states. It must surely be one of the strangest cases in history where the border is up and running long before the political agreement is in place.

 

The US-Mexico border, the outer borders of the EU, the wall separating Israel/Palestine - the walls and fences are here to stay for the foreseeable future. They won't be disappearing any time soon.

 

The Berlin Wall only existed for 29 years but for many of us it was a defining story of our entire lives. The fall of the Berlin Wall was a momentous event in our contemporary history, but it did not, as many of us hoped, signify the disappearance of borders, fences and walls. As Robert Frost said in his famous poem, good fences make (for) good neighbors - and even if they do not make for good neighbors, they continue to constitute the lines which separate us from each other.

 

The writer is professor of political geography at Ben-Gurion University and editor of the International Journal of Geopolitics. He has convened today's international seminar on 20 Years since the Fall of the Berlin Wall.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

A PERSONAL LETTER TO THE MODERN-ORTHODOX READER

YONATAN GHER

 

Dear brother, dear sister,

 

My aim in writing this letter is to take advantage of the hideous acts of violence Ya'acov Teitel is accused of to create dialogue, and to understand each other better.

 

I'd like to begin by introducing myself: I'm Yonatan. Thirty-one years old, I grew up in Jerusalem in a family that is part secular, part Conservative and part Orthodox.

 

Today I live in Jerusalem with my partner, and he and I are raising our son, who is now one year old. I began serving as executive director of the Jerusalem Open House a year and a half ago.

 

My predecessor, an amazing woman named Noa Sattath, led the Open House and our community during a time of unprecedented violence and incitement directed against us. She was forced at times to employ bodyguards, and was the target - so we've learned now - of what police believe were Teitel-made explosive devices. All this to assure her right, and mine and that of any LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender) person to walk the streets of the city in which we grew up.

 

And what a wonderful story it was for the media: "the gays vs. the religious." And how quickly we all hurried to play our roles: more posters, more riots and as many TV debates as we could fit into our day. This was a necessary phase for our community; it established our legal and moral right to march and protest and state that we are part of this city and are here to stay.

 

But this achievement came at a high price. We lost you, because we each became convinced that we are opposites, at two extremes of one continuum. Thank God so many members of our community are religious, to help remind us that this is not so.

 

IN THE past two years, the name of the Jerusalem March for Pride and Tolerance has been ahavat hinam, infinite love, to counter the sinat hinam, or causeless hatred that surrounded our marches in previous years. This is not merely a cosmetic change, but manifests a shift in our approach. We built a subtle relationship, which led to the disappearance of the haredi riots. We held numerous meetings with Modern Orthodox leaders, and every journalist knows today that we consistently refuse to take part in public debates of the "gay person vs. kippa-wearing person" style.

 

It is important to us to counter the assumption that our communities are opposites. We have far more in common than not. You and I both want to live in this city in peace. You and I both feel like a minority singled out by the surrounding society. You and I both oppose violence and are horrified by Teitel's actions.

 

It's important to me that you know - though your opinion may not be positive with regard to messianic Jews,

leftists, Palestinians or gay people - that I do not suspect that you wanted, or even secretly hoped for acts of violence such as Teitel's.

 

I believe you when you condemn these atrocities. But I also believe that Ya'acov Teitel thinks otherwise. That is what separates plain crime from hate crime: the (mistaken!) belief that the perpetrator's social circle is pleased by the actions of the "anonymous hero."

For this reason, the burden is on all of us to act responsibly when we converse.

 

In 2006, in the heat of the violence surrounding Jerusalem Pride, someone profaned the Chabad synagogue on Rehov Sheinkin in Tel Aviv. This was an act of violence which I condemn unequivocally, and remains in my mind as a constant reminder that individuals may act as a result of my words.

 

My request to you is that you remember this as well. I will happily engage in a discussion about the meaning of Leviticus 18:22 ("You shall not lie with a man as with a woman"), but I expect you to make it clear in that conversation that the value of human life, especially as sanctified in the commandment "thou shalt not murder," remains the highest Jewish value.

 

On my part, I will continue to speak against collective finger-pointing against you, and will continue to fight side by side with you for your rights, with the same conviction as I fight for mine.

 

The writer is executive director of the Jerusalem Open House for Pride and Tolerance. director@joh.org.il

 

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

NO WALL IN ITS MIDST

 

Twenty years ago today the freedom-seeking masses marched to the Berlin Wall and shattered it. The 156 kilometers of concrete that had divided the city for more than a quarter-century - that had deprived the residents of the city's eastern, Communist half of basic human rights - collapsed like a house of cards. It happened on the night of November 9, 1989. In January of that year, East German dictator Erich Honecker had declared that the wall, which the East Germans called a defensive wall, would still be standing in "50 or 100 years."

Twenty years ago today, history proved that what seems to be impossible or fated to continue eternally can collapse in an instant, irrevocably.

The night of November 9, 1989 proved that leaders have the power to change the face of history - though the leaders who do so are not always the ones expected. It was the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev and South Africa's F.W. de Klerk - two rather dull statesmen, not charismatic leaders who give fiery speeches - who brought freedom to their peoples, even though no one expected this to take place while they were in office.

Fifty-one years before the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, on precisely the same date, Nazi Germany was the site of Kristallnacht. And here's another astounding historical consideration: The unified Germany of today is a real democracy, a central player in the European Union and a true friend of Israel. Who could have imagined such a thing on that blackest of nights in 1938?

The thousands of Israeli tourists who have chosen to visit united Berlin over recent years should heed these lessons as they stroll through the streets of both parts of the liberated city. Just two decades ago, this city was torn and divided, with part of it ruled by a totalitarian regime. The Berlin Wall symbolized the Cold War and the struggle between the West and the Eastern bloc, which at the time seemed unending.

But force, violence and the trampling of human rights - like accumulated despair and the absence of hope that things could change - could not withstand the winning combination of a resolute public and courageous leadership that came together at the right moment to change history.

 

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

 

THE ISRAELI PERVERSION

BY AKIVA ELDAR

           

What does Mahmoud Abbas want from us? He should stop crying and start talking. Even Benjamin Netanyahu, born in the rightist camp, has promised him a state; and Shaul Mofaz, the horror of Palestinians, is willing to hand over, on credit, 20 percent of the West Bank. Abbas may be able to fool the Americans, but the Israelis are no suckers. We are not impressed by all of these resignation tricks. We know that no one throws out the keys to his office because of a few thousand settlers. Every child in Ramallah knows that, in the end, the settlements located outside of the "settlement blocs" will be part of Palestine.

The attitude of the average Israeli on the issue of the settlements is one of the effects of a chronic illness threatening the existence of the Jewish State: an inability to walk in the shoes, even for a minute, of their neighbor. What would we say if Abbas were to ask that we agree to the return of refugees to their home in Jaffa? Not much, just a few hundred, temporarily. In any case, we will eventually have to reach an agreed upon solution to the refugee problem. How would we respond if Syria, during the Yom Kippur War, had managed to conquer the Galilee - and years later refused to stop building its own settlements in the territory of "Greater Syria," despite continuing peace talks with Israel? Because it is not that bad, it's only lands that are part of the "settlement blocs" in Area C that are under Syrian military and civilian control? (Sixty percent of the West Bank is described as Area C, and no Palestinian building is allowed there.) After all, it is only a matter of a few kindergartens and day care centers. And we must give consideration to their natural growth.

If the Syrians had decided to disengage unilaterally from Nahariya, would the Israeli freedom fighters in the broader area of Tiberias have put down their arms? How many Baruch Goldsteins would blow themselves up in mosques if Syrian soldiers were searching the vehicles of Jews at road blocks, or were imposing a curfew on them on Muslim holidays? And what would happen to an Israeli leader who promised that in September 1993 Syrian occupation would end by the end of the decade - only the end of the decade would come and he would be caught up in empty maneuvering on temporarily freezing construction in part of the Galilee? How many days would a government of the Israeli Authority - set up as a temporary entity, an intermediate arrangement on the way to political independence, only to become a subcontractor in the management of the occupation - actually last? What terms would be used to describe the Israeli Abbas and Salam Fayyad?

 

In his book "The Social Order of the Multiple Selfs," Prof. Shlomo Mendlovic, who heads the psychotherapy program at Tel Aviv University, takes on the characterization of perversion. The similarity between what defines perversion and the characteristics of the collective Israeli behavior makes one nauseous: an attack of forces that can assist a person (or society) to survive; collapse of the distinction between what is useful and damaging, between life and death; confronting fear and suffering by retaining the status quo and the struggle against ideas that suggest change; and undermining necessary, painful processes in order to achieve change. This is how we missed out on the Jordanian option, this is how we are ignoring the Arab Peace Initiative, and this is how we will lose the Palestinian partner for a two-state solution.

There is no Arab identified with insistence on this solution more than Abbas, through his courageous opposition to violence and patience in the face of the acrobatics of Israeli politics. But no leader is capable of carrying out negotiations on loaded issues, such as borders, Jerusalem, and the refugees, without public backing from his people. No public will grant him the legitimacy to carry out negotiations concerning the fate of its country and avert its gaze while the other side bites into chunks of it.

Now we are being assuaged and told that nothing will affect the good-old status quo. We are promised that Abbas will cancel elections and will continue serving the occupation until his final days. At the same time, we rally our perversion against the Fayyad initiative to unilaterally declare a Palestinian state. The option has been and remains one of the following: two states for two peoples along the 1967 borders; or one state, in which two peoples continue to make each other miserable. Israel is galloping toward this latter disaster with eyes wide shut.

 

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 HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

STUDY MUST PRECEDE THE LEGAL TSUNAMI

BY ZE'EV SEGAL

 

Everyone connected to the debate over splitting the attorney general's job has gone out on a limb that is not strong enough to hold them. Justice Minister Yaakov Neeman released a document last week that detailed the main points of the proposed reform, which would strip the attorney general of his powers as head of the prosecution and transfer them to a new prosecutor general. But the document conceals more than it reveals, and it was not accompanied by any lengthier report that would clarify the issue's various aspects.

The next day, State Prosecutor Moshe Lador released a letter he had sent the minister - to whom he is administratively subordinate - in which he called Neeman's plan a "false charm" and "half-baked concoction."

This letter goes into detail, but even after reading it, one would need more convincing as to why splitting the job would effectively destroy the rule of law.

 

Attorney General Menachem Mazuz then added supporting arguments and clarifications to Lador's letter, in a style that sought to moderate the legal tsunami. He cited the danger that an attorney general's opinions on civil or administrative matters would be given less weight if the job were split, even if these opinions continued to be binding on the government. Yet this seems doubtful because the attorney general would still have the power to decide which positions to defend in the High Court of Justice.

Neeman is due to meet with Lador this week and will apparently express his displeasure over publication of the letter, which has few parallels in the history of the battle between civil servants and politicians. Nevertheless, the justice minister will most likely bite his tongue and not demand that the cabinet fire the experienced and respected state prosecutor.

My own view, as I have written in the past, is that the idea of transferring some of the attorney general's powers to the state prosecutor, or to a new prosecutor general, is not invalid per se. Lador's claim that the proposed new format would "substantially weaken the capabilities of the state's public legal service" still requires proof. Making the attorney general responsible only for providing the government and its various agencies with legal advice and representation would not necessarily decimate his stature and power. But Neeman, for his part, still needs to demonstrate the need for the new position of "prosecutor general," a post that would be above, or instead of, the state prosecutor.

One thing emerges clearly out of this tangle of pros and cons: Neeman's concoction is not merely "half-baked," it seems doubtful it ever made it into the oven. Even the document attorney Dan Avi-Isaac prepared for then-justice minister Daniel Friedmann in July 2008, explaining the latter's proposal for splitting the attorney general's role, did a better job of detailing the principles of the new structure. Neeman's document, which was defined as a "draft for discussion and comment," does not specify in the body of the text that the attorney general's opinions will continue to be binding on the government; it does this only in the accompanying "explanatory notes," which will cease to be of any importance if a law is passed that does not make this point explicit.

Moreover, it does not state that the attorney general will no longer represent the government in High Court petitions dealing with the enforcement, or lack thereof, of criminal law. Unless that changes, the new system could result in exhausting and unnecessary fights between different governmental legal authorities.

Clearly, it is impossible to implement the proposed reform now via hasty legislation before a replacement has even been chosen for Mazuz, who is leaving in another two months. An orderly and systematic study of the reform and its ramifications is needed to create an infrastructure for the institutional and public debate on such a sensitive and important issue. The many meetings Neeman held to investigate the matter are no substitute for setting up a committee - which could be ordered to finish its work in no more than six months - to study and analyze the relevant material. It is not necessary for the committee to formulate conclusions; what matters is that there be an intelligent examination of this question, 11 years after the Shamgar Report rejected the idea of splitting the job. Before generating a legal tsunami, the whole issue must be reexamined.

 

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 HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

AN IMPRUDENT MISSILE UMBRELLA

BY AVIGDOR HASELKORN

 

Judging by the publicity accorded it, it's safe to conclude that the Israeli government believes that the joint Juniper Cobra air defense drill with the United States enhances the country's national security. This may be a premature judgment.

To begin with, the exercise and hype show everyone that Israel is, at the least, unsure of its ability to defend effectively against missile strikes by Iran and possibly others without the help of its ally the United States. This would not be the first time this lack has been exposed; during the two Gulf wars, similar scenarios unfolded.

But airing anew this vulnerability also undermines any offensive option Israel might have hinted at to pressure Iran to stop its program. It suggests that Israel will think twice before going after Iran's nuclear facilities given that its own defenses against retaliatory missile attacks are insufficient. Moreover, filling the defensive gap with U.S. capabilities would all but nullify a military undertaking, considering Washington is on record as firmly opposing an Israeli preemptive attack.

 

One can hardly blame Iran for concluding, as its Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has said, that "the Zionist regime currently [is] in its weakest position and we do not see [that] it has such a capacity" to carry out a strike against Iran's nuclear installations.

Second, by conducting the defense drill, Israel and the United States are implicitly recognizing that a nuclear-armed Iran is a fait accompli. The mere fact that the two countries are stressing defense against a missile attack indicates a shift from a possible offensive option, which Israel demonstrated successfully against the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs. Moreover, if there was any residual fear in Tehran that the drill may bolster Israel's offensive option, repeated statements that its timing is "unrelated to current events" have undermined any leverage the two countries might have gained from the event. At the minimum, this is the wrong signal to send to Tehran during negotiations to halt its nuclear program.

Little wonder that Iran has taken pains to display its disdain for the deadlines put down by U.S. President Barack Obama and the "Iran Six" group of nations concerning its nuclear program. Tehran, no doubt, feels confident enough to demonstrate that it will not abide by any international diktat and that it remains undeterrable.

Third, the drill fosters an undue reliance on the defense commitment of a foreign power, not to mention the effectiveness of its antiballistic-missile technology. In this regard, past lessons should not be forgotten. It may be recalled that in 1991, the deployment of American Patriot (PAC-2) missile defenses in Israel was meant to intercept Iraqi Scud missiles and keep Israel out of the Gulf conflict. The Patriots proved utterly ineffective, yet Washington did not relent in its opposition to Israel taking care of its own security by attacking the Scud sites in western Iraq. The net result of this forced restraint was a severe blow to Israeli strategic deterrence.

Fourth, while Israel views the exercise largely as a signal to Iran, Washington wants the drill to further tie down Israel's hands so it does not act unilaterally to preempt Tehran's nuclear gambit. The exercise's unspoken message is that there is no need to go after the Iranian program since an Iranian attack would be dealt with comprehensively by a range of U.S. defense platforms deployed in-theater on short notice.

Finally, and most important, the size and scope of the exercise are undoubtedly linked to the overall concept pronounced this past July by the United States, which envisions extending an American "defensive umbrella" over the Middle East if Iran goes nuclear. There should be little doubt in Jerusalem that in due course the Obama administration will use the umbrella argument to pressure Israel into disarming its reported "bomb-in-the-basement" posture and giving up its option of last resort. Yet, paradoxically, the U.S. umbrella solution would allow Iran to go nuclear while an Israeli preemption is blocked under the pretext that the U.S. defense guarantee would deter the Iranians, or failing this, beat back any attack. It is incomprehensible that Israel is taking part in this scheme.

The writer is the author of "The Continuing Storm: Iraq, Poisonous Weapons and Deterrence" (Yale University Press)

 

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 HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

OF AUTHORITY AND DUTY

BY AMIR OREN

 

On the afternoon of Friday, October 5, 1973, a man was summoned into the office of the head of the authority planning the tank that would later be known as the Merkava; it was the office of deputy chief of staff Yisrael Tal. Maj. Gen. Tal was not there; he was taking part in discussions about the growing tension with Egypt and Syria. His bureau chief, Maj. Meron Homesh, was there and looked agitated. "How are things?" he said. "Things are very bad. Talik says war will break out tomorrow."

Tal, a disciplined soldier, said - he didn't shout - what he also said using the appropriate channels in the chain of command, but he remained alone at the top. He tried in vain to convince his commander, chief of staff David Elazar, and to secure the help of his friend, Military Intelligence chief Eli Zeira. He did not make a huge fuss or overturn any tables. This self-control would torment him for years after the Yom Kippur War and the terrible rift it caused in the country. He knew many of the 2,600 fallen soldiers personally, and many were well respected, including the sons of some of his closest friends.

Yaakov Neeman would have granted him an award for bravery. That's the way a major general should act if he disagrees with his commanders. To express himself quietly, behind closed doors, through the command pipeline, without making waves. Going by the book even when a catastrophe looms. A deviation from the rule is appreciated only when it contradicts the legal authorities and favors Avigdor Lieberman - for example, when police officer Stanislav Yazhemsky, who stole intelligence and interrogation material from the National Fraud Squad, made allegations against the unit's commander, Moshe Mizrahi. What an escaped convict is allowed is forbidden to State Prosecutor Moshe Lador or Attorney General Menachem Mazuz, who warned against the dangers of the justice minister's tentacles.

 

On Friday evening, the Simhoni clan - the extended family of Asaf Simhoni who was GOC Southern Command during the Sinai Campaign and died the day after the fighting when his plane crashed in Jordan - gathered at the clubhouse at Kfar Yehoshua. The members of the diverse families with connections to Simhoni were celebrating the publication of a book by Amos Carmel and Tzila Rosenblit on the fallen general. The extended family's memorial tablet includes the names of other airmen, armored corps members and fighters from the Sayeret Matkal special forces unit. Many of those invited and their relatives were born on kibbutzim and moshavim in the Jezreel Valley - Tel Yosef, Geva, Nahalal, Kfar Yehoshua, Beit She'arim. They are the aristocracy of blood and earth, tank and tractor, aircraft and plow.

Asaf Simhoni, meanwhile, thought differently from chief of staff Moshe Dayan and acted against his plans even though, contrary to what Dayan claimed, he had received the approval of the General Staff's operations officers. (The documents were found in the archives 50 years later by his son Yoav and grandson Avner.) Keeping the Seventh Brigade from Sinai, Simhoni feared, would cause the Israel Defense Forces heavy losses and prevent it from routing the Egyptians. He was right, and as for the question of authority, the same chief of staff who was so angry with him later welcomed the change of plan; he himself flouted authority when he refrained from reporting this to David Ben-Gurion. His opposition to Ben-Gurion's decision to withdraw from Sinai under pressure from the great powers was even broadcast over the loudspeakers.

Other good examples of this in Israeli history are Ben-Gurion's resignation and machinations to concentrate authority in his own hands (out of office he did not hesitate to rebel against his successor, Levi Eshkol). Further examples can be seen in the underground movements of the Irgun and Lehi, and the dissident Mapai faction Siya Bet. Even Yitzhak Rabin was sentenced by chief of staff Yaakov Dori for violating a prohibition against taking part in the protest on the anniversary of the Palmach's dismantling.

The last to speak at the Simhoni event was another major general in the family. In 1982, while conducting war games as head of the IDF's training division, Simhoni was one of the few who dared point out defects in the plans of defense minister Ariel Sharon and chief of staff Rafael Eitan for the first Lebanon war. Another major general, Military Intelligence chief Yehoshua Saguy, who "moved aside" when he saw that no one was listening to his warnings, as he told the Kahan Commission, was sent home at the commission's behest.

Among the members of the Simhoni family over the generations were two commanders of air bases - the cousins (thanks to their wives) Amikam Norkin from Tel Nof and Yehu Ofer from Sde Dov. In recent years, they and their friends took part in some of the most important plans and campaigns for Israel's safety. Even more fateful situations are ahead of them. Let's hope that when they have to express their opinions, they will follow in the footsteps of Lador, not Neeman.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

IMPRISONING A CHILD FOR LIFE

 

The United States could be the only nation in the world where a 13-year-old child can be sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, even for crimes that do not include murder. This grim distinction should trouble Americans deeply, as should all of the barbaric sentencing policies for children that this country embraces but that most of the world has abandoned.

 

The Supreme Court must keep the international standard in mind when it hears arguments on Monday in Graham v. Florida and Sullivan v. Florida. The petitioners in both argue that sentencing children to life without the possibility of parole for a nonhomicide violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

 

The court came down on the right side of this issue in 2005 when it ruled that children who commit crimes before the age of 18 should not be subject to the death penalty. The decision correctly pointed out that juveniles were less culpable because they lacked maturity, were vulnerable to peer pressure and had personalities that were still being formed.

 

Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony Kennedy said the practice of executing 16- and 17-year-olds violated the Eighth Amendment, conflicted with "evolving standards of decency" and isolated the United States from the rest of the world.

 

The Roper decision took scores of juveniles off death row. It also threw a spotlight onto state policies under which young juveniles were increasingly being tried in adult courts and sentenced to adult jails, often for nonviolent crimes.

 

The practice is even more troubling because it is arbitrary. Children who commit nonviolent crimes like theft and burglary are just as likely to be shipped off to adult courts as children who commit serious violent crimes. And the process is racially freighted, with black and Latino children more likely to be sent to adult courts than white children who commit comparable crimes.

 

The rush to try more and more children as adults began in the 1980s when the country was gripped by hysteria about an adolescent crime wave that never materialized. Joe Sullivan, the petitioner in Sullivan v. Florida, was sentenced to life without parole in 1989 — when he was just 13 — after a questionable sexual battery conviction. His two older accomplices testified against the younger, mentally impaired boy. They received short sentences, one of them as a juvenile.

 

The case of Terrance Graham has similar contours. A learning disabled child — born to crack-addicted parents — Mr. Graham was on probation in connection with a burglary committed when he was 16 when he participated in a home invasion. He, too, had older accomplices. He was never convicted of the actual crime but was given life without parole for violating the conditions of his probation.

 

These were two very troubled children in need of adult supervision and perhaps even time behind bars. But it is insupportable to conclude, as the courts did, that children who committed crimes when they were so young were beyond rehabilitation. The laws under which they were convicted violate current human rights standards and the Constitution.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

ALBANY AND THE BUDGET

 

Gov. David Paterson of New York has commanded the Legislature to return on Tuesday. Fixing the budget must be their top priority. The state is in a fiscal crisis. There is no other word for it.

 

The facts are these: Revenues are down about 20 percent; expenses are rising. And dreams that the good times will suddenly come roaring back are just dreams. Unless the Legislature can cut $3.2 billion from the state's operating budget by the end of the fiscal year, next year's deficit could reach $10 billion.

 

There are, of course, other important matters that must be addressed. The secretive authorities that do much of the state's building and borrowing are badly in need of reform. The right to same-sex marriage in New York is long overdue. Mr. Paterson's proposal for a new, less costly pension plan for new state employees deserves attention as does his proposal to tighten controls on a state budget that expands even in the worst of times, like these.

 

But Albany's toughest and most important job right now is to make certain that New York does not become another California, running out of cash, paying bills with i.o.u.'s and watching state credit ratings deteriorate.

 

The governor's proposals are not pretty. Most agencies would lose 11 percent of whatever they expected to get over the next five months, except for education financing, which would drop 5 percent. And the numbers attached to some of Mr. Paterson's revenue-raising proposals need a more rigorous look, including a tax amnesty that his aides say could bring in $250 million in unpaid taxes or the Aqueduct raceway contract that might add $200 million.

 

The Legislature has been largely barren of new ideas. What it must do is work with the governor. If it refuses to do so, New Yorkers can legitimately add fiscal dysfunction — the inability to deal with economic reality — to the list of Albany's many flaws.

 

Some legislators who don't want to make any hard choices say that they have heard these alarms before, and that if they just wait, the crisis will resolve itself. They are deluding themselves. If they won't act now, we will all pay the price.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

RODY ALVARADO'S ODYSSEY

 

After 14 years, Rody Alvarado finally has the full support of the United States government in her struggle to find safe haven here. She fled Guatemala in 1995 after enduring years of horrific beatings and sexual abuse by her husband. Though the facts of her suffering were not disputed, her case took a tortuous route through immigration courts, where the question of asylum for battered women has long been muddled by controversy, indecision and inaction.

 

Ms. Alvarado heard every kind of answer to her plea — no, yes, maybe, we don't know, we're thinking about it. It wasn't until late October that the Department of Homeland Security told a court in San Francisco that it considered Ms. Alvarado eligible for asylum, clearing the way for a judge to grant her, at last, the right to stay.

 

Ms. Alvarado's long-delayed victory is good news for her, but it should be much more than that. It is an opportunity for the government to finally bring clarity and justice to a neglected area of asylum law.

 

The Department of Homeland Security should follow up its brief in the Alvarado case by issuing something more lasting and useful: a firm, clear set of regulations spelling out the conditions under which battered women could be granted asylum here. Such regulations would give invaluable guidance to asylum officials and immigration judges and prevent the years of delays and uncertainty that so worsened Ms. Alvarado's ordeal.

 

The regulations need not open the doors to an unrestricted flood of asylum claims. The law limits asylum to those who suffer due to their race, religion, nationality, political opinion or "membership in a particular social group."

 

Women's advocates have long argued for a way under which a battered woman could qualify as a member of a "particular social group": by establishing, as Ms. Alvarado did, that domestic violence was widely tolerated by the government and society in her home country; that women there were viewed as subordinate to men; and that she had no place within its borders to find a safe haven.

 

Regulations that could have moved the issue forward were proposed in 2000 but never finalized; asylum for battered women was seen as too controversial. Homeland Security and the Justice Department are said to be working on such regulations. We're eager to see them. The Obama administration has shown courage in protecting Ms. Alvarado. Now it must ensure that other deserving women can find justice and safety as well.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

LAST ACT FOR THE BLUEFIN

 

The international commission that sets fishing limits for tuna and other large migratory fish is meeting in Brazil. The commission faces a depressing reality: the bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean is headed toward commercial extinction.

 

From time to time, the commission has marginally reduced the allowable catch, but never by as much as its scientists have recommended, and never by enough to reverse the fish's plunge toward extinction. The only quota that will make a difference is zero. The tuna fishery in the Mediterranean, where most of the fish spawn, should be shut down, pure and simple, until scientists say the fish have reached sustainable levels.

 

The United States delegation to the talks should settle for nothing less. If the talks produce only a reduced quota — given the makeup of the commission, that could happen — then the United States should join Monaco and other nations that have been pressing to put tuna on the international list of endangered species. Such a listing would allow fishermen to sell bluefin domestically but would make the high-volume international trade illegal, finally giving tuna a chance to recover.

 

Scientists say that overharvesting (much of it illegal) has caused a 72 percent decline among adult bluefin tuna in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean over the last 50 years. The smaller western Atlantic stocks have shown similar declines but have now stabilized, partly because of rigorous compliance by the United States.

 

Though shutting down a fishery is a drastic step, scientists increasingly believe that it is the only way to save the fishery, and that it has to be done soon, before the species reaches a point of no return. That happened to the North Atlantic codfish, while closing nursery areas to commercial fishing allowed the swordfish to rebound.

 

European countries with big industrial fleets are sure to argue that dropping the allowable catch to, say, 15,000 tons a year from the present 22,000 tons will do the trick. It won't. We know the commercial stakes are huge: bluefin fishing is a billion-dollar business that is driven by a global appetite for tuna, particularly in Japan.

 

But what these governments and their fishing interests need to recognize is that unless something is done now, soon there will be no tuna left to fish.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

OPED

PARANOIA STRIKES DEEP

BY PAUL KRUGMAN

 

Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we've grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption "National Socialist Healthcare." It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.

 

The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn't a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.

 

True, Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, offered some mild criticism after the fact. But the operative word is "mild." The signs were "inappropriate," said his spokesman, and the use of Hitler comparisons by such people as Rush Limbaugh, said Mr. Cantor, "conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful."

 

What all this shows is that the G.O.P. has been taken over by the people it used to exploit.

 

The state of mind visible at recent right-wing demonstrations is nothing new. Back in 1964 the historian Richard Hofstadter published an essay titled, "The Paranoid Style in American Politics," which reads as if it were based on today's headlines: Americans on the far right, he wrote, feel that "America has been largely taken away from them and their kind, though they are determined to try to repossess it and to prevent the final destructive act of subversion." Sound familiar?

 

But while the paranoid style isn't new, its role within the G.O.P. is.

 

When Hofstadter wrote, the right wing felt dispossessed because it was rejected by both major parties. That changed with the rise of Ronald Reagan: Republican politicians began to win elections in part by catering to the passions of the angry right.

 

Until recently, however, that catering mostly took the form of empty symbolism. Once elections were won, the issues that fired up the base almost always took a back seat to the economic concerns of the elite. Thus in 2004 George W. Bush ran on antiterrorism and "values," only to announce, as soon as the election was behind him, that his first priority was changing Social Security.

 

But something snapped last year. Conservatives had long believed that history was on their side, so the G.O.P. establishment could, in effect, urge hard-right activists to wait just a little longer: once the party consolidated its hold on power, they'd get what they wanted. After the Democratic sweep, however, extremists could no longer be fobbed off with promises of future glory.

 

Furthermore, the loss of both Congress and the White House left a power vacuum in a party accustomed to top-down management. At this point Newt Gingrich is what passes for a sober, reasonable elder statesman of the G.O.P. And he has no authority: Republican voters ignored his call to support a relatively moderate, electable candidate in New York's special Congressional election.

 

Real power in the party rests, instead, with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin (who at this point is more a media figure than a conventional politician). Because these people aren't interested in actually governing, they feed the base's frenzy instead of trying to curb or channel it. So all the old restraints are gone.

 

In the short run, this may help Democrats, as it did in that New York race. But maybe not: elections aren't necessarily won by the candidate with the most rational argument. They're often determined, instead, by events and economic conditions.

 

In fact, the party of Limbaugh and Beck could well make major gains in the midterm elections. The Obama administration's job-creation efforts have fallen short, so that unemployment is likely to stay disastrously high through next year and beyond. The banker-friendly bailout of Wall Street has angered voters, and might even let Republicans claim the mantle of economic populism. Conservatives may not have better ideas, but voters might support them out of sheer frustration.

 

And if Tea Party Republicans do win big next year, what has already happened in California could happen at the national level. In California, the G.O.P. has essentially shrunk down to a rump party with no interest in actually governing — but that rump remains big enough to prevent anyone else from dealing with the state's fiscal crisis. If this happens to America as a whole, as it all too easily could, the country could become effectively ungovernable in the midst of an ongoing economic disaster.

 

The point is that the takeover of the Republican Party by the irrational right is no laughing matter. Something unprecedented is happening here — and it's very bad for America.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

OPED

LIFE AFTER THE END OF HISTORY

BY ROSS DOUTHAT

 

For most of the last century, the West faced real enemies: totalitarian, aggressive, armed to the teeth. Between 1918 and 1989, it was possible to believe that liberal democracy was a parenthesis in history, destined to be undone by revolution, ground under by jackboots, or burned like chaff in the fire of the atom bomb.

 

Twenty years ago today, this threat disappeared. An East German functionary named Günther Schabowski threw open his country's border crossings, and by nightfall the youth of Germany were dancing atop the Berlin Wall, taking hammers to its graffiti-scarred facade. It was Nov. 9, 1989. The cold war was finished.

 

There will be speeches and celebrations to mark this anniversary, but not as many as the day deserves. (Barack Obama couldn't even fit a visit to Berlin into his schedule.) By rights, the Ninth of November should be a holiday across the Western world, celebrated with the kind of pomp and spectacle reserved for our own Independence Day.

 

Never has liberation come to so many people all at once — to Eastern Europe's millions, released from decades of bondage; to the world, freed from the shadow of nuclear Armageddon; and to the democratic West, victorious after a century of ideological struggle.

 

Never has so great a revolution been accomplished so swiftly and so peacefully, by ordinary men and women rather than utopians with guns.

 

Twenty years later, we still haven't come to terms with the scope of our deliverance. Francis Fukuyama famously described the post-Communist era as "the end of history." By this, he didn't mean the end of events — wars and famines, financial panics and terrorist bombings. He meant the disappearance of any enduring, existential threat to liberal democracy and free-market capitalism.

 

This thesis has been much contested, but it holds up remarkably well. Even 9/11 didn't undo the work of '89. Osama bin Laden is no Hitler, and Islamism isn't in the same league as the last century's totalitarianisms. Marxism and fascism seduced the West's elite; Islamic radicalism seduces men like the Fort Hood shooter. Our enemies resort to terrorism because they're weak, and because we're so astonishingly strong.

 

Yet nobody seems quite willing to believe it. Instead, we keep returning to the idea that liberal society is just as vulnerable as it was before the Berlin Wall came down.

 

On the right, pundits and politicians have cultivated a persistent cold-war-style alarmism about our foreign enemies — Vladimir Putin one week, Hugo Chavez the next, Kim Jong-il the week after that.

 

On the left, there's an enduring fascination with the pseudo-Marxist vision of global capitalism as an enormous Ponzi scheme, destined to be undone by peak oil, climate change, or the next financial bubble.

 

Meanwhile, our domestic politics are shot through with antitotalitarian obsessions, even as real totalitarianism recedes in history's rear-view mirror. Plenty of liberals were convinced that a vote for George W. Bush was a vote for theocracy or fascism. Too many conservatives are persuaded that Barack Obama's liberalism is a step removed from Leninism.

 

These paranoias suggest a civilization that's afraid to reckon with its own apparent permanence. The end of history has its share of discontents — anomie, corruption, "The Real Housewives of New Jersey." And it may be that the only thing more frightening than the possibility of annihilation is the possibility that our society could coast on forever as it is — like a Rome without an Attila to sack its palaces, or a Nineveh without Yahweh to pass judgment on its crimes.

 

Humankind fears judgment, of course. But we depend on it as well. The possibility of dissolution lends a moral shape to history: we want our empires to fall as well as rise, and we expect decadence to be rewarded with destruction.

 

Not that we want to experience this destruction ourselves. But we want it to be at least a possibility — as a spur to virtue, and as a punishment for sin.

 

This was how the Soviet threat often played on the home front. Remove the stain of segregation, liberals argued in the 50s, or the Communists will win the world. Repent of your hedonism and pacifism, neoconservatives urged Americans in the 70s, or the West will go the way of Finland.

 

Neither group wanted the United States to lose the cold war. But they wanted to inhabit a world where America could lose, and pass into history, if we failed to live up to our ideals.

 

This could be why we don't celebrate the anniversary of 1989 quite as intensely as we should. Maybe we miss living with the possibility of real defeat. Maybe we sense, as we hunt for the next great existential threat, that even the end of history needs to have an end.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

OPED

20 Years of Collapse

By SLAVOJ ZIZEK

 

TODAY is the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. During this time of reflection, it is common to emphasize the miraculous nature of the events that began that day: a dream seemed to come true, the Communist regimes collapsed like a house of cards, and the world suddenly changed in ways that had been inconceivable only a few months earlier. Who in Poland could ever have imagined free elections with Lech Walesa as president?

 

However, when the sublime mist of the velvet revolutions was dispelled by the new democratic-capitalist reality, people reacted with an unavoidable disappointment that manifested itself, in turn, as nostalgia for the "good old" Communist times; as rightist, nationalist populism; and as renewed, belated anti-Communist paranoia.

 

The first two reactions are easy to comprehend. The same rightists who decades ago were shouting, "Better dead than red!" are now often heard mumbling, "Better red than eating hamburgers." But the Communist nostalgia should not be taken too seriously: far from expressing an actual wish to return to the gray Socialist reality, it is more a form of mourning, of gently getting rid of the past. As for the rise of the rightist populism, it is not an Eastern European specialty, but a common feature of all countries caught in the vortex of globalization.

 

Much more interesting is the recent resurgence of anti-Communism from Hungary to Slovenia. During the autumn of 2006, large protests against the ruling Socialist Party paralyzed Hungary for weeks. Protesters linked the country's economic crisis to its rule by successors of the Communist party. They denied the very legitimacy of the government, although it came to power through democratic elections. When the police went in to restore civil order, comparisons were drawn with the Soviet Army crushing the 1956 anti-Communist rebellion.

 

This new anti-Communist scare even goes after symbols. In June 2008, Lithuania passed a law prohibiting the public display of Communist images like the hammer and sickle, as well as the playing of the Soviet anthem. In April 2009, the Polish government proposed expanding a ban on totalitarian propaganda to include Communist books, clothing and other items: one could even be arrested for wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt.

 

No wonder that, in Slovenia, the main reproach of the populist right to the left is that it is the "force of continuity" with the old Communist regime. In such a suffocating atmosphere, new problems and challenges are reduced to the repetition of old struggles, up to the absurd claim (which sometimes arises in Poland and in Slovenia) that the advocacy of gay rights and legal abortion is part of a dark Communist plot to demoralize the nation.

 

Where does this resurrection of anti-Communism draw its strength from? Why were the old ghosts resuscitated in nations where many young people don't even remember the Communist times? The new anti-Communism provides a simple answer to the question: "If capitalism is really so much better than Socialism, why are our lives still miserable?"

 

It is because, many believe, we are not really in capitalism: we do not yet have true democracy but only its deceiving mask, the same dark forces still pull the threads of power, a narrow sect of former Communists disguised as new owners and managers — nothing's really changed, so we need another purge, the revolution has to be repeated ...

 

What these belated anti-Communists fail to realize is that the image they provide of their society comes uncannily close to the most abused traditional leftist image of capitalism: a society in which formal democracy merely conceals the reign of a wealthy minority. In other words, the newly born anti-Communists don't get that what they are denouncing as perverted pseudo-capitalism simply is capitalism.

 

One can also argue that, when the Communist regimes collapsed, the disillusioned former Communists were effectively better suited to run the new capitalist economy than the populist dissidents. While the heroes of the anti-Communist protests continued to dwell in their dreams of a new society of justice, honesty and solidarity, the former Communists were able to ruthlessly accommodate themselves to the new capitalist rules and the new cruel world of market efficiency, inclusive of all the new and old dirty tricks and corruption.

 

A further twist is added by those countries in which Communists allowed the explosion of capitalism, while retaining political power: they seem to be more capitalist than the Western liberal capitalists themselves. In a crazy double reversal, capitalism won over Communism, but the price paid for this victory is that Communists are now beating capitalism in its own terrain.

 

This is why today's China is so unsettling: capitalism has always seemed inextricably linked to democracy, and faced with the explosion of capitalism in the People's Republic, many analysts still assume that political democracy will inevitably assert itself.

 

But what if this strain of authoritarian capitalism proves itself to be more efficient, more profitable, than our liberal capitalism? What if democracy is no longer the necessary and natural accompaniment of economic development, but its impediment?

 

If this is the case, then perhaps the disappointment at capitalism in the post-Communist countries should not be dismissed as a simple sign of the "immature" expectations of the people who didn't possess a realistic image of capitalism.

 

When people protested Communist regimes in Eastern Europe, the large majority of them did not ask for capitalism. They wanted the freedom to live their lives outside state control, to come together and talk as they pleased; they wanted a life of simplicity and sincerity, liberated from the primitive ideological indoctrination and the prevailing cynical hypocrisy.

 

As many commentators observed, the ideals that led the protesters were to a large extent taken from the ruling Socialist ideology itself — people aspired to something that can most appropriately be designated as "Socialism with a human face." Perhaps this attitude deserves a second chance.

 

This brings to mind the life and death of Victor Kravchenko, the Soviet engineer who, in 1944, defected during a trade mission to Washington and then wrote a best-selling memoir, "I Chose Freedom." His first-person report on the horrors of Stalinism included a detailed account of the mass hunger in early-1930s Ukraine, where Kravchenko — then still a true believer in the system — helped enforce collectivization.

 

What most people know about Kravchenko ends in 1949. That year, he sued Les Lettres Françaises for libel after the French Communist weekly claimed that he was a drunk and a wife-beater and his memoir was the propaganda work of American spies. In the Paris courtroom, Soviet generals and Russian peasants took the witness stand to debate the truth of Kravchenko's writings, and the trial grew from a personal suit to a spectacular indictment of the whole Stalinist system.

 

But immediately after his victory in the case, when Kravchenko was still being hailed all around the world as a cold war hero, he had the courage to speak out passionately against Joseph McCarthy's witch hunts. "I believe profoundly," he wrote, "that in the struggle against Communists and their organizations ... we cannot and should not resort to the methods and forms employed by the Communists." His warning to Americans: to fight Stalinism in such a way was to court the danger of starting to resemble their opponent.

 

Kravchenko also became more and more obsessed with the inequalities of the Western world, and wrote a sequel to "I Chose Freedom" that was titled, significantly, "I Chose Justice." He devoted himself to finding less exploitative forms of collectivization and wound up in Bolivia, where he squandered all his money trying to organize poor farmers. Crushed by this failure, he withdrew into private life and shot himself in 1966 at his home in New York.

 

How did we come to this? Deceived by 20th-century Communism and disillusioned with 21st-century capitalism, we can only hope for new Kravchenkos — and that they come to happier ends. On the search for justice, they will have to start from scratch. They will have to invent their own ideologies. They will be denounced as dangerous utopians, but they alone will have awakened from the utopian dream that holds the rest of us under its sway.

 

Slavoj Zizek, the international director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in London, is the author, most recently, of "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce."

 

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 I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

TARGETING FEMALE TEACHERS

 

Two female teachers were shot dead on Thursday in Bajaur Agency, after masked men dragged them out of their vehicles and opened fire. The two women had been going home from their government school. At least two men accompanying them were also injured. A few days ago, a girls' school in Bara had been blown up. The pattern is a familiar one. We have over the past years seen many such attacks. Other schoolteachers have died, some have quit jobs for fear of being targeted and across our northern areas stand the burnt-out buildings of schools that have been attacked. The process of rebuilding almost 200 such structures is now just getting underway in Swat. It is in more than one way tragic that education for girls, in a part of our country where literacy rates are already dismally low, is being hit in this way. In almost all cases communities are distressed by the happenings but powerless against the militants.

We need to hear more vocal protests against what is happening from our religious leaders and others with standing within communities. Their active role in a campaign to expose the barbarity of such actions and the fact that they violate Islam's call for education could have at least some impact and help end violence that has destroyed hundreds of schools within months. We need an effort to stop this and it must begin now. The teachers' murder is the latest example of the vengeful tactics of the Taliban on the run, of their hitting of 'soft' targets. That being the case, we wonder where the extremist elements' ghairat (honour) applies in such tragedies. Or is ghairat confined to restrictions of women's social rights and freedoms?

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

THE FEAR WITHIN

 

There is a long history of mass shootings in America. The Columbine massacre is perhaps the one closest to the surface of our awareness here in Pakistan, but they are a relatively regular event and usually followed by a debate about gun control and ownership that runs quickly into the sand to be forgotten until the next time some disturbed individual lets fly with a gun. In that sense the Hood killings are not unusual. These things happen in America (other places too, but more often in America). The alleged killer is said to have been the subject of harassment because of his faith and ethnicity. Thus far nobody is crying 'conspiracy' and he seems to have acted alone. The only thing that makes this event any different to all the other mass killings is the faith of the gunman. This single fact is going to 'read across' within the US armed forces – which have thousands of Muslims within them – and the armed forces of every other nation that has Muslims serving in combat alongside non-Muslims. A soldier needs to trust the man he fights beside. The Hood killings are going to be a test of the resilience of American cultural and ethnic diversity. The Muslim population of the US is already screened, scrutinized and profiled – and quietly fearful of being stigmatized for what they believe.

American Muslims in all trades and professions, not only those who are members of the armed forces, will have taken a sharp intake of breath at the news that the man who killed thirteen of his comrades at Fort Hood was a fellow Muslim. The intake of anxious breath will have been taken in other nations as well – in the UK, Germany, France, the Netherlands – countries having a significant minority of Muslims either as indigenous or as immigrant populations. Muslims who live in the west are to be found in every walk of life – doctors, teachers, social workers, politicians, trades-people, truck drivers and florists. They live their lives alongside their fellow-countrymen and women, people of many faiths and no faith. Many of them will be second or third generation; born, brought up and educated in the land they live in and seeing themselves as loyal and patriotic members of society. Perhaps inevitably there are those who live and work alongside them who do not have such a benign view; and the sharp intake of breath taken by American Muslims may be matched by a narrowing of suspicious and mistrustful eyes by some of their neighbours. The 'trust deficit' that is spoken of within the diplomatic world as existing between America and much of the Muslim world now finds itself at the micro-level of the workplace, the bus queue or the supermarket checkout line. America – and other nations – needs to be careful that the act of a disturbed individual does not become a metaphor for all Muslims living within their borders.

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

PROVINCIAL POWERS

 

The parliamentary special committee on constitutional reform has recommended that the concurrent list be done away with and all subjects delegated to the provincial assemblies, with the exception of defence, foreign affairs, finance, currency and communication. This brave step would help bring about within our federation the balance between the powers of the centre and provinces that has been the cause over the years of so much angst. Indeed, central power has gradually grown as a result of distortions in the 1973 Constitution. The Local Government law of the Musharraf era is just one example of this.

The change proposed by the committee will help restore to the provinces a greater sense of autonomy. The mistake we have too often made, in an attempt to strengthen our faltering federation, is to try and curb the powers of provinces when they rebel against centralized authority. By this we hope to make for a stronger union. In reality we weaken it by imposing the will of Islamabad on the provincial units. The notions about where power stems from in the federal capital add to the disquiet we repeatedly see in the smaller provinces. Today it simmers on in Balochistan, and on a lower fire, elsewhere too. The change in the division of the list of powers may not help solve all the problems we face. But it should act to knit together a stronger nation and give the provinces a sense of greater say in decision.

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

IS PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY FOR REAL?

IN ABSOLUTE GOVERNMENTS THE KING IS LAW, SO IN FREE COUNTRIES THE LAW OUGHT TO BE KING; AND THERE OUGHT TO BE NO OTHER. — THOMAS PAINE, COMMON SENSE

MIRZA SHAHZAD AKBAR

The current debate surrounding the National Reconciliation Ordinance, its presentation before the standing committee of the National Assembly, the consequent uproar of major political parties within and outside Parliament, a possible rift between components of the ruling alliance, and, finally, the government's decision to withdraw it from Parliament have raised serious legal questions.

In particular, it is being asked whether Article 248 of the Constitution grants immunity to the president from any criminal or civil legal proceedings. Is that really possible?

Sub-clause (2) of Article 248 stipulates: "No criminal proceedings whatsoever shall be instituted or continued against the President or a Governor in any court during his term of office." Repetition of this on TV news channels by the president's protectors establishes an impression of absolute presidential immunity. However, logic and common sense cannot accept the notion of a ruler enjoying absolute immunity from prosecution despite any crime "whatsoever," and getting away scot-free. Say, if a president commits murder, would he not be liable? We need to adopt a more nuanced interpretation of Article 248 of the Constitution and explore more deeply the whole notion of executive immunity.

The concept of immunity is not unique to the Constitution of Pakistan; it is present in most of the democratic constitutions in one form or another. The constitution of the United States furnishes one good example, and there have been some informative deliberations on this topic by the US Courts.

The archaic concept of sovereign immunity provided absolute immunity for the monarch on the basis that "the king can do no wrong." In a democracy, however, the president is no longer the symbol of sovereignty, which, instead, is deemed to rest in the people. And, in any event, the doctrine of sovereign immunity applies to limit governmental rather than personal liabilities.

This does not mean that in a democracy a president is not eligible to any immunity. In fact, the presidency is a unique office which enjoys the greatest immunity possible in a modern state. The supporters of absolute immunity for the president of Pakistan advance this cause on two grounds, which are nevertheless recognised in most other republics. First, the head of state needs to work without any distraction and fear of being sued in a court of law, which enables him to conduct effective governance. Second, the separation of powers between the organs of state requires the various branches, in particular the judiciary, to stop interfering in the affairs of the other branches.

 

Interestingly, the subject of presidential immunity in Pakistan has not previously been under serious consideration. However, a good case study in this regard would be the constitutional jurisprudence in the United States, which like us has a written constitution and where presidential immunity has been the subject matter of some notable cases where the US Supreme Court elaborated on this issue.

The earliest decision of the US Supreme Court is Mississippi vs. Johnson in 1867, in which Chief Justice Marshall placed the president "beyond the reach of judicial direction, either affirmative or restraining, in the exercise of his powers, whether constitutional or statutory, political or otherwise, save perhaps for what must be a small class of powers that are purely ministerial."

Until 1974, this remained the established principle of absolute immunity and in 1974, in the case of Nixon vs. Fitzgerald, the Supreme Court elaborated further the concept of executive immunity. In this case, the president was sued in a civil suit and the US Supreme Court was asked to consider a claim by former president Richard Nixon that he enjoyed an absolute immunity from a former government employee's suit for damages for his allegedly unlawful official conduct in office. The Court endorsed a rule of absolute immunity, concluding that such immunity is "a functionally mandated incident of the President's unique office, rooted in the constitutional tradition of the separation of powers and supported by our history."

After Nixon's case it was almost a settled principle that any act done by the president of while in office cannot be challenged for its ramifications in any court of law. However, an interesting diversion was made in a rather recent case of Clinton vs. Jones in 1997, concerning President Clinton. In it the Court declined to extend the immunity recognised in Fitzgerald to civil suits challenging the legality of a president's unofficial conduct. In that case, the plaintiff, Paula Jones, sought to recover compensatory and punitive damages for alleged misconduct by President Clinton occurring before he took federal office. Her claim was of sexual harassment by Mr Clinton while he was governor of Arkansas and Ms Jones was an employee in his office. The president took the plea of absolute immunity and sought to pause the proceedings while he was in office. The district court initially denied the president's motion to dismiss based on a constitutional claim of temporary immunity and held that the discovery of documents and evidence should go forward, but granted a stay of the trial until after the president left office. However, the Supreme Court rejected the claim of absolute immunity and permitted the civil proceedings to go forward against the president while he still occupied the Oval Office.

In considering the president's claim of a temporary immunity from suit, the US Supreme Court first distinguished Nixon vs. Fitzgerald, maintaining that "the principal rationale for affording certain public servants immunity from suits for money damages arising out of their official acts is inapplicable to unofficial conduct." The point of immunity for official conduct, the Court explained, is to "enable such officials to perform their designated functions effectively without fear that a particular decision may give rise to personal liability. But this reasoning provides no support for immunity for unofficial conduct."

As regards Pakistan, on the face of it the immunity granted to the president is absolute in criminal and civil proceedings while his being in office. However, in the light of US precedents and jurisprudence, whether this immunity extends to past acts and omissions is a question to be determined by the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Furthermore, the cases Mr Zardari was facing in the past were criminal, and not civil suits, and were not by any stretch of imagination official acts done by the president. Moreover, these criminal proceedings were for offences of the gravest magnitude.

It is also important to mention here that while looking at dicta rendered in superior court cases in Pakistan — in Zahoor Elahi vs. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (PLD 1975 SC 383), Sadiq Hussain Qureshi vs. Federation of Pakistan (PLD 1979 Lahore 1) and Muhammad Anwar Durrani vs. Province of Balochistan (PLD 1989 Quetta 25) — it seems that in any event the protection granted to the functionaries of the state or the president under Article 248 does not cover illegal and mala-fide acts, because such acts cannot be deemed to be in pursuance of the law or in discharge of official functions.

The nature of the immunity granted under Article 248, whether absolute or not, temporary or permanent, is a debatable matter and cannot be declared resolved at the outset. The Supreme Court might have to carry another cross while adjudicating upon the validity of the NRO, and that will be the burden of resolving the issues surrounding presidential immunity from criminal actions committed in an unofficial capacity.

The writer is a barrister-at-law practising at the Lahore High Court

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

REMEMBERING IQBAL'S LEGACY

DR RIFFAT HASSAN

Allama Iqbal, the spiritual founder of Pakistan, like the world's great thinkers and artists, belongs not only to Pakistan or the Muslims, but to humanity. In the vast annals of history, it is hard to find a person like him who took such joy and pride in being human that he was not willing to exchange his humanity even for the glory of Godhead.

In order to understand fully Iqbal's role as a philosopher, one needs also to understand the present times. "The modern predicament," says H J Paton, "is that man seems to be faced with an unbridgeable gap between knowledge and faith." In today's world, there are a large number of people who feel a deep and urgent need for a synthesis of faith and knowledge so that they can find both intellectual and emotional peace and satisfaction.

In Paton's view, if anything can bridge the gulf between science and religion, it is philosophy — provided it assumes its ancient task of rising "to such a general view of things as shall reconcile us, or enable us to reconcile ourselves, to the world and to ourselves." It is the traditional aim of philosophy to enter into different points of view and to fit different vistas as far as possible into one coherent whole. But this aim has been forgotten or forsaken by most philosophers of the modern world. It is one of Iqbal's great merits as a philosopher that he sets out, with unswerving determination, to build a conceptual scheme in which religion, science and philosophy all have a place.

Iqbal is sometimes described as a "committed" poet, which means that he is committed to a defence or vindication of Islam. As Professor Whittermore rightly observes, Iqbal's work is "from first to last, the work of a Muslim. At every point, he is at pains to indicate his conviction that his teaching is in all respects harmonious with the spirit and teaching of the Quran. He speaks and writes always from a standpoint within Islam."

Iqbal, no doubt, begins and ends with Islam. But it must be pointed out that his interpretation of Islam differs from the narrow meaning that is sometimes given to it. For Iqbal, Islam is not just the name for certain beliefs and forms of worship. The difference between a Muslim and a non-Muslim is not merely a theological one — it is a difference of the fundamental attitude toward life. We hear Iqbal saying repeatedly that a person who does not love creative activity is not a Muslim. He also said that "the infidel with a wakeful heart praying to an idol, is better than a religious man asleep in the sanctuary."

In other words, Iqbal begins with Islam because he regards it as a universal religion which repudiates the idea of race, colour and country. If Iqbal never went beyond Islam, it is only because he believed that Islam, if properly understood and practiced, could satisfy all human needs and aspirations. Though a devout Muslim, there is in Iqbal's words a message even for those who do not share his religious beliefs. E M Forster points out that Iqbal, "whatever his opinions, he was no fanatic, and he refers to Hindus and Christians with courtesy and respect." His breadth of vision and deep wisdom lifts his philosophy to a plane where the great minds of all times meet despite differences of environment and circumstance.

Iqbal undertook the task of uniting faith and knowledge, love and reason, heart and mind. It would be true to say that in modern times if any thinker has succeeded — to some degree — in the task of building a bridge between East and West, it is Iqbal. For this task, few are qualified, and even for those who are qualified, the journey is full of hazards and the road is long, lonely and arduous. In his own field, Iqbal's work is that of a pioneer. He saw the vision of a world no longer divided into irreconcilable oppositions, a world in which human beings were at peace with themselves, with their fellow beings and with God.

While we are reflecting on the universality of Iqbal's message, it would be pertinent to point out that throughout his life Iqbal identified himself with the oppressed people of the world. Whenever he saw injustice and exploitation, he protested against it. Iqbal's sympathy for his fellow beings flows through the pages of his work. He never spared those who sought to undermine or violate the basic dignity of others. Though he had no pity to waste on those who would not strive to improve their lot in life or whose attitude to life was one of passive resignation, yet he could well understand the frustration of those whose struggle was inadequately rewarded by people who wielded power over their lives. Few people have championed the cause of the wronged people of the world as passionately as Iqbal did, and for this reason alone, if for no other, he deserves to be remembered by all.

In trying to assess Iqbal's legacy to the world, we can hardly do better than the late Zakir Hussain, a former President of India, who said, "What is it that Iqbal does not give to him who seeks? He gives strength to the weak and a meaning to strength. He awakens the urge for a full, all-round, harmonious development of personality, for the devoted and selfless service of social ideas which alone make life worth the living. He gives to the pale, anemic calculations of the intellect the possibility to draw upon the unlimited resources of emotion and instincts, disciplined, chastened, ennobled by faith and by creative activity."

The writer is professor emerita at the University of Louisville and president of the Iqbal International Leadership Institute. Email: rshass01@gwise.louisville.edu

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

PAKISTAN'S AMERICAN ADDICTION

AYESHA IJAZ KHAN

Pakistanis entertained, cross-questioned, vented their anger at and generally basked in the company of Secretary Hillary Clinton on her recent visit. Yet with the exception of one good interview conducted by on a private TV channel, the Pakistani press largely ignored the similarly timed visit of Prime Minister Recep Erdogan of Turkey. This is not only ironic but sad because Mr Erdogan is both charismatic and wise.

As a result of Ms Clinton's painstaking outreach, she is likely to inform President Obama that it will take a lot more than references to keema and daal to "turn the page on US-Pakistani relations". But isn't it time for our press to broaden its horizons? If we are to open avenues for Pakistan and educate our people then we must reach out to partners other than the US. This of course is not to suggest that we should ignore our relationship with the US. Given our history, that is not feasible; nor is it advisable. But as I heard, the discourse between Secretary Clinton and the various groups with whom she interacted, I could not help but notice the wide gap in perceptions. Surely, gaps can only be bridged through interaction, but there is also a more pressing question that comes to mind. To what extent is the gap really bridgeable?

When, for instance, a media person says to Ms Clinton that "this is not our war" in spite of the fact that Pakistanis are victims of violence every day, it may earn her kudos with domestic audiences, but raises serious questions about Pakistan's tolerance towards extremism, not only among western analysts but also within the Islamic world. As Prime Minister Erdogan explained to a journalist, Islam favours the middle path of moderation, and we must shun extremes. Pakistan is at war with a violent extreme and wavering on the commitment to eradicate it, or justifying it by implying that the violence is in response to American imperialism, leads to concerns about Pakistan's willingness to harbour terrorism. To say that this is not our war is exactly the type of rhetoric that fuels mistrust of Pakistan and plays in the hands of lobbies vying to portray Pakistan as a state that is in denial of the extremist problem. It is this mistrust that then leads to the type of conditions that Pakistanis are objecting to in the Kerry-Lugar Bill KLB)?

If more Pakistanis were to take the contrary approach, as voiced by another media person at the same platform, saying to Ms Clinton that "this is our war because we have shared creating this monster with you" and therefore you must also share our burden. That is a position that would resonate far more around the world and evoke sympathy towards Pakistan.

It is true that America abandoned Pakistan at the end of the Soviet-Afghan war and was insensitive to its needs in the aftermath of a bloody conflict that took a severe toll on Pakistan. It is also true that America has historically supported military dictators in Pakistan and has worked against the interests of democratic movements. Yet we must be fair and acknowledge that America has nevertheless provided Pakistan with large amounts of aid, much more than any other country — and $7.5 billion "in the middle of a global recession" as Ms Clinton put it, is certainly not "peanuts"— contrary to what some analysts would have us believe. Where that money goes, both on the Pakistan end (potential corruption) and on the US end (inflated consultancy fees, etc) is a wholly other matter and must be actively monitored by Pakistanis.

The American frustration, as voiced by Ms Clinton, is that in spite of forking out large sums of cash, anti-Americanism continues to rise. This is symptomatic of a far deeper issue which is that we just don't have much in common. Our fates linked because of Pakistan's geography more than anything else, it is unlikely that the Pakistanis and the Americans will ever really trust each other. On the other hand, Pakistan is so preoccupied with its American addiction, cursing it but repeatedly turning to it for aid, that it has lost focus of the possibility of forging real alliances with countries like Turkey, not just at the governmental level but at people-to-people level.

Part of the reason for this failure is the way that Pakistanis define friendship. In conversations with fellow Pakistanis across the board, I am struck by our focus on the handout. It appears that we define friendship by how much money others send our way. Examples are cited of China and Saudi Arabia giving us aid free of conditions. In reality, there is no free lunch and alliances cannot be based on how actively a nation is contributing to our begging bowl. If enough aid is sent our way, no matter who the donor, conditions will be attached.

The best way around this is a two-fold strategy in which the press must play an active role to ensure that taxation issues are the front and centre of national debates. Increasing revenues is essential to our survival as a self-respecting nation. Lifestyles must commensurate with taxes paid to the national exchequer while the people must be educated in the importance of accountability of spending taxpayer money. Handouts, in the form of money or jobs in exchange for loyalty, have led to a society driven by patronage that has detrimentally affected our national psyche such that it is also what we have come to expect from the international community. We cannot expect to have friends if all we really want are benefactors.

Second, we must outgrow our sovereignty complex. Pakistan was created in 1947. The independence movement was successful and it's over. This is not the time for chest-thumping rhetoric. Let's get real. With a bomb blast a day, sometimes more, Pakistan really does need all the help it can get. This means acknowledging that we have a problem with extremism instead of looking for scapegoats. In order to combat this, it is an ironic reality that we need to cautiously partner with the US in a well thought-out alliance, as our government and army appear to have realised. But we cannot be myopic and believe that the US is interested in solving all our problems or that if the US were to leave the region all our problems would be solved. While managing our difficult alliance with the US, we must also actively plead our case elsewhere, including the Organisation of Islamic Conference.

The OIC, a body historically known for inaction rather than action, has recently had an interesting and promising development — its first ever democratic election for the office of Secretary General. Dr Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, elected as the first Turk to head the OIC, in a recent interview, asked with concern, "Who is helping Pakistan?"

Pakistan must work with Muslim countries in addition to the west in order to solve its extremist problem. So I hope that the next time Prime Minister Erdogan travels to Pakistan, our press will pay him at least half as much attention as they did Ms Clinton. His thoughts on maintaining a balance between Islam as a personal religion and secular political expression would have had Jinnah nodding in agreement. His ideas on civil-military relations and the struggle for democracy in light of Turkey's historical experience would be instructive to Pakistanis, who would be able to relate more to his than to Ms Clinton's experiences.

The writer is a London-based writer turned political analyst. Website: www. ayeshaijazkhan.com

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

LET'S BE OUR OWN 'FRIENDS'

SHAMSHAD AHMAD

This summer I finished first three parts of the Harry Potter series and have just started the fourth one titled Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. I was struck by the imaginative storylines and incisive plots of these tales for their resemblance to the ever-uncertain situation in our country.

What struck me even more was a report in the papers some time ago about an 11-year old student in a private school in Karachi who, as part of her class assignment on the analogies of this book's characters, said that the situation in Pakistan was similar to that in the story in which evil Lord Voldemort takes over the ministry of magic and starts hunting down Harry Potter. She reportedly said "We just hope there is a Harry Potter out there — somewhere who will come and save us."

What a tragedy that a country which on its birth was considered a "20th-century miracle" and which today is a nuclear power should be looking for a Harry Potter. We are already running after the Friends of Pakistan with a begging bowl in our hands and ready to barter whatever sovereignty is left.

Indeed, like Alice in Wonderland, we as a nation never cared which way we go. After a long spell of dictatorship, we had an opportunity of a life-time to return to genuine democracy rooted in the will of the people. Sadly, we are still lost and looking for a Cheshire cat to show us the way. Our real problem is governance failures and leadership miscarriages.

History seems to be repeating itself. Perhaps we are going back to the East India Company era. With no one like the legendary rulers of Mysore, our feudal political elites in power are getting nostalgic about the role their forefathers were playing in British India, and are looking for new imperialist masters because they just can't reconcile to being free and independent. While our own people are being crushed to death waiting in line for food, we have invented corporate agricultural farming as the new charter for leasing out our motherland.

Also, for decades our rulers have been allocating millions of acres of areas in Southern Punjab including Rahim Yar Khan, Bahawalpur and Baluchistan to Arab princes for their annual hunting expeditions just to gain their goodwill and personal favours. We have never understood much less valued the sanctity of independence or that of the country's territorial integrity.

In recent years, grave crises and acute problems in our own region have proliferated in a manner that has not only made us the focus of world attention but also forced us to make difficult choices in our perennial struggle for security and survival. This perception not only impairs our global image but also complicates things for us in dealing with the outside world. Indo-US defence and strategic alliance is not without serious implications for the delicate balance of power and stability in our region and is already undermining the peace process and prospects of conflict resolution between India and Pakistan.

Our problems are further aggravated by the complex regional configuration with a growing Indo-US nexus, India's strategic ascendancy in the region and its unprecedented influence in Afghanistan, with serious nuisance potential against Pakistan's security interests. As we play our role in the war on terror, we cannot but feel perturbed by America's indifference to our legitimate concerns.

Instead of fixing the fundamentals of our governance and choosing to live our own lives as an independent nation free from want and ignorance and raising our children with honour and dignity free from the fear of violence, we are back in the hands of a handful of countries who wish to help us to advance their own agenda. We always took pride in claiming friendship with the entire international community but today, we have ourselves constricted the number of our friends to a 22-member group of Friends of Pakistan.

Unfortunately, Quaid-e-Azam did not get to know us well. We now have a government which the people brought to power to bring about an end to dictatorship. It was a vote of no-confidence against the last government and system that it represented. It was a referendum for change but till now there is none. Let us not blame America or India for our problems. We ourselves are responsible for being where we are today. Musharraf left behind a legacy that would shame any nation on the earth. We have done nothing to change that.

No one, not even the Friends of Pakistan would trust us with a penny in cash. They might help us only in some areas of humanitarian relevance such as the Malakand rehabilitation and FATA's Reconstruction Opportunity Zones (ROZs). No other cash flows will come except those in the form of ODAs or FDIs, provided we guarantee an investor-friendly environment.

But our real problems are not external; they are domestic. Our foremost priority is to fix the fundamentals of our governance. We need domestic consolidation through democracy based on constitutional supremacy, institutional integrity and independent judiciary, rule of law, accountability and good governance. No compromise on principles and national interests and no begging. We must opt for self-reliance. Forget the friends of Pakistan. Let us be our own friends for a change.

The writer is a former foreign secretary. Email: shamshad1941@yahoo.com

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

STEPS TO A SOFT LANDING

ASIF EZDI

The announcement made by the government that it is withdrawing the bill seeking parliamentary approval for the NRO has defused the immediate crisis over the fate of the legislation, but it has by no means taken the country out of turbulent political waters. An even bigger crisis lies ahead if, as widely expected, corruption cases against Zardari are now reopened. The clock is already ticking.

Zardari stands isolated and beleaguered as never before. His options are dwindling fast and the fear is that in his desperation he will not shrink from taking reckless steps that could shake the country's democratic system to its foundations. At the very least, he can be expected to resort to political manoeuvrings of all sorts to keep himself afloat. As he flails about to get out of the quicksand in which he is now trapped, the country will be kept on edge during the coming days and weeks.

Zardari has only himself to blame for his predicament. Although deeply mired in graft charges dating from Benazir's two terms as prime minister, he surrounded himself after moving into the Presidency with others with similarly shady reputations and pasts. Reports of opaque business deals under the new government have proliferated. Zardari has himself been implicated in the purchase last March of 300 acres of land near Islamabad at a fraction of its real value. According to a Reuters analysis dated Nov 3, the consensus view is that corruption in Pakistan has worsened significantly since the transition from military to civilian rule.

Zardari has again failed to judge the public mood. In the face of growing public clamour to dump the NRO, he tried to ram through the Parliament a bill that would not only have given amnesty from graft charges to holders of public office between 1986 and 1999 but, for all times, to everyone if they could show that they had been implicated for political reasons. In other words, the bill would have given a permanent license to loot to all past, present and future looters of national wealth. As explained by some of Zardari's acolytes, all this was to be done in the name of the fundamental constitutional right to equality!

The entire political scene has now been radically transformed by the completely unexpected decision of the MQM, the largest ally of the PPP in the ruling coalition, to vote against the NRO. Zardari's hectic efforts since then to change the mind of the MQM have so far yielded little results, but there are still three weeks left before the 120-day period given by the Supreme Court for the approval of the ordinance runs out. As British prime minister Harold Wilson said, a week in politics is a long time. This is even truer of Pakistani politics.

If Zardari fails to win over the MQM, one option before him, theoretically, would be to promulgate the ordinance again with retrospective effect from February 2008. But there is a catch here. He can do so only on the advice of the prime minister, and that may not be forthcoming readily. Gilani has been noticeably unenthusiastic about getting parliamentary approval for the NRO and it is unlikely, in view of the MQM stance and overwhelming public opinion against the ordinance, that he would favour its re-issuance. If Zardari still insists, a clash between the offices of president and prime minister, in which public opinion would be with the prime minster, would be difficult to avoid and it would not be in Zardari's interest.

Zardari will only be able to escape prosecution by invoking the immunity given to a sitting president under Article 248. Aitzaz Ahsan has said that the Pakistani constitutions of 1956 and 1962 also gave the president complete immunity from criminal proceedings. He is wrong as far as the 1956 constitution is concerned. Article 213 of the 1956 constitution stated that the president was not answerable to any court for any act done in the performance of his official duties. But there was no blanket immunity for acts done in his personal capacity. Earlier, the Basic Principles Committee of the Constituent Assembly had also proposed in 1954 that there should be no bar to legal proceedings against the head of state even during the tenure of his office for acts done in his personal capacity.

The comprehensive immunity given to the president under Article 248 is a vestige of the privileges given by the Government of India Act of 1935 to the viceroy. It has been retained in the Indian Constitution but there is no other democratic country in which an elected head of state or government is exempt from the jurisdiction of the courts. A proposal has been made to the Parliament's Special Committee on Constitutional Reforms to withdraw the immunity given to the president for acts performed in his personal capacity and to substitute the language of Article 248 by that of the 1956 Constitution. The PML-N has also spoken of limiting the president's immunity to official acts, but is not pursuing this proposal seriously in the committee.

The government's policy is to expand, not restrict, the privileges of the political class. The new accountability law that will replace the NAB Ordinance has fittingly been called NRO-II. It will not apply to the sitting president, deletes wilful default in repaying a bank loan as an offence, provides for amnesty if a charge is not brought within three years after a person leaves his post, and gives immunity for acts done "in good faith." This law will also incorporate Sections 4 and 5 of the NRO. This means that a Member of Parliament accused of corruption may not be arrested without the recommendations of a parliamentary committee to be set up for the purpose being taking into consideration. Knowing how our parliamentary committees function, this amounts practically to granting immunity to our legislators from arrest on charges of corruption.

As the Zardari camp has been saying, it will not be possible to resume criminal proceedings against him because of Article 248. But morally and politically his position will be completely untenable. Pakistan will become the only country in the world with a head of state implicated in graft running into hundreds of millions of dollars. It is inconceivable that cases against all others charged with corruption are reopened while Zardari happily continues to enjoy life in the Presidency. The safest course for him, therefore, would be to take a one-way ticket out of Pakistan. The other option – being dragged out kicking and screaming – would be far worse, for him and for the country.

Zardari's departure need not – indeed, it should not – result in the fall of the PPP-led federal government or in midterm elections. That is the last thing the country can afford at this time. As anyone can see, Zardari's time is up. His political obituaries are already being written. The task before the nation now is to make the transition as smooth and as short as possible. All political parties, in the government and in the opposition, need to cooperate in averting a sudden collapse of the political system and guiding the country to a soft landing.

Two steps are needed. First, the opposition parties must give credible ironclad assurances that they do not seek midterm elections or a change of government in Islamabad. Second, the smaller parties in the ruling coalition should advise Zardari to make a sacrifice for the sake of the country. The MQM has done so already. The other coalition partners should ponder doing the same. It will be in their interest, as well as the national interest. They will enhance their own standing and restore some of the nation's faith in the political system.

Email: asifezdi@yahoo.com

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

UNDER SIEGE

CHRIS CORK

Visiting Islamabad even as recently as a year ago was a treat. A break from the dust of Bahawalpur, a place were I could spend hours browsing bookshops, taking leisurely lunches with friends or visiting an art gallery. In the evening, window shopping in Jinnah and Super and Kohsar or a truly scrumptious ice-cream in an old railway carriage decorated with film posters from the 1950s. Despite the chaos and turmoil around it, Islamabad seemed a veritable haven of peace – but not any more.

The city has assumed an almost ghostly quality, both day and night, seeming depopulated and having the life drained from it to become pale and frail, lying on its bed at the foot of the Margallas and breathing shallow panting breaths. The arteries are clogged and blocked everywhere as the thrombosis of "security" constricts the flow of life, the day to day business of being a capital city.

Speaking to colleagues over a couple of days, there was agreement that the Islamic University bombing was the watershed, the point at which things became different. The schools' closures quickly followed across the country, but it now appears that there is not, and has not been, any direct threat to schools anywhere outside of FATA. The terrorists have scored a significant victory in that they have exploited the latent fears of an already fearful population and administration and terrified them into frantic action – action designed to combat a threat that is more in the mind than writ large for real.

I was last in the city the weekend before the IIU bombing, and although there were plenty of check posts they had a slightly casual sense about them, with languid, bored policemen waving you through with hardly a glance either at driver or passenger. Not any more, they don't. There has been a significant change in the mood music. Police are edgy, terse and commanding. Cars are stopped and rummaged and a white face is no protection either – "Can you prove your identity and where are you going?" Getting into the Marriott – which was a blackened shell a year ago, and today a fine example of grace under pressure – is an epic journey punctuated by almost painful politeness; the staff seeming apologetic for the inconveniences that they have to make you suffer. At night the feeling of ghostliness is accentuated by the lack of traffic on the streets and the shops that close hours before they used to. By 11 p.m. Islamabad is behind its doors and hoping that the bogeyman will pass by and not tap the window tonight.

The Siege of Islamabad is a metaphor, the acting out of the fears and insecurities of a wider populace. But wait a moment…isn't a siege conducted with the population inside a fortified perimeter and the enemy without? The Siege of Islamabad has turned the model inside out – the enemy is within and the defenders looking at one another and wondering "friend or foe" of everybody. It is from that uncertainty that has sprung the fear that shut down an entire national education system – much of which remains shut today. The actual threat may not have materialised but the fear of the threat was enough to potentiate it, giving it an ersatz reality that translated into action – directives and requirements – the extension of The Siege to the minds of all of us.

I left The Siege behind and went home wondering at the capacity of all of us to "carry on regardless" – but even that capacity is finite, and, historically, sieges tend to end with the besieged defeated.

The writer is a British social worker settled in Pakistan. Email: manticore73@gmail.com

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

POWER CRISIS: ENCOURAGE LOCAL INVESTORS

 

WHILE the country suffers from energy crisis, addition of a single Megawatt of electricity in the system would be welcomed by people and the industrial sector. The addition of 200 MW of electricity to be generated by Nishat Power Project which was inaugurated by Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani on Saturday at Jambar Khan near Pattoki is an encouraging development and should serve as a lead to the local private investors to venture in this sector and help the country get out of the energy crisis.

In his address PM Gilani said while the Government was exploring all options to generate more electricity, the private sector can play a vital role in power generation. We are of the firm belief that in the given law and order situation only local investors, who hold the national interests above every thing, should be persuaded to go for energy generation projects. Nishat Group having a credible track record in various projects had taken the challenge and completed the project at a cost of $ 234 million which should be appreciated by the Government and encourage the group and other local entrepreneurs to set up similar power generation plants rather than relying heavily on foreign investors. We impress upon the government to encourage local investors to invest in coal based and solar plants instead of thermal units so that cheap electricity is available to PEPCO and ultimately to the consumers. Foreign investors prefer for the oil fired units and generation cost goes beyond the capacity of domestic consumers and industrial sector. We must keep in view that the era of cheap oil is gone and the country would have to exploit alternative sources of energy available to it including nuclear, hydel, coal, wind and solar. Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission Sardar Aseff Ahmad Ali during a visit to Chashma Nuclear Power Plants the other day also said the Government would support efforts to upgrade the indigenous technical facilities of the PAEC for the manufacture and installation of nuclear power plants. Nuclear energy is a clean source and indigenous capability is direly needed to meet our future needs of electricity. The need of the hour is that instead of hollow statements, practical support be extended to the PAEC and other institutions so as to encourage them to contribute in indigenous manufacture of plants for power generation in a planned and sustained manner to get out of the energy crisis.

 

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

PLIGHT OF MUSLIMS IN US

 

MOSQUES across the United States have sought additional security after US Army Major Nidal Malik Hassan, son of a Palestinian from a village near Jerusalem, killed 13 and wounded 30 at the Ford Hood military base. The incident prompted the US media that the Muslims in US could face the sternest test since 9/11 attacks.

After the incident all major Muslim organisations denounced the shooting as a barbaric act of violence and have urged American Muslims to be vigilant, both at home and at Mosques. According to reports Hasan, 39 years old, had never served in a war zone. Instead, his horror of war came second hand. He was a psychiatrist who listened to the harrowing stories of his comrades at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC, and later at Fort Hood, Texas. His relatives said he had suffered harassment from fellow soldiers who questioned his loyalty to the US and commented on his Middle East ethnicity. As a Muslim, he was upset at the killing of Muslims in Iraq and Afghanistan, and had been resisting deployment in war zone. Though it was a condemnable act of an individual but regrettably prompted religious tension and Muslims are receiving death threats and hate mails. We would emphasise that the Americans should not focus on gunman's religion but the mental stress that its troops are undergoing due to deployment in Iraq and Afghanistan. In his weekly address President Obama has done well to stress that people of all faiths including Muslims have served the US military and we hope he would take effective steps to protect the fundamental rights of American Muslims.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

SUGAR CRISIS WORSENING

 

SHORTAGE of sugar across the country continues to irritate domestic consumers and despite order of the Supreme Court to the Federal and Provincial Governments to ensure its availability at Rs 40 per kg no foolproof arrangement is in place. People are complaining that they are unable to get the commodity from anywhere alleging that the sugar millers and wholesalers are in league to mint money thus throwing a direct challenge to the administrative machinery.

There is clear lack of a strategy behind the worsening sugar crisis and the authorities seem to be more interested in playing the blame game, instead of focusing on the problem. At the end of the last crushing season, it should have been realized that the country would be facing sugar shortfall yet the officials accepted the plea of the All Pakistan Sugar Mills Association (APSMA) that the stocks would be enough to meet the domestic requirements till the new crushing season starts in November,2009. No doubt there are still enough stocks to meet the domestic needs but the cartel of the sugar millers fully exploited the failure of the policy makers to realise the gravity of the situation. A free hand was given to the millers and stockists which resulted in alarming increase in sugar prices ahead of Ramazanul Mubarak and from that point the millers never gave in. Had the concerned authorities imported the required stock of sugar early in the year,when international prices were competitive, the country would not have been in such a situation. While people suffer at the hands of the vested interests, the situation is not rosy for the next year as far as sugar is concerned. The sugar mills are delaying to start their crushing season so that they could exhaust their stocks at exorbitant rates and the expected shortfall of one million tons for the next year would give them the leverage to fix higher prices. We have landed in this situation because the sugar mill owners are politically influential people and least worried for any action. Tired of the tactics of the millers, growers have also shifted to other crops and sugarcane production has gone down. While urging the Government to address the grievances of the farmers and persuade them to revert to sugarcane crop, we also expect that the Supreme Court would soon take a notice and get its order implemented in letter and in spirit to alleviate the sufferings of the masses.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

THE POET, PHILOSOPHER AND VISIONARY

MOHAMMAD JAMIL

This day — 9th November — is celebrated to mark the birth anniversary of Allama Muhammad Iqbal, a renowned national poet of Pakistan whose poetry in Urdu and Persian is considered to be among the greatest of the modern era. His dream for a separate homeland for the Muslims of the sub-continent was converted into reality by Quaid-i-Azam. On this day, works of Iqbal, his philosophy and teachings and his active participation in the creation of Pakistan is remembered. "The good hero lives on in our minds if we are imaginative, and in our actions if we are wise", said Paul Johnson, author of several best-selling books during a lecture delivered on board the 'Crystal Symphony', a Hillside College cruise from Montreal to Miami. Whereas Iqbal's poetry was for the people to take them out of slumber, his famous lectures were meant for the opinion makers and scholars. His lecture 'The Principle of Movement in Islam (Ijtihad) inspires the Muslims to understand that the world is not static; life does not standstill and history is constantly on the march, making it necessary to evolve new forms to cope with new developments.

There are many instances in the history when a nation was faced with the dilemma of choosing a right course of action for the solution of multi-dimensional problems. One has to revert to the history to understand the causes of the rise and fall of the nations, and what measures were taken for causing a decadent and moribund society plagued by the curse of corruption, immorality, inertia and factionalism like ours to change into a progressive, vibrant and dynamic organism brimming with vitality, ideas and creativity? But where should we look for a model? Allama Iqbal in his lecture 'Knowledge and Religious Experience' writes: "European culture on its intellectual side, is only a further development of some of the most important phases of the culture of Islam. Our only fear is that dazzling exterior of European culture may arrest our movement and we may fail to reach the true inwardness of that culture".

The Western intellectuals had borrowed ideas from Islamic culture for their progress because the pre-Renaissance Europe was based on Greek thought and philosophy that were speculative and theoretical in nature, whereas Islamic culture draws its spirit from facts and realities of life. Aristotle visualized a fixed universe; Islam on the other hand regards signs of universe as signs of Allah. According to Allama Iqbal, "The Qur'an sees signs of the Ultimate Reality in the sun, moon, the lengthening out the shadows, the alternation of day and night, the variety of human colours and tongues—in fact in the whole nature as revealed to the sense-perception of man. And Muslim's duty is to reflect on these signs and not pass by them as if dead or blind, for he who does not see the signs in this life will remain blind to the reality of the life to come". It is for the man of today to use his faculties of sama, basr and faud to convert the vast energies released by signs of Nature to his advantage. The most fascinating feature of man's characteristics is that God granted him knowledge of the names of things, which made him superior to angels, and they were commanded by the Lord Creator to prostrate to him. Muslim scholars interpret this knowledge of the names as knowledge of the nature of things. Another unique aspect bestowed on man is that God has established man as His vicegerent on earth (2:30, 6:165) with authority and responsibility so that he carries out His mission according to His Plan and Agenda—the task of creativity, development, enlightenment, invention, love, mercy, forbearance and change from one state to another, both intellectually and physically. All religions had revolutionary appeal but with the passage of time religious shysters misinterpreted the message to strengthen the status quo forces. Islam, however, is a complete code of life and Allama Iqbal has tried to explain the true spirit of Islam.

Allama Iqbal says: "The essence of Islam is Tauheed, and the essence of Tauheed as a working idea is equality, solidarity and freedom. The state from Islamic standpoint is an endeavour to transform these ideal principles into space-time forces, an inspiration to realize them in a definite human organization". Freedom means liberation of mankind from forces of exploitation, oppression, suppression and manipulation. It also means freedom from gods other than God, from idols of traditions and customs, from political and bureaucratic strongholds, from the sorceries of clerics, obscurantist and religious shysters, from ignorance and poverty. Only when a man is freed from all these thoughts, can he think progressively and feel the existence of one God.

So far as equality is concerned, it means equality in status, equality before law, equality in civil rights and equality of opportunities but not necessarily in material possessions. When socio-economic justice is ensured to all the citizens, and all flaws in the judicial system cleared, there shall prevail a sense of equality. Lastly, solidarity means bringing the people on a platform so as to think positively towards each other, and to share a common outlook towards their problems. By adhering to these precepts, complete harmony and peace shall prevail in the society. All the Muslim countries should focus their attention on education, especially Science, Engineering and Technology, and ensure that people have share in running the affairs of the state. Muslim countries should also increase interaction with each other, unite in their struggle to get rid of foreign domination with a view to finding a respectable place in the comity of nations.

It is clearly stated in the Quran that God is interested in the welfare of al-nas (people). God addresses al-nas to do good deeds and stay away from evil; the rewards and blessings are announced for al-nas; Prophets were sent to al-nas. Since Prophet Mohammad was the last Prophet, Islam is, therefore, the deen for all the times to come. And which is why periodic reinterpretation of Islamic teachings in the light of inventions, discoveries and new sciences is imperative so that it can offer inspiration to all the people at all times. The principle of such movement is called Ijtihad, which could provide new perceptions to the world vision. But how could illiterate and downtrodden people with variegated ideas could reach consensus, and bring about a change in society? According to Allama Iqbal, "The only effective power that counteracts the forces of decay in a people is the rearing of self-concentrated individuals. Such individuals alone reveal the depth of life. They disclose new standards in the light of which we begin to see that our environment is not wholly inviolable and requires revision".

Muslims, indeed, had a glorious past. When the West was in the Middle Ages - a part of it was an era of darkness - Spain at that time was the great Islamic civilization, and acted as a transmitter of knowledge and culture to Europe. And Muslim scholars, scientists and mathematicians had played an important role in the progress of mankind. Religious scholars have not seriously tried to ignite the internal combustible spirit in us and convert the release into useful energy with the potential to change our state and find a niche in the comity of nations. They did not reach the innermost recess of conscious and sub-conscious minds of the people and inculcate in them an urge or desire to search for truth and reality. By persuading the people to seek life of the hereafter only, and to convince them that God made them as they are due to Divine Determinism, they created immobility, supineness and lethargy among the people; thus discouraging all efforts for progress and prosperity. The poor masses were not told the truth that Almighty Allah was keenly interested in positive change in their state.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

INDIA'S BLAME GAME REVISITED

FATIMA SYED

Recently, India's Home Minister Chidambaram gave a statement that India would retaliate strongly to Pakistan-backed terrorism. He said, "If terrorists and militants from Pakistan try to carry out any attacks in India, they will not only be defeated but will be retaliated very strongly". He said he has been warning Pakistan not to play with India and that the Mumbai attacks should be the "last game". Contrary to the statement of Indian Home Minister, it is the Indian soil which is being continuously used for subversive activities against neighbouring countries such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and China etc. No wonder New Delhi is facing some serious security threats but from within. These problems and threats are of absolutely indigenous nature. India is facing Naxal menace, which according to the Indian Prime Minister is the biggest threat to country's security. Similarly, the turmoil in the Northeastern states is also a result of Indian Governments' inability to address their grievances. India is also facing communal violence perpetrated by Hindu extremists, having patronage of Indian government. The demolition of Babri Mosque, Gujarat pogrom and burning of Samjhota Express are few examples in which Hindu extremists butchered Muslims with complete impunity.

Being the traditional enemy, India always tried to create chaos in Pakistan and RAW performs this duty very efficiently. Since its inception, RAW tried in one way or the other to destabilize Pakistan. After East Pakistan started demanding autonomy from 1969 onwards, RAW extended open and full cooperation to the movement leading to the dismemberment of Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh. In fact, this was more a war between India and Pakistan rather than the movement of autonomy. After the separation of East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh, Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi delivered a speech at New Delhi Ground in which she mocked the Two Nations Theory by saying, "Today 'WE' have taken the revenge of the one thousand years' slavery and the birth of Bangladesh is the death of Two Nations Theory."

India is engaged in creating disturbance in Pakistan. It currently has an extensive diplomatic presence in Afghanistan. It includes the Indian embassy in Kabul and four consulates in Kandahar, Jalalabad, Mazar-e-Sharif and Herat. These Indian diplomatic missions serve as launching pads for undertaking covert operations against Pakistan from Afghan soil. Particularly, the Indian consulates in Kandahar and Jalalabad and their embassy in Kabul are used for clandestine activities inside Pakistan in general and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Baluchistan in particular. Indian consulates in Afghanistan are printing fake Pakistani currency, using it to recruit poverty-stricken Afghans to carry out acts of sabotage and terrorism on Pakistani territory.

A senior official in Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said that, "Pakistan very much wants a stable Afghanistan, because they are next to us, and any instability up there will leak into Pakistan but as for the Indians, we told Afghanistan that the only purpose of opening those consulates is cross border terrorism into Pakistan". India is using Afghanistan as the launching base for 'proxy war' and is constantly encouraging and promoting activities detrimental to Pakistan. India is continuously interfering into the internal affairs of Bangladesh. She is supporting the Chakma refugees of Bangladesh in order to create unrest in that country. Her expansionist design intends to merge the whole Bangladesh into Indian Territory. For this purpose India is supporting many separatist groups and fifth columnists for covert and overt operations. Tracts of Bangladeshi territories are in forced possession of India. She presently occupies 110 enclaves of Bangladesh. Human Rights Congress of Bangladeshi Minorities (HRCBM), a Hindu organization is creating communal violence in Bangladesh. It is facilitating the settlement of Hindus in border districts of the country in order to facilitate Indian annexation of border territory of Bangladesh. The area identified is about 30% border territory of Bangladesh and has been named a Bango Bhumi to be annexed with India. Economic growth of Bangladesh has been hampered due to excessive penetration of Indian smuggled goods into the markets of Bangladesh. Indian intelligence agencies have also flooded Bangladesh with fake paper money to ruin its economy.

Apart from Pakistan and Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka are also the victims of RAW's wicked designs. India engineered internal strife and conflicts in Nepal through RAW to destabilize the successive legitimate governments.In Sri Lanka RAW created and supported Tamil Tigers. On the Mukti Bahini model, RAW built up terrorist training camps in Tamil Nadu for a number of Tamil terrorist organizations. The militants trained in India sidelined the moderate Tamils and started demanding complete independence. The Indian diplomat G. Parathasarathy admitted supporting terrorism in Sri Lanka. "We have learnt our lesson" for backing the terrorist and that "India paid it price for backing the LTTE". The former Indian High Commissioner in Sri Lanka, J.N. Dixit even accused RAW of having given Rs. five crore to the LTTE.

India, which is in habit of blaming others for all its wrongs most of the time forgets that it has many elements on its soil which are creating terrorism. In most of the subversive activities on Indian soil the Hindu extremist groups are involved. They executed such activities sometimes to have an excuse to start backlash against Muslims and sometimes to inflict harm upon Muslims and damage to their properties and belongings. Despite knowing the involvement of Hindu fanatics in most terrorist acts the Indian government is in habit of blaming Lashkar-i-Taiba, Jaish-e-Muhammad, Indian Muslims and Pakistan for every subversive activity. This is just like deliberately closing ones eyes and ignoring the facts.

There are several incidents in which the Indian government readily put the blame on Indian Muslims and Pakistan such as Sabarmati Express incident, Malegaon Blasts and Samjhota Express explosion. It was, however, cleared afterwards that Hindu extremist groups have had a hand in all these events as the style of execution was much similar. In its well known way, India is double crossing its neighbours and leaving no stone unturned to expand beyond its territory. In order to understand the Indian political objectives one has to recall childhood story of the wolf and the lamb. Just like wolf, India on the basis of lame-excuses and absurd reasons trying to eat up the small neighbouring states. After all this is the only way a Greater India can emerge on the map of the world.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

ARM THE AFGHANS AND GET OUT

AIR MARSHAL AYAZ A KHAN (R)

Arm the Afghan Army and the Afghan Police and get out" is the thinking and desire of the American politicians, the public, the media, the military and the Administration. NATO and ISAF are planning for such a strategy. Indicators are President Barak Obama's statements, and top priority given by General MaCrystal to the training and re –equipment of Afghan National Army and the Afghanistan national Police Force. Sixty eight thousand NATO troops, including forty thousand American Army and US Marine officers, non-commissioned officers and GI's are engaged in this challenging task. President Barak Obama wants the GI's to return home safely, but this is not possible until a strong Afghan National Army, and National Police can take over the task of national defense and internal security; and that could take twenty years.

Afghan Army has a bleak past and a dubious history, and lacks military traditions. From 1960 to 1990 Afghan Army was trained and equipped by the Soviet Union. By 1992 the national army had fragmented into regional militias under warlords and drug barons. During the Taliban rule that followed, the army was disbanded, and the Taliban raised their own armed forces, led by Taliban and Islamic clerics. After the exit of Mullah Omar in 2001, Afghan National Army started taking shape with US and NATO help. Since 2002 the United States has spent billions of dollars on recruitment, equipment, weapons, munitions, facilities and state of the art housing and medical facilities for the new Afghan Army. US, British, German, Canadian trainers and instructors from 42 NATO countries are providing basic and advanced warfare training to theAfghan army officers and soldiers.

In October 2009 Afghan National Army-ANA had seventy five thousand trained troops on active duty. Afghan ministry of defense has plans for a 134000 army. US President Barak Obama has called for a massive expansion to a 260000 strong Afghan National Army at a cost of twenty billion dollars. The time scale is only five years. This is an impossible aim. It cannot be done. It is an impossible goal, because recruits are hard to get. The pay at $ 100 per month is low. The Pushtun youth are under Taliban influence, and Taliban threats intimidation and influence is pervasive. The US and Afghan authorities are offering cash and vocational stipends to encourage the youth to join the volunteer National Army and Police. The current plan is to raise seventy five infantry battalions, of six hundred soldiers each. Fourteen infantry Brigades with three battalions each, are already in place. An Afghan Army Brigade has only 1800 soldiers, as compared to 4000 to 5000 troops in a Pakistan Army Brigade. ANA has six Corps, of two Brigades each. 201 Corps in Kabul has No-1 and No-2 Brigades under command. No-1 Brigade defends the Presidents palace, along with a contingent of US Army troops. No-2 Brigade is stationed at Pul-e- Chakri.

No 203 Corps with two Brigades under command, is stationed at Gerdez. Each ANA Corp's has an aviation component of eight helicopters. Four of these are for transportation, two are gunship-attack helicopters and two for medical duties. 205 the biggest Corps with four brigades is at Kandhar. General Sher Mohammad is the Corp's Commander. It is responsible for Kandhar, Helmand, Zabul, Nimroz and Orazgan provinces. This Corp's has a commando battalion, and three garrison cantonments. 207 Corp's at Herat has two brigades; one at Heart and the other at Farah. No 2009 Corps at Mazar-e-Sharif is integrated with the German led regional command. Its two brigades are at Mazar-e-Sharif and at Kunduz. Army Corps of Engineers is also based at Mazar-e-Sharif. ANA has received 4500 armor plated Humvees and 104000 M-16 Assault Rifles. Large number of Humvees have been destroyed by mines, road side bombs, and from Taliban attacks, during transportation through the Khyber Pass. ANA suffers from acute shortage of artillery and armor. Fighting Taliban in the hilly terrain without armor, artillery and air cover is not possible.

The 6th Corps is the Afghan National Air Corps i.e. The Afghan Air Force, which suffered extinction during the Taliban rule. Six Commando battalions intensively trained and equipped, are to be deployed in Southern Afghanistan to help Canadian forces to crush enhanced Taliban insurgency in the area. The insurgency is now wide spread. The US Army strategy of retreat to towns and cities, has left the rural areas i.e. 70% of Afghanistan under the control of the Taliban insurgents. Six posts along the Pak-Afghan border manned jointly by American and Afghan troops have been vacated, leaving the border open for the Taliban. The Afghan Army strength is far short of the requirement of defense and security for the vast Afghan spaces. ANA has suffered heavily in ambushes, encounters and battles with the elusive and hardy Taliban.

Afghan National Police of eighty thousand is poorly trained. Common Afghan hates the corrupt constables. It is planned to be expanded the police force to 160000 constables. With improper Police recruitment procedure's, no vetting of the police recruits, and only two months of shoddy training policemen, are under trained, non-professional and poorly led. Raw recruits are dispatched to outposts, where they become sitting ducks for the ferocious and experienced Taliban guerrilla fighters. One thousand Afghan policemen were killed in 2008 and another one thousand during 2009. Twice that number of policemen were injured and kidnapped. Thus policemen are demoralized, and many are synmpathetic to the Taliban Afghan policemen have killed US and British soldiers, and then defected .The deaths of five British soldiers at the hands of an Afghan policeman with whom they were working, has unleashed an outcry in Britain.

This incident has highlighted the vulnerability of the Western troops as they train the Afghan military and police. This attack occurred at midday on November 04,2009, in Helmand province. The British instructors were relaxing in the warm autumn sun, at a joint Check Point, when their Afghan police colleague opened fire on them. The attack came as the public support for the Afghan war in America, Britain, Germany, and other forty member NATO nations has become extremely shaky. The war has taken a heavy toll of America and British soldiers. About one thousand American GI's, and one hundred British Tommy's have been killed and three times that number injured. In a letter to Los Angeles Times ( daily circulation runs into millions) Irwin Spector from Tolica Lake- California writes, "Well here we are, stuck with another failed leader (Hamid Karzai), while our brave young soldiers come home with broken bodies and addled brains.

We really ought to forget about President Hamid Karzai and go directly to the Afghan people: not to protect them, but to arm and train them, and then promptly leave. If they - the people of Afghanistan really want to enter the modern world, they will quickly dispatch the Taliban, and Karzai's corrupt government in the bargain. On the other hand may be they would rather live in the 10th century, and will embrace the Taliban. In any case let it be their decision and not ours. Americans are sick and tired of seeing precious lives and resources lost to the vanities of a handful of misguided men in Washington". But the situation is not as simple as that. NATO-US retreat will imply defeat of the armed might of the mightiest military powers on earth. Taliban-Al-Qaeda will then seek distant horizons much beyond Kabul. Islamabad with its nuclear weapon capability will be the next target. That must not happen, because it will jeopardize global security. But with rural Afghanistan in the control of the Taliban, families of soldiers and policemen remain at risk.Afghan National Police has been infiltrated by the Taliban. In Wardak province during joint patrolling an Afghan policeman fired on American soldiers killing two of them. Can such a police force take on the role of combating Taliban insurgency? Whether this police constable was a rogue or not, the episode could be repeated. There is a wide chasm between the Karzai government and the majority Pushtun population. In Pakistan the nation is with the armed forces, but this is not so in Afghanistan. Hamid Karzai is judged as a puppet and a Quizling, who cannot survive without US-NATO armed might.

An important part of the US-NATO counter insurgency strategy is to train more Afghan troops and police officers to protect the Afghan people and government., in the hope of reducing tensions and frustration created by the presence of foreign troops. But the prospects of a viable and reliable Afghan military and police force able to do that is nowhere near. US and NATO forces withdrawal from Afghanistan, if not properly planned could be like the Vietnam fiasco. Afghanistan would be lost to the Al-Qaeda- Taliban, and planet earth will become unsafe for Western civilizations. America and NATO are trapped in the Afghan quicksand. Patience and wisdom of the highest order is required to extract from this quagmire. Instead of hurried and unplanned troop withdrawal, an intelligent exit strategy be formulated. Shortcomings in the recruitment, training, pay, allowances and amenities of ANA and police be streamlined; and the majority Pushtun population be compensated for the losses and damage suffered by them. The United Sates and the West owes an apology to the people of Afghanistan for the sufferings, destruction and damage inflicted on them.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

A NATO WITHOUT TURKEY?

DAVID SCHENKER

The European Union has long debated the merits of Turkish EU membership. But now, nearly a decade after Islamists took the reins of power in Ankara, the central question is no longer whether Turkey should be integrated into Europe's economic and political structure, but rather whether Turkey should remain a part of the Western defence structure.

Recent developments suggest that while Turkey's military leadership remains committed to the state's secular, Western orientation and the defining principles of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the civilian Islamist government led by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) seems to have different ideas. Ankara is increasingly pursuing illiberal policies at home, for instance by attacking independent media, while aligning itself with militant, anti-western Middle East regimes abroad.

The latest demonstration of Ankara's political shift was its cancellation last month of Israel's long-standing participation in NATO military exercises in Turkey. Even worse, on the same day Israel was disinvited, Turkey announced imminent military exercises with Syria, a member of the U.S. list of "State Sponsors of Terrorism." These developments came just weeks after Ankara and Damascus established a "senior strategic cooperation council." These developments could signal the beginning of the end of Turkey's close military and economic cooperation with the Jewish State. Ankara is simultaneously moving closer to Tehran, even though the Islamic Republic is undermining stability in Afghanistan and Iraq by providing insurgents in both countries with explosives that are killing NATO and US soldiers. The Iranian regime is also threatening to annihilate Israel, the very state Turkey is now distancing itself from. And yet Turkey and Iran have signed several security cooperation agreements over the past few years, and just two months ago, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoðan hinted he would oppose sanctions against Iran, saying he "firmly believe[d] that the international community's concern over Iran's nuclear program should be eased." This past June, Turkish President Abdullah Gul was among the first to call Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to congratulate him on his fraudulent re-election.

Meanwhile at home, individual liberty and rule of law have gone by the wayside. The Islamist government—in an effort to silence critics—attempts to bankrupt the independent and secularist Turkish media through extra-legal tax fines. The AKP government has also targeted political opponents by arresting them on dubious charges of attempting to overthrow the government. Ankara's dramatic policy transformation seems inconsistent with the fundamental values that underpin the alliance. NATO partners are bound by the principles articulated in the 1949 charter, which affirm member states' "desire to live in peace with all peoples and all governments...[a] determin[ation] to safeguard the freedom, common heritage and civilisation of their peoples, founded on the principles of democracy, individual liberty and the rule of law." Member states are also committed to "seek to promote stability and well-being in the North Atlantic area."

As Ankara's politics shift, Turkey's willingness to take on politically difficult NATO missions could also diminish, bringing into question the commitment to "collective defence." While Turkey has deployed troops to the NATO mission in Afghanistan, it's unclear that Ankara would support NATO efforts to stem Russian pressure westward in Latvia or Lithuania. Judging from Turkey's equivocal position on Russia's 2008 invasion of Georgia, it seems unlikely that Turkey today would even consent to training missions in the Baltic States. Justifying his tilt toward Moscow, Mr. Erdogan said "we have an important trade volume [with Russia]. We would act in line with what Turkey's national interests require." While Ankara's politics have changed, the military's pro-Western disposition reportedly has not. But over the past decade, the dynamics between the politicians and the general staff have been transformed. For better or worse, Western pressures have compelled the Turkish military to remain in the barracks, and refrain from interfering in political developments.

Today, the Turkish military can do little but watch as the secular, democratic, pro-Western republic established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in the early 1900s is undermined. While it's still too early to write Turkey out of NATO, in the not so distant future, the alliance will reach a decision point. In 2014, NATO's next generation fighter plane, the Joint Strike Fighter, will be delivered. Given the direction of Turkish politics, serious questions must be asked about whether the Islamist government in Ankara can be trusted with the highly advanced technology.

It's time that NATO starts thinking about a worst case scenario in Turkey. For even if the increasingly Islamist state remains a NATO partner, at best, it seems Turkey will be an unreliable partner. Since the 1930s, the country has been a model of modernisation and moderation in the Middle East. But absent a remarkable turnaround, it would appear that the West is losing Turkey. Should this occur, it would constitute the most dramatic development in the region since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.

The writer is director of the Programme in Arab Politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. — The Wall Street Journal

 

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

THE INNER LANGUAGE OF BUSINESS..!

ROBERT CLEMENTS

The Mumbai municipal corporation has suddenly started insisting that signboards put up by shops and other establishments have Marathi script in big letters. "Ridiculous," I thought to myself, "It's upto the shopkeepers to find out which language displayed will get them the best business!"

"Not ridiculous!" said my friend P.K.Bole appearing from nowhere, "This rule will help shopkeepers increase their business manifold!" "Nonsense!" I said, "How will Marathi boards help increase business?" P.K. beckoned me to sit at a roadside tea stall and pointed to a shop on the other side, "Now let's say your wife goes shopping to buy you some underwear!" "I buy my own!" I shouted, "My wife doesn't buy my underwear!" "Just for the sake of debate let's assume your wife is the type who buys you your innerwear, now what does she do when she walks down the road?" "She looks for a shop that will sell the stuff!" I said blushing. "And because she doesn't know where it is, because you're the type who has been insisting on doing it yourself, she walks up and down looking for the shop!" "Yes," I agreed, "Till she looks up at the boards and sees…""The boards are in Marathi!" said P.K. "Ah yes, so that adds to the confusion!" I said. "So what does she have to do?" "Enter every shop and ask whether the shop sells what she is looking for!" "Exactly," said P.K. Bole, "So she enters the shop opposite." "But that shop sells fridges and air-conditioners," I pointed out. "So she enters the shop selling fridges and AC's and asks the salesman whether he sells inner wear for her husband, and the sales man…" "Throws her out.." I added quickly. "No," said P.K. "The salesman being a good salesman, says 'Madam, have a look at our air conditioners, Madam see our new frost free green colour fridges!"

"Green colour?" I asked. "Let it be," said P.K patiently. "Green or red or blue, and suddenly a woman who is in search of her husband's innerwear purchases a new AC or a blue fridge and big business is made, through the use of Marathi signboards!" "But that is preposterous!" I cried. "For whom?" "For the people!" "Which people?" asked P.K. "For the wife? She is happy with a red fridge or a purple one, the salesman is happy with a huge unexpected sale. It is a win-win situation!"

"What about me?" I asked. "Ah you!" said P.K, "You have a couple of choices, either do your shopping yourself, learn to go around without inner wear, or…"

"Or what?" I asked impatiently. "Or teach your wife Marathi..!" said P.K as he disappeared as silently as he'd come.

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

DHAKA-THIMPHU TIE

 

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's visit to Bhutan, our land-locked neighbour now a democracy under a constitutional monarchy, is likely to open up a new chapter in the two countries' relations. A whole gamut of issues such as bilateral and regional politics, economy, trade, communications, climate, tourism and people-to-people contact have come under discussion during her visit. While Thimphu has sought cooperation from Bangladesh for successfully hosting the 16th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), Dhaka has offered duty-free access to 18 more commodities, on top of the existing 72, from Bhutan. On this count, Bangladesh has taken the right initiative characteristic of both bilateral trade and South-South cooperation which is a deal conforming to free market economy.

Sure enough, political component alone cannot account for the core of bilateral relations; these have to be complemented by economic factors. Both Bhutan and Bangladesh have commodities - from small to big - to exchange and share in collaborative ventures. Duty-free access to fruits from Bhutan would be in the interests of both countries. Import of electric pole from that country makes sense for Bangladesh. Our prime minister's proposal for import of electricity from hydroelectric power plants set up jointly there, merits consideration.
Bhutan has requirement for industrial products, garments and knitwear which we can export. One stumbling block is the absence of a transit route through India. If the three land ports - Burimari, Tamabil and Naoka can be made fully operational by connecting them with Bhutan, the volume of trade can be increased a lot. So the case for opening transit routes through India should be pursued jointly by both countries. In this connection, the offer of Mongla seaport for use by Bhutan can be beneficial for all three countries with its facilities linked to the proposed Asian Highway from the second seaport to Tamabil.

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

DISPUTE RESOLUTION

 

The government has decided to reform the legal system by introducing an Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) system to reduce the backlog of cases in the courts. It may be recalled that three lakh cases are pending in the High Court and 15 lakh cases are waiting in the trial courts for dispensation. This has been roughly the situation for a long time and hopefully the changes will usher in the much-needed relief to the litigants. But still there remains some problems to be sorted out before the out-of-court settlement can be put to good use. 
The possibility of political influence seeping into the judicial process is a possibility that comes with the introduction of such settlements. But if the government intends to really improve the legal system, the ADR is indeed a handy tool. Particularly when it comes to civil cases, ADRs could be extremely effective as has been observed in the case of commercial cases, where the only litigations settled have been through such methods. But if criminal cases are also to be settled outside court, it could be dangerous, as coercion and other unfair means could be used to subvert the cause of justice. Therefore, it is desirable that ADR be limited to civil cases only.

ADR is a common practice, the world over and it does substantially reduce the pressure on courts. But it has to be used judiciously combining the two conflicting claims of being both fair and timely. It is not an easy task but then when others can do it, why can't we? The major stumbling block is our inability to change our mind-set.

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

BOB'S BANTER

WHO IS YOUR NEIGHBOUR?

 

"A 45 year old man who suffered an injury on his left leg bled to death at the gates of the Chennai Government Hospital. The shabbily dressed man, with a plaster on his leg, had been lying under the scorching sun for 20 days…" TOI, 23rd Oct.

 

Twenty days! Not an hour or two, not a day nor two, but twenty days in the scorching heat of Madras, lying not at the gates of a five star hotel or rich man's bungalow but outside a hospital, meant for such as him. And from the filthy pavement the suffering man cries, "Doctor! Doctor!" Doctors rush by, their minds on patients they are going to save, their ears closed to the cries below. Again his pitiful cries and relatives of one who has just recovered, pass him by, happily bearing a box of sweets for the nurses who have saved their kin. The poor man cries out, not for an hour, not two, but twenty days. The beggars feed him. From their scraps and tit bits they give him some. And in their homes and offices the people of that city are angry. Angry for their neighbouring brethren in Sri Lanka, Tamils just like them who they feel are getting a raw deal in a country across the sea. "They are our neighbours!"

"Tamils just like us!"

"Being ill-treated by the Singhalese!"

"No human rights!"

"No rights!" they shout about their brothers a thousand miles away. The poor man cries out, not for an hour, not two but for twenty days, as the beggars feed him outside the hospital gates with scraps and tit bits they scrape out of their nearly empty plates. "Hello sir, yes, yes, you who walk with fuming face, you who are so angry about human rights across the sea, come with me!"

"Where?"
"Just across the road, to the general hospital!"

"Why!"
"A man lies there, dying!"

"What do you want me to do?"

 

"The same you are trying to do for those across the sea! Come!"
"No!"
"Why?"

"Because it's easier shouting about someone a thousand miles away, screaming about human rights and poverty across the sea than lifting and feeding someone across the street…!" And the man bled to death.        bobsbanter@gmail.com

 

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

DEVELOPING TOURISM INDUSTRY

DR. MIR MUHAMMAD HASSAN

 

Presently Bangladesh government is showing interest in developing tourism industry in the country. Information regarding actions taken toward achieving the goal and consistence of words and actions of the authorities' are not encouraging. Therefore the whole situation deserves to be seen from right perspectives.
Bangladesh being a small level flood prone agrarian country 80 per cent of which is level floodplain, 8.0 per cent is terrace land with patchy 'sal' forests in central and north-west parts and the remaining 12.0 per cent in north, northeast and southeast parts is covered with depleted rain forest. The country is blessed with rich biodiversity with 7,500 species of flowering plants and many species of mammals, reptiles, amphibians and birds. The hills have elevations range of 300-400 metres in Sylhet and Chittagong, 600-700 metres in Rangamati and Khagrchcari districts and in Bandarban the elevation of hills reaches up to 15,00 metres.
The climate in Bangladesh is homogeneous having hot humid summer (May - October), cool dry winter (December - February), short spring (February-March) and long warm wet season (July - October). The population size is 150 million (BSS 2001) belonging to the Muslim (86.7 per cent), Hindu (10.0 per cent), Buddhist and Christian faiths. There are 33 types of indigenous ethnic minorities in Bangladesh. Though, they live in all 64 districts but are denser in Bandarban (1,10,000), Chittagong (50,000), Dinajpur (61,000), Jaypurhat (40,000), Khagrachari (1,70,000), Moulvibazar and Mymensingh (35,000), Naogaon (75,000), Netrakona (30,000), Rajshahi (45,000), Rangamati (2,50,000) and Rangpur (30,000) districts.

People presently practice tourism for the purpose of recreation, business, study, cultural exchanges, promotion trade and commerce, exploration of markets for industrial and agricultural products, searching work, acquisition of knowledge, cultural exchanges, and availing of health service facilities hence many countries developed tourism sector as gainful industry. Based on above contexts, tourism is classed as recreational, ecological and business, academic, etcetera. In addition many tourists travel with multiple objectives and make better utilisation of money, time and efforts. Generally tourists are interested enjoying the natural beauties of forests, wetlands, landscapes, deserts, mountains, waterfalls, historical places and relics along with cultural activities.
The advanced countries developed tourism linked facilities e.g. good hotels and restaurants, rich shopping malls, night clubs and cabarets for recreation along with good communication facilities and well-managed recreation centres, nature conservation areas, archeological sites to attract tourists from different categories and countries. Development of tourism is therefore linked with the overall development of a country particularly the related sectors e.g. communication, public health, environment, education and culture and dependable law and order situation. Attention of the concerned agencies may therefore be drawn toward these facts for development of tourism industry in Bangladesh. Hence success of developing tourism industry will therefore depend on sincere efforts and proportionate investments that will help Bangladesh earning foreign exchange and generation of employment like Singapore where 25 per cent in tourism biased activities. India, Mayanmer, Sri Lanka also developed tourists facilities in recent years.

In Bangladesh, for developing tourism industry existing facilities at Cox's Bazar, Kuakuta, Teknaf, Shonadia, St. Martin island, Jaflong, Patenga, Ramgamati, Kaptai, Khagrachhari, Bandarban, Chimbuk and other places can be improved to attract tourists. The sundarbans' tidal forest, Hail Haor and Hakaluki Haor, the holy shrines at Bagherhat, Sylhet, Chittagong and archaeological relics at Mainamati, Paharpur, Mahasthan Garh, Dhaka, Vikrampur, etc. have potentials for tourism development. Bangladesh though does not possess very attractive tourist resources like India, Thailand, and Myanmar, yet the country can develop tourists' industry based on relics of its past Buddist, Hindu and Muslim rules, beeches at Kox's Bazar and Kuakuta, rain forests in CHT and wetlands, greenness of the floodplains and the ethnic diversities.

The architectures of different mosques, churches and pagodas will be interesting to the pilgrims, architects, artists, historians and holiday makers as well, if presented with proper backgrounds. The Labagh Fort, Tara Mosque, Chhota Sona Mosque, Baba Adam Mosque, Sat Gumbuj Mosque, Shilaidaha Kutibari, Sonargaon Fort, Kantajee's Temple, Dhakeswari Mandir, Bayajid Bostami Majar, Shahjalal Mazar, Buddist Stupa, pagodas at Kuakata and Cox's Bazar can generate interest amongst the tourists. Similarly tourists can also be guided to visit the National Museum, Muktijuddhyer Jadughar, Central and National Shahid Minars. Many tourists may be interested visiting the ethnological museums in Chittagong and Rangamati, archeological museums at Maina-mati, Comilla and Mahastangarh that tell us the history of Buddhist civilisation in the region.
The Sundarbans has 335 plant species that include 'sundri' (Heritiera fomes), 'gewa', 'baen', 'keora', 'dhundul', 'singra', 'golpata', 'henthal' and 'passur', rich faunal diversity, and landscape intricately chopped by rivers, channels and ox-bow lakes is interesting to the tourists. The faunal species in the Sundarbans include 49 mammals, 315 birds, 53 reptiles and 8 amphibians (IUCN 2000). World's densest stripped tiger (Panthera tigris) population (450) live there (2004). UNESCO declared the Sunderbans as 'World Heritage Sites'. This vast wetland forest has potentiality for the development of river cruising, shooting by camera and bird seeing site to attract tourists. Quick and easier communication facility along with safe and clean accommodation and healthy and safe food supply facility can also be developed in the Sundarbans.

Similarly the tea gardens at Sylhet, Moulvibazar, Habiganj, Ramgarh and Khagrachari, Ramgarh, Panchagarh and the scenic beauties of Tentulia, Teknaf, Madhabdi, Jaflong, Tamabil and Kuakata can be developed as attractive tourists' resorts. In addition, the ethnic cultures at CHT, Sylhet, Mymensingh, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Dinajpur districts need to be preserved and developed further. Eleven out of 30 indigenous tribes of Indo-Chinese and Indo-Mongolian origins live on hills in CHT. They apparently look alike but have different rituals, languages, cultures, house construction patterns and costumes. Usually each tribe lives in villages scattered on hill slopes and hill tops separately that are recognizable. Tourists show great interest visiting the tribal villages. At Cox's Bazar, tourists visit pagodas, buy things from Marma shops and make time for visiting the Marma villages. The traditional cultures of the Marmas, Chakmas, Murongs, Tippras at Rangamati, Khagrachhari and Bandarban and the Garo, Khasia and Monipuri cultures are subjected to rapid erosion in recent years. These indigenous cultures are required to be preserved as resources both for attraction of tourists and conservation of cultural diversities.

The GoB makes promises for development of the tourists' sector but do not investment for the purpose adequately. As a result Bangladesh failed reaching the goal so far. Since the eighties Bangladesh Tourist Bureau established few motels, restaurants at different places. Forest Department established National Parks at Salna, Madhupur, Kaptai and Khagrachhari; Eco-Park and Game Sanctuaries at Sitakunda, Madhu Tilla, Madhabkundu-Muraichhari, Chimbuk, Gajni, Alu-Tilla and Suffary Park at Duhazari. The Birds' Sanctuaries at Hakaluki Haor, the Botanical garden and National Herbarium in Dhaka and the World Heritage sites at Tanguar Haor and sundarbans are also maintained by FD. The Zoo Gardens in Dhaka and Chittagong are maintained by Livestock Department. Contributions of private sector toward development of tourism industry remained limited in the establishment of several residential hotels at the important tourists' spots. Experience of visiting countries in Asian, Africa, Europe and North America  shows that development of tourists' industry is closely related with several other backward and forward linkage factors hence Bangladesh has to put serious efforts both from public and private sector agencies for developing tourism as industry utilising its limited resources. Because CHT is not open to the expatriate tourists due to security reason, Sundarbans, Kuakata, Jaflong, Hakaluki and Hail Haor areas occur at remote places and traveling is inconvenient, expensive, and risky. Accommodation facilities at the tourists' spots are inadequate, expensive and often ill maintained. Bangladesh Tourist Bureau though occasionally arranges package tours but these are neither regular nor convenient for visitors to avail those. Moreover, the resorts at Cox's Bazar, Bandarban, Khagrachhari, Kuakata, Tekinaf, St. Martin islands and Char Kukri Mukri are crowded due to poorly regulated movement of squatters, beggars, hawkers and on looker creating public nuisance and law and order problems.

The incidents of rapes, murders, extortions, terrorist activities, road accidents, hartal, abduction and kidnap published in the media discourage tourists visiting Bangladesh. The incidents of bomb blasts by the terrorists frighten the local and expatriate tourists equally. The militant Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh (JMJB), Jamiatul Mujahedien Bangladesh (JMB), Harkatul Islam, Ahle Hadis, Islamic Constitution Movement (ICM), and etcetera unless is nipped in the buds will hinder development of tourists' industry in Bangladesh.
The prospect of tourists' industry is not bright in Bangladesh where the tourists and holiday makers cannot even freely move, use camera, binocular, tape recorder and talk with people. Moreover, establishment of nightclubs, cabarets, bars, etc. even in big cities may be bitterly criticised by the conservative groups.
Tourism development in Bangladesh requires mending limiting the efforts on improvement of existing facilities, conserving the ethnic cultures, removing the distrust between indigenous people and Bangalees and implementation of Peace Accord, 1997. Finally, human resources in Bangladesh Tourist Bureau require development to understand the basic requirements of tourism enhancements and proper guiding.
It is unfortunate but true that the Cox's Bazar and Kuakata beeches have already lost some natural beauties due to ill-planned growth and demographic pressure; the St.Martin island, Shonadia, Nijhumdip and Char Kukri Mukri, Jaflong and Tamabil have turned densely populated slums already. The CHT is politically disturbed and every thana towns and growth centres are the clusters of plain land settlers that might reduce tourists' attraction in the region.

 

(The writer is Former Director, BFR)

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

BANGLADESH-MYANMAR RELATIONSHIP

KAWSER AHMED

 

IN one of the recent photographs which framed Bangladeshi Border Guards officers playing golf with their Nasaka counterparts in the nearest Myanmar outpost close to Teknaf, was a pleasant scene, reminiscing of a German General visiting USSR Aeroplane factories prior to German invasion of USSR in 1941 (Germany and the USSR were friendly countries at that time due to a Treaty of Non-Aggression in 1939). Saying so, I am not being too skeptical about the latest development along our southeastern front but it's a worrisome posture when everything seems all correct in newspapers. Is there something to worry about? May be not. But let's put things in perspective. Bangladesh and Myanmar share a 320 km border, partly demarcated by the Naf River. Since independence Myanmar was low in our foreign relation priority. This relationship nosedived first in 1991 when Myanmar attacked and ransacked bordering Rejupara Border Observation Post (BOP) and Bangladesh was put on a high military alert. Both the countries reached in a boiling point, and both reached close to a 'Limited War', one headed by military junta and other with rejuvenated democratic polity. But somehow the tension did not escalate beyond a danger level. The second opportunity appeared on November 1, 2008, when South Korean Company Daewoo started exploration work in AD-7 Block, 50 nautical miles south west Saint Martin Island in the Bay of Bengal. Nearly 50 people were found using four ships in that area, escorted by two Myanmar's naval warships. This area in Bay of Bengal is also claimed by Bangladesh (international law allows every country to have and use 200 nautical miles from its coast to the sea, however, this law gives rise to tricky situation as the coasts of India and Bangladesh and Myanmar follow a curve, which implies overlapping of territory). This time also a strong diplomatic overture by the then caretaker government of Bangladesh could successfully diffuse the tension as the danger could be avoided at a threshold level. So what could be the third attempt? An intelligent guess or conspiracy theory may produce many stories but the people in the helm of government should scrutiny all symptoms in order to remain proactive. Ultimately this is our national security matter which cannot be ignored.

Let's quickly revisit the path of history and how 'Burma' turned into 'Myanmar'. The conventional wisdom of the powerful Burmese kings was to fight wars with dominant neighbours who invaded when Burmese kingdoms were weak. Out of these, Ayutthaya and Chiang-Mai of Siam (Thailand), Manipur, Assam and Kachar of India and Chittagong of present Bangladesh were important. Since the Pyu City-State in the 1st century BC, Burma was part of an overland trade route between China and India. Southeast Asia was at times under the control of Pagan Kingdom, which was finally flattened by Mongols in 1289. Even China feared expansion of Burmese power and sent armies, but Burmese kings successfully held back four Chinese invasions between 1766 and 1769. Burmese general Bandula succeeded in conquering Assam, bringing Burma face to face with British interests in India. Consequently three Anglo-Burmese wars made Burma a province of British India in 1886. When the Suez Canal was put in operation, the demand for Burmese rice grew. By then it was heavily colonized and the jobs, power and wealth were concentrated in the hands of the Indian and Chinese migrants. General Ne Win was compelled to expel all foreigners in 1960s but China openly supported the communist revolt in Burma. During this turmoil, Aung San and his comrades got practical help from the ambitious Nippon (Japan). Democratic rule ended in that country in 1962 when General Ne Win led a military coup d'etat. He ruled for nearly 26 years and pursued policies under the guise of the 'Burmese Way to Socialism'. In 1988, unrest over economic mismanagement and political oppression by the government led to widespread pro-democracy demonstrations throughout the country. Security forces killed thousands of demonstrators and general Saw Maung staged a coup d'etat and formed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Since then Myanmar is a country ruled absolutely my military junta. The official English name was changed from "the Union of Burma" to "the Union of Myanmar" including its capital from Rangoon to Yangon, in 1989 amidst lots of controversy in western quarters but it suited the Junta's appetite.

So far our activities in foreign, military and economic arena is India centric and far to the West. Myanmar used to be considered as a hinterland thus posing lesser strategic values. So to say, military or some insurgent threat had never been anticipated. But when the first flight of Rohingyas arrived in the southern part of our shore in 1992, it rang the bell for our foreign policy makers to address the issue and with the recent turmoil over maritime border demarcation; it further called for the necessity to understand Myanmar. Traditionally, serving military officers on deputation to Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) are being designated as ambassadors in Myanmar which somehow sends a signal that Myanmar is low on foreign policy priority (though some would justify dispatching military officers where military junta rules!). However, the recent changes need a closer scrutiny within a larger landscape as we need to know the factors that shaped and would be shaping our 'Strategic Contours' with Myanmar in future.

(To be continued)

 

(The writer is an M..Phil researcher in the department of Peace and Conflict Studies at D.U.)

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

GLOBALISATION AND DEFORESTATION

OBAIDUR RAHMAN

 

BY definition globalisation, which is usually driven by a combination of economic, technological, socio-cultural, political and biological factors, is traditionally described as a continuing process where regional economies, societies and cultures have become incorporated through a globe-spanning network of exchange. This global course is however chiefly concentrated on the aspects of economic globalisation where national economies are being integrated into the international economy through trade, FDI, capital flows, migration and the spread of technology. Sounds all good but the other side of the argument is that the efforts of globalisation are simply to create a global free market of goods and services which are exclusively damaging for the poorer nations as western nations aims to exploit the strategies of globalisation to fulfill their devious political ambitions. The debate is still on and as for Bangladesh's perspective, some view this as the ultimate path to economic freedom while others remain skeptic describing globalization as nothing but domination towards the interests of the western corporatism. At this point some might wonder what the relationship of globalisation with deforestation is. Well, if truth be told third world developing countries like Bangladesh look up to the elements of globalisation to strengthen their weak and fragile economy but along the way, very unfortunately, the state of the countries environment paid considerably a huge price as a reaction to that effort and one of such deteriorated environmental aspects of Bangladesh is her gigantic problem of deforestation. 

It has been estimated that 18-19% of total land area of the country consists of forest land, out of which 10-12% are declared as forest. Another estimate suggests that the total natural forest cover is 769000 hector, which is 5.9% of the total land area of the country while another estimate is 6.7% or about 871,000 hectares of Bangladesh is forested. The truth is the extent of the forest coverage of the country has experienced a drastic decline over the years and the amount that exists now is not enough. Unfortunately the situation is worsening with the passing of each day which is in effect having a drastic effect in the once rich ecosystem of the country. Not just Bangladesh but forest depletion has turned out to be a serious concern all over the globe and especially for developing countries. According to Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of United Nations, in between 1980-90, an estimated 163 millions of hectors of forestland was lost and the number has significantly increased in the last two decades. Viewed as a result of global population growth, studies have found that per capita forest area fell globally from an average of nearly 1.2 hectors in 1960 to 0.6 hectors in 1990 and it has been predicted that it will be less than 0.2 hectors by 2020. Deforestation is expected to continue with worsening implications here in Bangladesh and it's not just due to the rapid increase of country's population.
The global causes of deforestation includes corruption of government institutions, inequality in the distribution of wealth and power, population growth, urbanisation and lastly as an effect of globalization. And as for Bangladesh, it has been estimated that deforestation affects one eighth of the country's total land areas. The key reasons behind such massive degradation of the country's forest include land clearance for agriculture, forestland encroachment, grazing, indiscriminate commercial logging, illegal felling and fuel wood collection. But probably the chief reason of all is the negligence and unbridled corruption of the forest department and other respective government authorities. This particular aspect considering the deteriorating situation of Bangladesh's forestry require great deal of attention because it is a shame what the corruption has brought to the forestry sector of this country and the tragedy is that the culprits often go unpunished.

As mentioned earlier, globalisation is one of the causes of deforestation and Bangladesh sure is an example of that. It has to be understood that efforts towards economic betterment are welcomed as long as the practice is sustainable.

In broader perspective, climate change is an example of that and deforestation is one reason that prompted this environmental problem to turn out to a staggering one. In the context of Bangladesh, many of her forestland had to be compromised to give room for entrepreneurial efforts. It is also a fact that to compete in the global economy trade and commerce must expand their activities but it also has to be realised that such expansion cannot be unethical. Sadly it has often been the case that's why inequality still prevails in the society and the fruits of such economic endeavours reach only the selected few. Globalisation sure is influencing countries to set up trade and industries but as it has been often the case that such efforts are carried out by corrupt individuals from government, political and business sectors who ensure that such attempts serve only their egotistical interests. As a result, many fears that the development efforts have been syndicated which is why the majority of the country's population lives below the poverty level and a vast extent of country's forestry has been compromised.

Since the independence, Bangladesh has come a long way. The country has her economic triumphs as well as letdowns. As the globalisation proceeds forward, Bangladesh does need to ensure her economic interests that parallels with the actual motives of such international economic and socio-cultural movement. Whether globalisation is good or bad is probably depends on the conciliation skills that solemnly protects and serves the countries overall interests. Just because one needs to compete in the international market that doesn't mean that nation's resources should be taken for granted and exploited. In terms of economic, social or cultural, that development is desired which wholly serves the need of the present generation while ensuring the requirement of the future ones. Forestry, for any country is a great resource that single-handedly influences the state of the environment of that country. And for a country like Bangladesh with her increasing population and expanding economy the extent of the importance of having a vast and enriched forestry is greater than ever. It must be remembered that economic progress is as much desirable as the environmental stability of the country. With the globalisation on the table, what is crucial for Bangladesh now is the preservation of her existing forestry while ensuring that economic efforts of the country do not jeopardize the forest lands and the ecosystem of the country.

 

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THE HIMALAYAN 

EDITORIAL

SECURITY STOCK-TAKING

The two-day Nepal-India Home Secretary Level meet rounded off on an amicable note despite the fact that the signing of the extradition treaty was deferred to be done at the highest political level. It is well-understood that Nepal and India regularly embark on bilateral talks on various issues so that greater misunderstanding on the part of either side can be mitigated at the earliest. The present meeting of the home secretaries of the two countries was basically aimed at taking stock of the security situation of South Asia and in particular the focus on terrorism that has proved to be pervasive. Terrorism as such affects almost all the countries of South Asia and has been a stumbling block for the economy as much manpower and resources have to be allocated to tackle the menace. This is where bilateral as well as multilateral cooperation among the countries of the South Asian region to tackle terrorism can be of immense benefit to all the stakeholders. This is, however, not to say that efforts are not on to overcome the tentacles of terrorism on a country-to-country basis. However, with technical innovations, the terrorists too have made forays that were considered impossible in the past. Hence, the threats look sinister unless there is a sustained and coordinated move at their annihilation.

India, as it is known, is cognizant of the reality that for checking cross-border terrorism mutual cooperation with Nepal is essential and vice versa. With the open border that exists between the two countries, it is necessarily a tough task to boost trans-border security, but given the will and cooperation to do so it can be done. For this, it becomes necessary to strengthen the border security arrangements, which has been agreed upon during the home secretarial meet of the two countries. Besides, mutual cooperation is the agreed upon plank not only to check terrorist activities but also to combat trans-border crime, human trafficking, and circulation of fake currencies. The assurance of necessary steps to be taken in the future makes sense in that both countries stand to benefit through the arrangement. The modalities, however, has to taken up as per the severity of each element. For Nepal, the agreement is only an indication that the talks were held on an amicable footing. The boosting up of the level of understanding between the two countries must exude confidence that there will be further tangible efforts in the future for mutual benefit.

For  Nepal and India to maintain their ever-strengthening bilateral ties, the urgency rests
in trying to untie the knot at the earliest of stages through the vehicle of talks. This guarantees that any issue, however trivial it may be, does not grow out of proportion to dent the cordial ties that has sustained many an ups and downs along the way. One thing that has to be borne in mind is that whatever is agreed upon needs follow up at regular intervals so as to ascertain that the implementation aspect is up to the mark. Now that the next home secretary level talks is scheduled for next year in New Delhi, the need is to not to wait for the meet to arrive but for both the countries to make the progress agreed upon recently.

 

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THE HIMALAYAN 

EDITORIAL

STICK THEM UP

The recent action against 25 shops in Kathmandu valley for violating laws over a period of six days shows the scale in which irregularities are taking place. Among other offenses, some of these shops were found selling date expired goods. Now, according to the law, the manufacturers are duty-bound to provide information on prices of commodities, their date of manufacture and expiry date, batch number, net weight and ingredients. It is common knowledge that many consumers are duped, and they unknowingly buy goods whose date have already expired.  Along with the price list, manufacturers should be compelled to give these details in their products, and for the wholesalers and retailers to sell only goods which do not exceed the expiry date.
Stringent action should be taken against those involved in the racket of selling date expired goods. This is necessary for some of the consumer items have direct impact on the health of the public. Another thing is that some retailers are found erasing the expiry dates of the products they sell. This is a serious crime and it is high time the concerned dissuaded such cheating by ensuring reach of the law.

 

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THE HIMALAYAN 

EDITORIAL

NEPAL-INDIA TRADE ACCORD UNRAVELLING CONTENTIOUS ISSUES

 

With effect of the revised Nepal-India Trade Agreement two great expectations loom large over Nepal's trade with India. First is overcoming the non-tariff barriers (NTBs) that restrained Nepal's export to India, despite the privilege of duty free market access. The treaty has essentially addressed the three long-standing issues faced by the Nepalese exporters: the technical requirements and standards, quantitative restriction, and the value addition criteria for preferential rules of origin.

For that India has agreed to recognize the standard certificates, issued by the "competent" Nepalese authority in order to facilitate the sanitary and phyto-sanitary requirements for Nepalese exports to India, and to simplify administrative arrangements for implementation of quotas on products under the quantitative restrictions (acrylic yarn, copper products and zinc oxide.)

The second great expectation is reducing Nepal's massive trade deficit with India which has more than doubled to Rs. 106 billion in the last five years. This proposition cannot, however, be uncontested mainly for two reasons. While the ratio of Nepal's export in the total trade value with India has been shrinking continuously, the import ratio has been swelling rapidly. That created a huge gap between the two. So for several reasons, it wouldn't be that simple for Nepal to bridge the gap so soon.

Consider first the import side. During the last five years, import from India has grown unprecedentedly to approximately four times of export. The growth has been stimulated largely by a constant rise in imports of petroleum products, coals, vehicles, chemicals, machinery and tools, which constituted almost half of the import value. That indicates no immediate restraint over import surge as long as India remains a major source of inputs and energy to Nepal. And import of these products would fundamentally depend on the growth prospect in Nepal.

The option is, thus, undoubtedly to boost up export to India by exploiting the preferences offered by the treaty. Yet the task is not without constraint either. Conspicuously, the flow of export to India looks inconsistent and irregular. Hardly ten key Nepalese products individually owned more than one billion rupee worth of export to India, and with much difficultly these items indicated regularity. For the rest of major export products their performance seemed trifling. Then a question may be raised as to what causes Nepal's export to India be so feeble in spite of the preferential treatment.

One major cause could be that Nepal depends excessively on a few commodities whose export potentiality is determined not by the "real" comparative advantage, but crucially by the duty advantage as a result of duty free market access to India. In that respect, it is pertinent to see what actually determines the value of duty advantage. Essentially, its significance depends on the difference between the preferential tariffs applicable to Nepal and the tariffs applied to other trading partners of India (or the tariffs popularly known as the MFN rates).

But equally important is to assess the actual value of preferences to Nepal as India accelerates trade liberalization. The margins of preference to Nepal are eroding as India reduces the MFN rates following its trade reform policy, particularly after the mid-nineties. As a result the preference margins for every key export item of Nepal have eroded substantially. Whether Nepal will lose Indian market following the preference erosion will critically depend on how much of its exports currently benefits from existing preferences. The higher the current preference margin, the higher the losses from preference erosion - hence the less likely it is that the gains will outweigh the losses. Since the combined share of the major export items is approximately half of Nepal's overall export value to India, a decrease in exports of any of these products, due to preference erosion, could have a significant impact on Nepal's overall exports to India. Similarly, the erosion of preference could lead to a reduction in the demand for Nepal's exports because other suppliers can now compete on more equal terms as India reduces the MFN rates. Thus the repercussion could be a severe trade imbalance for Nepal.

So there is no alternative to export promotion through product diversification to recover from trade imbalance. Nepal should desirably specialize in agriculture products to enlarge India exports for two reasons. First, Nepal has a comparative advantage in a range of agriculture products. Secondly, it enjoys relatively higher preference margins and confronts slower preference erosion in agriculture exports. Hence the specialization in farm exports assures both duty advantage and stability of preferential treatment. If so, the enhanced farm exports to India would effectively correct Nepal's soaring trade imbalance with India, provided that the commitments made by the revised treaty are accomplished.

Shakya is Lecturer of Economics at TU — bijshakya@hotmail.com

 

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THE HIMALAYAN 

EDITORIAL

BOOST CHILDREN'S MORAL IQ

SUVECHCHHA POUDEL

In moral intelligence: the seven essential virtues that teach kids to do the right things, Dr Michele Borba, an educational consultant says, "the best way to help kids overcome negative pressures and act right in this immoral times is to boost their moral IQ. Parents can teach traits of moral intelligence such as empathy, love, conscience, self-control, respect, kindness to their children."

Parents today can no longer sit back and assume that their kids will become decent human beings. They will have to take the reins in their own hand to raise moral children. Raising a moral child is more than correcting misbehavior and encouraging positive action.

Children learn behavior and values from their environmenst, but mainly from their parents, siblings, relatives, peers, teachers and increasingly, the media.

They learn from watching how other people behave, from observing minutely how their parents deal with difficult and trying situations and from their own experience. Research say that parents who have clear moral convictions are more likely to raise good children because they live their moral beliefs and priorities them in their daily living.

Sadly, today many parents are wrapped up in their careers and the world and fail to nurture their children's moral intelligence. They feel that providing their children with food, clothing and shelter is all that they are duty-bound to do. "Parents are their children's first and most powerful moral teachers, so make sure that the moral behaviors your kids are picking up from you are the ones that you want them to copy. Don't let them be influenced by role models they watch around them who are empty-headed and immoral. Try to make your life a living example of good moral behavior for your child to see. Your gentleness will teach them kindness. Your positive attitude about life will rub off on your children and they will be upbeat," says Richard Eyre in teaching your children values.

Keep in mind that "If we do not educate our children, society will, and they, and we, will live with the results," so for most of the parents, the greatest opportunity they have is to deepen their own character and make sure that their children really can become the best they can be.

 

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THE HIMALAYAN 

EDITORIAL

WHAT'S LEFT AFTER 1989?

IAN BURUMA

NEW YORK:Twenty years ago, when the Berlin Wall was breached and the Soviet empire was collapsing, only die-hard believers in a communist utopia felt unhappy. A few people, of course, clung to the possibility of what was once called "actually existing socialism." Others criticised the triumphalism of the "new world order" promised by George HW Bush. And the way West Germany rolled over the wreckage of its East German neighbour seemed almost like an act of cruelty.

Still, 1989 was a good time to be alive (except in China, where the democrats were put down). Many of us felt that we were seeing the dawn of a new liberal age, in which freedom and justice would spread, like fresh flowers, across the globe. Twenty years on, we know this was not to be.

Xenophobic populism is stalking democracies in Europe. Social-democratic parties are shrinking, while right-wing demagogues promise to protect "Western values" from the Islamic hordes. And the economic debacles of the last few years seem to bear out Mikhail Gorbachev's recent warning that "Western capitalism, too, deprived of its old adversary and imagining itself the undisputed victor and incarnation of global progress, is at risk of leading Western society and the rest of the world down another historical blind alley."

The way it looks now, liberals, in the "progressive" American sense of the word, may actually have been among the losers of 1989. Social democrats were always despised by communists, and vice versa. But many social-democratic ideals, rooted in Marxist notions of social justice and equality, were thrown out, like the proverbial baby, with the bathwater of communism.

This process was already underway before the fall of the Berlin Wall, with the free-market radicalism of the Thatcher-Reagan era. Society, Margaret Thatcher once famously declared, doesn't exist. Only individuals and families counted. It was everyone for themselves.

For many people, this had the ring of liberation - from overregulated markets, overbearing trade unions, and class privilege. That is why it was called neo-liberalism. But free-market radicalism undermined the role of the state in building a better, more just, and more equal society. Neo-liberals are not so much interested in justice as in greater efficiency, more productivity, the bottom line.

At the same time that neo-liberals were slashing and burning their way through old social-democratic arrangements, the left was dissipating its energies on cultural politics, "identity," and ideological multiculturalism. Democratic idealism was once the domain of the left, including social democrats and liberals. In the United States, it was Democrats, such as John F Kennedy, who promoted freedom around the world.
But, in the late 20th century, it became more important to many leftists to save "Third World" culture, no matter how barbaric, from "neo-colonialism," than to support equality and democracy. People on the left would defend brutal dictators (Castro, Mao, Pol Pot, Khomeini, et al.) simply because they opposed "Western imperialism."
As a result, all politics that were derived, no matter how loosely, from Marxism, lost credibility, and finally died in 1989. This was naturally a disaster for communists and socialists, but also for social democrats, for they had lost an ideological basis for their idealism. And, without idealism, politics becomes a form of accounting, a management of purely material interests.

This explains why Italians, and later Thais, chose business tycoons to lead their countries. They hoped that men who managed to accumulate so much personal wealth could do the same for their voters.

Yet the rhetoric of idealism has not quite disappeared. It merely shifted from left to right. This, too, began with Reagan and Thatcher. They took up Kennedy's promotion of democracy in the world. Once the left abandoned the language of internationalism - democratic revolution, national liberation, and so forth - it was taken up by neo-conservatives. Their promotion of American military force as the strong arm of democracy may have been misguided, crude, arrogant, ignorant, naïve, and deeply dangerous, but it was indisputably idealistic.
The allure of revolutionary élan has drawn some former leftists to the neo-conservative side. But most liberals were deeply alarmed by the neo-cons, without being able to find a coherent answer.

Having lost their own zest for internationalism, a common response among liberals to neo-con radicalism has been a call for "realism," non-interference in others' affairs, and withdrawal from the world. This may be the wiser course in many cases, but it is hardly inspiring. So it is no wonder that a left-wing internationalist, such as French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, has found a kind of home for his idealism in Nicolas Sarkozy's conservative government.

For the first time since the Kennedy administration, the US is one of the only liberal democracies in the world with a centre-left government. Can President Obama lead the way to a new era of social and political idealism? It seems unlikely. His efforts to provide better healthcare for Americans, for example, is not so much an innovation, as an attempt to catch up with arrangements which most Europeans and Japanese have long taken for granted. And for this he is already being called a "socialist" by his enemies.

Obama is neither a socialist, nor a mere political accountant. He has some modest ideals, and may yet be an excellent president. But what is needed to revive liberal idealism is a set of new ideas on how to promote justice, equality and freedom in the world. Reagan, Thatcher, and Gorbachev, assisted in the end of an ideology, which once offered hope, and inspired real progress, but resulted in slavery and mass murder. We are still waiting for a new vision, which will lead to progress, but this time, we hope, without tyranny.
Ian Buruma is the author of Murder in Amsterdam: The Death of Theo van Gogh and the Limits of Tolerance. He is a professor of democracy, human rights and journalism at Bard College. His latest book is the novel The China Lover.

Courtesy: Project Syndicate

 

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THE HIMALAYAN 

EDITORIAL

CREDOS;CREATE A WINNING ATTITUDE — II

ROBERT KNOWLTON

 

There is a science to creating a positive attitude of achievement. It is made up of very specific elements. They are presented here in a sequence, but it is the simultaneous interaction of them working together that creates the chemistry for a winning attitude and success in just about any endeavor.

Read over this list. Then, follow the exercise at the end.  For a start you have to set your inner motivation. Inner motivation happens when you are clearly motivated toward a very specific goal and away from the unpleasant consequences of not achieving it. You must realize the value of high standards. Set your own high standards. This means achieving anything less is unacceptable. Dedicate yourself to this level.

Get your goal into chunks. Break down your goal into manageable, bite-size chunks. The benefits are:
a. You'll focus on small tasks you can and will do.

b. This creates a sense of satisfaction in completing each small step towards achievement.
The time frames of the present and the future have to be combined. Think vividly and fully in the positive future. At the same moment you are concentrating on achieving the task at hand, you can also see the big bright picture of your future accomplishment drawing you forward.

What step can you take right now to reach your next milestone? Fully experience the present and take action toward your future.

Personal involvement is of utmost importance. Get involved in your own success. Don't wait for it to happen to you. When you participate, you influence what's going on. It increases your commitment, focuses your intensity, and makes you more determined. Personal involvement leads to owning a bigger stake in your own future. —icbs.com

 

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

CLIMATE OF FEAR AND LOATHING

ON NOVEMBER 6 THE PM MAKES HIS CASE

 

WHEN you strip away all the political rhetoric, all the political excuses, there are two stark choices: Action or inaction. The scientific evidence from the CSIRO and other expert bodies have outlined the implications for Australia, in the absence of national and global action on climate change: Storm surges and rising sea levels putting at risk over 700,000 homes and businesses around our coastlines, with insurance companies warning that preliminary estimates of the value of property in Australia exposed to the risk of land being inundated or eroded by rising sea levels range from $50 billion to $150bn. The truth is that the do- nothing climate change skeptics offer no alternative official body of evidence from any credible government in the world. Instead they offer maximum fear, the universal conservative stock in trade. And by doing so, these do-nothing climate change sceptics are prepared to destroy our children's future. Climate change deniers are small in number, but they are too dangerous to be ignored.

 

Has the PM been stung into action by Peter Hartcher's column in The Sydney Morning Herald on October 24?:

 

Can you guess when Kevin Rudd last gave a speech on the subject he once called "the great moral and economic challenge of our time", climate change? It was six months ago. Rudd's promise to act on global warming was one of the central campaign pledges that carried him to the prime ministership in 2007. It is a mandate issue for him. Yet he has not made any serious effort to argue his case for six months.

 

Virginia Trioli gets sceptical with Steve Howard, CEO of The Climate Group on ABC2's Breakfast Television on Friday

 

Trioli: And Steve Howard, finally, what if we're wrong and what if those naysayers are right, if global warming is not human-induced but actually is a cyclical thing. Are you prepared to take responsibility for the economic and financial damage that might be done to some industries in the rush to try and fix it?

 

Howard: In the same way, yes, if we discover the world is flat then I'll actually pay for all of the little globes to be reproduced.

 

Trioli: No, the suggestion is not as outrageous as that.

 

Howard: It's close to it.

 

Trioli: It's just some honest dissenters and I think they have to be given their place too.

 

Howard: I think it is actually akin now to saying tobacco is not linked to lung cancer. It's about that level of certainty on the science. But let's say, even then they are right, the worst we will do is create a greater energy security, a clean economy, we'll clean up air pollution, and we've done a macro-economic (study) with our partner, with Tony Blair, and we found that if we have very deep emissions reduction cuts we'll overall stimulate the global economy, we'll create more jobs, so overall we're better off if we do this. The worst we can do is be better off. We have the technology, we understand the policies, let's just get on and do it.

 

Eleanor Hall gets sceptical with Environment Minister Peter Garrett on Meet the Press yesterday:

Hall: The Prime Minister launched an attack on climate change sceptics on Friday as scaremongerers but couldn't you be accused of being a scaremongerer on sea-level rise? Do you stand by your comments on Lateline that the sea level will rise by 6m by the end of the century.

 

Garrett: As you know that discussion was a discussion about what scientists were saying about potential sea-level rises. I make this simple point about sea-level rises and climate change generally. The debate has become very skewed in this country by the sceptics. The fact is that the most comprehensive scientific endeavour to look at issues surrounding greenhouse gas emissions . . . has been conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It's fourth assessment report is crystal clear. It says it's unequivocal that there are greenhouse gas emissions ...

 

cutpaste@theaustralian.com.au

 

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

A TERROR ACT BY ANY OTHER NAME

THE FORT HOOD MASSACRE POSES HARD QUESTIONS FOR THE US

 

MUCH remains to be found out about Major Nidal Malik Hasan, army psychiatrist and prime suspect in the deadly shooting rampage at the Fort Hood military base in Killeen, Texas, where 13 soldiers died and 30 were wounded on Friday. As the Pentagon investigates the tragedy, it is being forced to confront several difficult questions. These include apparent inadequacies in its internal security, whether it should manage the military's growing contingent of Muslim soldiers any differenlty and whether the war in Afghanistan is stretching resources so thinly that it is increasingly relying on officers, like Hasan, who are unfit for service.

While the attack bore the hallmarks of terrorism, authorities from Barack Obama down are intent on limiting alarm and possible fallout against other Muslim soldiers by not referring to the incident as a terror attack. No links have been established between Hasan and Islamist terror groups and it is yet to be determined whether he was mentally ill and to what extent, if any, that factor triggered the attack. Such a bloodbath would, most likely, have been called an act of terror had it been an outsider who opened fire while invoking the name of Allah, killing a 21-year-old pregnant soldier and 12 other mothers, fathers, spouses, sons and daughters.

 

Information to emerge so far suggests that while Hasan was listed in army records as having "no religious preference", he was a devout Muslim. He was seen visiting a local mosque last week, as he did regularly. Lieutenant General Robert Cone, commander at Fort Hood, says witnesses heard Hasan shout "Allahu Akbar" -- Arabic for "God is great" -- as he gunned down fellow soldiers. Al Jazeera reports that he had lately "started arguing with soldiers about whether the wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) were right or not, to the point where he received disciplinary action and negative work reviews". And Pentagon officials are reportedly "close to 100 per cent" certain that Hasan had authored an Internet posting defending suicide bombings. If so, it would be alarming that authorities monitoring such sites were unable to identify Hasan earlier, possibly preventing a tragedy.

 

Hasan, who was due to be deployed to Afghanistan, was reportedly so reluctant to go that he had hired a lawyer in an effort to cut his contract short and leave the army. The co-founder of the Islamic Community in the vicinity of the Fort Hood base, Osman Danquah, says he had found Hasan "almost incoherent" recently and that he clearly had "something wrong". Mr. Danquah was sufficiently concerned to recommended that Hasan's request to become a lay Muslim leader be rejected. While it is easy to be wise in hindsight, it remains to be seen what danger signals, if any, his colleagues noticed. The fact he was being sent to Afghanistan to counsel others while in such an apparently fragile state of mind suggests army resources are extremely stretched.

 

The US military has worked hard in recent years to recruit more Muslims as their language skills and cultural insights are valuable. And as the Arab American Institute said on Friday, thousands of American Muslims serve honourably every day in all branches of the services. The risk, however, is that a small number of extremists might wreak havoc in the ranks. Time will tell if that was the case in Fort Hood and what needs to be done to avoid a repeat of such a tragedy.

 

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

NO NEED TO RUSH AS RUDD GOES GLOBAL

THE PRIME MINISTER'S FIRST DUTY IS TO AUSTRALIA

 

IF Kevin Rudd is trying to win Coalition support for his emissions trading scheme, he has a strange way of going about it. The opposition and government are ploughing on with "good faith" negotiations, but could it be the Prime Minister thinks it's all over bar the shouting? Or was he just keen to push the asylum-seekers off the

ront page after a bad week?

His speech to the Lowy Institute on Friday was marked by hyperbole and carping criticism rather than charm as he dubbed his opponents climate change sceptics and political cowards.

 

As the chances of an Australian agreement before Christmas recede faster than the evidence of rising sea levels on the eastern seaboard, Mr Rudd's intervention looks to be more about positioning than considered policy-making. With one eye on his multilateral role as a "friend of the chair" in Copenhagen and the other on last week's Newspoll, which recorded some electoral unhappiness, Mr Rudd was clearly keen to win some green approval. Internationally, climate change is his calling card, his best chance of securing the global attention he courts. The speech doubtless went down well with that constituency given the Prime Minister's vigorous denunciation of the "brigade of do-nothing climate change sceptics (who are) dangerous because if they succeed, then it is all of us who suffer. Our children. And our grandchildren."

 

But the speech failed to divert attention from asylum-seekers; and it insulted many of those arguing against the ETS by labelling them climate deniers just for questioning specific elements of the scheme. This was one of the few occasions the Prime Minister has formally defended his legislation, having often preferred to leave that to Climate Change Minister Penny Wong. He opted to reassert himself with a populist and simplistic attack on his opponents. Once again in his efforts to force his view, Mr Rudd was like a dog with a bone, endlessly repeating his new catchphrase of climate change sceptics. This makes for good news grabs but not for good policy. Then again, the ETS has been a low point in the nation's policy-making efforts with debate marked by poor information, polarisation and exaggeration.

 

This newspaper has long argued that there is no good reason to rush an ETS through ahead of Copenhagen next month. And nothing that has emerged in recent days has persuaded us otherwise. The Coalition is in a mess -- negotiations on one side and an exodus of support on the other. Yesterday, senator Barnaby Joyce made it clear that, come what may, the Nationals would vote against the legislation, due to come up for a vote in the Senate in the week of November 23. As the Coalition's position collapses, some of its members are scampering away from their decision to take an ETS to the 2007 election, an ETS that former prime minister John Howard is very happy to own. Mr Howard said at the weekend that his scheme was in fact little different from Mr Rudd's ETS. Yet on Four Corners tonight, some in the opposition will suggest it was all heat-of-the-moment stuff, that they were more or less intimidated by green hysteria in 2007 and that they know better now. Senator Joyce told the Nine Network yesterday that the 2007 plan was "little more than a thought bubble".

 

The only good news in this unedifying performance is that the complexities of local and global climate change proposals are emerging finally. The ETS -- far from being cost-neutral as expected -- is likely to cost money over the next five years. That means not only that it will be much more difficult to fund the compensation the Coalition is pushing for, but that the government needs to be more upfront about the costs at a time of high budget deficits. Enduring electoral support for the cap-and-trade scheme must be based on accurate information about its repercussions, not hectoring of opponents as sceptics. Similarly, the Scotland G20 meeting at the weekend demonstrated the difficulties of setting a figure for paying developing nations to join in emissions reduction. Little by little, we are getting the debate on the detail that so many advocates have skirted for months.

 

In this context, we need our leaders to show some common sense on some of the claims made about climate change. They might start with the question of rising sea levels. The Weekend Australian revealed that sea levels on the eastern seaboard were rising at less than a third of the rate that the NSW government is predicting. That's a pretty big gap in the scientific data, especially when the government is about to ban thousands of landowners from coastal sites. Rising sea levels are the new orthodoxy. Mr Rudd argued on Friday that 700,000 homes and businesses valued at up to $150 billion were at risk from surging tides. Yet, like so much else in this debate, the evidence is at times contradictory.

 

As Christmas beckons, some are urging Canberra to get on with it, pass the ETS and release the citizenry from yet another explanation of cap-and-trade. But haste would be the worst possible outcome.

 

There is no reason for Australia to leap ahead of the pack and pass an ETS before Copenhagen. Mr Rudd's involvement at that forum is proof of our nation's good standing in the world. The Prime Minister's first responsibility is to deliver a workable climate framework for Australia, one based on sound science, rather than exaggerated reactions to his opponents. Copenhagen can wait.

 

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

THE ABUSE OF SCEPTICISM

 

SCEPTICISM, honest doubt about the truth of a particular fact or theory, can be a healthy thing. But the term becomes debased when used as a euphemism for self-interested denial, or wilful ignorance, of evidence that is strong enough to convince an overwhelming global majority of the scientists who are qualified to make a judgment. Just this sort of false scepticism, born of short-term greed and fear, now threatens the United Nations climate change summit in Copenhagen next month.

 

The original plan, that Copenhagen would produce a legally binding treaty to replace the flawed Kyoto Protocol, has been downgraded. Now the best hope seems to be that if President Barack Obama can put firm numbers on the table, Copenhagen might cobble together a "binding" political agreement - something sceptics, including many politicians, see as a contradiction in terms - with a treaty unlikely to materialise for six months or a year, if at all.

 

It is tempting to lay the main blame for the campaign against strong measures to mitigate global warming on the most obvious suspects: populist, conservative and often downright reactionary politicians and commentators, here and abroad. They were the targets of the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, in his muddled attack on climate change deniers last Friday. Unfairly, and tactically unwisely, he seemed to include the Opposition Leader, Malcolm Turnbull, even while acknowledging good faith efforts by the Coalition's Ian Macfarlane in the negotiations over the Government's emissions trading legislation - negotiations in which Turnbull has invested much political capital.

 

More importantly, Rudd has flattered the noisy standard-bearers of the anti-emissions-reduction campaign, whose egos are already inflated, while largely ignoring the real heavy-hitters. These, as the International Consortium of Investigative Reporters has reported after an investigation to which the Herald contributed, are the world's big, immensely wealthy greenhouse polluting companies and their legion of lobbyists.

 

These people rely less on shouting from the rooftops (though they do finance advertising campaigns by industry organisations) than on gaining access, and whispering, persuasively, to decision makers about threats to jobs and power supplies. In Australia 120 companies with significant greenhouse emissions use about 80 lobbying firms, and their own in-house PR people. There are more than 2800 climate lobbyists in the US. It works, too. Rudd made huge concessions to big polluters before arriving at the present watered-down form of his emissions trading scheme. Perhaps he should worry less about Barnaby Joyce than about those smiling across his table.

 

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

CAUGHT IN A MIND FIELD

 

WAR also produces invisible wounds. There are mental health consequences of deployment. These range from normal distress to treatable mental disorders including depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. However, early treatment does not offer any guarantees. But the often devastating effects of these disorders - 128 suicides have been reported in the US Army this year - can go beyond the immediate sufferer.

 

Major Nidal Milak Hasan, the US military psychiatrist identified as the gunman at Fort Hood, Texas, had not seen action and was not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. However, he was, no doubt, aware of the terrible realities of war through his work at the base counselling scores of returning soldiers suffering from it (these interviews being the source, it is believed, for his alleged opposition to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq). All the units stationed at Fort Hood have seen extensive duty in those two wars. But despite the commitment to rehabilitation, this was the second shooting at the base in just over a year.

 

Australia has thousands of its own soldiers returning from the same theatres of war. Australian Defence Force statistics show that of all personnel deployed to the Middle East between 2003 and last year, 3.3 per cent reported post-traumatic stress disorder-related symptoms, and, of 23,830 personnel sent, 146 were discharged for mental health reasons. As of December 30, a total of 760 veterans had an accepted post-traumatic stress disorder claim in relation to East Timor, the Gulf War, Iraq or Afghanistan.

 

But mental health in the Defence Force is under-resourced. The Defence Force provides post-operational psychological screening to see if a soldier is having difficulty adjusting to life, or is showing signs of illness from service. As it deploys 4000 people a year, that means about 1500 to 2000 personnel need screening every six months. But in April there were still 8000 military personnel yet to receive it. This backlog was for postings over the past 10 years and is potentially dangerous because people can benefit from early intervention. As the Defence Force Surgeon-General, Major-General Paul Alexander, said at the time: ''Frankly, we could always do with more [psychologists and examiners].''

 

The responsibility of the state to protect the citizen extends to ensuring that the men and women in uniform who provide that protection are properly cared for at home and abroad. Treatment is imperfect. All the more reason, then, for continuing research, education and consultation to improve it.

 

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

SCHOOL REPORTS WELCOME BUT ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT

 

WHAT is a good or bad school report? It's a deceptively simple question. Just as parents interpret reports on a student's performance in the knowledge of their child's ability and work rate, help received and hurdles encountered, reports on every Victorian school's performance require a context to be meaningful. The state is the first to publish such progress reports and, to its credit, aims to avoid simplistic ''league tables'' based on raw literacy and numeracy test results.

 

The Victorian approach is an improvement on national ''report cards''. State-published online data will allow parents to compare national test results, VCE results and measures of student wellbeing and parent satisfaction. Critically, schools' socio-economic profiles, which affect results, will be included. The missing context is school resources. Education Minister Bronwyn Pike argues that this is irrelevant for state schools, since all students are funded equally. However, not all school communities are equal, so schools' needs vary.

 

Nor is it good enough to say independent schools, which get public subsidies, detail their budgets in annual reports. The data on resources must be readily accessible on the site. If some private schools baulk at this, is it that they fear their results do not justify the fees they charge? Another pertinent factor would be the extent to which schools discourage less able students from pursuing certain subjects, or undertaking the VCE at all.

 

Setting aside public-private comparisons, many parents do not have the luxury of choice. Their state schools must perform with the students and communities they have. The focus must be on sharing the lessons of those that perform well, particularly in adversity. Lack of transparency may have helped underachieving schools slide under the radar. Unless clearly identified, they may continue to struggle to attract the extra support they need to improve.

 

In a speech in June on the school reform agenda, Ms Pike set a goal of system-wide improvement. She said unique student identifiers would track the progress of every student in every school over time. Although the minister said transparency was essential ''to lift the performance of the education workforce'', there has been no talk of identifiers for teachers and principals, to establish their impacts, good or bad, at whatever school they work in. That would not go down well, but quality of teaching must be lifted.

 

Good teachers matter above all else. Most of us know the influence a great teacher can have - much more than smaller classes or a poor teacher in a good school. Victoria appears to be focusing on teacher certification, rather than attracting and retaining people of greater academic ability and teaching aptitude. Ms Pike aimed ''to equip our teachers to develop greater professional expertise and capacity'', citing Melbourne University's new master of teaching. Yet various authorities, including a new study by the US Department of Education, find no correlation between teacher certification and effectiveness.

 

What matters most is the quality of teaching recruits and the creation of an environment that encourages them to perform to their best. Instead, in Victoria, teachers' pay has declined in relative terms for decades and as other professions become more attractive, more schools than not have staff teaching outside their areas of expertise. If Ms Pike just insists on a ''higher level of scrutiny … and greater and more intelligent accountability for our teachers'', many are likely to decide the job is not worth the pay. The Business Council of Australia, which is rarely keen on wage rises, last year said top classroom teachers were so valuable that their pay should be almost doubled to $130,000. ''Who really believes that a top salary for classroom teachers of about $70,000 means we place sufficient value on teachers' work to attract the best university graduates?,'' the council said. ''There is no justification for assuming … that our society can continue to get away with not paying teachers what they are worth.''

 

So why is this aspect of teaching quality, which can make or break schools, so badly neglected? The short-term issue is where the money will come from. The answer lies in the astonishing returns on investment in teaching. A US study this year by consulting firm McKinsey & Company, which Ms Pike cites as a world authority, found that if all the achievement gaps between students - along the lines of race, wealth and locality - were closed, the gains in yearly gross domestic product would be greater than America's losses in the recession. The gains would be worth $US3-5 billion a day. The same is true for Australia, albeit on a smaller scale. If we are going to have transparency and accountability, this should apply to schools, students, teachers and the adequacy of state investment in education.

 

Source: The Age

 

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

AUSTRALIA IS RIGHT TO KEEP THE PRESSURE ON FIJI

 

FIJI has been a flashpoint in Pacific regional affairs for many years. With what amounts to five coups since 1987, there is every reason to believe that what now represents democracy in the island nation is no longer a sham, but non-existent. How could it be otherwise - especially following last April's so-called ''new legal order'', which included the repealing of the constitution, sacking of the judiciary and the reinstatement of Commodore Frank Bainimarama's military regime for at least five election-free years?

 

Last week, the Fiji Government expelled New Zealand and Australia's high commissioners after accusations that both countries were sabotaging Fiji's progress by denying visas to Sri Lankan judges. On Thursday, in retaliation, the Australian Government expelled Fiji's acting high commissioner. This situation goes far beyond diplomatic tit-for-tat to be a potential threat to regional stability. Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, who is current chairman of the Pacific Islands Forum, has defended Australia's hardline approach to Fiji by saying, ''We do not want this coup culture to spread elsewhere in the Pacific.'' The argument, however, is not so much to do with containment as persuading one rogue nation to return itself to proper democratic accountability.

 

The United States has supported Australia and New Zealand, calling for Fiji to restore an independent judiciary and fundamental rights. This can only be good for strengthening regional resolve; that it might persuade Fiji to return to a more democratic way of life is far less certain. Mr Rudd is right to keep the pressure on. Perhaps his next move - in his Pacific Forum capacity - would be to shift the forum's secretariat from Suva to a more acceptable location.

 

Source: The Age

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THE GURDIAN

EDITORIAL

OBAMA AFTER A YEAR: KEEP THE FAITH

 

In the end, Democrats in the House of Representatives answered the call of history, as their president put it. Not since 1965, when Medicare and Medicaid were created, has a chamber of Congress passed a measure to vastly increase medical coverage. Universal healthcare, the centrepiece of Barack Obama's first term as president – and everyone is assuming there will be another – looks like becoming a reality. There were breathtaking compromises on the way, such as an amendment that prohibits the public option, the government-run healthcare programme, from covering abortion, except in cases of rape, incest or if the mother's life is threatened. There could be more hard decisions to come: allowing states to opt out of the public option, whether to require employers to provide coverage for their workers, whether to tax the rich.

 

But healthcare reform, like other issues, demands a clear judgment: is Mr Obama betraying in power the principles on which he ran for it? Or is this president a shrewd and pragmatic leader? This has not been an easy year for those who danced in the streets last year. With unemployment the highest in nearly three decades, seven of the 10 states with the highest rates are Democratic, and three of those – Nevada, Florida and North Carolina – switched sides to vote Obama last year. If anyone is struggling to keep faith, it is the people responsible for putting Mr Obama in office. And what about those promises to take bold action on the banks? We got caution rather than boldness, a government of Goldman Sachs by Goldman Sachs, the belated introduction of caps on bonuses and no restructuring of finance.

 

Those who believed Mr Obama's commitment to wipe away the stain of Guantánamo and all that went on inside it have also been struggling with the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which he has just signed into law. Congress made significant improvements on a truly horrific law, but military commissions will remain as a second-class form of justice circumventing both the US constitution and the Geneva conventions, and they will only exist for non-US citizens. Many of the deepest problems of Guantánamo, like indefinite detention, may simply be continued in other, though less obvious, forms.

 

These are significant blips, but none in themselves constitute a reason for losing faith. Most of what is going wrong now – the banking crisis, the war in Afghanistan, the stagnation of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, failure over climate change – was going wrong a year ago. Some things, such as the atmosphere in talks between the US and Russia have changed, and could well result in an agreement on strategic arms which will replace the Start-1 agreement next month. But even if the current talks with Iran are doomed to failure, who would be foolhardy enough to damn the new era of constructive engagement which Mr Obama has brought in? The failures are manifest. It is easy to see how the realities of power betray the hopes of a year ago. It is harder to stick with the vision, but that is what we should all do.

 

 

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THE GURDIAN

EDITORIAL

TELEPHONE HACKING: CURSORY AND COMPLACENT

 

Think of the opprobrium heaped by the press on the regulators who slept while the banks overheated and crashed. And then read the report of the industry's own "regulator" into the recent developments concerning phone-hacking by private detectives on behalf of newspapers and resist the instinct to laugh. After the most cursory of inquiries, the Press Complaints Commission has produced a complacent report which will give ammunition to every sceptic who has ever accused the body of being a toothless watchdog.

 

The PCC's "inquiry" resulted from this paper's story in July reporting that News Group newspapers had reached a confidential million pound settlement with three victims of illegal phone hacking by a private investigator working for the News of the World called Glenn Mulcaire. The victims included Gordon Taylor, chief executive of the Professional Footballers' Association. That story was true. Its significance was that the documents in the Taylor case included a NoW contract promising Mulcaire a £7,000 bonus for the Taylor story – implying some sort of official sanction of his work – and that the transcripts of his intercepted phone messages indicated that at least two other NoW staff had been involved – a junior reporter and whoever directed him. That contradicted earlier assurances to parliament and the PCC by senior Murdoch executives that only one NoW journalist, Clive Goodman (jailed for hacking royal phones), had ever used these methods. The PCC has decided it was not misled by the "rotten apple" defence. Despite the £1m settlement; despite the bonus contract; despite the phone transcript – written "for Neville" (the NoW's chief reporter) - it says it has not seen any evidence that any NoW journalist other than Goodman was involved in phone message tapping. This finding is extraordinary, since it flies in the face of direct evidence about at least two other journalists involved in the Taylor case which is not disputed, even by the NoW.

 

A secondary element of the Davies story was the claim by two police sources that they had uncovered "thousands" of instances of phone message hacking by the same private investigators employed by the NoW. That police sources were making such claims was confirmed by Taylor's solicitor, who told MPs that a named police sergeant had told him that 6,000 people may have had their phones hacked into. We also know from the DPP that prosecutors evaluating the evidence were faced with so many potential offences that they deliberately limited the number of charges to prevent the inquiry becoming "unmanageable". These may have involved newspapers other than the NoW, we don't know.

 

In reaching its conclusions, it appears the PCC did not interview a single witness or inspect a single document beyond those uncovered by police, the information commissioner or MPs. It did not question Andy Coulson, editor at the time (just as it failed to contact him at the time of Goodman). It did not make inquiries of five other NoW journalists or contractees who had direct knowledge of events – Thurlbeck, Greg Miskiw (who signed the contract), the junior reporter, Goodman or Mulcaire – or, indeed, any other NoW journalist employed at the time. It did not interrogate the bonus contract (News Group said it was confidential). It did not interview – though it said it tried – the detective sergeant or reconcile his remark with other police evidence. Indeed, the solitary successful serious inquiry the PCC itself appears to have made was an exchange of letters with the current NoW editor, Colin Myler, who was not at the paper at the time. Without the benefit of investigations made by outsiders – parliament, police, lawyers, the information commissioner and reporters – the PCC would have been forced to write a very short report. We now know that top people from the military, police, government and royal family have been warned by the police that their phone messages may have been intercepted by private detectives working for newspapers. The security services took this seriously enough to conduct a review. Who ordered the hacking? We don't know and the PCC won't ask.

 

The PCC performs a valuable function as a mediator. To call it a "regulator" increasingly looks misleading. Credible regulators have teeth. They have powers to investigate, to call for evidence and to impose sanctions. Since the information commissioner first reported on the widespread use of private investigators by journalists in 2006, the only bodies to have made a determined effort to find out what was going on have been the information commissioner, the police and parliament. The PCC has repeatedly declined to make its own detailed inquiries, pleading that it is beyond its remit. Most neutral observers would conclude from this pattern of behaviour that the only effective scrutiny and regulation of the press currently comes from outside, which is a dangerous state of affairs. The PCC has just announced a governance review. Unless it proposes serious reforms, the cause of effective self-regulation will be unsustainable. That would be very troubling. This newspaper has supported effective self-regulation, believing that any other form of control or limits on the press would be worse. We still believe that. But the form self-regulation currently takes is not very credible. The PCC has done its own cause – and therefore the press itself – no favours.

 

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DAILY EXPRESS

COMMENT

RISK-TAKING IMMIGRATION POLICY ENDANGERS US ALL

A WEEK ago the home secretary Alan Johnson declared that successive governments, including his own, had been "maladroit" in their handling of immigration. It was an odd choice of words and it sounded like a poor excuse,signalling merely that matters had been handled clumsily.

 

We now know that this Government has been guilty of far worse. its attitude towards immigration issues has not just been maladroit but also malign and maladministered.

A Home Office document released under the Freedom of information Act reveals that staff were told to "take risks" as they dealt with immigration applications, fast-tracking thousands, thus admitting members of the Taliban, criminal gangs and other riff-raff. Officials were to assume that applicants had a right to be in Britain rather than the opposite.

Take risks? Take risks with national security at a time of high terrorist threat? This smacks of malpractice and certainly shows that the Government is severely maladjusted if it thinks that these sensitive decisions can be made at speed with few proper checks.

In all other areas the Government encourages its citizens to be ludicrously risk averse, endlessly nannying us, stifling initiative and personal responsibility and imposing health and safety regulations to protect its citizens from a host of largely imagined dangers.

But in the matter of admitting potential criminals and terrorists to our country it is more than happy to take a chance. Maladroit or plain malicious? You  decide

 

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DAILY EXPRESS

COMMENT

HEROISM MUST BE HONOURED EVEN IF THE WAR IS FUTILE

BY LEO MCKINSTRY

 

THIS week's Remembrance commemorations have been given a heartfelt poignancy by the mounting death toll from Afghanistan. The fallen heroes of past conflicts are now joined in the roll of honour by the 201 men and women who have been killed in action during the present campaign.

 

The grim milestone was reached yesterday when another soldier was blown up in helmand, the 95th British fatality in the region this year.

The courage of our troops in Afghanistan is almost beyond imagining. Deprived of the resources to carry out their job effectively, they are battling in an inhospitable environment against a deadly, unseen enemy.

Their task has been made all the more difficult by the treacherous foe lurking at the heart of their operations, as highlighted by last week's massacre of five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman who was meant to be their colleague.

Yet in the face of such daunting odds they continue to fight, displaying the highest ideals of patriotism and sacrifice.

Their selfless sense of duty is in dramatic contrast to the whingeing, bingeing culture of modern Britain. Their bravery ensures that they put their lives at risk every day, whereas benefit spongers claim that they cannot even work because of "stress" or "depression". They demonstrate an abiding love of their country, unlike the weasels of the political elite who actively conspire to destroy our nationhood through mass immigration and surrender to the European Union.

What makes their valour all the more impressive is that they are waging war without proper support from the Government. Labour Ministers have failed not only to provide them with the necessary equipment and numbers but also to set out a clear strategy for winning the war. Meanwhile public backing for the campaign continues to ebb away. According to polls published last weekend more than 60 per cent of Brit-ons now believe that our troops should be "withdrawn as soon as possible".

The call for an end to our involvement in Afghanistan does not in any sense lessen the nobility of the military campaign. No British soldier ever falls in vain since the willingness to die in the service of our nation is a supreme virtue in itself. As the great warrior statesman Winston Churchill once wrote: "Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all the others."

 

But our desire to honour military heroism must not blind us to the political catastrophe that the Afghan campaign has become. The Government has wilfully refused to explain the purpose of the continuing war, how long it will last or how it will be won. Yesterday the puerile Foreign secretary David Miliband wrote a newspaper article attempting to explain the need for Britain to remain in Afghanistan, yet all he could come up with was meaningless platitudes about Western security and the joys of democracy.

Our past wars were fought with clear goals, whether it be to defeat Nazi tyranny or restore British sovereignty in the Falklands. But there is no such clarity today about our role in Afghanistan. At different times we have been told that our troops have been sent there to promote democracy, support women's rights and end the drugs trade. Last week the home Office Minister Phil Woolas claimed that one of the war aims was to keep down the number of bogus asylum claims from Afghanistan, a ludicrous suggestion from a Government that has deliberately smashed our own borders.

Far from encouraging Western-style liberal democracy, we are actually propping up the corrupt regime of President Hamid Karzai, which has done nothing to bring good governance to the country or combat Islamic extremism. Hisrecent re-election as president was a travesty of democracy.

The most hollow justification for the war is that it protects us from Islamic terrorism. The Ministry of Defence recently proclaimed that "The choice is between fighting insurgents in Afghanistan and fighting them on the streets of UK towns".

Such idiocy is an insult to our intelligence. The truth is that Afghanistan has nothing to with jihadism in this country, which is largely a home-grown phenomenon.

What really threatens us is not Afghan militants but Labour's disastrous twin-track approach of uncontrolled immigration and craven appeasement of militant Islam.

The Government has allowed tens of thousands of radicals, principally from Pakistan, to flood into our country without any checks, many of them fraudulent students enrolled at bogus colleges. Through the dogma of multiculturalism, Labour has fanned the flames of dangerous radicalism by refusing to halt the spread of sharia courts or the repression of Muslim women through forced marriages and honour killings.

Only last week, it was revealed that the Government has given a grant of £550,000 to assist with the creation of madrassas or Islamic schools, even though anti-terror police fear that these institutions could indoctrinate pupils in anti-Western ideology.

The Government is currently spending £2.6billion a year on the Afghan war. That money could be far better used at home on surveillance of terror suspects, rebuilding our borders and the deportation of illegal immigrants. A rising count of body bags in Afghanistan will achieve nothing.

This week, we remember our fallen heroes. But we must never forget that political folly is leading to this carnage.

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

WALL AND FENCES

 

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On the news that they were given the right to go out of the country anytime, crowds of East Germans thronged at crossing points to the West in no time. Border guards, overwhelmed by the rushing waves of East Germans, opened them up, even though they had received no such orders.

 

The opening of the border did not go the way the East German leadership had intended. It had planned to break the news on travel the next day. Instead, it was mistakenly announced on Nov. 9 that the right to travel was effective immediately. It proved to be a death knell for East Germany as a state.

 

As a result of the fumbling, the task of guarding the border became impossible, inadvertently getting the process of German reunification rolling straight away. It was not just the East Germans but the then Chancellor Helmut Kohl and other West German leaders that were taken off guard.

 

This is not to say that West Germany had not been preparing for reunification. On the contrary, its preparations date back to the late 1960s when Chancellor Willy Brandt began to implement the Ostpolitik policy - efforts to improve relations with East Germany and other East European communist states.

 

West Germany signed the Basic Treaty with the East, establishing official relations between the two German states in 1972. It had since been giving a helping hand to East Germany, including 3 billion marks in loans in 1983. All these efforts were undoubtedly preparations for an eventual reunification.

 

But reunification was not something that West Germany could plan for. If it did, reunification did not go accordingly. Instead, it was forcibly placed in the hands of West Germany without warning.

 

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent German reunification should serve as a sobering reminder to South Koreans, who mistakenly believe that any fundamental change in inter-Korean relations will be under their control. Among them is President Lee Myung-bak, who was quoted as saying in September: "Ours will not be like the unplanned East-West German reunification. We are constantly planning on our reunification."

 

Should North Korea be embroiled in a commotion bordering on implosion, for instance, would the barbed-wire fences north of the Demilitarized Zone be strong enough to fend off onrushing North Koreans? If not, could South Korea manage to send them back at the border for the sake of an orderly reunification?

 

Such an event cannot be ruled out, given that Kim Jong-il, who has North Korea under his tight control, is in ill health. Just as the fall of the Berlin Wall took the West Germans off guard, so may the collapse of the border fences come as a surprise to the South Koreans.

 

A key question here is whether or not South Korea is as well prepared for reunification as West Germany was. The answer is a resounding "no."

 

True, just as West Germany had the Ostpolitik, so did South Korea have its own version, the Nordpolitik, which former President Roh Tae-woo adopted in 1988 to improve relations with North Korea, the Soviet Union and other communist states. The policy evolved into the late President Kim Dae-jung's "sunshine policy." But the South Korean preparations ended there.

 

President Lee's policy is to help North Korea increase its per capita gross domestic product to $3,000 during the next 10 years if it abandons its ambitions to arm itself with nuclear weapons. He apparently believes reunification is unimaginable until then.

 

But what if the Kim Jong-il regime should collapse now? How should South Korea fund the reunification cost, which researchers say would be astronomical? One estimate puts it at $1 trillion

 

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

A NEW WORLD ARCHITECTURE OF MULTILATERAL SYSTEM

GEORGE SOROS

 

NEW YORK - Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism, the world is facing another stark choice between two fundamentally different forms of organization: international capitalism and state capitalism. The former, represented by the United States, has broken down, and the latter, represented by China, is on the rise. Following the path of least resistance will lead to the gradual disintegration of the international financial system. A new multilateral system based on sounder principles must be invented.

 

While international cooperation on regulatory reform is difficult to achieve on a piecemeal basis, it may be attainable in a grand bargain that rearranges the entire financial order. A new Bretton Woods conference, like the one that established the post-World War II international financial architecture, is needed to establish new international rules, including treatment of financial institutions that are too big to fail and the role of capital controls. It would also have to reconstitute the International Monetary Fund to reflect better the prevailing pecking order among states and to revise its methods of operation.

 

In addition, a new Bretton Woods would have to reform the currency system. The post-war order, which made the U.S. more equal than others, produced dangerous imbalances. The dollar no longer enjoys the trust and confidence that it once did, yet no other currency can take its place.

 

The U.S. ought not to shy away from wider use of IMF Special Drawing Rights. Because SDRs are denominated in several national currencies, no single currency would enjoy an unfair advantage.

 

The range of currencies included in the SDRs would have to be widened, and some of the newly added currencies, including the renminbi, may not be fully convertible. This would, however, allow the international community to press China to abandon its exchange-rate peg to the dollar and would be the best way to reduce international imbalances. And the dollar could still remain the preferred reserve currency, provided it is prudently managed.

 

One great advantage of SDRs is that they permit the international creation of money, which is particularly useful at times like the present. The money could be directed to where it is most needed, unlike what is happening currently. A mechanism that allows rich countries that don't need additional reserves to transfer their allocations to those that do is readily available, using the IMF's gold reserves.

 

Reorganizing the world order will need to extend beyond the financial system and involve the United Nations, especially membership of the Security Council. That process needs to be initiated by the U.S., but China and other developing countries ought to participate as equals. They are reluctant members of the Bretton Woods institutions, which are dominated by countries that are no longer dominant. The rising powers must be present at the creation of this new system in order to ensure that they will be active supporters.

 

The system cannot survive in its present form, and the U.S. has more to lose by not being in the forefront of reforming it. The U.S. is still in a position to lead the world, but, without far-sighted leadership, its relative position is likely to continue to erode. It can no longer impose its will on others, as George W. Bush's administration sought to do, but it could lead a cooperative effort to involve both the developed and the developing world, thereby reestablishing American leadership in an acceptable form.

 

The alternative is frightening, because a declining superpower losing both political and economic dominance but still preserving military supremacy is a dangerous mix. We used to be reassured by the generalization that democratic countries seek peace. After the Bush presidency, that rule no longer holds, if it ever did.

 

In fact, democracy is in deep trouble in America. The financial crisis has inflicted hardship on a population that does not like to face harsh reality. President Barack Obama has deployed the "confidence multiplier" and claims to have contained the recession. But if there is a "double dip" recession, Americans will become susceptible to all kinds of fear mongering and populist demagogy. If Obama fails, the next administration will be sorely tempted to create some diversion from troubles at home - at great peril to the world.

 

Obama has the right vision. He believes in international cooperation, rather than the might-is-right philosophy of the Bush-Cheney era. The emergence of the G20 as the primary forum of international cooperation and the peer-review process agreed in Pittsburgh are steps in the right direction.

 

What is lacking, however, is a general recognition that the system is broken and needs to be reinvented. After all, the financial system did not collapse altogether, and the Obama administration made a conscious decision to revive banks with hidden subsidies rather than to recapitalize them on a compulsory basis. Those institutions that survived will hold a stronger market position than ever, and they will resist a systematic overhaul. Obama is preoccupied by many pressing problems, and reinventing the international financial system is unlikely to receive his full attention.

 

China's leadership needs to be even more far-sighted than Obama is. China is replacing the American consumer as the motor of the world economy. Since it is a smaller motor, the world economy will grow slower, but China's influence will rise very fast.

 

For the time being, the Chinese public is willing to subordinate its individual freedom to political stability and economic advancement. But that may not continue indefinitely - and the rest of the world will never subordinate its freedom to the prosperity of the Chinese state.

 

As China becomes a world leader, it must transform itself into a more open society that the rest of the world is willing to accept as a world leader. Military power relations being what they are, China has no alternative to peaceful, harmonious development. Indeed, the future of the world depends on it.

 

George Soros is chairman of Soros Fund Management and of the Open Society Institute. His most recent book is "The Crash of 2008." - Ed.

 

(Project Syndicate)

 

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

ABOVE THE LAW?

 

Two national umbrella organizations for trade unions staged a joint mass rally over the weekend, demanding another deferral of law enforcement. They took the action as a prelude to a year-end general strike they are threatening to launch if the government enforces laws on permitting multiple unions at a work site and banning the corporate remuneration of full-time union officials.

 

In the protest rally, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions and the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions accused the government of attempting "to annihilate unions" by permitting multiple unions to be organized at a worksite and banning management from paying full-time union officials. But their charges were misplaced, given that 13 years have passed since the laws were enacted.

 

A few early delays may have been justified by a claim that unions needed protection from the laws because they were still in an infant stage. Indeed, unions had been denied legal protection until democracy was restored in 1987.

 

But unions have now become strong enough to support themselves with membership dues and negotiate wages and working conditions with management on equal terms. For unions to demand another deferral of law enforcement is little different from attempting to place themselves above the law. It is unionized workers, not their employers, that should pay for the services they receive from full-time union officials. At the same time, different groups of like-minded workers should be allowed to organize themselves.

 

The corporate remuneration of full-time union officials has resulted in a runaway increase in their numbers. One full-time official works roughly for 150 to 200 union members in Korea, compared with 500 to 600 in Japan and 1,000 to 1,200 in the United States. That is a telling case of moral hazard. All unions will do good to cut their full-time staff as some are planning to do ahead of the law enforcement.

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

FIGHTING COURT MAFIA

 

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's decision to bring the fight to the mafia-like judiciary as his top priority for action in the first 100 days of his second-term government is a strategic move.

 

Without legal certainty and an impartial judicial system, our hard-gained democracy will become meaningless and could even be jeopardized. Yet more damaging, our economic development will prove futile for most of the population.

 

Unfortunately, we prefer to react to the President's move by confronting it with crippling qualifications because it was made in hasty political reaction to appease the populace after the nation-wide furor over after the revelation of wide-spread collusion and conspiracy between senior police officers, state prosecutors, corruption suspects and legal case brokers.

 

We are afraid Yudhoyono, notorious for his diffidence and indecisiveness when it comes to reform measures, has not yet worked out a well-designed, overall process of reform for the justice sector.

 

In fact, his declaration of war against corruption within the judiciary was never mentioned during the preparations of his 100-day programs last month, and was not even mentioned during the national summit of Cabinet ministers, governors, regents, mayors, national and regional legislators, business and civil-society leaders late last month.        

 

It is in fact the mafia-like practices within the judiciary—the police, prosecutors and judges—that have made corruption so deeply entrenched in the government and private sector, thereby retaining Indonesia's notorious ranking as one of the most corrupt countries in the world.

 

 It is because of the corrupt judicial system, the drive against corruption, one of Yudhoyono's top priority programs since 2004, has so far made only mediocre achievements, despite the establishment of  an overarching body with draconian powers to combat graft, the Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK).    

 

The question then is what is the difference in the political environment now that should prompt us to give the benefit of the doubt to Yudhoyono's fight against corruption during his second and final term?
There is, we think, a new factor that will generate a stronger determination on the part of  Yudhoyono to lead a more powerful battle against corruption: The tremendous public pressure ignited by the playing to the public of the wiretap recordings by the Constitutional Court last week.

 

The nationwide uproar over the last 10 days set off by the police's arrogance in arresting two  KPK deputy chairmen, and the sickening state of our judiciary, as revealed by the recordings, have been such that Yudhoyono should act firmly and immediately to tackle this debacle.

 

Failing to regain public confidence and trust in his fight against graft could expose his 20-day-old administration to the risk of political instability. But in order to recoup the trust of the public,  the President should lead the fight against mafia in the judiciary by overhauling it.

 

 It  takes leadership, courage, perseverance and commitment to clean up the corrupt judicial system, to remove the culture of corruption already so strongly rooted in the national system.  

 

The President should seize the furor over the current face-off between the National Police and the Attorney General's Office on one side, and the KPK on the other, as momentum with which to build up strong public support for his crackdown on corruption in the judiciary, which has become the basis for widespread graft in all other sectors.

 

Public support is vital to this battle because anticorruption efforts cannot succeed if they're only supported by a few government and state agencies in the judicial system. The campaign cannot be sustained without the full participation of civil society organizations and mass media with full voice and empowerment.

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

DEALING WITH NATIONAL TERRITORY

I MADE ANDI ARSANA

 

Coincidently or intentionally, on the 80th anniversary of Sumpah Pemuda (The Youth Pledge Day) on Oct. 28, 2008, the House of Representatives (DPR) passed a new bill concerning the national territory (wilayah negara). Interestingly, the popularity of the new law was beaten by the anti-pornography law that was passed slightly earlier.

 

People's attention was excessively sucked by the so-called controversial law of anti-pornography. Consequently, the content of the national territory law might not have been well disseminated.

 

Apart from the lack of information dissemination, the law on national territory can be seen as an important achievement in Indonesia. Since its independence in 1945, Indonesia has not yet enacted a law specifically governing its national territory. Similar law was enacted in 1960 and 1996 concerning the Indonesian waters, but not land territory.

 

Meanwhile, the 1945 Constitution specifies that national territory should be governed by a specific law (Article 25A). Thus, the adoption of the law concerning national territory is a breakthrough. Now that the law is 1 year old, what has been done so far?

 

The 2008 Law on National Territory comprehensively explains the basic principle and definition of terms related to territory and international land and maritime boundaries. It states that national territory covers all land areas, internal waters, archipelagic waters and territorial sea, which extends up to 12 nautical miles from the baseline (coastline).

 

The law also explains the definition of territory (sovereignty) and the definition of jurisdiction (sovereign rights). Article 1 of the law consists of 13 paragraphs from which people can learn basic important definitions of, for example, territory, maritime zones, territorial boundaries, jurisdictional boundaries, border areas, central government, local government, border management agency etc.

 

When dealing with national territory, the law also deals with multilateral boundaries. Article 5 of the law states that territorial boundaries (land, maritime and airspace) are established by relevant bilateral/trilateral agreements. In some areas, the outer limits of Indonesia's territory are represented by agreed lines between Indonesia and its neighbors.

 

In the Strait of Malacca, for example, Indonesia's territory is limited by the agreed maritime boundaries between Indonesia and Malaysia signed on March 17, 1970. Similarly, in the Singapore Strait, the limit of Indonesia's territory is partially the line delimiting territorial sea between Indonesia and Singapore, signed on May 25, 1973 (eastern segment), and March 10, 2009 (western segment).

 

To date, Indonesia has yet to complete territorial sea boundaries with some neighbors. Indonesia has pending territorial sea boundaries with Singapore; with Timor Leste in the Ombai Strait, Wetar Strait and Timor Sea; and with Malaysia in the Sulawesi Sea. However, a process of delimitation is being undertaken through a series of negotiations involving geospatial/technical, legal and political aspects.

 

In addition, EEZ and/or continental shelf boundaries with India, Thailand, Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, Palau and Timor Leste also need to be delimitated. Once a new treaty has been achieved, this will serve as the outer limits of Indonesia's territory pursuant to the law of national territory. In this regard, the new law treats international treaties concerning territorial boundaries as its integral part.

 

Another important provision in the national territory law is the establishment of a Border Management Agency for central and local government (Article 14). The agency is to be established within six months after the enactment of the law (Article 25). Its responsibilities include the definition of policy concerning development programs in border areas; budgeting; operational coordination; and monitoring and evaluation (Article 15).

 

The formation of the agency aims to accelerate and facilitate development in border areas, especially land border areas. It seems the government (central and local) is still working on a robust design/plan for the agency. Now the six-month deadline has passed, but the agency has yet to be established. It is worth noting that we have not managed to comply with the law in establishing such an important agency.

 

The promulgation of new law concerning national territory is an important achievement in Indonesia. With this new law, Indonesia's territory and jurisdictions, which were mentioned in the youth pledge, 81 years ago, now have stronger legal and spatial bases, which in turn can facilitate the process of boundary establishment, security maintenance and resource management.

 

The formation of the Border Management Agency is one of the critical components of this law, since certainty of national territory is not the end of the story.

 

However, one year after the birth of the law on national territory, the agency has not been established yet. It seems there are either political or technical obstacles blocking its formation. No matter how hard it is, the establishment of the agency needs to be accelerated. This will lead the way to a better border management and well-developed border areas.

 

The writer is a lecturer at the School of Geodetic Engineering, Gadjah Mada University, Yogyakarta. He is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong. This is his personal opinion.

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

ELINOR OSTROM AND REDD

SIWI NUGRAHENI

 

The 2009 Nobel prize in Economic Sciences was awarded to Elinor Ostrom. Sharing with Oliver Williamson, Ostrom was acknowledged for her analysis of economic governance, especially for common-pool resources.

 

Those studying community-based natural-resource management would be familiar with Elinor Ostrom. She introduced the concept of "common-pool resource" (CPR), a resource in which the property rights arrangement is in the hands of a group of users and, therefore, the people share rights and obligations associated with the resource.

 

Economists before Ostrom tended to classify types of goods into two groups: private and public goods. They put CPR, such as forests, grazing areas and water, into the public goods category. As public goods, all members of society have access to the resources, and as a result these resources would be overexploited - as Hardin indicates in The Tragedy of the Common (1968). In facing open or public goods, people consider others as their rivals and will act as free-riders and extract as much resources as possible. This leads to unsustainable resource use: resource degradation and exhaustion of resources.

 

Ostrom argues that CPR is different from open and public property. Everyone could have access to and gain benefits from open or public property, but not to and from CPR. This type of resource is owned and managed by a group of people with specific regulations designed by the group. As an owner of a CPR, the benefits and costs related to the resource would go to no one but members of the group.

 

Providing examples of a communal tenure system in high mountain meadows and forests in Torbel (Switzerland), in several Japanese villages, and other places, Ostrom shows how community-based resource management can be sustainable.

 

Instead of behaving as free riders, people within the group communicate with each other and have the capability to form a self-organized group. Cooperative, collective action and trust among them is possible, when they realize that collaboration will increase the benefits or reduce the costs.

 

In her study, Ostrom finds similarities in successful CPR institutions. Her book of Governing the Commons (1990) lists principles for long-enduring and successful collective action in managing CPR. These include: clear rules associated with the boundaries of resources being managed, fairness in the distribution of benefits associated with costs, accountable monitoring systems, conflict resolution mechanisms and the recognition of rights by the external entities.

 

Ostrom was awarded a Nobel prize after an international meeting on Climate Change in Bangkok had just concluded. One of the agendas of the Bangkok Climate Change Talks last month was to discuss the implementation of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD) scheme.

 

REDD was introduced in 2007, at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 13th Conference of the Parties (COP 13), in Bali. One of the main causes of climate change is carbon emissions.

 

Deforestation is an important source of carbon emissions, particularly in Indonesia. Maintaining forests is therefore a potential way to mitigate global warming. Under REDD, reduced emissions from avoiding deforestation would be quantified and then sold in the carbon market or handed to an international fund arrangement for financial compensation.

 

In many places of the world, forests are managed as CPR. Communities living adjacent to forests have managed the resources in sustainable ways for hundreds, if not thousands, of years. This community-based forest management can be seen in many places in Indonesia as hutan adat (customary forests), hutan desa (village forests) or other community forestry regimes. Under the REDD program, communities conserving their local forests are eligible to financial compensation, which could in turn be used to improve their livelihoods.

 

It might be a coincidence that Ostrom received the Nobel prize at about the same time the issue of REDD implementation was discussed at the Bangkok Climate Change Talks. In fact, Ostrom's winning has an important implication for REDD implementation. Ostrom's recognized work is a list of principles for successful collective action in managing CPR.

 

Therefore, those who are in charge of implementing REDD schemes could use the principles suggested by Ostrom as a starting point to examine whether a group of people managing forests are eligible for REDD facilities or not.

 

The writer is a lecturer at the School of Economics, Parahyangan Catholic University.

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

BOOSTING EU-INDONESIA RELATIONS

CARL BILDT

 

Today a big leap forward will be taken in the relations between Indonesia and the European Union. A comprehensive EU-Indonesia Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) will be signed today in Jakarta at the margins of an EU-Indonesia Ministerial Troika meeting under the co-chairs of Dr. Marty Natalegawa,

 

Minister for Foreign Affairs of Indonesia, and me, as representative of the Presidency of the Council of the EU. Though the EU and Indonesia lie at opposite sides of the globe, our similarities are undoubtedly more striking than our differences.

 

Indonesia and the EU share many values and political principles. We also share strong historical, cultural and personal ties. Both Indonesia and the EU are looking outward in a globalizing world, with a firm commitment to both regional development and multilateral cooperation. Furthermore, we are confronted by similar challenges with an international dimension such as climate change and terrorism.

 

Our respective contributions to fostering global peace and stability are exemplified by Indonesia's participation in over 20 UN peacekeeping missions, and by the fact that the EU and its member states provide the largest share of development and humanitarian assistance in the world.

 

We are also brought together through our thriving commercial ties - with two-way trade exceeding 20 billion Euro in 2008 and showing positive trends from year to year with a potential to grow further.

 

Now is the moment to place our relationship on a new and upgraded footing. Indonesia has in the past 10 years made a remarkable transition to democracy - reaffirmed and cemented this year in a newly elected parliament and government - and is assuming an ever-more influential role in the councils of regional and world opinion, including the UN, ASEAN and the G20.

 

With the Treaty of Lisbon being put in place, the EU is ready to reform both its internal workings and foreign policy structures, not least to ensure that we can function more effectively with 27 member states.

 

It is in response to this compelling logic for closer ties that Indonesia and the EU today will formally sign a new PCA, which envisages intensified co-operation in numerous policy fields.

 

Already today, the EU has committed half a billion Euro in development co-operation to Indonesia for the period 2007-2013.

 

The PCA will pave the way for the creation of permanent structures to guide co-operation and foster our shared values in fields as diverse as trade and economic affairs, the environment, counter-terrorism, human rights, good governance and education. Our ministerial meeting today will touch upon a number of these important matters of mutual interest.

 

Maybe most urgently, we must ensure that the great concern shared by the EU and Indonesia on climate change translates into meaningful results at the upcoming climate talks in Copenhagen in December, and beyond.

 

Just as the EU is recognizing its responsibilities to cut emissions and furnish extensive support for climate change mitigation and adaptation, so I welcome and encourage the development of a leadership role for Indonesia, both in terms of cutting greenhouse gases, and in its potential to act as a bridge between the priorities of the developed world and those of less developed countries.

 

As member of the preparatory troika, Indonesia is a key player in the run-up to the Copenhagen summit.

 

We should also make this revitalized relationship count through intensified efforts to remove the trade barriers and irritants that impede the creation of prosperity.

 

Through our new Agreement, new areas of cooperation will be explored, including on research and development, and a series of sectoral committees will help identify opportunities and more rapidly defuse irritants in key sectors of commercial interest.

 

Equally, we can increase even further the impact of our shared action to reduce poverty and attain the Millennium Development Goals.

 

We are pleased to officially launch today also a human rights dialogue between the EU and Indonesia, reflecting our shared values in this field and recognizing Indonesia's role in championing human rights in the region. This dialogue will be an important forum for cooperation on issues of mutual interest related to human rights, democratic principles and the rule of law.

 

However, high-level discussions between politicians and officials should not be the sole focus of a new EU-Indonesia partnership. With the EU and Indonesia together encompassing over 10 percent of the world population, the PCA should serve as a spur to the enrichment of cultural, social and business relations.

 

There are already many encouraging signs to this effect, one example being the Erasmus Mundus scholarship program, which to date has supported hundreds of Indonesian students attending EU universities.

 

Tourism is another area with huge potential for growth - the astoundingly diverse heritage and beauty of Indonesia has, not surprisingly, a magnetic attraction for European tourists.

 

The writer is Minister for Foreign Affairs of Sweden, current holder of the Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

BUILDING ON SUCCESS

 

The consensus reached on a wide range of issues at the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit over the weekend in Egypt once again proves that China-Africa strategic cooperation is an effective South-South mechanism that is conducive to global peace and development.

 

Reviewing the positives notched up so far, the Sharm El Sheikh summit has elevated China-Africa relations to a new high with additional measures promised to facilitate cooperation in more sectors.

 

The pledges are especially important against the backdrop of declining global investment amid the current economic slump.

 

The refreshing cooperation between China and Africa, the largest developing country and the continent that is home to the largest number of developing nations, is a mutually beneficial mechanism.

 

China has the finance and expertise which can help Africa tap its full potential, which is a model that Africa prefers rather than one-way aid.

 

Chinese engagement in the continent, mostly in the infrastructure and technology sectors, is pivotal to the continent's industrialization and revival through pacing up transfer of technical know-how and facilitating the training of African professionals.

 

Meanwhile, Chinese companies have seen vast business opportunities that African countries provide, with the collaboration mechanism based on mutual respect and understanding.

 

China does not attach conditions in cooperation. It has never imposed its mode of economic development on African soil and always keeps its hands off African countries' internal affairs while respecting their choice of development approaches.

 

The China-Africa strategic partnership, in the form of FOCAC set up 9 years ago, has focused on action rather than empty rhetoric.

 

For instance, the target set at the 2006 Beijing Summit of China-Africa Cooperation Forum to push trade volume to $100 billion by 2010 was met two years ahead of schedule. Economic trade zones continue to be built in African countries.

 

To help African countries cope with the impact of the global financial crisis, China's favorable tariff policy toward African imports cover 500 product categories, under which $890 million worth of goods have been imported.

 

Apart from the marked improvement in the local economy, the cooperation has also generated social development in Africa and a stronger friendship.

 

One of the best illustrations is that new mothers who managed to keep their children safe against malaria have chosen to name their offspring after the medicines provided by Chinese pharmaceutical makers.

In another example, more than 13,300 people have been imparted technical skills under the 2006 scheme, pushing along Africa's self-driven development.

 

China-Africa cooperation has a glorious past with African countries helping China secure a UN seat and is bound to have a brighter future through such sincere and win-win cooperation.

 

Experience demonstrates that unity between China and Africa and their joint actions on the world stage help boost the influence of the developing world as a whole.

 

Their common prosperity is, in turn, conducive to bringing about a more just political and economic world order.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

PROTECTING WATCHDOGS

 

As our colleagues celebrated the country's 10th Journalists Day yesterday, many shared the feeling that journalism as a profession is no longer what it was. For many, being a journalist is now a risky business.

 

Indeed. We have heard plenty about the troubles the men and women in our profession have run into. There have been a number of cases where investigative journalists were physically assaulted, illegally held in custody, threatened, or falsely incriminated. And truth-seeking reporters have been thrown those two famous rhetorical questions: "On whose side are you standing, the Party's or the masses'", and "Are you a Party member?"

 

Being a journalist may be tricky. Many are still accustomed to seeing the mass media as the authorities' mouthpiece. To them, journalists finding fault with the authorities is simply unacceptable. On the other hand, the central authorities have been calling on the media to be more aggressive and play the watchdog role.

 

Expectations of them have also undergone dramatic changes in recent years. People want journalists to be more inquiring to satisfy their right to know. The authorities want the media to be a dutiful supervisor to facilitate their attempts to deliver clean and good governance.

 

Yet, in spite of all the promises and encouragement, that is not an easy role to play. Access to government information is not a handicap peculiar to journalists. Even the recent decree on government information disclosure has not made much difference. The bigger trouble is the same old question of whom the media work for.

 

In practice, besides pressure from editors on "marketability," most Chinese journalists also have to take pains to weigh and balance their reports so that playing a supervisory role does not land them in trouble.

 

It is helpful that the newly amended regulation on press card management emphasizes protection for journalists. However, details of how to better protect them are to be worked out.

 

So on this Journalists Day, when our colleagues expressed concern about their legitimate rights as news professionals, we are still faced with the truth that there is no legal basis for the protection they want.

 

Protecting journalists may stir mixed feelings among the general public. Some are fed up with paparazzo journalism. Some are sickened by journalists trading favorable exposure for personal gains. Some are tired of those singing the praises of people in power.

 

This profession is in need of regulation but if there is no healthy environment where journalists can pursue serious journalism, media supervision is out of the question.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

DALAI LAMA SUSPENDED TALKS BUT DOOR STILL OPEN

 

Editor's note: Zhu Weiqun, the executive vice-director of the United Front Work Department (UFWD) of the Communist Party of China (CPC), was interviewed by Germany's Focus magazine on September 22 about China's policy on the Tibet autonomous region and the central government's attitude towards the Dalai Lama. Following is an excerpt of the interview, published in the magazine on Oct 5.

 

Q: Tibet is an ethnic autonomous region of China. What is your perception of the concept of "autonomy"?

 

A: Due to their different historical and cultural traditions and different ethnic structure, all countries may apply different policies for ethnic autonomy. Each country is entitled to handle domestic ethnic relations according to its unique national conditions. No country has the right to force its own policy onto others.

 

Q: What rights do the Tibetan people enjoy? Can you give an example of how they exercise their own right to govern their own affairs?

 

A: Local Tibetans elect the people's congress and governments at all levels in the Tibet autonomous region. In line with the principle of the Constitution, they have the right to make decisions on the development of local economy and social affairs. Our ethnic autonomy is related with the unity of the country and union of all ethnic groups. Ethnic autonomy does not exist without them.

 

In Tibet, 70 percent of local officials are Tibetans at the regional level, 80 percent at the prefecture level and 90 percent at the county and below levels.

 

Q: The Dalai Lama and some Tibetans complain that they were excluded from the process of Tibetan modernization and deprived of the right to participate in local cultural and religious affairs. Also, it is true that Tibetans have taken on a lot of local government posts, but most of them do not hold important positions. Is that true and what are your comments?

 

A: The allegation that ethnic Tibetan officials only occupy nominal positions without the real decision-making power in hand is totally contrary to fact. Without our Tibetan officials in the crucial positions, how could Tibet achieve such earthshaking progress in such a short period? Our statistics indicate that nearly 70 percent of the top leaders of local Party committees region-wide are ethnic Tibetans.

 

The Dalai Lama's so-called "autonomy blueprint" for Tibet has exposed his ambition to restore Tibet's widely denounced former feudal hierarchic system to the vast Himalayan region.

 

Q: Why does the Chinese authority so deeply distrust the Dalai Lama and treat him with suspicion? What is the evidence of the Chinese authority to accuse the Dalai Lama clique as the mastermind of last year's March 14 Lhasa riots?

 

A: The Dalai Lama fled after a failed rebellion in 1959 against the democratic reform campaign launched by the central government. During the 1960s, with the help of some Western countries, the Dalai Lama had long been engaging in armed sabotage and disturbance at the frontier area. After all these plots and conspiracy were frustrated, the Dalai Lama began to turn to the so-called "middle line" instead of pursuing complete independence for Tibet. However, the so-called "middle line" is still in nature "Tibet independence".

 

We have ample facts and evidence that last year's Lhasa violence was premeditated, masterminded and incited by the Dalai Lama clique. The existence of the so-called "Tibet exiled government", which is essentially an overseas separatist group, is in itself a source of turbulence. From 2007 to the opening of the Beijing Olympic Games, the Dalai Lama clique, especially the extremist group "Tibetan Youth Congress", had organized and incited a series of violent activities in an attempt to disrupt Tibet's society. Also, the Dalai Lama himself has made several speeches since the March 14 riots to defend involved criminals.

 

Q: At the end of last year, the Chinese authorities ended talks with the Dalai Lama's private representative. So under what conditions could the central government restart the talks?

 

A: It is not the Chinese central government but the Dalai Lama himself that halted the talks. During the talks in last November, the Dalai Lama's representative showed a so-called "memorandum on Tibetans' genuine autonomy" and claimed that the following talks with the central government should be based on the memorandum.

 

At that time, the central government's stance is crystal clear that the memorandum is another edition of the "Tibet independence" plot that is completely unacceptable. Seeing its attempt fail to come true, the Dalai Lama clique immediately convened a special meeting among "all exiled Tibetans" and announced the suspension of the contact and talks.

 

It is the central government's consistent stance that we are always open to talks. However, that could only be under the precondition that the Dalai Lama abandons his separatist remarks and activities.

 

Q: When we visited Tibet and talked to some young people, they all appreciated the considerable progress in local living standard. In spiritual life, however, the publicity and religion teaching are confined only to the temples. There is no religious class in schools. And do the Tibetan people have the rights to express their views and criticize the government?

 

A: Though Tibet has achieved rapid and great progress in economic development, there is still a gap between the region and the country's eastern areas. Hence, we cannot say Tibet has modernized too fast, rather it needs to develop even faster.

 

In regards to religion, like other places in the country, Tibetans enjoy sufficient religious freedom. The rights of religious belief and practice are fully respected and protected without any hurdles. But, of course, as a secular state with separation between church and school, like most countries in the world, it is not allowed to preach and propagate religion in public schools.

 

In the whole country including Tibet, citizens are entitled the freedom to criticize the government. Criticism, which can be widely seen in the media, especially on the Internet, is protected. However, it is not tolerable if someone wants to break the law, sabotage the national unity, and topple the State.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

HOW TO HANDLE GLOBAL ECONOMIC IMBALANCES

 

Regardless of whether we admit it or not, the financial crisis is deeply related to global economic imbalances. Currently, the world seems to have weathered the crisis and people envisage a new, post-crisis world order. If global imbalances are to be blamed for the crisis, then it is of little significance to discuss a new world order before identifying the causes of imbalances.

 

It is generally believed that the overspending spree in countries with huge trade deficits and the excessive savings in trade-surplus states caused global economic imbalances. Outwardly, this argument is reasonable and has been accepted by academicians and policymakers. Based on the assumption, economists wrote a "prescription" for avoiding crises: Increase consumption in trade-surplus countries and savings in trade-deficit countries. Indeed, since the beginning of this year, some positive signs seem to be emerging in countries with trade deficit, such as increasing savings in the US. So, people began to suspect that with the decline of the US spending, whether the export-oriented growth pattern in trade-surplus countries, with China as the representative, could keep up.

 

Unfortunately, the rising deposit in the US is very likely to be temporary and irrespective of people's will, and trade-surplus countries will still maintain the export-oriented growth model. I believe that it is the long-term factors that influenced the international division of labor, causing imbalances that could not be avoided through readjusting short-dated factors.

 

Moreover, global imbalances are rational to some extent, because they are the outcome of the international division of labor, and both trade-surplus and deficit countries could benefit from them. In the short term, the policies of various countries and international organizations should focus on reducing the negative influence of global imbalances; in the long term, countries should change the long-term factors that impact the international division of labor through restructuring so as to avoid global imbalances.

 

In order to reduce external imbalance, China must engage in structural adjustment, especially in speeding up the process of urbanization and financial system reform. The goal of urbanization is to boost domestic consumption while reforming the financial system aiming at better utilizing the savings provided by current account surpluses.

 

The direct effect of improving the rate of urbanization is to increase domestic spending. Once a rural resident comes to the cities, his or her income would increase without much training or learning. Because in rural areas, farmers' income improvement is constrained by the fixed factor - land, while in cities their labor is based on capital, which could be expanded. In other words, urbanization could raise the income of migrant workers at "zero cost" as well as per capita income countrywide. At present, urban per capita consumer spending is 2.57 times that in rural areas. Therefore, urbanization will boost domestic consumption level.

 

On the other hand, China's backward financial system led to the waste of national savings. If we have a well-established financial system, the large amount of foreign exchange brought by exporting could become bank loans or financing in capital market, which can enable enterprises and residents to buy imported products, and our trade surplus will not be so huge. Even if holding tremendous trade surplus, a developed financial system still could transfer the capital into domestic or offshore fund and reduce current account surplus.

 

One of the problems facing China's financial system is the absence of small- and medium-sized banks. At present, there are only 18 major commercial banks and more than 110 city commercial banks in China. Although the number of rural credit cooperatives is huge, most of them are not in good shape. While in the US, there are 7,500 commercial banks, 886 savings and loan associations, 400 mutual savings banks and 9,900 credit cooperatives nationwide.

 

Erecting more small- and medium-sized banks would be conducive to relieving China's economic imbalance. First, these banks prefer to issue loans to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which have financing difficulties for a long time. China's savings rate has surpassed 50 percent in recent years while domestic investment rate is about 42 percent, which means that savings equivalent to nearly 10 percent of the GDP have not been used each year. In a financial system dominated by large banks, the problem of loan difficulties facing SMEs cannot be solved effectively. With abundant funds, big banks would like to issue loans on a big scale to large enterprises, which could bring stable returns and lower their cost. While, small- and medium-sized banks with a few funds can operate flexibly and would like to issue loans to SMEs. So boosting the development of small- and medium-sized banks could increase domestic investment and improve the utilization rate of savings.

 

Second, SMEs can promote employment. The same amount of capital invested in SMEs would bring more job opportunities than that in large enterprises. With more employment, the labor payment ratio of the GDP will rise, which would change the current income allocation pattern so as to increase domestic spending and reduce dependence on export.

 

Another major flaw of China's financial system is the lack of regional capital markets. The population and acreage of each Chinese province is equivalent to a medium- or large-scale country, but there are only two stock markets and only about 1,500 listed enterprises. Even considering the newly launched Growth Enterprise Market, the scale of China's capital market is still relatively small. Moreover, China basically has no enterprise bond market and very few other financing channels. The consequence of lacking regional capital markets is the frequent recourse to illegal funds. We should, however, be aware that the large scale illegal fund raising signals SMEs' high demand for capital and people's desire to deploy spare capital.

 

Financial markets should not only play a role as an intermediate agent but also as a means for ordinary residents to share the fruit of the current high-speed economic growth. In the current allocation structure of China's GDP, the ratio of labor income is declining while capital income rising. Reforming the financial system could raise the proportion of labor income and could increase the ratio of capital income possessing by residents through encouraging private investment.

 

The author is deputy dean of the School of National Development, Peking University.

 

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THE MOSCOW TIMES

EDITORIAL

RUSAL ACCUSED OF 'TERROR' CAMPAIGN

BY ALEX ANISHYUK

 

As deeply indebted United Company RusAl sweet-talks foreign investors ahead of a planned initial public offering, it has launched a "terror" campaign at home against a business newspaper.

 

Vedomosti said RusAl and its lawyers were bombarding its journalists with threatening cell phone calls and e-mails after it published a front-page article on Oct. 26 that contained information from a closed-door investors meeting where RusAl announced its 2008 results.

 

The article, titled "$6 Billion Found Missing," revealed that RusAl had posted a net loss of $5.98 billion for last year and a $720 million loss for the first quarter of 2009. Vedomosti cited a presentation from the meeting as its source, without saying how it was obtained.

 

Vedomosti editor-in-chief Elizaveta Osetinskaya said RusAl accused the newspaper of breaking the law by publishing commercial secrets and was now waging a "war" to force it to reveal its source and prevent it from writing about the company again.

 

"UC RusAl and its lawyers from Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev & Partners have triggered an information terror [campaign] against Vedomosti," Osetinskaya wrote in an unusually sharp post on her LiveJournal blog late last week. "Their goal is to make us stop writing fairly and objectively about one of the most closed companies in Russia, as we have done for the past 10 years."

 

Vedomosti is a joint venture between The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and Independent Media Sanoma Magazines, which is the parent company of The Moscow Times.

 

RusAl refused to comment for this article. The company's press office has rejected requests for comment from The Moscow Times since April, when the newspaper bypassed the press office to talk to RusAl workers about conditions at their plant.

 

Dmitry Afanasiev, chairman of Egorov, Puginsky, Afanasiev & Partners, said Vedomosti was in breach of the law for publishing financial data from the RusAl presentation in three separate articles, even though it had been warned that the information was a commercial secret.

 

"We have a number of legal options open to us against the newspaper and its editors, and we are currently reviewing these," he said Sunday in e-mailed comments.

 

He did not address Vedomosti's complaints of intimidation.

 

Osetinskaya said Vedomosti had no obligation to check with sources whether information it received was a commercial secret. She stressed that Russian media legislation gives journalists the right to gather and publish any information, unless proven that they knew about the confidentiality and still decided to make it public.

 

"[RusAl and its lawyers] are trying to force us to stop writing stories about RusAl's business," Osetinskaya wrote. "This is a real legal terror: They call the mobile phones of our staff from early morning until late at night, warning them, 'Are you sure you should write about this?'"

 

The lawyers, she wrote, have flooded staff's e-mail boxes and even tried to convince the journalists that the phone calls and e-mails fell under the category of confidential information, too.

 

They "are threatening journalists with consequences" such as possible criminal charges, she said.

 

Osetinskaya wrote that the real goal was most likely to find out the identity of the source.

 

"In unofficial conversations, lawyers have made it clear what they indeed want from us," she wrote. "They need the source of the information."

 

She said such a demand was in violation of a company policy that requires journalists to shield the identities of sources from third parties except when ordered by a court.

 

The whole affair, Osetinskaya wrote, is most likely orchestrated by RusAl owner Oleg Deripaska himself.

 

"I'm almost sure that Deripaska is dissatisfied personally with the fact that unsanctioned information about his brainchild and about himself has surfaced," she wrote. "A person who assembled a large empire under his control is trying to control us — genuinely independent journalists."

 

Alexander Nadmitov, a lawyer with Nadmitov & Partners not connected to the RusAl-Vedomosti affair, said Vedomosti had no obligation to refrain from publishing the RusAl report unless its source had said the information was a commercial secret.

 

At the same time, he said, RusAl would be hard-pressed to make the commercial secrets claim stick in court if it had not required the investors at the closed-door meeting to sign a nondisclosure agreement.

 

"If there was no written agreement between the company and its counteragents, no information provided can be regarded as confidential," he said.

 

He said a lot of red tape goes into classifying something as a commercial secret.

 

"If a company lists certain information as a commercial secret, it should be documented and a list should be made of the people who have access to it," Nadmitov said. "If a company gives certain information in the form of leaflets to conference participants, the leaflets should bear a disclaimer mentioning that this data should not be disclosed to a third party."

 

The RusAl presentation was marked confidential on each page and was prepared for a small group of investment bankers under a confidentiality agreement, Afanasiev said.

 

Nadmitov agreed with Vedomosti's assessment that RusAl was probably more interested in finding the source of the leak than going after Vedomosti.

 

RusAl, which has long been sensitive about how its activities are portrayed in the media, has a lot at stake as it prepares for a possible IPO next month that could raise $2 billion in Hong Kong and Paris. RusAl would use the earnings to reduce its massive debts of about $16.8 billion.

 

Companies often threaten the media with lawsuits, but the courts are unlikely to be persuaded by an argument based on the commercial secrets law, said Leonid Bershidsky, editor-in-chief of the Slon.ru business portal and a former editor-in-chief of Vedomosti.

 

"However, if you bribe a judge you can win such a case, well, you can probably win any case then," he said.

 

Bershidsky said companies can be aggressive when they lack the ability to work well with the media, investors, analysts and consumers. Journalists, in turn, often find it easier to give in to a big company "that tries to reach its goals by threats or bribes rather than to do their jobs honestly," he said. "Vedomosti, however, looks for the fair rather than the easy way. This is what Liza Osetinskaya's blog post is about."

 

RusAl has a reputation of being a closed company when it comes to dealing with journalists, said Maxim Kashulinsky, editor-in-chief of Forbes Russia magazine.

 

"We haven't experienced any pressure from RusAl so far, but I wouldn't call their approach a friendly one," he said. "We ran an article about Deripaska's business a year ago, and RusAl's press office declined to comment for it."

 

He said some companies try to pressure journalists into not publishing certain information, but this rarely results in lawsuits.

 

"Companies don't use such threats on a systematic basis," he said. "This scandal is an alarming signal for journalists, and I hope Vedomosti comes off victorious, which would benefit all journalists working in Russia."

 

A receptionist at RusAl's press office said no spokespeople were available to comment when called several times Friday. Sergei Babichenko, a spokesman for Basic Element, Deripaska's holding company that has a controlling stake in RusAl, forwarded all questions to RusAl.

 

RusAl has used similar tactics against The Moscow Times. In an article in April titled "RusAl Saves $554M On Costs, Production," The Moscow Times asked workers in one of RusAl's mines how cost cuts were affecting them. One miner's response, that the drop in spending was forcing workers to cut corners on safety, drew an angry reaction from RusAl's press office, which said the newspaper could only publish information about the company that had been cleared by the press office.

 

Representatives of the mining giant also threatened to sue the newspaper, but no lawsuit materialized. The company has since refused to reply to inquiries from The Moscow Times.

 

 

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THE MOSCOW TIMES

EDITORIAL

POLICEMAN MAKES YOUTUBE APPEAL TO PUTIN

BY ALEXANDRA ODYNOVA

 

Interior Minister Rashid Nurgaliyev ordered an investigation Sunday of the Novorossiisk police after a local officer made a personal appeal to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin complaining of bad working conditions and being ordered to arrest innocent people.

 

Nurgaliyev also ordered that the officer be suspended pending the investigation, while the Krasnodar region police chief fired him for slander, Interior Ministry spokesman Valery Gribakin said Sunday, Interfax reported.

 

"Nurgaliyev will report on the results of the check to the president and prime minister," Gribakin said.

 

The incident is the latest embarrassment for Nurgaliyev, who has been struggling to reign in corruption in his ministry and deal with fallout from a police officer's shooting rampage this spring that left three people dead.

 

Alexei Dymovsky, a police major in the Krasnodar region city of Novorossiisk, said Sunday on Ekho Moskvy radio that he feared for his life and his family after his video addresses to Putin became an Internet sensation.

 

In the apparently unscripted and at times stumbling speeches, Dymovsky criticized his superiors for ordering him to arrest innocent people or be faced with unpaid overtime. He also said they told doctors not to give him paperwork for sick leave.

 

"I'm sick and tired of it all, and I want to resign," Dymovsky said.

 

Two videos — both approximately six minutes long — were posted late Thursday on his web site,

 

Dymovskiy.ru. The clips, filled with patriotic language and homage to state service, were later reposted on YouTube and quickly spread around the Russian blogosphere.

 

By Sunday evening, the two clips had more than 400,000 combined viewings on YouTube, and the number was steadily rising.

 

Dymovsky, 32, works in the city's department against drug trafficking and has served in the Novorossiisk police since 2004. Before that, he worked in the Amur region city of Svobodny, according to a biography on his site.

 

In the videos, Dymovsky complained that his monthly salary was only 14,000 rubles ($480) but that he had to work 30 days per month. He said he was on sick leave because his left arm was becoming numb from an injury and that he had been denied medical attention at local facilities for not solving enough crimes.

 

During his 10 years as a police officer, Dymovsky said, two wives left him because of his tough work schedule. Now he fears for the safety of his new wife, who is six months pregnant.

 

He told Ekho Moskvy that he was planning to send her to Moscow for safety reasons and that he had to hire a security guard and a car because he suspected that he was being followed.

 

Novorossiisk police met Saturday and condemned Dymovsky's actions, spokeswoman Polina Gerasimova told Interfax. "People become investigators not to get rich, but because it's their calling," she said.

 

"We disagree with our colleague, whom we can hardly call a colleague, since the major hasn't showed up at work since August," the police said in a statement.

 

As of Sunday evening, there was no reaction from Putin. The Public Chamber, a government oversight body, said Dymovsky's allegations would be seriously examined.

 

"In case of an emergency, we're ready to take the police officer under protection to avoid sanctions and persecution," said lawyer Anatoly Kucherena, head of the chamber's committee to oversee the activities of law enforcement agencies.

 

Human rights advocates in Novorossiisk met with the acting city police chief, Vladimir Grebenyuk, and regional officials. Police chief Vladimir Chernositov, among those whom Dymovsky criticized by name, has also been on sick leave, Interfax reported.

 

"Dymovsky said what nearly every police worker feels in Russia," Mikhail Pashkin, chairman of the Moscow police union's coordinating committee, said Saturday on Ekho Moskvy. "We have the same happening in Moscow."

 

In his appeal, Dymovsky also offered to recruit for Putin a team of good police officers to carry out a nationwide investigation of law enforcement agencies.

 

"Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin], I appeal to you with a request. Let's carry out an independent investigation all around our Russia. And I'm ready to take on such responsibilities," he said.

 

The offer coincides with Interior Ministry plans to root out corruption. Most notably, Nurgaliyev said in August that he planned to stamp out corruption in his ministry within a month.

 

In an interview to Der Spiegel magazine, President Dmitry Medvedev played down Nurgaliyev's pledge, but he also sounded a note of frustration.

 

"I hope, anyway, that the interior minister has a realistic idea of how to fight corruption. Of course, you can't defeat corruption in a month. As I understood Nurgaliyev, he was talking about getting rid of the most serious abuses in the Interior Ministry," Medvedev said, according to a transcript posted on the Kremlin web site.

 

Problems of the law enforcement system have been a subject of intense discussion since police Major Denis Yevsyukov killed three and wounded six people in a Moscow supermarket on April 27.

 

Medvedev sacked Moscow's police chief several days later.

 

In October, the republic of Buryatia's top police official and his deputy were arrested in connection with a contraband case. Also last month, Medvedev fired the Tuva region's police chief after an officer there shot two traffic cops, killing one and injuring the other, before shooting himself.

 

After that incident, Nurgaliyev called on the federal, regional and local police to discuss ways of reinforcing work discipline.

 

The scandal with Dymovsky comes at a particularly unfortunate time for the Interior Ministry, which celebrates the national Police Day holiday on Tuesday.

 

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THE MOSCOW TIMES

EDITORIAL

THE DAY THE BERLIN WALL CAME DOWN AND CHANGED HISTORY

 

BERLIN — Twenty years ago Monday, they danced atop the Berlin Wall, feet thudding on the cold concrete, arms raised in victory, hands clasped in friendship and giddy hope. On that cold night, years of separation and anxiety melted into the unbelievable reality of freedom and a future without border guards, secret police, informers and rigid communist control.

 

This weekend, Germans celebrated with concerts boasting Beethoven and Bon Jovi; a memorial service for the 136 people killed trying to cross over from 1961 to 1989; candle lightings and 1,000 towering plastic foam dominoes placed along the wall's route to be tipped over.

 

On Nov. 9, 1989, East Germans came in droves, riding their sputtering Trabants, motorcycles and rickety bicycles. Hundreds, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands crossed over the following days.

 

Stores in West Berlin stayed open late and banks gave out 100 Deutschemarks in "welcome money," then worth about $50, to each East German visitor.

 

The party lasted four days and by Nov. 12 more than 3 million of East Germany's 16.6 million people had visited, nearly a third of them to West Berlin, the rest through gates opening up along the rest of the fenced, mined frontier that cut their country in two.

 

Sections of the nearly 155 kilometers of wall were pulled down and knocked over. Tourists chiseled off chunks to keep as souvenirs. Tearful families reunited. Bars gave out free drinks. Strangers kissed and toasted each other with champagne.

 

Klaus-Hubert Fugger, a student at the Free University in West Berlin, was having drinks at a pub when people began coming "who looked a bit different."

 

Customers bought the visitors round after round. By midnight, instead of going home, Fugger and three others took a taxi to the Brandenburg Gate, long a no man's land, and scaled the nearly four-meter wall with hundreds of others.

 

"There were really like a lot of scenes, like people crying, because they couldn't get the situation," said Fugger, now 43. "A lot of people came with bottles" of champagne and sweet German sparkling wine.

 

Fugger spent the next night on the wall, too. A newsmagazine photo shows him wrapped in a scarf.

 

"Then the wall was crowded all over, thousands of people, and you couldn't move … you had to push through the masses of the people," he said.

 

Angela Merkel, Germany's first chancellor from the former communist East, recalled the euphoria in an address last week to the U.S. Congress.

 

"Where there was once only a dark wall, a door suddenly opened and we all walked through it: onto the streets, into the churches, across the borders," Merkel said. "Everyone was given the chance to build something new, to make a difference, to venture a new beginning."

 

The wall that the communists built at the height of the Cold War and which stood for 28 years is mostly gone. Some parts still stand, at an outdoor art gallery or as part of an open-air museum. Its route through the city is now streets, shopping centers, apartment houses. The only reminder of it is a series of inlaid bricks that traces its path.

 

Checkpoint Charlie, the prefab that was long the symbol of the Allied presence and of Cold War tension, has been moved to a museum in western Berlin.

 

Potsdamer Platz, the vibrant square that was destroyed during World War II and became a no man's land during the Cold War, is full of upscale shops selling everything from iPods to grilled bratwursts.

 

At a ceremony in Berlin on Oct. 31, Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor who presided over the opening of the wall, stood side by side with the superpower presidents of the time, George H.W. Bush and Mikhail Gorbachev.

 

After the decades of shame that followed the Nazi era, Kohl suggested, the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the reunification of their country 11 months later gave Germans pride.

 

"We don't have many reasons in our history to be proud," said Kohl, now 79. But as chancellor, "I have nothing better, nothing to be more proud of, than German reunification."

 

In an interview in Moscow, Gorbachev said it was a catalyst for peace. "No matter how hard it was, we worked, we found mutual understanding and we moved forward. We started cutting down nuclear weapons, scaling down the armed forces in Europe and resolving other issues," he said.

 

It all began with a routine late afternoon news conference.

 

On Nov. 9, 1989, Guenter Schabowski, a member of East Germany's ruling Politburo, casually declared that East Germans would be free to travel to the West immediately.

 

Later, he tried to clarify his comments and said the new rules would take hold at midnight, but events moved faster as the word spread.

 

At a remote crossing in Berlin's south, Annemarie Reffert and her 15-year-old daughter made history by becoming the first East Germans to cross the border.

 

Reffert, now 66, remembers the East German soldiers being at a loss when she tried to cross the border.

 

"I argued that Schabowski said we were allowed to go over," she said. The border soldiers relented. A customs official was astonished that she had no luggage.

 

"All we wanted was to see if we really could travel," Reffert said.

 

Years later, Schabowski told a TV interviewer that he had gotten mixed up. It was not a decision but a bill that the Politburo was set to discuss. He thought it was a decision that had already been approved.

 

That night, around midnight, border guards swung open the gates. Through Checkpoint Charlie, down the Invalidenstrasse, across the Glienicke Bridge, scores of people streamed into West Berlin, unabated, unfettered, eyes agog.

 

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