EDITORIAL 22.04.10

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Editorial

month april 22, edition 000488, collected & managed by durgesh kumar mishra, published by – manish manjul

 

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THE PIONEER

1. A PERVERSE RELATIONSHIP
2. DEALING WITH IRAN
3. OBAMA PANDERS TO PAKISTAN - SHOBORI GANGULI
4. GANDHI REVERED, NOT HIS VALUES - SUDHANSU R DAS
5. SCAM CALLED VEDANTA - SASWAT PANIGRAHI
6. ONE GIANT STEP BACK - GWYNNE DYER
7. BANK HELPS THEM WEAVE DREAMS INTO REALITY - NUSRAT ARA

MAIL TODAY

1. DON'T SUBVERT DUE PROCESS TO GO AFTER LALIT MODI
2. A PRICE WORTH PAYING
3. DRUNK ON POWER
4. POPULIST HIJACK OF UPA AGENDA - BY MANOJ JOSHI
5. BOOMTOWN RAP - MAX MARTIN

THE TIMES OF INDIA

1. LEGALISE GAMBLING
2. NO TRAVEL BANS, PLEASE
3. MAKE ATTENDANCE COMPULSORY - KAUTILYA KUMAR
4. LEGALISE GAMBLING
5. MY FLAMINGO FAMILY - BACHI KARKARIA
6. TAKE TRASH SERIOUSLY, OR IT WILL KILL YOU - RAJESH KALRA

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. THAILAND IN A RED CURRY
2. TAKE COVER!
3. LESSONS FROM ATISH - MN KUNDU
4. STILL CUTTING EDGE
5. ANURADHA SRIVASTAVA
6. IPL? LET'S GET REAL - SAMAR HALARNKAR

THE INDIAN EXPRESS

1. COURTING TRAUMA
2. PARTY FAVOURS
3. AT SILLY POINT
4. I-BANKS' IPL MOMENT - SAUBHIK CHAKRABARTI
5. EXPERIMENTS WITH TWITTER - COOMI KAPOOR
6. THE SPECTRE OF NAZ - VINAY SITAPATI
7. IN THE CORNER OF A FOREIGN FIELD - SHAILAJA BAJPAI
8. VIEW FROM THE RIGHT - SUMAN K JHA
9. READING TIGER WRITING DRAGON

THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. BOOST TO INFRA
2. THE RIGHT ROAD
3. STILL LEANING ON THE SIDE OF GROWTH - MAHESH VYAS
4. WHAT APPLE SAYS ABOUT INNOVATION - KRISHNAMURTHY V SUBRAMANIAN
5. REGULATING THE DISTRIBUTORS - K MUTHUKUMAR

THE HINDU

1. WHY WE NEED AN ANTI-TORTURE LAW
2. WALK THE TALK
3. TO BANGALORE, WITH HATE - PRAVEEN SWAMI
4. PAID NEWS UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY: PRESS COUNCIL REPORT - P. SAINATH
5. FAITH IN KABUL AT A NEW LOW IN KANDAHAR
6. RICHARD A. OPPEL JR. AND TAIMOOR SHAH
7. GOOGLE HITS BACK IN PRIVACY ROW - CHARLES ARTHUR
8. U.S. NAVY PLANNING "GREAT GREEN FLEET" - SUZANNE GOLDENBERG

THE ASIAN AGE

1. IPL, BCCI PROBE MUST BE THOROUGH
2. EMPOWERING OR OPPRESSIVE?
3. RIGHTS OF EARTH

DNA

1. ENERGISING BABUS
2. BEYOND THE ASHES
3. THE ICEBERG FORMULA - R JAGANNATHAN
4. BEG YOUR PARDON, WHAT'S IPL? - ANTARA DEV SEN

THE TRIBUNE

1. ARMY CHIEF IN J&K
2. N-CHOE KINDLES HOPE
3. MAKING VOTING COMPULSORY
4. AFPAK: WILL THEY, WON'T THEY? - BY B.G. VERGHESE
5. CANINE LOVE - BY SURINDER GOSAIN
6. OF NEWS AND TRIVIA - BY SAJLA CHAWLA
7. ONLY MAVERICKS TRIGGER REFORM - BY CHANDRA MOHAN
8. BANGALORE DIARY

MUMBAI MERROR

1. WOODPECKER AND MISTLETOE

BUSINESS STANDARD

2. FERTILISER PRICE MISMATCH
3. BECAUSE THEY ARE THERE!
4. INDIFFERENCE ABOUT THE BIG RUPEE RISE? - SHANKAR ACHARYA
5. A WORLD TOO FLAT FOR COMFORT - ARVIND SINGHAL
6. TOILERS OF THE SEA - BARUN ROY
7. WHY, HOW AND HOW MUCH? - ANSHU BHARADWAJ

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. LIVE AND LET DIE
2. DÉJÀ VU ON RESERVATION
3. MARKET STABILISATION BONDS
4. THE FATE OF A MEGAPOLIS - PRABHA JAGANNATHAN
5. BALANCING THE OPPOSITES - VITHAL C NADKARNI
6. CENTRAL BANK HAS TRIED TO BALANCE LIQUIDITY AND INFLATION
7. THE RATE HIKE IS AIMED AT TAMING INFLATION AND SUPPORTING GROWTH
8. DHARMAKIRTI JOSHI, CHIEF ECONOMIST, CRISIL LTD
9. CONSUMER PROTECTION A FAR CRY IN HOUSING MKT - PARRY SINGH, MD, RED FORT CAPITAL
10. CONSUMER PROTECTION A FAR CRY IN HOUSING MKT
11. NIRANJAN HIRANANDANI, MD, HIRANANDANI CONSTRUCTION
12. FOR A SINGLE FINANCIAL REGULATOR - T K ARUN
13. STRONG MARKET, HIGHER PRICES HELP LIFT MARGINS: SESA GOA MD
14. ASIA TO DRIVE GLOBAL GROWTH, BUT US MAY SURPRISE ON THE UPSIDE' - APURV GUPTA
15. RE PLAYS SPOILSPORT FOR HCL TECH, BUT FOCUS ON GLOBAL MARKETS SAVES THE DAY - ANDY MUKHERJEE
16. IS A PILLAR OF FUTURE GROWTH: THE BODY SHOP - AMIT SHARMA

DECCAN CHRONICAL

1. IPL, BCCI PROBE MUST BE THOROUGH
2. RIGHTS OF EARTH - BY VANDANA SHIVA
3. HOW OBAMA MADE US INDISPENSABLE AGAIN -BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
4. EMPOWERING OR OPPRESSIVE? - P.P. RAO
5. WHO KILLED BENAZIR? - BY MAHIR ALI
6. DON'T YOU SEE GOD IN OTHERS? - BY FRANCIS GONSALVES

THE STATESMAN

1. DANTEWADA~II 
   UN INDICTMENT
2. SECOND TERM
3. MAOISTS AND IPL - RAJINDER PURI
4. ASIANS MUST THINK FOR THEMSELVES
5. THE HOSTESS BITES BACK
6. SEASON OF JOY - PARAMANANDA PAL

THE TELEGRAPH

1. INFLATION WORRY
2. PARTY TIME
3. VIABLE UNIVERSITIES  - ANDRÉ BÉTEILLE
4. DYING FLAME - SUMANTA SEN
5. RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS
6. THE MANY WINDING WAYS TO CLOSURE - INSIYA POONAWALA

DECCAN HERALD

1. REASON TO REJOICE
2. STEADY APPROACH
3. MANAGING WITH 'GURUS' - BY ALOK RAY
4. TURKEY'S EU ENTRY MAY SUFFER A SET BACK - BY MICHAEL JANSEN
5. NRI SABOTEURS - BY MEERA SESHADRI

THE JERUSALEM POST

1. CANDIDLY SPEAKING: EXPOSING HYPOCRISY, CANT, FALSEHOOD - BY ISI LEIBLER
2. IPAD IMBECILITY - BY JPOST EDITORIAL STAFF
3. RATTLING THE CAGE: YASHER KOAH, JUDGE GOLDSTONE - BY LARRY DERFNER
4. COULD WATER IGNITE THE NEXT WAR? - BY DOUGLAS BLOOMFIELD
5. DID BUSH SAVE AMERICA? - BY OFER ISRAELI
6. THIS ISN'T ABOUT GOLDSTONE, IT'S ABOUT JUDAISM - BY WARREN GOLDSTEIN

 HAARETZ

1. AN ONEROUS SECURITY BURDEN
2. OBAMA MUST STOP DEMANDING THE IMPOSSIBLE FROM ISRAEL - BY ARI SHAVIT
3. THE COLLAPSE OF RELIGIOUS ZIONISM - BY SHAHAR ILAN
4. THE OTHER END OF THE CORRIDOR - BY AMALIA ROSENBLUM
5. DIASPORA JEWS SHOULD STOP TRYING TO FIND ISRAEL'S FLAWS - BY ISRAEL HAREL

THE NEW YORK TIMES

1. AFTER GOLDMAN
2. 264 DAYS AND COUNTING
3. WHAT WOULD YOU DO?
4. A CHILD'S BEST INTEREST
5. OBAMA BACKS DOWN ON SUDAN - BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
6. DANCE OF THE DERIVATIVES - BY GAIL COLLINS

USA TODAY

1. EARTH DAY: SMILE, DON'T SHUDDER - BY BJORN LOMBORG
2. OUR VIEW ON FINANCIAL REFORM (PART I): REIN IN WALL STREET BEFORE HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
3. OUR VIEW ON CAMPUS CLUBS: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM? YES. BUT DON'T FUND DISCRIMINATION.
4. HOW BAD SCIENCE OPENED DOOR FOR MALARIA - BY RICHARD TREN AND DONALD ROBERTS

TEHRAN TIMES

1. WHAT LINKS THE BANKING CRISIS AND THE VOLCANO? - BY GEORGE MONBIOT

HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

1. FROM THE BOSPHORUS: STRAIGHT - A THANK YOU TO OUR 'ACCIDENTAL READERS'
2. GÜL'S CALL FOR CONCILIATION REMAINS UP IN THE AIR - SEDAT ERGİN
3. IS TURKEY TRYING TO DO BETTER?
4. IN DEFENSE OF BLASPHEMERS - ELDAR MAMEDOV
5. MILITARY SERVICE BY PAYMENT: A LIE - MEHMET ALİ BİRAND
6. THE NEW BOOM IN MALARIA - PHILIP STEVENS
7. TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES - ALON BEN-MEIR
8. ALARM BELLS ARE RINGING - YUSUF KANLI

I.THE NEWS

1. MEETING ON THE BRINK
2. FACE IT!
3. A FRIEND IN NEED
4. REDEFINING NATIONALISM - DR MUBASHIR HASAN
5. NAME CHANGE, NAME-CALLING - FASI ZAKA
6. THE TEXT BEHIND THE PRINT - KAMILA HYAT
7. ON JCSC CHAIRMEN - IKRAM SEHGAL
8. MYSTIC VIEW - AMAR JALEEL
9. TURKISH LESSONS - TAYYAB SIDDIQUI

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

1. SHAMEFUL SITUATION, SHAMEFUL APPROACHES
2. WE WISH CM RAISANI WAS RIGHT
3. RESIGNATIONS OF FAKE DEGREE HOLDERS
4. WAGING WAR AND MAKING PEACE - HAMID ALVI
5. DISGRACING DEMOCRACY
6. BURHANUDDIN HASAN
7. AFTER A DECADE OF US WAR
8. SYED M TARIQ PIRZADA
9. AMBASSADOR OF MUSLIM-HINDU UNITY - YASIR ALI KHAN
10. SETTING THE TRAP ON IRAN - DAVID IGNATIUS

 THE INDEPENDENT

1. SLAIN POLICE
2. RODENT INVASION
3. A FREE COUNTRY..!
4. WORSENING ELECTRICITY CRISIS - DR. MOHAMMED NAWAZISH
5. BRITAIN'S NO-WIN ELECTION?  - ROBERT SKIDELSKY

THE AUSTRALIAN

1. FIRST STEPS ON THE LONG ROAD TO HOSPITAL REFORM
2. NO MORE EXCUSES IN VICTORIA
3. FORGOTTEN BATTLE REMEMBERED
4. MORE MONEY BUT NOT BIGGEST CHANGE SINCE MEDICARE
5. RUDD STILL HASN'T SET COURSE FOR REFORM
6. HARSH BUT EFFECTIVE POLICY

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1. MORE PILLARS NEEDED IN FINANCE
2. EDUCATION'S LEVEL PLAYING FIELDS
3. PROBLEM GAMBLERS AT BREAKING POINT
4. SAFE CITY ABOUT MORE THAN POLICE NUMBERS

THE GUARDIAN

1. LABOUR: ALL QUIET ON THE PROGRESSIVE FRONT
2. BANKS: THE TAXMAN COMETH
3. IN PRAISE OF … ROBINSON THE GREAT

DAILY EXPRESS

1. IMMIGRATION POLICY SHOWS CLEGG IN HIS TRUE COLOURS
2. A TALE OF ASHES AND ASSES
3. IMMIGRATION POLICY SHOWS CLEGG IN HIS TRUE COLOURS
4. AT LAST THE TORIES GRASP THE NETTLE OF WELFARE REFORM - BY LEO MCKINSTRY

THE GAZETTE

1. CAN QUEBEC SHOW SOME IMAGINATION ON SCHOOL LANGUAGE?

THE KOREA TIMES

2. MINI-FINANCIAL CRISIS AGAIN?
3. BY LEE CHANG-SUP
4. WALL STREET FLAP COLORS CALIFORNIA RACE. - BY DAN WALTERS
5. IT'S WHAT THEY DIDN'T SAY! - BY ANTHONY HEGARTY

THE KOREA HERALD

1. FTA WITH CHINA.
2. TRULY SHAMEFUL
3. JUSTICE MINISTER BLIND TO ETHICAL DILEMMAS
4. CHINA MUST PROTECT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
5. IRANIAN THREAT COULD BE EXAGGERATED
6. GREEK MATH ADDS UP TO DELUSION, DEFAULT
7. TOYOTA SHOWCASES JAPAN, INC.'S COMMUNICATION GAP
8. CHALLENGES TO MULTIPOLAR GLOBAL ECONOMY

THE JAPAN TIMES

1. THE FIELD OF PARTIES THICKENS
2. HELPING POST-CONFLICT COUNTRIES
3. A PIG'S BREAKFAST IN EUROPE - BY HOWARD DAVIES

THE JAKARTA POST

1. INCENTIVES FOR THE EARTH
2. NO IRONY OF WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION: A DISCOURSE
3. WHAT OUR ACFTA CRITICS USUALLY OVERLOOK - AKHMAD RIZAL SHIDIQ
4. USERS AND DISAPPEARING WATER - AMREETA REGMI

CHINA DAILY

1. DONATIONS THAT COUNT
2. EXPORTING FOR THE WORLD
3. UNDERSTAND CHINA BETTER
4. HIGH LEVEL OF RESCUE GOES BEYOND ALTITUDE - BY XIONG LEI (CHINA DAILY)
5. CURBING PROPERTY SPECULATION - BY YI XIANRONG (CHINA DAILY)
6. PSYCHOLOGIST MINISTERS TO STUDENTS - BY KU MA (CHINA DAILY)
7. TIME FOR A NEW BRETTON WOODS - BY ADLAI E. STEVENSON (CHINA DAILY)

DAILY MIRROR

1. SMALL COUNTRY, BIG HEART
2. VICTORY IS A CURSE WITH MANY DIMENSIONS
3. A GAME CHANGER: NEW POLITICS
4. THE SHIP OF STATE MEANS STATESMANSHIP
5. DAYS OF THE ASH ARE OVER  - BY DILINI ALGAMA

THE MOSCOW TIMES

1. COALITION OF THE WILLING MODERNIZERS - BY KONSTANTIN SONIN
2. NATO'S COMMON EUROPEAN ROOF  - BY ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN

THE HIMALAYAN

1. MISSING MATURITY
2. EARTH DAY: A DAY OF CELEBRATION
3. SCOTT H. DELISI
4. TOPICS: MOTHERS IN DISTRESS - DURGA INNANI
5. BLOG SURF: BREATHING - TWEAKFIT.COM
6. CREDOS: I AND YOU—X - MARTIN BUBER 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

A PERVERSE RELATIONSHIP

BABUS, CONTRACTORS COLLUDE TO CHEAT INDIA

The Standing Committee on Transport, Tourism and Culture of Parliament is welcome to feign surprise over a senior bureaucrat's candid admission of how babus collude with contractors to delay road projects under the National Highways Development Programme to ensure cost escalation and hence higher profits for those who are awarded contracts, but there really is nothing new about this nefarious nexus. The senior bureaucrat was merely reiterating a well-known fact which, in this particular case, adversely impacts the National Highways Development Programme and slows down both ongoing and proposed projects. But the nexus between babus and contractors (and, at times, politicians and criminals) is virtually all pervasive at the Centre as well as in the States. It's a strange, perverse relationship that thrives on slowing down India's progress, thus denting its growth prospects, and feeds on the public exchequer, or, more precisely, the tax-payers' money. It is anybody's guess as to how much money is lost on account of delayed road projects, but it would not be inappropriate to suggest that the pay-out due to cost over-runs could have been better utilised by way of adding to our physical infrastructure or improving the quality of roads and bridges that are being built. We should, however, not limit the damaging impact of the nexus between babus and contractors to roads and bridges alone. Every scheme of the Government, no matter how well-intentioned it may be, falters at the implementation stage because of this odious relationship. If sub-standard or fake medicines are being supplied to health care centres and hospitals, then the reason can be traced to babus colluding with suppliers. If textbooks that are meant to be distributed free of cost to students do not reach schools in time — they often reach well after the academic session has begun — it's because babus have struck a deal with the printers and distributors. If only 10 per cent of the funds meant for social welfare schemes for the poorest of the poor reach the beneficiaries, then it is because babus and contractors have entered into a compact to feather their own nests. These are only illustrative examples; the list is far too long to be replicated here.

This is not to suggest that every babu has his snout in the trough. There are honest bureaucrats but they are rarely heard of, leave alone seen, because they would rather not rock the 'system' which can ruthlessly punish those who break ranks. Whistle-blowers are treated as outcasts and made to rot in irrelevance and worse. The food chain may begin with contractors but it does not end with babus — it extends well beyond the bureaucracy and keeps politicians in comfort. Yet, it need not be so. If there is sufficient political will, the obstacles raised by corrupt babus and greedy contractors can be overcome. The NDA Government demonstrated that this is possible through its road-building programme; the Government of Gujarat has shown that babus can be kept on a tight leash and made to deliver on the ruling party's promises to the people. What the Congress-led UPA regime clearly lacks is political commitment and the courage to take on vested interests. Some critics would argue that the Congress has never discouraged babus from colluding with contractors as this serves its own narrow interests which do not require elaboration. That in the process India suffers is of negligible concern to the regime of the day.

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

DEALING WITH IRAN

EXPOSE, CHECKMATE ITS N-PROGRAMME

As the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany mull a fresh round of sanctions against Iran for what they say are efforts by the Islamic Republic to produce a nuclear bomb, it is fast becoming apparent that the US's views on the subject are hardly helping matters. Although it recently held a Nuclear Security Summit to secure the world's existing nuclear stockpile in four years time, the Obama Administration chose to snub the two countries that according to its own reading present the biggest challenge to tackling nuclear proliferation — Iran and North Korea. The two countries were not only not invited to the summit — something that did not go down well with the Iranian regime which held its own rival nuclear summit a week later and, unsurprisingly, did not invite the US — but the Americans also made it clear that they would like to see more punitive action against Tehran for being opaque about its nuclear programme — Pyongyang, it seems, has been left alone for the moment given the Chinese angle. Predictably, this has only hardened the resolve of the Iranian regime to pursue its nuclear programme with greater vigour. What this fundamentally represents is a huge lack of understanding on the part of the US. Even if Iran is pursuing a military nuclear programme — new secret nuclear fuel enrichment facilities were discovered there last year — it hardly pays to enforce sanctions and push the programme underground. Iran's nuclear programme has now achieved enough critical mass to withstand targeted economic or military sanctions. In fact, sanctions that target the import of oil products will only hurt the Iranian people, not the Iranian regime. On the contrary, given the vice-like grip that the Iranian Government has on that country, it is more likely that sanctions will be portrayed as American attempts to subvert Iran's sovereignty.

It would be prudent for the Americans to view the Iranian nuclear issue as a derivative of Iran's autocratic political system. To begin with, it would be a better idea for the US to work with Russia and China to expose Iran. For, if the Iranians have been guilty of not being transparent about their nuclear programme, the Americans have been guilty of being paranoid. The latter have to be more flexible and directly engage the former. If Tehran persists with its defiance, then Washington, DC will have greater support from the international community to enact policies to isolate Iran. Simultaneously, the US Administration really needs to secure Pakistan's nuclear arsenal and work on Saudi Arabia to prevent the production of an 'Arab Bomb'. The bottomline is that if isolation of Iran is indeed the punishment that the US seeks, it will have to do the ground work and get the international community on board first.

 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

OBAMA PANDERS TO PAKISTAN

SHOBORI GANGULI

So besotted the Indian media has been with the IPL controversy surrounding Mr Shashi Tharoor and now Mr Lalit Modi that it ignored some extremely important signals that came India's way during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's visit to the United States last week. In his inaugural speech at the nuclear security summit in Washington, attended by 46 countries including India and Pakistan, US President Barack Obama made it known in no uncertain terms that the possibility of terrorists obtaining a nuclear weapon is "the single biggest threat to US security". No issues with this assertion, except that the possibility of such a scenario obtaining in Pakistan did not strike Mr Obama. That was the first signal.

Then followed news of US Deputy Secretary James B Steinberg's visit to India this week, ahead of which White House admitted to "talking to both India and Pakistan about their nuclear programmes and the responsibilities that come with them". Clearly, India's responsibilities as a nuclear power are of a significantly different nature from Pakistan's. Yet, "talking to both" was a subtle yet sure re-hyphenation of India and Pakistan in America's South Asia policy, a signal that was sent out more clearly in the bilateral meetings Mr Obama held with Mr Singh and Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on the sidelines of the summit. Amid reports that the US is putting pressure on India to resume normal diplomacy with Pakistan to best serve American interests in Afghanistan, the content of Mr Obama's meetings with the two South Asian leaders held significant indicators.

Indeed, India had already displayed its abject surrender to Mr Obama's AfPak policy this February when it agreed to the resumption of Foreign Secretary-level talks with Pakistan despite the latter's intransigent refusal to address India's post-26/11 concerns. Then followed the US-India and US-Pakistan bilaterals in Washington. The White House readouts of the two meetings amply sum up the nature of US engagement with the two South Asian neighbours. A nearly 500-word readout on the Obama-Gilani meeting states how "very fond of Pakistan" Mr Obama is, what with the nostalgia of "having visited the country during college". Noting the "positive relations between the US and Pakistan", it said both countries are working "against extremists operating in South Asia", and that they are "truly facing a common enemy". Mr Obama observed that Pakistan's participation in the nuclear summit "comes at a time when popular support for the US-Pakistan relationship is growing". He also reiterated America's commitment to $ 125 million worth energy-sector projects in Pakistan. Finally, what must sound intensely shocking to India, Mr Oabma lauded Pakistan for taking "nuclear security seriously" and said he was certain that it has "appropriate safeguards in place".

Now sample the White House's 170-word readout on the Manmohan-Obama meeting. The two leaders agreed to "continue to strengthen the robust relationship between the people of their countries" and "work together on global development issues, including economic infrastructure, food security, and poverty reduction". On Afghanistan, it said the two had a "shared vision for a strong, stable, and prosperous South Asia", wherein Mr Obama lauded the "humanitarian and development assistance" provided by India in Afghanistan. Starkly absent was the mention of a "common enemy" whom Mr Obama had so clearly identified with Pakistan. The two merely discussed "a number of regional and global issues, including counter-terrorism and nonproliferation". Significantly, there was no talk of "working together" against extremists in South Asia, particularly Pakistan, who threaten India far more directly than they do the US. All this was topped up by vague assurances about India gaining access to Mumbai mastermind David Headley, a "sensitive issue" for the Americans. Despite such an obviously tepid meeting, Mr Singh gushingly told Mr Obama that he had "caught the imagination of millions around the world, including the people of India who were anxious to see him soon in our country".

Admittedly, Mr Obama, since June 2009, has been consciously reworking America's attitude to Muslims the world over. Following his much-hyped policy statement in Cairo last year, the US President is going to great lengths to reach out to the domestic American Muslim constituency. In recent months, his Administration has indicated that it would like to change the vocabulary it has reserved for Muslims since 9/11. For instance, the National Security Strategy document has dropped the term "Islamic radicalism" from its guidelines. Officials have also reversed a Homeland Security guideline that earlier subjected visitors from 13 Islamic countries to mandatory screenings. American Nobel Prize winners have been despatched across the Muslim world to advise its scientists, researchers and economists on excellence and Muslim entrepreneurs are being invited to America for seminars and workshops.

 

Although the fruits of this re-engagement are yet to become visible, Mr Obama seems seriously committed to wooing the American Muslim constituency, one that looks at improved and growing relations between the US and Pakistan as a very positive step. In fact, such is Mr Obama's determination to revamp America's image in the Muslim world that his Administration is willing to disregard American military and intelligence inputs on how the CIA-ISI partnership in Afghanistan is crumbling and how sections of the Pakistani establishment, particularly the ISI, are working with, not against, the Afghan Taliban. Specific reports suggest that the Pakistani establishment would like to keep this channel alive in case the Americans simply leave and there is a Taliban takeover of Kabul. Despite these shocking revelations, the Obama Administration seems determined to humour Pakistan, only so that the post-9/11 US-Muslim face-off gets a cordial touch.

In the above context, Mr Obama's rather warm meeting with Mr Gilani last week appears understandable. What is, however, infinitely shocking and unacceptable is India's surrender to America's urge for Muslim appeasement that overlooks the clear and present threat India faces from terror groups operating out of Pakistan under the aegis of its military and security establishment. Ideally, a nuclear security summit of the scale held last week in Washington ought to have witnessed a strong and unequivocal Indian statement on how Pakistan's nuclear weapons are never too far from its terrorists simply because the establishment in custody of those weapons is aligned with the terrorists. Instead came Mr Singh's meek assertion that, "There should be zero tolerance for individuals and groups which engage in illegal trafficking in nuclear items." What stopped him from mentioning Pakistan's name if that is indeed the threat India faces? Perhaps the answer lies in what the US ordered. After all, Mr Obama lauded Pakistan for "taking nuclear security seriously" and "keeping safeguards in place". Could Mr Singh have dared differ?

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

GANDHI REVERED, NOT HIS VALUES

SUDHANSU R DAS

It was an unassuming, little man who picked up a pinch of salt at the sea near Dandi that rocked the British empire. This was the magical effect of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. The man drew his strength from truth, purity and integrity which he cultivated every day of his life. Gandhi was undoubtedly the greatest politico-spiritual leader of the past century. In fact, a leader's charisma develops when he takes pains to connect with his people. In exchange, he gains first-hand knowledge of the condition of the common folk and political capital to serve them. Gandhi's extraordinary zeal to traverse the length and breadth of the country was due to his spiritual energy.

After his death, his followers went into oblivion because no one wanted to emulate his simple way of life. Leaders cleverly distanced themselves from Gandhi by declaring him a Mahatma so that they could escape the 'hardship' of travelling in ordinary train coaches, walking long hours in the remotest of villages, living in ashrams, eating simple food and cleaning toilets.

In the process, they also lost sight of the common man's problems. Gandhi's knowledge about grassroot issues inspired him to launch the Swadeshi movement which saved the livelihood of millions in the cottage industry. But today, politicians want to be mass leaders through TV shows and aimless debates. Few of them have the guts to take up economic and social issues like price rise, starvation deaths, malnutrition, terrorism, internal security, corruption and poverty. It is when leaders fail to reach the masses that they spend tax-payers' money to roll out social sector schemes. And these are just instruments for furthering vote-bank politics.

In order to escape from this mess, our present political leadership should adopt a resolution to choose and promote only politico-spiritual leaders for the future of this country. For, only individuals who can transcend the barriers of caste, religion and language to achieve inclusive growth and national integration should lead this country. India might be the land of spirituality, but Indians seem to have become impervious to it.

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

SCAM CALLED VEDANTA

THE RECENT LOK PAL REPORT HIGHLIGHTING GROSS IRREGULARITIES COMMITTED TO FAVOUR THE VEDANTA GROUP WITH REGARD TO ITS 'WORLD-CLASS' UNIVERSITY PROJECT IS A STRONG INDICTMENT OF THE BJD GOVERNMENT IN ODISHA. IT'S TIME NAVEEN PATNAIK COMES CLEAN ON THE ISSUE

SASWAT PANIGRAHI

Odisha Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is in trouble again. This time for the biggest land grab scam in independent India. As much as 6,000 acre of three-crop agricultural land has been allotted by the State Government to the London-based Vedanta foundation, purportedly for establishing a 'world-class' university on the Puri-Konark marine drive. The recent order of Odisha Lok Pal Justice PK Patra in response to a petition filed by trade union leader Dwarika Mohan Misra is a strong indictment of the functioning of the State Government. As brought out by the findings of the Lok Pal, the whole idea of Vedanta university was conceived in the Chief Minister's office.

Mr BK Patnaik, Principal Secretary to the Chief Minister, had initiated a file relating to the establishment of Vedanta university by putting up a note which was signed by the Special Secretary of Finance, the Agriculture Production Commissioner, the Minister for Higher Education, the Minister of Finance and the Chief Minister on July 13, 2006. Just six days after the initiation of the file, a Memorandum of Understanding was signed on July 19, 2006, between the Odisha Government and the Vedanta foundation for the establishment of a 'multi-disciplinary' university.

"The MoU in question signed by the parties does not constitute a legally enforceable contract. It appears from the records that the officials of the Government of Odisha had acted in haste to accede to the request of the foundation," says the Lok Pal in his 26-page order.

The Lok Pal's findings clearly indicate that 6,000 acre of agricultural land — which includes 1,300 acre of arable land belonging to the Jagannath Temple that farmers linked to the seva of the temple cultivate, and another large stretch of land containing huge quantities of thorium and other rare minerals — is in the process of being acquired by Vedanta Foundation. This violates the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 and the Shri Jagannath Temple Act, 1954, the Lok Pal observes.

There is also a huge chasm between the land required and the land grabbed. The Lok Pal agrees that such a vast track of land would not be required for the establishment of the proposed university, as even world-class universities like Oxford, Cambridge and Harvard are built on lesser land space. This clearly points to an ulterior motive behind the acquisition.

The project will affect at least 50,000 people across 22 maujas (villages) of Puri district who depend primarily on agriculture for their livelihood. Also, the land in question comes under the Costal Regulation Zone and is situated adjacent to the sweet-water zone of Puri district which stands to be adversely affected if the project is operationalised.

It is interesting to note that following the proposal for Vedanta university, the foundation has changed its name thrice. It was originally named Sterlite Foundation but later changed to Vedanta Foundation and then again to Anil Agarwal Foundation. It has been further revealed that Anil Agarwal Foundation is not a public company but a company under Section 25 of the Companies Act, 1956.

The State Law Department clearly stated that the acquisition of land for Vedanta university would require the change of status of the foundation from 'private company' to 'public company', and only then would it meet the qualification prescribed by the Land Acquisition Act, 1894. "But the views of the Law Department appear to have been misread by the public servants concerned," the Lok Pal says.

The foundation submitted erroneous documents with regard to the change of its legal status from private to public, and thus, cleverly hoodwinked the core committee comprising senior bureaucrats of the State and influenced them to believe that the Section 25 company had been converted to a 'public company'. Following this, the core committee rendered all assistance to the foundation even without complying with the statutory requirements.

"From the materials available on record it is clear that the representative of Anil Agarwal Foundation was able to manoeuvre or influence, mislead and misguide senior bureaucrats of the State who had acted without application of mind," the Lok Pal judgement says, adding, "Steps had been taken in extending the helping hand in haste to Anil Agarwal Foundation in various ways."

Citing the Supreme Court verdict that says imparting education is essentially charitable in nature and educational institutions should not be established with the motive of earning profits, the Lok Pal has raised a cloud of doubt on the motive of Anil Agarwal Foundation in establishing the proposed international university. The foundation has so far not defined an international university, further putting a question mark on its intention.

The Lok Pal has made a series of recommendations to the Odisha Government on the university project. It has recommended that the Chief Minister consider a moratorium on the project until compliance with the legal provisions for conversion of Anil Agarwal Foundation from a private to public company was met.

It has also asked the State Government to constitute a vigilance cell to monitor the progress of the project and to see to it that the land acquired and delivered to the foundation is done so in phases and not utilised for purposes other than education. Besides, it has directed the State Government to ensure payment of adequate compensation by the foundation to those affected by the project.

Meanwhile, the Lok Pal order has triggered strong reactions from the Opposition. The BJP has rightly raised the issue in the national domain. The party has also demanded the resignation of the Chief Minister on moral grounds.

Shamed by the Lok Pal order and worried over its political ramifications, the Odisha Government has come out with a Press release which says that the media cannot publish the Lok Pal judgement as it has not been tabled in the Odisha Assembly — a logic strongly contested by the BJP which says that it is not the proceeding but the findings which the media should be able to report. The State Government has also written to the Lok Pal's office, urging the latter to restrain the publication of the report.

 

THE PIONEER

OPED

ONE GIANT STEP BACK

TRIMMED NASA BUDGET SPELLS DOOM FOR US'S MARS PLAN

GWYNNE DYER

In the movies, all the spacemen are Americans, but that's just because Hollywood makes the movies. In the real world, the United States is giving up on space, although it is trying hard to conceal its retreat. Last week, three Americans with a very special status — they have all commanded missions to the Moon — made their dismay public.

In an open letter Mr Neil Armstrong, the first human being to walk on the Moon, Mr Jim Lovell, commander of Apollo 13, and Mr Eugene Cernan, commander of Apollo 17, condemned US President Barack Obama's plans for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as the beginning of a "long downhill slide to mediocrity" for the US.

The letter was timed to coincide with Mr Obama's visit to Cape Canaveral to defend his new policy, which abandons the goal of returning to the Moon by 2020, or indeed ever. Mr Obama insists that this sacrifice will allow the US to pursue a more ambitious goal, but his plan send Americans to Mars by the late 2030s has the distinct political advantage of not needing really heavy investment while he is still in office — even if he wins a second term.

The 'Constellation' programme that he scrapped had two goals. One was to replace the ageing Shuttle fleet for delivering people and cargo to near-Earth orbits. The other was to give the US the big rockets it would need to meet Mr George W Bush's target of establishing a permanent American base on the Moon by 2020 where rockets would be assembled to explore the Solar System.

That programme's timetable was slipping and would undoubtedly have slipped further, as such programmes often do. It would have ended up costing a lot: $ 108 billion by 2020, as much as the Pentagon spends in three months, with the possibility that it would have ended up costing one or two more months's worth of the defence budget. But it would have kept the US in the game. Mr Obama's plan only pretends to.

He says all the right things: "Nobody is more committed to manned space flight, to human exploration of space, than I am, but we've got to do it in a smart way." He talked about a manned mission to some asteroid beyond the Moon by around 2025, and another that will orbit Mars for some months in the mid-2030s — "and a landing on Mars will follow."

Those are indeed ambitious goals, and they would require heavy-lift rockets that do not yet exist. But the "vigorous new technology development" programme that might lead to those rockets will get only $ 600 million annually (the price of four F-22 fighters) for the next five years, and actual work on building such rockets would probably not begin until 2015.

In the meantime, and presumably even for some years after Mr Obama leaves office in 2016 (should he be re-elected in 2012), the US will have no vehicle capable of putting astronauts into orbit. It will be able to buy passenger space on Russian rockets, or on the rapidly developing Chinese manned vehicles, or maybe by 2015 even on Indian rockets. But it will essentially be a hitch-hiker on other countries' space programmes.

Mr Obama suggests that this embarrassment will be avoided because private enterprise will come up with cheap and efficient "space taxis" that can at least deliver people and cargo to the International Space Station once in a while. And he's going to invest a whole $ 6 billion in these private companies over the next five years.

These entrepreneurs are mainly people who made a pile of money in the dotcom boom or in computer game design, and now want to do something really interesting with some of it: People like Amazon president Mr Jeff Bezos, Mr John Carmack, programmer of Doom and Quake, Mr Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal, and of course Mr Richard Branson of Virgin Everything. "Our success is vital to the success of the US space programme," Mr Musk said recently.

No doubt they will get various vehicles up there, but if they can build something by 2020 that can lift as much as the ancient shuttles into a comparable orbit, let alone something bigger that can go higher, I will eat my hat. Space technology eats up capital almost as fast as weapons technology, and these entrepreneurs have no more than tens of billions at most.

Does Mr Obama know this? Very probably, yes. One suspects that he would actually be cutting NASA's budget, not very slightly raising it, if its centre of gravity (and employment) were not in the swing state of Florida, where he cannot afford to lose any votes. What is going on here is a charade, which is why normally taciturn astronauts — including the famously private Neil Armstrong — signed that open letter.

So for the next decade, at least, the US will be an also-ran in space, while the new space powers forge rapidly ahead. And even if some subsequent administration should decide it wants to get back in the race, it will find it almost impossible to catch up.

Which is why the first man on Mars will probably Chinese or Indian, not American.

 

The writer is an independent journalist based in London.

 

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THE PIONEER

OPED

BANK HELPS THEM WEAVE DREAMS INTO REALITY

DASTKAR SCHEME PROMOTES THE ART AND CRAFT OF JAMMU & KASHMIR, WRITES NUSRAT ARA

A muddy lane at Hardshura village on the Srinagar Gulmarg highway in Kashmir leads to a single-storeyed mud and wood house of Ghulam Nabi Malik. On the threshold, Malik's three daughters sit working with nimble fingers on shawls spread across their laps. Malik and his wife are old sozni embroiders. Being in the craft for 30 years, they have now passed on the art to their daughters. The craft, prized the world over, is unique to Kashmir. Sozni involves the making of beautiful intricate colourful patterns using a needle and colourful threads on a shawl, stole or a garment.

Ironically, shawls embroidered by Malik made to global showrooms bringing fortunes for traders while he found difficult to make ends meet. Malik and artisans like him worked for meagre wages that rarely comes on time. The trader, the Malik family worked for, would pay him according to his whims, often delaying payments. At times, if he did not like the work, he had commissioned, the trader would simply not pay or Malik would have to pay a penalty. This way Malik ended up sharing the cost of raw materials which was supposed to borne by the trader.

"If I refused to bear the cost of raw materials, he would ask us to sell it ourselves," Malik rued.

The global meltdown strained Malik's prospects further. Kashmir's handicrafts which have a huge market in Europe, the United States and West Asia were hit by the recession. With vanishing buyers, exporters and traders felt the heat.

The situation remained grim for Malik and some 180 families engaged in crafts like Sozni and carpet weaving until one day the Jammu & Kashmir Bank launched Dastkar Finance scheme which aimed at extending the benefits of banking to them. The scheme is geared towards artisans like carpet weavers, shawl embroiders and kani shawl weavers. This way the bank aims to promote, professionalise and institutionalise the arts and crafts of Kashmir.

The scheme provides a fixed capital for loom, tools and design plus working capital for raw material, wages and others. The disbursement is phased in quarterly installments subject to verification of the status of work in progress. This would in turn provide a breather to the artisan community by way of better income, improved life standards and launching pad for entrepreneurial ventures.

This is not all. Moving beyond its conventional contours, the bank has promised to help in marketing the products made by the artisans. The bank is prioritising direct and micro-lending with the aim of doing away with middlemen. The chain goes even further with the Kashmir Chamber of Commerce and Industries agreeing to be the buyers of the products, as a last resort.

 

Malik family now embroiders shawls and stoles owned by them as well as parcel out work to other artisans. He manages to make a neat profit. "My monthly income has doubled" said Malik. With their hearth fires burning, Malik, father of five has taken steps to ensure education of all his children. His eldest daughter Rifat is in the final year of her graduation. Her expenses and education are funded by the craft she engages in. His second daughter Afroza too finds satisfaction in being able to finance her own education and helping her family too.

Malik's neighbour Manzoor Ahmad Parray has also benefited from Dastkar Finance scheme. Parray has moved from being a wage-earner to being his own master. Today he not only embroiders shawls and stoles but is engaged in their sale as well. "My shawls are sold in Mumbai, Kolkata and Himachal Pradesh. My shawls are also bought by a trader who exports them abroad. I want to export shawls on my own one day" he says, acknowledging that timely finance provided wings to his dreams.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

DON'T SUBVERT DUE PROCESS TO GO AFTER LALIT MODI

THE timing of the probe into the allegedly murky financial deals of Indian Premier League ( IPL) commissioner Lalit Modi comes too soon after the Shashi Tharoor affair to not raise suspicions that the high- profile cricket administrator is paying for embarrassing the government of the day. No one will argue that the tax authorities should not look into the affairs of Mr Modi and the IPL. But the events of the past few days do raise the issue of due process. Even if he is guilty, is he getting a fair shake? The IT authorities have the right to check everyone's tax returns and compliance with the tax laws of the country. But surely the process could have been done as it is in the case of other citizens— through the serving of a notice first, and thereafter if the right answers are not forthcoming, escalating to raids and seizures.

The worrying aspect of the move to oust Mr Modi — Union ministers Pranab Mukherjee and P. Chidambaram virtually arm- twisting Sharad Pawar to perform the hangman's role on Mr Modi and the flurry of activity by tax officials and investigating agencies — is the underlying message that those who take on state power will have to face its full fury.

Roping in Mr Pawar to organise his ouster lends credence to the view that the IPL chief is being fixed for ensuring the downfall of a member of the establishment.

The cases against Mr Modi could be serious. But, the due process of the law should be followed to probe his case too. Procedural due process or the avoidance of arbitrary procedure, is the very foundation of democracy.

However, what we are witnessing is the kind of " raid Raj" that characterised the deeply flawed governance style of Indira Gandhi.

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

A PRICE WORTH PAYING

IT IS perhaps a measure of the inertness of the literate classes that newspaper reports on Wednesday morning focused on the traffic chaos that was going to result from the mega rally organised by the Bharatiya Janata Party rather than price rise, the issue over which it had been organised. Traffic movement was certainly a problem on Wednesday but this is a price that citizens have to pay to enable the right of protest, a key pillar of democracy. No doubt the BJP seeks to capitalise on the failure of the government to curb the high prices of essential commodities, but this, too, is a legitimate part of the democratic political process.

In any political rally, there is a good lot more at work than the simple outrage of common people. For instance, the rally was an opportunity for the new party president Nitin Gadkari to strut his stuff — it's another thing that the blistering heat made him faint in the process. But this being true of most forms of mobilisation does not detract from the central issue which inspired Wednesday's rally.

Of course, there is a need to ensure that protest, political or otherwise, does not greatly impact on the normal functioning of the city. This is as much the responsibility of the BJP as that of New Delhi's police and government authorities.

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

DRUNK ON POWER

NON- RESIDENT Indian Sajendra Bihari Singh — who ran a business in Russia — was hoping to come back to his home state Bihar and set up a restaurant. Little did he know that merely overtaking the car of a probationary officer of the Indian Police Service would bring his hopes to a cruel end. He was chased right to his doorstep, taken to the police station and assaulted.

It is probably unfair to draw generalisations about the police as a whole because of a handful of sadistic policemen. But that an officer still on probation was so intoxicated with his authority does reveal the culture of impunity and ethical vacuum in which the police operate. This can also be seen from the fact that the police refused to lodge Mr Singh's complaint as it was against a police officer. There should be zero tolerance towards the guilty in such cases and an example must be made of the officer concerned.

Mr Singh's bruises will heal soon. But it is up to the authorities to restore his faith in the system.

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MAIL TODAY

     COLUMN

POPULIST HIJACK OF UPA AGENDA

BY MANOJ JOSHI

 

A YEAR into the second United Progressive Alliance government and the overwhelming feeling you get is one of drift. Or is it that too many people are grabbing at the steering in the boat called the UPA preventing it from navigating a clear course? The Congressled government seems to be a victim of its own success. While the success is partial, considering its coalition- based majority in Parliament, the demands seem to be total, from those who want to cash in on a dividend that has yet to be put in the credit column of the bank ledger.

 

Primary among these are from the liberal or " socialistic" wing of the party who want the rising monetary resources of the government to be used in ever- greater quantities for social welfare programmes. In the process, not only do they insist on putting fiscal stress on the country's financial system, but also, and more importantly, ensuring that the country cannot exploit the tiny window of opportunity that has opened up to get on to the track of double- digit economic growth. So we have the spectacle of tens of thousands of crore rupees being shoveled into programmes that neither create assets to transform the countryside, let alone ever reach the people it is intended for.

 

Poverty

 

The issue is not that we should not feed the starving or provide succour to the needy, but of the need to evolve processes which will transform them into productive and fulfilled members of society. India's socialistic bleeding heart policies seem aimed at keeping people permanently dependent on the hand- out mode.

 

Last week in a move to shovel some more money, the number of poor in India formally went up by 100 million. The Planning Commission issued a fiat that declared that 37.2 per cent of Indians were below the poverty line, not 27 per cent.

 

Every country has a BPL line, even the rich Americans and Europeans, and there is an arbitrariness in the process of defining who is poor in a particular society. But in the case of India, the whole process is a hit and miss affair.

 

As an article by V. K. Ramachandran et al in Tuesday's The Hindu pointed out, the official BPL figures are probably not worth the paper they are written on. The sad truth is that while all the Jawaharlal or Rajiv yojanas look grand on paper, there are serious question marks about their efficacy. Grand legislation of the Bismarckian variety promising universal education, the right to work and food is good politics, but poor policy. The tawdry reality sinks in when you stir out of New Delhi and find the money for the schemes going into an endless sink of corruption.

 

Earlier this week, the authorities caught three senior income tax officers taking bribes. Sadly, they are the norm rather than the exception and their fault happens to be that they were caught. Anecdotal evidence suggests that corruption has now become all pervasive and leaves nothing untouched from mega- projects to the office stationery. Most social welfare schemes are prone to the crassest kind of corruption because they steal from the poor and the needy.

 

It is true that it is easier to point to the faults than to provide a remedy. The fix cannot be found in technology options such as e- governance or coupons. In the Indian context, even they will be corrupted.

 

It lies in liberating the people from the feudal patronage system of the government.

 

Through history the feudal system worked in such a way that down the line each feudatory kept what he wanted for himself as part of the largesse; the people fended for themselves.

 

No one will argue that malnutrition, hunger, human rights abuses do not exist, and that the Indian state should not make any effort to ameliorate them.

 

Leave alone the moral imperative, the state should act from the pragmatic impulse which understands that only better fed, healthy and educated citizens can become productive members of society.

 

However, the issue is the balance that must be struck at any given point in time between what can be spent on a social safety net, and what is needed to ensure a productive and growing economy which enables people to look after themselves.

 

There has to be an effort to understand that we cannot live on a diet of populism alone, that there must be a concept of short- term sacrifice for long- term gain.

 

Gujarat

 

Take the challenge of stagnant agriculture that we are confronting today. We need deep reform involving water management, electricity pricing, market mechanisms, and so on to make our agriculture productive.

 

Just what can be done, too, is staring us in the face. The Gujarat state has had a growth rate averaging 9.6 per cent in the past decade because it has acted in these areas according to a paper in the Economic and Political Weekly written by Tushaar Shah, Ashok Gulati et al in December 2009. Remarkably the paper points out that the major locus of growth was the arid Saurashtra, Kutch and north Gujarat, and not the command area of the Narmada dam. According to the authors, the BJP government " has actually devoted a great deal of energy and resources to accelerating agricultural growth through a broad spectrum of policy initiatives." These include 1) creating more than 1 lakh water bodies allowing groundwater to be recharged and therefore allowing 2) multiple cropping and higher value agriculture; ( 3) market access; ( 4) road and other infrastructure. " Gujarat is the only state whose groundwater balance has turned positive in recent years," state the authors. There are, of course, specificities that have been responsible for the Gujarat success story such as the use of Bt cotton and generally good rainfall, but a key cause was better water management.

 

State chief minister Narendra Modi may be rightly reviled for the 2002 massacre of Muslims, but this is no reason why the lessons from the Gujarat agricultural " miracle" cannot be applied elsewhere.

 

Reform

 

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is someone who understands the issues well and knows what must be done. There is a limited window that the country has to remain on the path of sustained high economic growth. To provide immediate relief to the poor and to permanently change their situation through better healthcare, education, skills and quality jobs, you need a booming economy which has its own and urgent need for resources.

 

But the party seems unclear about the path it must take. Bleeding heart populism has been a part of its DNA. But there is only so much that throwing money at a problem, or raising slogans and creating statutes, can achieve.

The country needs much more extensive reform of its governing structures for solutions to problems which are structural and chronic. A corrupt and inept bureaucracy cannot deliver anything and prevent everything from happening. The solutions lie at the very fountainhead of the system— in the conduct of politics and governance of the country.

 

This is the challenge the Congress confronts.

 

But as of now it seems to be more taken up with the shenanigans of the IPL rather than the slew of weightier issues that are there.

 

manoj.joshi@mailtoday.in

 

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MAIL TODAY

     COLUMN

BOOMTOWN RAP

MAX MARTIN

 

NO MORE SUNSHINE, GIVE US SOME RAIN!

TODAY is Earth Day. This is the time when ardent greens advise us about ways to make the earth a better place to live in, and perform symbolic acts – such as dressing up as polar bears.

 

Over here in Bangalore we cannot dress up as any animal. We cannot dress up, period. It is so hot most of the time. Not oven hot as it used to be till last week – just plain hot and humid.

 

Senior citizens here tell us that during their childhood their houses did not have fans. In their youth, Bangalore was still called an ' air- conditioned city'. Even in the late 1980s, we used to pack sweaters for trips to Bangalore. Today hardly anyone uses sweaters in public. In our apartment block, anybody who is somebody, has at least one air- conditioner. And they all run it at night. Scientists tell us that this is not such a good idea. Too many air- conditioners actually warm up the ambient air – contributing to ' heat islands' ( hot spots), along with choc- a- bloc construction, tarred roads, paved parking lots, treeless surroundings and so on.

 

When temperature rose unusually high across India recently, it soared in Bangalore too. On April 11, the city recorded its highest in 25 years.

 

Met officials say that the heat island effect has caused a two degree increse.

 

In a recent study using satellite data, Prof T V Ramachandra of the Indian Institute of Science and a colleague have painted a rather grim picture of the city. In the study titled, ' Greater Bangalore: Emerging Urban Heat Island', they show how the city has dramatically lost its green cover and lakes.

 

Greenery has decreased by 32 per cent from 1973 to 1992, by 38 per cent from 1992 to 2002 and by 63 per cent from 2002 to 2009.

 

More than half the lakes face encroachment and illegal construction around them. A field survey shows that 72 lakes are showing a decrease in their catchment area. As a result, the city has witnessed an increase of about 2 to 2.5 degree Celsius during the last decade, as the study shows.

 

There have been efforts to plant more trees and restore lakes – but such small initiatives cannot outpace the rapid growth of this city. Bangalore has become ' hot' property in every sense of the phrase! The more modern it gets, with allglass constructions, bumper- tobumper traffic, and parks turning into paved parking lots, the warmer it becomes.

 

A word of caution, though. Do not compare Bangalore temperatures with Delhi figures. Our summer temperature ranges from 18 to 38 degree Celsius and winter temperature ranges from 12 to 25. We hardly get the 12 degree bit anymore, though.

 

As I write this column on Wednesday evening, a cool shower is bringing the temperature down here. Our photographer wonders if a hot Bangalore shot will make any visual sense anymore. So as a compromise, he has chosen a picture of children playing in a lake on a hot day.

 

Experts and old- timers tell us that Bangalore always had this cooling mechanism – whenever it gets hot beyond a point it rains here. That is because the city is situated in the middle of the Arabian Sea ( don't stop here) and the Bay of Bengal.

 

Atmospheric phenomena over these seas influence the weather here. When it was scorching hot here( by our standards, that is 37.6 degrees) Met department officials consoled us saying, " Don't worry, there will be rain." The problem is that rains have become erratic of late. And the cooling evening showers are now rare. But then that is another story.

 

NO IPL HERE, NO KUMBLE A DOUBLE WHAMMY

 

CRICKET lovers in Bangalore are sad that the city has lost a chance to host the semi finals of the IPL thanks to a couple of minor blasts and a few dud bombs.

 

The saddest people were those who bought the ticket in black. Obviously the refund does not cover the illegal premium.

 

Not ones to miss the action, several fans have flown to Mumbai to cheer the Royal Challengers led by city boy Anil Kumble. Kumble is so popular here that there is a circle named after him just outside the cricket stadium – the spot where one of the bombs burst. We often find him at social gatherings and cinemas, standing head and shoulders above the crowd. He mingles with people easily.

 

Maybe it is part of his net practice for a future political career in the BJP. Apart from his saffron overtones, Kumble also has a green side. He recently adopted a giraffe calf at the Mysore zoo. Giraffe, as it happens, is the tallest animal on land.

 

As for the blasts, Home minister V S Acharya says that it is part of a conspiracy – to rob Bangalore of its title as the cricket capital.

 

Only further investigations will reveal whether the miscreants had a political agenda or they mainly wanted a change of venue.

 

DGP Dr. Ajay Kumar Singh said that there were no security lapses. Lets hope the investigations don't prove to be like Kumble's googly for the police.

 

SATHYU TOUCH TO A GRIM REALITY

FILMMAKER M S Sathyu is making a commercial film after a 12- year hiatus. His new film ' Ijjodu', addresses the practice of ' devadasi' ( a tradition of temple dancers which deteriorated to sexual exploitation).

 

After initiation as devadasis, many women migrate to cities and get drawn into commercial sex rackets.

 

Despite the grim subject, Sathyu has made the film into a beautiful fare with some good dance performances and music. Meera Jasmine plays a devadasi and Anirudh a photographer who tries to save her.

 

Sathyu, entered the world of films in the 1950s. His best known film is Garam Hawa ( 1973). Sathyu is active in Kannada theatre and television.

 

He also runs workshops for young artistes. A staunch critic of linguistic chauvinism in the state, he raises his voice on various social issues.

MARTYR OF THE TWITTERLAND

THE twitteratti in Bangalore are still batting for Shashi Tharoor. Some of them offer " unrelenting support for you to bounce back". A fan calls him " one of the very few politicians who work for the country". On his part, Tharoor on Wednesday morning thanked all the supporters from Bangalore to Birmingham for their kind words posted in the website: http:// supporttharoor.

 

org/. This tweet came after a news item reported that he was ' silent'. The website is anything but silent. In bold, block letters, it offers Tharoor the support of " we the people". It invites you to make a pledge: " We are here to say, ' we support you Shashi Tharoor. Don't let them pull you down for you will take our hopes and dreams for a better and brighter India with you. You bring to India everything we had ever hoped would change, and we stand by you". An earlier tweet of Tharoor on Apil 16 morning, the day he addressed the Parliament, was a take on US President Barack Obama's election campaign: " U folks are the new India. We will ' be the change' we wish to see in our country. But not w'out pain!". The former minister seems to be right, at least about the last word.

 

One tweet called him " Twitterland ka pehala shaheed." With such popularity in Bangalore, it is a pity that Tharoor took all this trouble for Kochi.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

LEGALISE GAMBLING

 

Ever since Delhi police recorded a conversation between Hansie Cronje and a representative of an Indian betting syndicate Cronje was subsequently banned from playing cricket for life and Indian captain Mohammed Azharuddin too implicated in the ensuing scandal rumours about match-fixing have been rife. They have resurfaced with the current IPL. Should any concrete evidence emerge it would ruin the sanctity of the game in public perception. That prospect should be the catalyst for ushering in a reform that would have many positive spin-off effects, not confined to cricket: legalising gambling in India.

As with the consumption of alcohol the simple truth is that when it comes to gambling, criminalising it does nothing to actually cut down on it. All it does is drive it underground, thereby ensuring that the only providers of that particular service are criminal elements. Massive amounts of cash are siphoned off into these networks, white money turning into black. It is more than likely that these resources are then used to fund other illegal activities ranging from the drug business to terrorism. The failed experiment of prohibition in the US is a prime example of unintended consequences. It had little effect on consumption of alcohol and ended up funding the rise of mafia bosses instead.

By legalising gambling and bringing it above ground the government can begin to reverse the process, breaking the monopoly of the betting cartels and turning black money into white that can be taxed. It will also enable independent bodies to regulate the activity. In most western countries, this is now the case, with the size of the gambling sector accounting for 1 per cent of GDP on average. As for the specific instance of the IPL, with the option to make money legally through betting, the risk-reward equation for match-fixing would be altered, disincentivising it.

Being able to establish casinos in India would act as a force multiplier for the tourism industry, generating additional revenue and jobs. Gambling addiction is a real problem, of course. But criminalising gambling does nothing to address it, merely making it more difficult for those suffering from it, either directly or indirectly, to get help. If it is legalised, checks and balances can be put in place to minimise the risks of addiction, as has been done with the lottery system. Instead of squandering resources and time on suppressing gambling, it is issues like these on which the government should focus.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

NO TRAVEL BANS, PLEASE

 

As a Union minister, DMK's M K Alagiri is answerable to the government. As an MP, he's accountable to Parliament. So, there's no disputing that his holiday in Maldives during an important Lok Sabha session was thoughtless. Understandably, it would irk the PM and the Congress chief. But does one MP's irresponsible behaviour mean that all parliamentarians are incapable of professionalism? Can it, moreover, justify any blanket ban on travel by MPs when the House is in session? If the first is not fair, the second is neither fair nor feasible.

Alagiri reportedly avoids both cabinet brainstorms and Parliament thanks to his problems with speaking Hindi and English. Insisting on using Tamil, he represents a special case that UPA bosses must deal with so far as the issue of cabinet meetings is concerned. In Parliament, he should be ticked off by relevant authorities without making others suffer. Recall that Lata Mangeshkar was once criticised for missing Rajya Sabha sittings. Other Upper House members weren't inconvenienced for her absenteeism.

Politics isn't just about attending Parliament. MPs may be required to be present in their constituencies or have to go abroad for conferences and the like. We can't expect the dates of work-related tours, emergencies or foreign trips to not clash with parliamentary sessions as a rule. MPs, moreover, aren't adolescents whose movements must be monitored. Media glare provides enough indirect pressure to keep politicians on their toes. Finally, the majority of elected people's representatives are surely qualified to use their own judgement concerning the work ethic demanded of them. In any case, MPs are finally accountable to the people who elected them. In case of mess-ups, leave it to voters to decide the fate of their representatives in Parliament.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 EDITORIAL

MAKE ATTENDANCE COMPULSORY

KAUTILYA KUMAR

 

Parliament is in session, but M K Alagiri, senior DMK leader and Union minister for chemicals and fertilisers, is missing. The minister, according to reports, is holidaying in Maldives. The decision of a cabinet minister to travel when the House is in session is highly improper. That he may have got the mandatory permission from the government doesn't make it any better.

Legislating is the primary responsibility of MPs. The business of politics extends beyond parliamentary duties, of course. But once elected to Parliament, parliamentary duties override a politician's responsibility of nurturing his constituency. To put it simply, an MP nurtures his constituency by carrying out his duties as a parliamentarian. These duties include attending Parliament and participating in activities that contribute to the making of public policies. Moreover, a parliamentarian is accountable not just to voters of his constituency but also to the whole country. He gets a salary and other entitlements like free housing, and enjoys special privileges as an MP.

Unfortunately, our MPs don't care much about their role in Parliament. Absenteeism is rampant when Parliament is in session. In recent times, the absence of MPs in the House has led to the collapse of the question hour forcing party heads like Sonia Gandhi to threaten action against the missing members. The Rajya Sabha chairperson has lamented the lack of interest among MPs in attending the House. Remember, the government spends nearly Rs 14 lakh of public funds every hour when Parliament is in session. It's colossal waste of tax payers' money if MPs skip Parliament.

Since polite requests, laments and admonitions from various quarters have failed to change the situation, it's time the government brings in more stringent measures to penalise absent MPs. There's a job to be done in Parliament and MPs are paid for doing it. Attendance in Parliament must be made compulsory for MPs except in emergencies.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

LEGALISE GAMBLING

 

Ever since Delhi police recorded a conversation between Hansie Cronje and a representative of an Indian betting syndicate Cronje was subsequently banned from playing cricket for life and Indian captain Mohammed Azharuddin too implicated in the ensuing scandal rumours about match-fixing have been rife. They have resurfaced with the current IPL. Should any concrete evidence emerge it would ruin the sanctity of the game in public perception. That prospect should be the catalyst for ushering in a reform that would have many positive spin-off effects, not confined to cricket: legalising gambling in India.

As with the consumption of alcohol the simple truth is that when it comes to gambling, criminalising it does nothing to actually cut down on it. All it does is drive it underground, thereby ensuring that the only providers of that particular service are criminal elements. Massive amounts of cash are siphoned off into these networks, white money turning into black. It is more than likely that these resources are then used to fund other illegal activities ranging from the drug business to terrorism. The failed experiment of prohibition in the US is a prime example of unintended consequences. It had little effect on consumption of alcohol and ended up funding the rise of mafia bosses instead.

By legalising gambling and bringing it above ground the government can begin to reverse the process, breaking the monopoly of the betting cartels and turning black money into white that can be taxed. It will also enable independent bodies to regulate the activity. In most western countries, this is now the case, with the size of the gambling sector accounting for 1 per cent of GDP on average. As for the specific instance of the IPL, with the option to make money legally through betting, the risk-reward equation for match-fixing would be altered, disincentivising it.

Being able to establish casinos in India would act as a force multiplier for the tourism industry, generating additional revenue and jobs. Gambling addiction is a real problem, of course. But criminalising gambling does nothing to address it, merely making it more difficult for those suffering from it, either directly or indirectly, to get help. If it is legalised, checks and balances can be put in place to minimise the risks of addiction, as has been done with the lottery system. Instead of squandering resources and time on suppressing gambling, it is issues like these on which the government should focus.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

MY FLAMINGO FAMILY

BACHI KARKARIA

 

Migrant flamingos and migrated family fly into Mumbai every winter.  To our great regret, No. 1 Son and his newish wife stay for a far shorter time than that magnificent mass of birds, but, fortunately, they have more manageable tastes in food.

 

Their pink colouring comes from the Atlanta winter not from snacking on algae, and though Urvaksh and Anisha share the avian' addiction to crustaceans, they go for the larger crabs and shrimp. They certainly don't demand the minuscule molluscs which the flamingos scoop up  with their strange, downwardly curved beaks.

 

The flamingos who descend on Mumbai in their thousands probably outnumber all the residents of all the Parsi colonies here. My personal migratory record is abysmal. Our immediate - family-from-afar comprises the measly two mentioned above, but hopefully they will make the number less dismal by adding some nestlings soon.

 

We will welcome that stork with considerably greater enthusiasm than the flamingoes show towards the lone ones which wade in their midst. Water birds of many a feather flock together on this eastern shore-line. The massed flamingos are punctuated by solitary herons and egrets, waiting patiently immobile, gingerly picking their long-legged way through Sewri's low-tide  slime and calling out in a Babel of beaks.

 

Our immediate emigrant family is singularly modest. It actually comprises only No.1 Son, since d-i-l Anisha is as much Georgia Girl as Guju Girl, having being born in the USA. However, when it comes to the larger family, we can muster a respectable count of emigrant members - just like so many other Indian families, rich or poor, rural or urban, Sikh, Shaivaite, Shia, or Seventh Day Adventist.

 

Our grand-uncle was the first recorded adventurer. This modest Calcutta lad went to Hong Kong as a 'ghar jamaai', and developed a penchant for bespoke three-piece suits, two-toned spats, manicured nails and Crepe de Chine cologne. For us, as children, he was as exotic as the latter-day flamingoes. Like them, Mamaji came back every winter, bearing exquisite but totally impractical gifts, most memorably tiny, embroidered silk bras for my bosomy mother and aunt.

 

Cousin Khorshed was next. Her American boss helped her to get a job in  New York. She impulsively hitched a ride to San Francisco in his daughter's red Mustang, and stayed on in sunny California for the next 40 years turning into Mrs Dodge. Her sister went to Australia soon after, and, three decades later, mine emigrated to New Zealand. Our No.1 Son went to study in Fort Wayne, pretentiously introducing himself as being from 'India-slash-Indiana'. Getting a green card, he moved to flamingo-country Florida before switching jobs, states and marital status all in a six-month span.

 

Mumbai's flamingoes fly in from West Africa; we developed family ties with its eastern wing in quick and co-incidental succession. No.2 Son's Saraswat 'm-i-l', Gita, was raised in Kenya; No 1 Son got married three years later, and his 'f-i-l', Kirti, was from Tanzania. We added Uganda in 2009, courtesy my nephew, Devapriyo, who joined his Danish NGO wife there.

Like the flamingoes, Urvaksh and Anisha have coloured our routine. Like them, they chatter in exotic accents ( he Twitters as well). Both top up their flamboyance; the birds with what they feed on; the kids with the baubles they shop for. 

 

Both have escaped the cold of the places they call home, and they warm up our lives. The children naturally. The flamingos mystically.  If these alien birds fly thousands of kilometers each year to a city that grows increasingly more inhospitable, there must surely be some magic still left in Mumbai.

 

Even if we can't decipher the message in the roseate dawn they bring, we still await them eagerly. For, if the flamingos come, can our faraway children be far behind?

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

TAKE TRASH SERIOUSLY, OR IT WILL KILL YOU

RAJESH KALRA

 

The government in the national capital is clueless as to where the radioactive Cobalt 60 that surfaced in a scrap dealer's yard came from. Even as the unfortunate dealer struggles for life in a Delhi hospital, and his equally clueless family worries about how it would foot the ballooning bill of the corporate hospital, others are showing symptoms of radiation.

As of now, everybody seems to be looking for a needle in the haystack. Teams from various government bodies can be seen active in the area that has been barricaded, supposedly to prevent others from getting exposed. Looking at the way they go about their task, with no protective clothing, one almost feels sorry for them. While one would assume that they know what they are doing, prime facie, it seems they are exposing themselves to radiation too.

This leads us to the bigger issue of how we generally handle any waste, be it toxic or radioactive or medical or even the most basic. I wouldn't be wrong if I say we are the most unhygienic, and insensitive nation in the world, especially in the way we dispose our trash. And it is getting worse.

As we increasingly become slaves to conveniences, we have discarded all our time-tested, environment-friendly practices of the past. And it is not just cities where the rot can be seen. Travel to the most scenic, even remote places of the nation and you'd know what I am saying. Plastic cold drink bottles, tetrapacks, potato-chips packets, polythene bags and 'gutka' pouches litter the most unlikely of places.

What is the solution, or is there a solution? For all the pessimism that I exude, I think we really have no option but to do something about it. To begin with, we should educate our masses as to why it is necessary to be careful with the way we discard our waste.

The government spends a lot on issuing ineffective advertisements on the subject. Wouldn't it be great if it got some professional help in this regard? The online space is full of excellent attempts by individuals and private entities on how to safeguard our environment. And no, I am not referring to save-tree or save-tiger attempts by mobile companies. I am not even referring to celebrities extolling the masses to do something, especially since we often know how shallow all this is. Believe me, most people can see through this 'tamasha'. The ridiculousness of celebs endorsing Earth Hour to 'save our beautiful planet' and then sitting up and watching floodlit cricket, or playing night golf in exclusive courses is something that is not lost on the masses.

Coming back to educating the masses, I strongly feel a direct message to the masses will be more effective, the like that Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' sent. It scared viewers, but made a point, and tellingly. This country has hordes of NGOs involved in such work. The close, person-to-person contact that they can do will be extremely effective too. Once a person begins to realise that sustainable development is the key, and that his kids will suffer if he does not change his ways, he is more likely to pay heed.

But all this will need to be supported by a proactive government. We invariably try to form rules after a mishap and are never prepared for something in advance.

Where is the guarantee that other scrapyards in the country do not have radioactive substance in their bellies? Do we have safeguards to stop their recurrence? If one were to assume that it came from someplace within India, what sort of safeguards are followed by those who are legally using the substance? Are there rules for safe disposal?
 
Apparently there is no black-and-white procedure for a lot of these things. But even more than rules, the challenge in our context is their implementation, and that is where the government has to show the will and determination.
 
Provide that, and you will see the results. The state of Sikkim, for example, has banned use of plastic bags. And this ban is not implemented the way Delhi has gone about it. There is nothing half-hearted about it and it shows.

This will and determination needs to percolate down to others too. Ban of plastic is relatively rather much simpler to enforce, but when it comes to radioactive material, their usage, disposal etc, the expertise required is of a different level. And, for that, the government needs to educate, and train itself first and then show the will to implement what it has learnt.

Ultimately, we all (government included) need to realise that we are beyond the critical stage. The delay has already played havoc with our environment. So far, it is an unfortunate scrap dealer in Delhi or thousands who are forced to drink contaminated groundwater who suffer. For most, it is just a story, yet. But it won't be long before more among us become part of this story.

Here's hoping that good sense will prevail.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

THAILAND IN A RED CURRY

Befitting a nation that promotes its beaches and smiles, Thailand is undergoing a social revolution in slow motion. Though there was bloodshed in Bangkok the past few weeks, political deaths have been a rarity in the struggle between Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and his exiled predecessor Thaksin Shinawatra. But the larger backdrop to their battle means Thailand won't experience peace for some time now. Political patch-ups will be temporary as Thailand is now a nation deeply divided over the future character of its society.

Until recently, Thai politics was seen as an unserious combination of uncompetitive democratic parties and a mild military, overseen by a benign monarchy. The past five years showed that all this hid the existence of two Thailands. One was a Bangkok Elite that controls the institutions of government and preserves its domination through selective repression. The Other Thailand was revealed in the successive election victories of Mr Shinawatra. This was a largely rural populace, untouched by Thailand's economic success and denied a genuine political voice for decades. Mr Shinawatra's populist measures and anti-establishment rhetoric aroused the political consciousness of this formerly passive Thai underclass. Regional and class lines have now hardened to the point that Mr Vejjajiva's own populist palliatives are failing to paper over these differences.

Thailand is ripe for revolution. If its establishment is intelligent about it, it can ensure this social change is nonviolent. The continuing strength of 'red-shirt' support among the peasantry of the Isaan region and Bangkok's working poor indicates that the social genie can't be put back in the bottle. There needs to be a recognition that a society where the top fifth of the population controls two-thirds of all wealth isn't sustainable. And that a system where citizens of certain class and regional backgrounds had no representation in the ruling structure is doomed. Compromise won't be easy. Mr Shinawatra was rightly criticised for authoritarian tendencies when in power. The evidence of a new red-shirt leadership is a positive fallout. But will there be anyone among Bangkok's ancien regime who is prepared to grasp the nettle of change — before violence becomes the norm rather than the exception in the Thai revolution? Let's hope so.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

TAKE COVER!

Iranian cleric Kazem Sedighi has an unlikely ally in the irreverent Mae West. She once said, "You can say what you like about long dresses, but they cover a multitude of shins." In Sedighi's case, make that sins. In an astounding scientific discovery, the cleric has pronounced that women in immodest clothing are causing earthquakes. We bet this is making all those seismologists who having been pouring over charts and graphs look a little stupid. There they were measuring tremors and studying the quality of soil when the answer was right under their noses. Let's see how they cover this one up.

On the question of covering up, support for Sedighi comes from an unlikely Indian quarter and it's not dear Muthalik of the Ram Sene or the sartorially suspicious VHP. It is from that doyen of modesty Rakhi Sawant. With the fervour of a Medici pope, the lady once known for the few centimetres of clothing that adorned her person, has informed us that the Bible feels that nudity leads to sin. Now, she may be right there. If, say, Cindy Crawford were to appear starkers in the middle of one of our cities, chances are that less than clean thoughts would pop into the heads of our lads. Having come to this realisation as Saul on the road to Damascus, old Rakhi has been making sure that none of her substantial assets are on view any more.

We would like to hear more from Sedighi. With his vast knowledge of the causes of natural disasters, he could be useful on how to deal with the Icelandic volcano that is causing such havoc. If the solution is a simple thing like adding an inch or two to your hemline, then so be it. Could it be that women in bathing suits are causing tsunamis? Sedighi is also a boon to a recession-hit fashion industry. Now all the top cats of couture can come out with a new version of the little black dress, the long black dress. Don't want to expose anyone to temptation, not even Nature, do we?

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

LESSONS FROM ATISH

MN KUNDU

When Atish Dipankar, a realised master from Nalanda University, reached Tibet, he instantly got royal patronage. Naturally, he had to face tremendous hostility from the jealous local monks. They decided to learn his meditation secrets to prove that he was no better and sent a scholarly monk for this purpose.

As a compassionate Buddhist, Atish accepted him well and called for tea. When the teapot was brought, he started pouring. The cup became full but he continued to pour. The monk intervened, "What are you doing. The cup is full." Atish replied, "So is your mind.  How can you receive anything more unless you make it empty?" The monk promised to be receptive.

Atish advised, "No one can perfect in meditation without attaining perfection in work. Worship must follow work for service to humanity. Go to the kitchen and help." The monk was not reluctant to work but he expected some dignified activity. But Atish was adamant, "No work is negligible. Do what I say and report your progress after seven days." Finding no other way, the monk continued. After seven days, he expressed dissatisfaction  but had to repeat it time and again. 

The monk lost his patience and thought that Atish was simply playing a trick. He would never teach. So he must quit. Now Atish greeted him with a smile, "you are ready for higher lessons because of your aspiration. Listen carefully." The unprepared monk wanted to write down. But Atish said, "My lessons are simple as truth is. Next seven days, don't think of any monkey."

After a week, Atish asked, "I hope you have not thought of any monkey these days? If so, the next lesson will follow." The monk morosely replied, "Sorry, all these days I have always thought of monkey and nothing else."

Atish said, "It is difficult indeed to control the mind. Meditation follows that. It is the last step of sadhana. You cannot reach the roof without climbing the stairs. It calls for self-purification and thereby withdrawal of mind from sense objects and thought waves."

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

STILL CUTTING EDGE

ANURADHA SRIVASTAVA

In a progressive move, the University Grants Commission (UGC) is considering banning animal dissections from the zoology and life sciences curricula. As a veterinarian and someone who cares about both animals and science, I urge the UGC to make the progressive and scientifically sound decision to end the cutting up of animals in classrooms. Banning dissection would not only save the lives of countless animals every year, but it will also ensure that every student benefits from the very latest and most effective teaching methods.

It has been repeatedly demonstrated that even those students who have not thought about the moral implications of harming animals as part of their coursework may not be learning to their fullest potential when dissection is part of the course. Dozens of studies show that non-animal teaching methods — like virtual dissection software — have an equal or even superior ability to provide students with an understanding of anatomy and complex biological processes.

A recently published peer-reviewed report examined 17 studies and found that the results associated with the non-animal method of instruction were, in each case, as good as  — and in some cases better than — the results associated with dissection. Non-animal teaching methods are also associated with increased learning efficiency, higher examination scores, student confidence and satisfaction.

The use of non-animal learning methods also improves the preparedness of students pursuing careers in medicine. Nearly 95 per cent of America's medical schools, including institutions such as Harvard, Yale and Stanford, have discontinued the use of live animals in teaching. No US medical school expects or requires students to have dissected animals.

Students forced to dissect animals when they ethically oppose to it may lose interest in pursuing scientific careers, according to a number of published research articles. Imagine the contributions from thoughtful, compassionate and promising young scientists we have lost because these young people would not consider the thought of violating their principles?

A one-time purchase of a computer programme can be used to teach an unlimited number of students for years on end. Ending dissection is the right choice for universities, students, animals and the future of scientific research.

Anuradha Srivastava is Vivisection Campaign Coordinator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) India

The views expressed by the author are personal

 

HINDUSTAN TIMES

IPL? LET'S GET REAL

SAMAR HALARNKAR

So, Shashi Tharoor has gone. Lalit Modi may follow. Or not. Cricket's great jamboree may be cleaned up. Or not.  Does it matter so much?

The Indian Premier League (IPL) brouhaha could not have come at a worse time. India was, finally, if reluctantly, starting to focus on long-festering-but-urgent issues that prevent this country from being a just, equitable democracy.

As Tharoor and Modi self-destructed, the circus around them diverted all attention from the perfect storm gathering over India. The tempest is a mélange of enduring destitution, growing violence and environmental disaster. The ominous acceleration in these issues, interlinked more than ever, requires urgent national discussions, broad consensus and a grand vision.

If you were not following the poverty debate unfolding between the top echelons of government and a small band of powerful civil-society activists last week, you might wonder how India agreed, almost overnight, to add 100 million to the 300 million people who live below the official poverty line (the ability of a person to spend Rs 17 per day in urban areas and Rs 12 in rural areas).

With pressure growing from UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi to recognise hunger and poverty as national issues, the government and its Planning Commission — the body that sets the poverty line — set about reviewing the absurd figure of less than 300 million poor Indians, eligible for benefits from a slew of social-security programmes, which, theoretically, run from cradle to grave.

The new figure of 400 million poor may sound like a lot in a country of 1.1 billion, but every expert will tell you this is a gross underestimation. If you were to raise the poverty line to $2 a day — or Rs 90, inadequate for a coffee at a five-star hotel — the number of poor would cross 800 million.

That's how poor India really is.

These figures are contentious because they determine what the government will spend on social-security programmes.

So, there's a split in the Planning Commission.

Those opposed to increasing the number of poor say the money needed for them will ruin the government's effort to rein in India's already huge fiscal deficit, which soared by 24 per cent to Rs 414,000 crore in 2009-10. (Largely because of the Rs 248,000 crore fiscal stimulus). Their argument: the poor will benefit eventually when the benefits of progress trickle down.

Those in favour of recognising more poor people say India's hunger and poverty are a national shame, and it is imperative to spend more money on social-security programmes, including food subsidies. Their argument: if you give sops to industry and other pressure groups why can't you do the same for the millions who can influence nothing? Consider what the IPL gets: entertainment-tax concessions (in Maharashtra); public security forces at a discount; and its income-tax dues haven't even been assessed in three years.

With Supreme Court commissioners Harsh Mander and N.C. Saxena — both former bureaucrats in the action-now camp advising the highest court on hunger issues — tipped to be on Gandhi's newly-revived National Advisory Council, the government is, for once, listening.

That's how Kavita Srivastava of the dogged Right-to-Food campaign got a call from the Prime Minister's Office on Monday asking what she opposed about the new poverty line. In another age, people like Srivastava would be ignored and reviled, much like Medha Patkar, the big-dam objector, once was.

As this newspaper's 'Tracking Hunger' campaign shows, deprivation is endemic, exacerbated by a looming collapse of India's social-security network. Since March 24, when the series began, my colleagues found: children eating mud to quell hunger in Jawaharlal Nehru's old constituency in Uttar Pradesh, mass migrations and slow-malnutrition deaths of men and women in their 30s and 40s in Bolangir, Orissa, children eating wild berries and red ants in Jharkhand's East Singhbhum district, children with distended bellies caused by disease and malnutrition lanced through their stomachs with red-hot rods — a tribal superstition meant to make them well. You can read these horror stories and the complex issues facing India at www.hindustantimes.com/trackinghunger.

Linked to this widening collapse of governance is the inexorable rise of the Maoists, who will again exploit our short attention span as they spur the rebellion with greater confidence and cunning.

On Tuesday, emboldened by the slaughter of 76 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) soldiers in an April 6 ambush in central India, the rebels launched heavy frontal attacks on CRPF camps in Chhattisgarh. In Bengal, the Maoists have successfully taken over the administration of a State school, ensuring it does not fall into decay.

The government considered drones and new approaches to confronting the Maoists only after the April 6 ambush. If the IPL or the next empty scandal grabs our eyeballs, the public pressure needed to keep India focussed will rapidly evaporate.

Hunger and Maoist violence are not unique to — but are largely centred on — India's tribal lands, once home to the nation's densest forests, systematically exploited by local governments, officials and private interests.

With the State in retreat, it's no surprise that the national animal is fading from sight. The tiger's decimation — 1,000 or less may be left — is so acute that the prime minister this week appealed to states for an extraordinary effort to save the predator that serves as a barometer for not just the health of the nation's natural wealth but also of grassroots governance.

When was the last time you discussed how saving the tiger can save India?

Let's talk — when we tear ourselves away from the IPL.

 

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Man proposes; nature disposes. We are seldom more vulnerable than when we feel insulated. The miracle of modern flight protected us from gravity, atmosphere, culture, geography. It made everywhere feel local, interchangeable. Nature interjects, and we encounter -- tragically for many -- the reality of thousands of miles of sepa- ration. We discover that we have not escaped from the phys- ical world after all.

Complex, connected societies are more resilient than sim- ple ones -- up to a point. During the east African droughts of the early 1990s, I saw at first hand what anthropologists and economists have long predicted: those people who had the fewest trading partners were hit hardest. Connectivity provided people with insurance: the wider the geographical area they could draw food from, the less they were hurt by a regional famine.

But beyond a certain level, connectivity becomes a hazard.
The longer and more complex the lines of communication and the more dependent we become on production and business elsewhere, the greater the potential for disruption. This is one of the lessons of the banking crisis. Impoverished mortgage defaulters in the United States -- the butterfly's wing over the Atlantic -- almost broke the glob- al economy. If the Eyjafjallajökull volcano -- by no means a mon- ster -- keeps retching, it could, in these fragile times, produce the same effect.

We have several such vulner- abilities. The most catastrophic would be an unexpected solar storm -- which causes a surge of direct current down our elec- tricity grids, taking out the trans- formers. It could happen in sec- onds; the damage and collapse would take years to reverse, if we ever recovered.

As New Scientist points out, an event like this would knacker most of the systems which keep us alive. It would take out water treatment plants and pumping stations. It would paralyse oil pumping and delivery, which would quickly bring down food supplies. It would clobber hospitals, financial systems and just about every kind of business -- even the manufacturers of can- dles and paraffin lamps. Emergency generators would function only until the oil ran out. Burnt-out transformers cannot be repaired; they must be replaced. Over the past year I've sent freedom of information (FoI) requests to electricity transmit- ters and distributors, asking them what contingency plans they have made, and whether they have stockpiled transformers to replace any destroyed by a solar storm. I haven't got to the end of it yet, but the early results suggest that they haven't.

There's a similar lack of planning for the possibility that global supplies of oil might soon peak, then go into decline.
My FoI requests to the British government reveal that it has made no contingency plans. The issue remains the preserve of beardy lentil-eaters such as, er, the US joint forces com- mand. Its latest report on possible future conflicts maintains that "a severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity".

It suggests that "by 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10m barrels per day". A global oil shortage would soon expose the weaknesses of our complex economic systems. As the cultural anthropologist Joseph Tainter has shown, their dependence on high energy use is one of the factors that makes complex societies vulnerable to collapse.

His work has helped to overturn the old assumption that social complexity is a response to surplus energy. Instead, he proposes, complexity drives higher energy production. While complexity solves many problems -- such as reliance on an exclusively local and therefore vulnerable food supply -- it's subject to diminishing returns. In extreme cases, the cost of maintaining such systems causes them to collapse.

Tainter gives the example of the western Roman empire.
In the 3rd and 4th centuries AD, the emperors Diocletian and Constantine sought to rebuild their diminished territories: "The strategy of the later Roman empire was to respond to a near-fatal challenge in the third century by increasing the size, complexity, power, and costliness of... the government and its army. ... The benefit/cost ratio of imperial government declined.
In the end the western Roman empire could no longer afford the problem of its own existence." The empire was ruined by the taxes and levies on manpower Diocletian and Constantine imposed to sustain their massive system. Tainter contrasts this with the strategies of the Byzantine empire from the 7th century onwards. Weakened by plague and re-invasion, the government responded with a programme of systematic sim- plification. Instead of maintaining and paying its army, it grant- ed soldiers land in return for hereditary military service: from then on they had to carry their own costs. It reduced the size and complexity of the administration and left people to fend for themselves. The empire survived and expanded.

A similar process is taking place in Britain today: a simplifi- cation of government in response to crisis. But while the pub- lic sector is being pared down, both government and private enterprise seek to increase the size and complexity of the rest of the economy. If the financial crisis were the only constraint we faced, this might be a sensible strategy. But the energy costs, environmental impacts and vulnerability to disruption of our super-specialised society have surely already reached the point at which they outweigh the benefits of increasing complexity.

For the third time in two years we've discovered that fly- ing is one of the weakest links in our overstretched system.
In 2008, the rising cost of fuel drove several airlines out of business. The recession compounded the damage; the volcano might ruin several more. Energy-hungry, weather-dependent, easily disrupted, a large aviation industry is one of the hard- est sectors for any society to sustain, especially one beginning to encounter a series of crises. The greater our dependence on flying, the more vulnerable we are likely to become.

The state of global oil supplies, the industry's social and environmental costs and its extreme vulnerability mean that current levels of flying -- let alone the growth the government anticipates -- cannot be maintained indefinitely. We have a choice. We can start decommissioning this industry while there is time and find ways of living happily with less of it. Or we can sit and wait for physical reality to simplify the system by more brutal means.

The Guardian

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

COURTING TRAUMA

 

Rape victims in India suffer twice over. Once the crime itself; and twice when a procedure-bound criminal justice system forces them to re-live their nightmare, in full public gaze. Thankfully, a slew of amendments to the Indian anti-rape laws since the '80s have sought to sensitise the judicial system to the vulnerability of rape victims — in theory at least. But the travails of a 13-year-old rape victim in Gujarat expose the gap between theory and practice.

 

Upon taking her to a local clinic for an abortion, her parents, both labourers in Surendranagar district, were told that they needed to get permission from a court. A sessions court denied the victim permission to abort her unborn child since there was no evidence that her health was in danger. For a 13-year-old rape victim and her family to have to go through this is in itself shocking. The Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act gives a qualified medical practitioner many reasons to conduct an abortion. "Explanation 1" of Section 3(2) of the law explicitly states that for pregnancies "alleged... to have been caused by rape... the anguish caused by such pregnancy shall be presumed to constitute a grave injury to the mental health of the pregnant woman." In other words, as long as rape is alleged, the health hazard to the pregnant woman must be presumed, and abortion permitted.

 

The trauma of a child should be enough cause for compassion.

 

Instead, the trauma of the girl and her family has been stretched in a manner that raises questions. The girl's family has had to traverse India's legal system, first to the sessions court and now to the high court. Apart from apprehending the criminals, it is the duty of the state to rehabilitate the victim; at the very least, not place any obstacles in her way. It is hoped that the Gujarat high court provides much needed relief.

 

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INDIAN EXPRESS

 

PARTY FAVOURS

 

Mukul Sangma, right after taking over as chief minister of Meghalaya, made a significant statement ordering the "denotification of all political appointees" — that is, he decided to question why the state's current and former legislators were all firmly ensconced in various boards and corporations as chairmen.

 

Sangma has highlighted a damaging trend in our governance — perhaps it is wishful to expect his attack on patronage politics to reverberate elsewhere in the country, but Sangma's course will be keenly watched. This particular form of political generosity is almost taken for granted in our system — what was once visible in the form of ministerial appointments has now been replaced by these comfortable corporate positions. In Indian politics, you are always friends with benefits. Recall Uttar Pradesh in 1997, when Kalyan Singh took this method to grotesque lengths, as the BJP got the support of MLAs from other parties during a vote of confidence, and then accommodated them all in a 93-member council of ministers. Several states, from Bihar to Karnataka, went a similar way. When everyone's angling to be a minister, it skews the necessary tension between executive and legislature, not to mention how much an extra unnecessary minister costs the coffers in terms of staff, cars, accommodation and security. Finally, the NDA in 2003 (with cross-party support) moved to limit the size of the council of ministers at the Centre and states to 15 per cent of the numerical strength of the legislature.

 

Since then, that blatant ministry-padding has been replaced by a flow of other favours, and less visible forms of patronage — political appointments in managerial posts are among the ways in which party advantage is established. However, like all such appointments, the arrangement demoralises the professionals and career executives in these corporations, and is also a drain on their resources. More worryingly, it frays the idea of responsibility to an elected legislature keeping an independent check on the executive. The acceptance of this system, where the victorious political formation divides the spoils and accommodates its supporters in all kinds of paying gigs, has a corrosive effect on the quality of our democracy.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

AT SILLY POINT

 

There is immense pressure on the government to clean up the muck that has engulfed the Indian Premier League. And that's a good thing, because there is little doubt that Indian cricket, at the business end of things, desperately needs a clean-up job. But it is important to maintain perspective on the job at hand. What we do not need is what assorted politicians of diverse ideological streams are clamouring for — a ban on the IPL. The IPL cannot be dubbed a dubious product because of its big market and huge potential for profit. Consider the interests of stakeholders other than the bosses of IPL. Consumers in India, and indeed abroad, are enjoying the cricket and the larger entertainment package being offered. Advertisers seem to find it worthwhile to pump in money where there is such a large audience. Broadcasters and franchise owners, and leave aside the murk for just a moment, must also see plenty of potential for profit to have invested so much money in the IPL. And the cricketers involved in actually dishing out the action are all better off (at least financially) from their participation in the league. Purists may worry about the fate of the game as they once knew it, but that is another debate.

 

Those responsible for the clean-up would be wise to keep in mind the "Satyam principle" as they tackle the IPL mess. Satyam was a good company, with strong human resources, an impressive client list and a powerful brand; but it had fraudulent top management. So, the government's decision to save the brand and its other stakeholders while picking out and punishing the fraudsters was an eminently sensible one. In the case of the IPL too, it's well worth saving the product while cleaning up the mess that the financial dealings have proven to be. Actually it's about more than the league alone. An economically healthy cricket set-up could, in fact, be a role model for other sports in India, all of which need to attract more money and interest, not less. The successful staging of the hockey world cup in Delhi recently was a reminder of the untapped potential of that sport.

 

The current investigations into the flawed and opaque business dealings of the IPL are therefore an opportunity to establish best practices for private participation in sport in this country — and to bring transparency in the administration of sport.

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

I-BANKS' IPL MOMENT

SAUBHIK CHAKRABARTI

 

Are Goldman Sachs' current troubles — the bank has been charged with fraud by the US financial regulator — relevant for India? Yes. And for two reasons. Let's first take the reason that's more entertaining, but no less important for it.

 

Post the fraud charge against Goldman, America's investment banks (technically, after the financial crisis I-banks that survived became commercial banks; but the distinction very much survives de facto) are roughly in the same intersection of public policy momentum and public anger build-up as India's IPL. Those of us who rightly believe that entrepreneurial chutzpah, risk-taking and profit-making are socially valuable, those of us who again rightly don't believe in Economics 101's fantasy that politics and business can remain absolutely separate, and therefore those of us who are usually deeply discomfited by reflexive populist rants against wealth find much to admire in both investment banking and IPL.

 

But we must also recognise that right now investment banking, like IPL, deserves to be subjected to some populist demands for bloodletting. Populist anger against Wall Street's establishment, like against our cricket establishment, is in part being informed by the fact that key information has been withheld and key stakeholders have been seemingly duped. These violations should be deemed unacceptable by those of us who value an aggressively entrepreneurial culture. The populist and the so-called elitist are on the same page here.

 

The other binding factor: the rules, regulations and laws governing both I-banks and IPL are important in the current developments. But as important is one simple fact: no half-decent person can find a moral case for certain goings-on in Indian cricket and American finance. Whether or not America's SEC wins the case against Goldman or India's Enforcement Directorate tracks down dodgy money trails in Dubai or Virgin Islands, the correct judgment has been passed in the court of public opinion.

 

Shashi Tharoor said, and continues to say, there's nothing more important than personal integrity to him. Yet, as a minister, he was comfortable with not disclosing that a close friend was getting a sweetheart deal in an IPL venture he "mentored". Simple moral case, no? If there are other people in public office and their close associates in positions similar to Tharoor, then the case is equally simple. If private individuals like Lalit Modi perpetrated the fiction that IPL ownerships and deals were only about blue chip companies and Bollywood stars turned entrepreneurs, it's an equally simple case. Key information was and in some case may prove to have been withheld and key stakeholders — sponsors, paying public, contracted players — taken for a ride for profits that otherwise would not have existed.

 

Goldman Sachs' business principles state that nothing is more important to it than its reputation. Strange then, like in the case of Tharoor, it didn't tell some of its clients that some of the investment products it was asking them to bet on were products that the bank knew (a) were cherry-picked to be vulnerable against an opposite bet and (b) were going to be betted against by another client of the bank who paid a fee to get this deal.

 

This is the simple summary of US Securities and Exchange Commission's complex case against Goldman and no matter which way you cut it, there's a simple moral case against the bank. Clients were deliberately taken to the cleaners. Key information was withheld from them. Banks that produce crazy financial engineering and pose systemic threats — the financial crisis, in other words — are a big problem. But banks that set out to act against the interests of their own clients for making money it shouldn't have are a big blot. The first calls for policy response. The second justifies calls that some heads are seen to roll.

 

Yes, there are less than simple political motivations in the current targeting of I-banks and IPL in, respectively, America and India. Barack Obama's administration needs a smoking gun as it prepares for financial sector reform. The Congress needs a counter-balancing bad guy after its government was forced to sack Tharoor. But the fact that I-banks and IPL have provided smoking guns for ruling political establishments does not make those smoking guns any less real and it does not mitigate the simple moral case against them.

 

This, the intersection of political incentives and public anger, brings up the second reason why the Goldman fraud case is relevant for India — it may set the course for future reform in Indian finance.

 

A very short summary of Indian finance now is this. Look at American finance, and be thankful you (Indians) have Indian finance. This, of course, is dead wrong. The solution to a big financial sector running amok is not a small financial sector that hobbles. But what has been called the Indian financial orthodoxy gets political traction in part because bailed-out American finance seems to have been arguing against changes in how it fundamentally functions. The stench of a discredited ancien régime has been strong.

 

The Goldman investigation should severely weaken banks' status quoist argument because the simple moral case leads to fundamental questions about investment banks. One, should a set-up where banks can so easily sell junk to its own clients be allowed? Two, isn't that set-up directly linked to the bigger set-up that allows banks to prioritise trading over raising money and lending and giving advice? Three, isn't that in turn linked to huge trading profits promised by financial instruments that seem to be nothing more than pure play speculative bets? Four, does not all of this boil down to the argument that American financial reform that does not fundamentally change the way Wall Street works will not be much of a reform?

 

These questions are being asked with a lot more force in America now than before the Goldman morality tale came to be known. The chances for fundamental reform are brighter. And if fundamental reform in American finance happens, the Indian financial orthodoxy will lose much of its sheen. Chances of fundamental reform in Indian finance will brighten.

 

Here's hoping we can say the same thing about Indian cricket.

 

saubhik.chakrabarti@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

EXPERIMENTS WITH TWITTER

COOMI KAPOOR

 

Thanks to Twitter, the ebullient and supposedly savvy former Minister of State for External Affairs Shashi Tharoor built up a following of over seven lakh on the Net. But Twitter, which made Tharoor so popular among the country's urban, educated youth, has also proved to be his undoing.

 

Tweeting and blogging has become a new form of instant communication for prominent personalities. It

establishes a direct rapport with the public at large, sidestepping intermediaries like journalists, public relations officers, press statements and press conferences. When Sania Mirza and Shoaib Malik wanted to announce their marital plans, they did so through Twitter. The Bachchan family uses blogs and Twitter to get its political messages across. Shah Rukh Khan gave his take on the My Name Is Khan controversy through Twitter.

 

US President Barack Obama and British Foreign Secretary David Miliband are blog and Twitter enthusiasts.

 

But is Twitter a good idea for an Indian politician? Nandan Nilekani, for instance, decided to close his Twitter account once he took up an official position with the government. Omar Abdullah uses the far more restricted Facebook, but even he got flak for an incautious remark about Indian security forces in Kashmir. Narendra Modi, Shivraj Singh Chouhan and Nitish Kumar have opted to blog, which is more in the nature of a one-way communication. Tharoor, who used new media very effectively during his election campaign in Thiruvananthapuram, opted to continue tweeting after becoming a minister, providing a running commentary on various aspects of his job, his travels and official interactions. He reacted testily to an item in my weekly column about the dangers of a minister tweeting. Today, the aim is for more openness in government, not keeping under wraps what should be in the public domain, he explained. He once headed the UN information department and was conscious of what news was appropriate for public consumption and what was not, he reasoned. And perhaps, his new age approach would see the winds of change blowing through the musty cubicles of Herbert Baker's colonial edifice, I thought. I did not reckon that the winds would sweep the junior minister off his feet so fast.

 

Despite his impressive UN record in dealing with the media and the public, Tharoor could not overcome an old Stephanian's instinct to have the last word, preferably a wisecrack. Tharoor's response to the Congress austerity campaign was downright blasphemous. Asked on Twitter whether he would be travelling cattle class, he replied flippantly, "Absolutely... out of solidarity with all our holy cows." His remark evoked outrage among our humourless political class. How dare he mock economy class travel? Worse, his "holy cows" allusion had an obviously irreverent tone in the family run Congress party. Early this year, Tharoor frankly shared his misgivings about the government's new visa rules in the wake of David Headley's arrest. A minister publicly criticising his own department was a refreshing departure. The fact that his OSD Jacob Joseph was also an avid tweeter and even less circumspect than his boss added to the mounting black marks against the minister.

 

The tweet which finally brought about Tharoor's comeuppance, however, was not his own but that of Lalit Modi's. Apart from a mutual fondness for Twitter, Modi and Tharoor both suffer from a hubris that makes them sail too close to the wind. Not used to being crossed, Modi thought he could get even with Tharoor by bringing to public notice the suspicious shareholding of the IPL's Kochi franchise. He has succeeded in his mission, but in the bargain it looks as if he too will soon come tumbling down from his position as czar of the mighty IPL money-making machine.

 

Surprisingly, for an inveterate tweeter, Tharoor has not been very forthcoming about the trauma of his own resignation. He has restricted himself to posting his speech in Parliament and thanking his Twitter supporters — who, incidentally, include Anand Mahindra and Shekhar Kapur — for all the support and good wishes.

 

coomi.kapoor@expressindia.com

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

THE SPECTRE OF NAZ

VINAY SITAPATI

 

Can words change society? It is a question that is increasingly being asked of our higher judiciary. Their opinions can veer between upbraiding beards to bemoaning cricket's social ills; even serious jurisprudence, on the environment or more recently on legalising gay sex, begs the question: Does it matter? Do their Lordships overestimate their powers of persuasion?

 

It is precisely such a question that has bedevilled the July 2009 judgment of the Delhi High Court in Naz Foundation v. Union of India. The judges "read down" section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, in effect decriminalising homosexuality. The decision is now backed, in the Supreme Court appeal, by an early opponent, the Central government. But so what? Will nosey neighbours or blackmailing beat constables really care what the court thinks? Even if the Supreme Court were to uphold the high court judgment, how much of a game changer will the decision be?

 

Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras provides one answer. Siras taught Marathi at Aligarh Muslim University. Last month, he was filmed in the privacy of his home in a compromising position with a male rickshaw puller. When the video was made public, AMU suspended Siras for "immoral sexual activity". The usual suspects manning India's liberal outposts howled at the travesty: how a man's house was broken into, and why he was being made to pay for consensual private pleasures.

 

But something else happened, something that hasn't happened before. On April 1, the Allahabad High Court ordered AMU to reinstate Siras, holding that his right to privacy had been violated. And now comes news that the Uttar Pradesh police have arrested two of those who broke into Siras's house and filmed him. A third, named in an FIR filed by Siras, is on the run. Many university officials have also been charged with criminal offences. This is not how the story was supposed to pan out. Those who broke into Siras's house and AMU (and there are allegations that they are one and the same) assumed that Siras's transgressions were so repellent, that their own would be forgiven. They now realise that the game has changed.

 

And what is interesting is that the game changers are the courts and the local police, the very institutions that have had, to put it mildly, an awkward relationship with homosexuality. Affidavit after affidavit filed in the Delhi High Court by the petitioners in the Naz Foundation case, documented tales of police brutality, coercion and blackmail. To see this very same institution moving another way shows that something is stirring. To be sure, it was Siras's tragic death, not his original complaint, that was the catalyst. Had the police swung into action soon after Siras filed an FIR, perhaps he would still be alive. Nonetheless, it is inconceivable to imagine the court's verdict and police action taking place in a context in which gay sex was illegal. In the pre-Naz Foundation era, Siras would have been the criminal, the other wrongs mere side shows. The current official narrative — of a victimised Siras, a callous administration and criminal house-breakers — owes much to the Delhi High Court's view that Siras's sexual choice was legitimate.

 

It is too early to tell whether the sea has parted, and homosexuals can live with dignity in India. Progressive court pronouncements and their official enforcement usually have a time lag between them.

 

Take America's experience with Brown v. Board of Education. In 1954, the US Supreme Court held that separate schools for Blacks and Whites were unconstitutional. But official acquiescence is another thing. Southern states were furious. In 1957, the governor of Arkansas openly defied the court order forcing US President Dwight Eisenhower to send in federal troops to guard Black kids attending White-only schools. It took years of legal threats and federal action for all of American officialdom to fall in line. Even after President Lyndon Johnson's sweeping civil rights legislations of 1964, desegregation took many years longer.

 

By that standard, official action in the Siras case, by a state police not known for progressive posturing, has been quick. Perhaps this is because homophobia in India does not run as deep as racism in the United States did; Brown v. Board of Education threatened an entire way of life, which the Naz Foundation case does not. But the point still remains: it takes a while to touch and feel the abstract rights granted in a court of law. Official action against Siras's persecutors shows that the impact of the Delhi High Court judgment decriminalising homosexuality is being felt.

 

In his speech marking 55 years of Brown v. Board of Education, to an audience of Black and White college students in 2009, US President Barack Obama acknowledged his debt "as President and as an African-American" to the case. But he also noted that it took "a number of years [after the court case] and a nationwide movement to fully realise the dream of civil rights for all of God's children." Siras was an unwitting symbol; he is now part of a nationwide movement to realise Naz Foundation's dream. Shortly before he died, Siras told a reporter from this newspaper that "I want to work for the gay community". Despite his tragic end, Shrinivas Ramchandra Siras's work continues.

 

vinay.sitapati@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

IN THE CORNER OF A FOREIGN FIELD

SHAILAJA BAJPAI

 

Beware, Lalit Modi: your time has come. Just that like passengers stranded everywhere, your flight has been delayed. But depart you must: not only because television has predicted, demanded, announced your departure since last week but also because you announced you wouldn't be going anywhere. That's precisely what happened to Shashi Tharoor. Last Saturday, he proclaimed he would not be resigning (NDTV 24x7). Within 24 hours that's exactly what he did. So when you told the TV microphones on Tuesday that there was nothing to worry about, we began to worry for you.

 

Television statements can be bad luck charms: the opposite of what you say may happen, especially when it comes to resignations or scandals. As NDTV reminded us, Natwar Singh had also proclaimed his continuance as external affairs minister after his alleged involvement in the Iraqi oil scam, and then promptly tendered his resignation.

 

No, you can't be too careful these days. Small wonder BCCI chairman Shashank Manohar did not respond to any of the questions put to him by a persistent Times Now reporter with anything other than, "I can't answer any of your questions". Small wonder NCP's Supriya Sule, asked by NDTV 24x7 what she would say to Lalit Modi, smiled, replied, "Hi", and wished him well — oh dear, was that a fond farewell? What else could she have done? Cursed him for getting her embroiled in this mess? Nah.

 

It's difficult to believe what you hear on television these days. You are so befuddled by the sheer volume and speed of apparent developments and television's relentless commentary on them. We had yet to recover from the Shoaib-Sania match-fixing tangle when the SMS scandal — as India TV delightfully referred to the Shashi-Modi-Sunanda affair — was breaking sweat across channels — and it had nothing to do with the heat wave.

 

In the last ten days, the facts and fiction surrounding the three, the IPL, and the politicians have merged and occupied airspace like a gigantic ash cloud (all the way from Iceland?) so dense, we can't see or tell one from another.

 

Thus, within a few hours on Tuesday, we went from the meetings of top politicians to the meeting between a top politician and top cricket administrator (fact), to taped conversations of top politicians with Lalit Modi (unsubstantiated), to companies in Dubai and Mauritius being used to launder black money (unsubstantiated), to allegations leveled against Modi in one English newspaper (unnamed) on his disproportionate assets, his "satta" betting, land deals in Rajasthan, match-fixing, to his master plan for his exit (speculation), to the discussions on the business model of the IPL with at least one channel claiming that the IPL was worth Rs 40,000,00 crores!

 

Figures, facts and fiction. The beauty of television news is that it seldom attributes anything to a source or substantiates its claims. It makes announcements and we accept them — with reports flying thick and fast, who can remember who said what when? That's the beauty of television news: you cannot hold it to its word because there's no evidence of what it said unless someone is taping them 24x7.

 

An equally (un)attractive feature is that it latches onto a story like a leech and sucks it dry — and then some. The whole of last Sunday was spent watching Shashi Tharoor's car drive up to the PM's residence, and his disappearance inside because the channels were waiting for him to resign — something the thoughtless fellow didn't do till late at night. Arrgh!

 

You'd have thought the plight of over 40,000 passengers waiting to take off from India throughout the week would have been in focus, but with Lalit Modi and Shashi Tharoor playing Twenty20? Nah. You'd have thought a sudden shoulder injury to Virender Sehwag could have been the top story of Tuesday and the IPL semi-finals would have been the top story of the week (what an irony!), not to mention bombs at the Bangalore cricket stadium.

 

Well, what can we say but that you would have thought wrong.

 

shailaja.bajpai@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

VIEW FROM THE RIGHT

SUMAN K JHA

Dithering Congress

Editorials in the latest issues of RSS's English mouthpiece Organiser and RSS's Hindi weekly Panchajanya, are devoted to the Congress stand on Maoist terror. Titled "The Congress is playing a diabolic game", the Organiser editorial says that "it's unfortunate that the Congressmen are fighting among themselves on the question of confronting the Maoist threat to national security". The Panchajanya editorial, on the other hand, is titled "Congress ke aantarik vorodhabhas khatarnaak" (internal contradictions in Congress on this issue are dangerous). The Organiser writes in its editorial: "It's not clear whether people like Digvijay Singh and Mani Shankar Aiyar are fighting their inner party feud under the façade of strategy on Maoists. In fact, the Centre has not so far given the impression that it has a strategy in place. In national interest, despite the suspicious record of the UPA, the Opposition parties extended unreserved support to Home Minister P. Chidambaram to firm up a policy against the Maoists. But he is being attacked openly by his own party colleagues in a language that has proved music to the ears of the butchers ensconced in the safety of the thick forests of Dandakaranya". Panchajanya, argues on similar lines. Its editorial says: "The Opposition stands with the government, but the Congress must understand that the party-government divide could prove dangerous for the country, and the fight against the Naxals cannot ever be won with this approach".

 

Happiness index

The Organiser carries two reports about RSS functionaries, in its latest issue. RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat, who was at Haridwar to take part in a discussion on the "Role of Indian culture in global conflict", is quoted as having said: "Earlier we used to live in harmony with nature and there was no thinking of exploitation at all. But modern science not only encouraged exploitation of nature but also ruined rich traditions and values of life. What we need today is to live in harmony with nature if we have to survive".

 

Another news report talks about the release of a book titled A new paradigm of development — sumangalam authored by Dr Bajrang Lal Gupta. Gupta is impressed by the idea of gross national happiness (introduced first in Bhutan), and argues that instead of evaluating development in terms of GDP, it should be evaluated in terms of all-round sumangalam, a concept "which ensures total happiness in life". Gupta is described as an economist in the Organiser report. That he also happens to be chief of RSS's northern India region, besides being one of the six RSS spokespersons authorised to speak to the media, has not been mentioned in the report.

Foreign enemies

Among other themes in the latest issue of Panchajanya, the weekly column by Devendra Swaroop says that the "Pope is encouraging religious conversions across the world. A column by Harbans Dikshit calls for "greater transparency in the judiciary", while another column by Satish Chandra Mittal debates whether "India is a country, nation, or a sub-continent". Swaroop has been a long-time contributor to Panchajanya; columnists like Dikshit and Mittal have not been introduced along with their pieces. The columns in the latest issue of Organiser, are devoted to various subjects — M.V. Kamath asks the question "whether we need foreign universities". Kamath writes: "Oxford can be Oxford only in Oxford and not in Noida. Tip to Kapil Sibal: Help our universities and colleges to upgrade themselves on a regular basis and await results... This is a nation that once produced Nalanda". Jay Dubashi, in his column, argues that "our economic model is designed to make the rich richer and the poor poorer". Writes Dubashi: "This is also the model adopted in most affluent countries from which we borrowed it. The gap between the rich and the poor has been widening ever since (Dr Manmohan) Singh and Co. came on the scene and liberalised the economy".

 

Compiled by Suman K. Jha

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

READING TIGER WRITING DRAGON

 

The rapid economic development of Asia since World War II — starting with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, then extending to Hong Kong and Singapore, and finally taking hold powerfully in India and mainland China — has forever altered the global balance of power. These countries recognise the importance of an educated work force to economic growth, and they understand that investing in research makes their economies more innovative and competitive.

 

Beginning in the 1960s, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan sought to provide their populations with greater access to post-secondary education, and they achieved impressive results. Today, China and India have an even more ambitious agenda. Both seek to expand their higher education systems, and since the late 1990s, China has done so dramatically.

 

The results of Beijing's investment have been staggering. Over the past decade, the number of institutions of higher education in China more than doubled, from 1,022 to 2,263. Meanwhile, the number of Chinese who enroll in a university each year has quintupled.

 

India's achievement to date has not been nearly as impressive, but its aspirations are no less ambitious. To fuel the country's economic growth, India aims to increase its gross enrollment ratio in post-secondary education from 12 per cent to 30 per cent by 2020. This goal translates to an increase of 40 million students in Indian universities over the next decade.

 

Having made tremendous progress in expanding access to higher education, the leading countries of Asia are focused on an even more challenging goal: building universities that can compete with the finest in the world. The governments of China, India, Singapore and South Korea are explicitly seeking to elevate some of their universities to this exalted status because they recognise the important role that university-based scientific research has played in driving economic growth in the United States, Western Europe and Japan.

 

Developing top universities is a tall order. World-class universities achieve their status by assembling scholars who are global leaders in their fields. In the sciences, this requires first-class facilities, adequate funding, and competitive salaries and benefits. China is making substantial investments on all three fronts. And beyond the material conditions required to attract faculty, an efficient system of allocating research funding is also needed.

 

It takes more than research capacity alone for a nation to develop economically, however. It takes well-educated citizens of broad perspective and dynamic entrepreneurs capable of independent and original thinking. The leaders of China, in particular, have been very explicit in recognising that two elements are missing from their universities: multidisciplinary breadth and the cultivation of critical thinking.

 

The traditional Asian approaches to curriculum and pedagogy may work well for training line engineers and midlevel government officials, but they are less suited to fostering leadership and innovation. Students who aspire to be leaders in business, medicine, law, government or academia need "the discipline" of mind — the ability to adapt to constantly changing circumstances, confront new facts, and find creative ways to solve problems. Cultivating such habits requires students to be more than passive recipients of information; they must learn to think for themselves.

 

There has already been dramatic movement toward American-style curriculum in Asia. But changing the style of teaching presents a more challenging problem. It is more expensive to offer classes with smaller enrollments, and it requires the faculty to adopt new methods.

 

Not every university can or needs to be world class. Japan and South Korea have learned this lesson and have well-funded flagship universities. China understands this strategy, too. But India is an anomalous case. It established five Indian Institutes of Technology in the 1950s and 1960s, and 10 more in the past two decades. These are outstanding institutions for educating engineers, but they have not become globally competitive in research. The egalitarian politics of India make it difficult to focus on developing a small number of world-class research universities.

 

In one respect, however, India has a powerful advantage over China, at least for now. It affords faculty members the freedom to pursue their intellectual interests wherever they may lead and allows students and faculty alike to express, and thus test, their most heretical and unconventional theories — freedoms that are an indispensable feature of any great university.

 

As barriers to the flow of people, goods and information have come down, and as the process of economic development proceeds, Asian countries have increasing access to the human, physical and informational resources needed to create top universities. If they concentrate their growing resources on a handful of institutions, tap a worldwide pool of talent, and embrace freedom of expression and freedom of inquiry, they will succeed in building world-class universities. It will not happen overnight; it will take decades. But it may happen faster than ever before.

 

The writer is president of Yale University. The New York Times

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

BOOST TO INFRA

The measures taken to boost infrastructure investments in the annual credit policy will go a long way in further accelerating and extending fund flows into this crucial sector. Particularly welcome is the move to liberalise the availability of bank funds to large-scale infrastructure projects by treating annuities from BOT projects and toll collection rights as tangible securities. Equally welcome is the move to reduce the provisioning for substandard infrastructure loan accounts from 20% to 15% under certain conditions that will allow banks to escrow cash flows and also secure a clear and legal first claim on such cash flows. Similarly, the appetite for infrastructure bonds will also be buoyed up by the move to allow banks to classify their investments in non-SLR bonds issued by infrastructure companies in the held-to-maturity category from the mark-to-market category. These steps will not only improve the availability of bank funds, which have shot up by an astounding 42.3% to Rs 1,08,757 crore on a year-on-year basis in the period ending February 2010, but also improve the working of the corporate bond market. This will boost private participation in infrastructure projects, which is crucial for sustaining long-term growth. This is especially the case as India's potential on this count is substantial; the country has already emerged as a world leader in the implementation of infrastructure projects with private participation.

 

Most recent numbers from across the globe show that India has registered impressive gains in investment commitments in infrastructure projects with private participation going up from $20.6 billion in 2000-05 to $24.7 billion in 2006-08 in the telecom sector alone. Gains were much higher in the transport sector, where such investments accelerated from $4.3 billion to $19 billion, and also in the energy sector, where they shot up from $8.4 billion to $28.5 billion during the period. This is in sharp contrast to the trends in other countries like Brazil and China, where the investment commitments in infrastructure projects with private participation came down in the latter half of the decade. The only other major developing country that has been able to improve private participation in infrastructure projects was Russia. But Russian gains were only in the energy segment where the fund commitments increased more than twelve-fold. However, India still has a long way to go before it can rest on its laurels, as the demand for private sector funds is expected to grow exponentially, given that overall funds for development of the infrastructure sector are expected to shoot up from around $500 billion in the Eleventh Plan period to more than a trillion dollars in the next.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

THE RIGHT ROAD

 

As reported in The Indian Express on Wednesday, the road transport and highways ministry has proposed that the draft National Highways Amendment Bill 2010 should have a clause that will enable the return of unused land acquired for road infrastructure projects to the original owners. If the original owner is willing to return the money paid for the purchase by the government, he or she will not have to pay appreciation monies but only those received when the land was sold to the government. This is clearly a move in the right direction for creating a smoother land acquisition environment, which is critical for so many sectors—not just roads and highways, but also coal, steel, power and so on. The road transport and highways ministry has also proposed that people selling land to NHAI should get solatium for better rehabilitation and resettlement. This, again, is a step in the right direction. Of course, minister Kamal Nath had mooted the idea of returning unused land to the original landowners some months ago but it's good to see that the idea has found its way into the draft legislation.

 

But what's happening with the amendments to the antiquated land acquisition Act, not to mention the rehabilitation and resettlement policy Bill? Both pieces of legislation remain hostage to coalition politics, with certain UPA partners remaining categorically opposed to the government's involvement in land acquisition. Given that an emerging economy like India has little option but to convert agricultural land for industrial use, addressing the land logjam is of vital significance. Tata Motors may have been the first and most high-profile casualty of confrontation over land acquisition in Singur but many more industries are equally affected. Today, for example, ArcelorMittal and Posco projects remain hamstrung by similar concerns. However tricky it may be, unless the government commits itself to clear legislation for reconciling industrial and welfare goals on this front, India's growth story will have a hard time powering ahead. Sure, such legislation will have to address a wide array of concerns. Infosys chairman Narayana Murthy has mentioned how India's floor-area ratio needs to improve from the current 1:1 to 1:15. There is also the question of putting unproductive government land banks to better use. The bottom line is that land reform is important. At least the road transport and highways ministry is thinking creatively on the subject and trying to convert its good idea into legislation.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

STILL LEANING ON THE SIDE OF GROWTH

MAHESH VYAS

 

The token measures taken by RBI in its monetary policy statement acknowledged the concerns of the economists at investment banking firms and yet left the economy free of any threat from high interest rates. Concerns regarding inflation have been greeted with erudite discussion and token action. If the intention was essentially to not disturb the growth momentum by high interest rates, then the objective has been met with élan.

 

If the choice was between high inflation and high interest rates, RBI has effectively chosen high inflation for now. This is because the token measures to raise interest rates or to absorb liquidity are unlikely to raise the interest rates in the economy. Many heads of banks have already stated this in response to the policy statement. If excess liquidity is leading to excessive demand, which, in turn, is leading to high inflation, then this will continue to be so, for now. The expectation is that increased supplies from agriculture and manufacturing will soon match the excess demand and inflation will come down to more acceptable levels.

 

RBI predicts that inflation in the WPI will be down to 5.5% by March 2011. We believe that inflation in the WPI will be lower at 3.8% in the quarter-ended March 2011. RBI has predicted a real GDP growth of 8% in 2010-11. We believe that the economy will grow at a faster 9.2%. RBI's benign intervention ensures that growth will be sustained.

 

During 2010-11, investment demand is likely to continue to remain high. The IIP for capital goods has been showing big increases in recent months. CMIE's CapEx database has also been showing a relentless growth in the creation of additional productive capacities across all major segments. Projects worth Rs 1.1 lakh crore were commissioned during the quarter-ended March 2010. Fiscal 2009-10 saw projects worth Rs 4 lakh crore being commissioned. And, projects worth Rs 6.5 lakh crore are scheduled to be commissioned in 2010-11.

 

The momentum of investments is unlikely to fizzle out soon. This is evident from the fact that Rs 4.3 lakh crore worth of new investment proposals were announced during the quarter-ended March 2010. With this, fresh proposals are back to the levels they were before the 2008-09 crisis that temporarily halted fresh investment.

 

Easy liquidity and capital flows are likely to continue to facilitate this continued investments boom. More importantly, consumer demand is likely to continue to remain robust post the monetary policy statement. A large part of consumer spending in 2009-10 was because of the one-time effect of farm loan waivers and increase in wages of government employees. But, sustained growth in consumer spending is possible only when employment increases.

 

The sustained increase in creation of new capacities (which shows up as lower capacity utilisation in RBI studies) has also created new jobs. These new jobs (for which there is no official data) create new domestic demand. Given that external demand growth is expected to be weak, it is important that the domestic demand growth is sustained. A significant hike in interest rates by banks will hurt this growth in domestic demand.

 

Traditionally, Indian households have been very low on borrowing. The recent trend in banks lending to households for homes, consumer durables, automobiles, education and other expenses has spurred domestic demand. A hike in interest rates is unlikely to hurt the corporate sector's cost structures or profitability directly. Corporates are flush with funds, have a strong balance sheet and command handsome profit margins. A hike in interest rates can be easily absorbed without impacting profit margins too much. Similarly, a hike in interest rates is unlikely to adversely impact costs involved in their expansion plans. It looks like they are on their way to get their pricing power back. But, if investments continue, competition will ensure that this power is under check.

 

Unlike the corporate sector, a hike in interest rates is likely to hurt domestic demand. Households are more sensitive to EMIs than corporates are to interest rates. A hike in interest rates can deplete the demand for housing. The interest-rate elasticity of demand for housing loans is evident in the teaser rates offered by some of the big banks to attract buyers. It is important to sustain this demand rather than curtail it. For if it is curtailed, it will bring down with it the investment demand that is in the pipeline. In India, domestic demand is the single largest determinant of investment demand.

 

Indian households are characterised by high savings, low per capita consumption levels and low borrowings, compared to international standards. A hike in interest rates would further increase their savings and depress consumption and borrowing. It makes sense to let households borrow more and increase their consumption levels. It makes sense to let the investment cycle continue and increase gainful employment. It makes sense to let the economy hum along without government interventions. If this leads to a consensus inflationary expectation of about 5-6% and a growth of 8%, it is a pretty good deal. Although I believe that we have a better deal on hand.

 

The author heads Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

WHAT APPLE SAYS ABOUT INNOVATION

KRISHNAMURTHY V SUBRAMANIAN

 

For a company that looked doomed a decade ago, it has been quite a comeback. Today, Apple is an iconic company. Take, for example, the iPad that was released this month. Go into any Apple store in the US and there are at least a dozen stations with people lining up to check the iPad out. What lessons can Indian technology companies learn from the success of Apple?

 

For the most part, Apple's zest comes from its reputation for inventiveness. From its first computer in 1977 to the mouse-driven Macintosh in 1984, the iPod music player in 2001, the iPod Touch and the iPhone in recent years, and now the iPad, Apple has prospered by keeping just ahead of the times.

 

Apple is extremely different from other tech companies. In particular, it inspires an almost religious fervour among its customers. Indian innovation companies can learn at least four lessons from the Apple success story. First, innovation can come from without as well as within. Apple is widely assumed to be an innovator in the tradition of Thomas Edison, locking its engineers away to cook up new ideas and basing products on their moments of inspiration. However, its real skill lies in stitching together its own ideas with technology from outside and then wrapping the results in elegant software and stylish design. The idea for the iPod, for example, was originally dreamt up by a consultant whom Apple hired to run the project. It was assembled by combining off-the-shelf parts with in-house ingredients such as its distinctive, easily used system of controls. And it was designed to work closely with Apple's iTunes jukebox software, which was also brought in and then overhauled and improved. Apple is, in short, an integrator of technologies, unafraid to bring in ideas from outside but always adding its own twists. This approach, known as 'network innovation', is not limited to electronics. It has also been embraced by companies such as P&G, British Telecom and several drugs giants, all of which have realised that not all good ideas start at home. Making network innovation work involves cultivating contacts with academic researchers and start-ups, scouting for new ideas and ensuring that engineers do not fall prey to the 'not invented here' syndrome, which values in-house ideas over those from outside.

 

Second, Apple illustrates the importance of designing new products around the needs of the user, not the demands of technology. Too many technology firms think that clever innards are enough to sell their products, resulting in gizmos designed by engineers for engineers. Apple has consistently combined clever technology with simplicity and ease of use. The iPod was not the first digital music player, but it was the first to make transferring and organising music, and buying it online, easy enough for almost anyone to have a go. Similarly, the iPhone is not the first mobile phone to incorporate a music player, Web browser or e-mail software. But most existing 'smartphones' before the iPhone required one to be pretty smart to use them. In other words, most technology firms do not view 'ease of use' as an end in itself.

 

A third lesson from Apple is that innovating companies should sometimes ignore what the market says it wants today. Listening to customers is generally a good idea, but it is not the whole story. For example, the iPod was ridiculed when it was launched in 2001, but Steve Jobs stuck by his instinct. Nintendo has done something similar with its popular motion-controlled videogame console, the Wii.

 

The fourth lesson from Apple is to 'fail wisely'. The Macintosh was born from the wreckage of the Lisa, an earlier product that flopped; the iPhone is a response to the failure of Apple's original music phone, produced in conjunction with Motorola. Both the times, Apple learnt from its mistakes and tried again. Its recent computers have been based on technology developed at NeXT, a company Jobs set up in the 1980s that appeared to have failed and was then acquired by Apple.

 

The wider fourth lesson is not to stigmatise failure but to tolerate it and learn from it. Europe's inability to create a rival to Silicon Valley owes much to its tougher bankruptcy laws. In fact, in my research work, I find that tougher national bankruptcy laws discourage innovation in a country. Thus, from the policymaker's perspective while bankruptcy laws must be tightened for the brick-and-mortar industries, bankruptcy laws should be lenient in the technology sector. Since innovation involves considerable risk-taking, firms will be averse to taking risk if tough bankruptcy laws rob them of a second chance.

 

The author is assistant professor of finance at Emory University, Atlanta, and a visiting scholar at ISB, Hyderabad

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

REGULATING THE DISTRIBUTORS

K MUTHUKUMAR

 

Market regulator Sebi's proposal to regulate the distribution business of the mutual fund (MF) industry is not without reason. Distributors are the final link to retail investors and they are making more profits than asset management companies.

 

In India, ballpark estimates put the revenue market share of distributors in the MF industry at 36%, while it is 64% for asset management companies. But in terms of profits, the distributors' market share improves drastically to a dominant 61%. This, in other words, means that it might be more profitable to be a distributor than a fund manager. A recent Boston Consulting Group report mentions that during the period 1996-2004, market share of distributors in the overall US MF industry revenues increased from 61% to 76%. In FY10, back of the envelope calculations show that the asset management revenues could have been in the range of Rs 3,100 crore. During the same period, distributor revenues are expected to have been around Rs 1,800 crore. While post-entry load ban from August 2009 has hit distributors' pockets, their profits are still estimated to be more than those of mutual fund companies.

 

Anecdotally, a CEO of a large mutual fund mentions that the industry collectively made a net profit of Rs 900 crore in FY09. Assuming a 30% net profit margin—some of the top companies earn that—it is likely that the figure for FY10 will be around Rs 1,000 crore. In contrast, distributors are known to earn net profit margins in excess of 80%—since after the one time sale, the trailing fees they earn comes literally at zero cost. That puts their collective net profit at Rs 1,400-1,500 crore, which is much more than that of MFs. So, in terms of the industry value chain, it is better to be a distributor than an asset manager. That is perhaps the reason why there are more players in the distribution business than in mutual funds.

 

The distribution business is being increasingly conducted by banks. In terms of the channel mix, 43% comprise independent financial advisors, 30% banks, 22% national distributors and 6% direct. As the industry evolves, the third party distribution model calls for greater regulation.

 

muthukumar.k@expressindia.com

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

WHY WE NEED AN ANTI-TORTURE LAW

 

It is common knowledge that in India torture is professionally sanctioned and practised as a potent means of criminal investigation. There are honourable exceptions of course but in an alarming number of cases, the police and also paramilitary and military forces resort to this barbaric practice as a tool for extracting information from those in custody, circumventing the criminal justice system and undermining the rule of law. India signed the United Nations Convention against Torture and other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (CAT) in 1997 but is yet to ratify it. The specious rationalisation is that existing laws are sufficient to prevent this gross human rights violation. In a belated but welcome move, the Government of India has now given the nod for an anti-torture Bill that is aimed at harmonising our laws with CAT, a condition that is necessary for its ratification. Under the Prevention of Torture Bill, public servants who obtain a confession by causing grievous physical or mental hurt or danger to the life of any person are guilty of torture and liable for imprisonment up to 10 years.

 

Our existing laws deal with torture as if it were a regular offence. Provisions in the Indian Penal Code such as Section 330 (grievous hurt) may apply to torture cases but are limited in two ways. First, they apply only in situations where specific kinds of physical injuries are inflicted and fail to cover the gamut of ways in which torture is committed. Secondly, for the purposes of such sections, it is of no relevance whether the perpetrator of the offence is a public servant or not. A specific and separate law is necessary in the face of the widespread use of torture and the alarming number of custodial deaths caused by it. Describing torture and death in police custody as the "most heinous crimes," the Supreme Court lamented some days ago that they were on the rise despite constitutional and statutory safeguards. According to the National Human Rights Commission, 2,318 cases of death in police custody and 716 fake encounters have been registered with it since 1993. Such numbers are merely indicative. It is an open secret that custodial deaths are routinely registered as suicides and encounters are frequently staged to murder those under detention. A built-in weakness in the proposed torture law is that the police will continue to have the responsibility of investigating such cases. This is one reason why complaints about torture rarely result in successful prosecution. Even so, the Prevention of Torture Bill can make a worthwhile difference to tackling one of the major issues of policing in India.

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

WALK THE TALK

 

United States Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood recently announced, to public acclaim in car-dependent America, that bicycle use and walking should be given the same importance as motorised transport in State and local projects. The Government of India took a similar view in its National Urban Transport Policy 2006 (NUTP). But it has been unable to persuade the States to implement the far-sighted reforms needed to make cities people-friendly. Providing a new deal for the cities now depends upon the commitment of the Ministry of Urban Development to pursue the reform agenda. A good place to start is to rate cities for their people-friendly quality. The Ministry has a good grading tool in the form of service-level benchmarks for pedestrians, bicyclists, and public transport users, among others. The NUTP unveiled a people-centric vision, yet the large sums of money that have been invested in urban infrastructure, such as flyovers and roads, centre-stage vehicles, not people. These structures are daunting to pedestrians, particularly children, the disabled, and the elderly. State governments have been dragging their feet on a vital aspect of the reform — the creation of a statutory Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) for the bigger cities. Had UMTA come into being, the massive funds granted under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission would have helped improve commuter services.

 

With the necessary legislative sanction to back it, the Authority can bring the major modes of public transport such as rail, bus, and feeder services under a single regulatory framework and make travel on a single ticket possible. This would end the administrative dichotomy of urban railways being run by the central government in some cities and the bus systems coming under State control. There is also a healthy living dimension to modernising public transport services and improving the 'walkability' of cities. According to a well-cited study, "Walking to public transit: steps to help meet physical activity recommendations," reported in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in November 2005, nearly a third of American commuters who used public transport achieved, by walking to and from transit, the 30 minutes of physical activity a day recommended by the Surgeon-General. To fund urban infrastructure that hinders pedestrian movement is therefore to work against public health. Secretary LaHood summed it up nicely when he said Americans want to get out of their cars, get out of congestion, and have more opportunities for transport and exercise. Same here, Indians would say.

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THE HINDU

LEADER PAGE ARTICLES

TO BANGALORE, WITH HATE

POLICE HUNTING FOR THE PERPETRATORS OF LAST WEEK'S ATTACKS ON THE CHINNASWAMY STADIUM IN BANGALORE ARE REVISITING THE 2008 SERIAL BOMBINGS IN THE CITY.

PRAVEEN SWAMI

 

"HAPPY Vishu, Malayalees and Pravasees," reads the cheerful red banner running across the web page set up by an enthusiastic resident of Pallikera in Kerala. Photos offer a glimpse of the small town's charms: men with gym-honed biceps, the Bekal fort, and, improbably, photos of two western tourists hugging the billboard of a local celebrity.

 

Fifteen years ago, a young man named Sarfaraz Nawaz left Pallikera on a journey that would lead, step by step, to the serial bombings in Bangalore in June, 2008. From his story, and that of his associates in south India's Islamist networks, investigators have pieced together a fascinating account of how multiple jihadist cells formed across the region; linked to each other only loosely through leaders, who in turn were connected to Islamist groups in the Gulf and the Lashkar-e-Taiba's commanders in Pakistan.

 

But the story also demonstrates disturbing gaps in intelligence; gaps that allowed jihadists to mobilise and recruit members, and prepare for attacks. Following last week's bombings at the M. Chinnaswamy stadium in Bangalore, the police in Karnataka have renewed the search for over a dozen individuals linked to Nawaz's networks who eluded arrest after the June 2008 serial bombings in India's information-technology capital.

 

Born in 1977, the quiet, scholarly Nawaz joined the Students Islamic Movement of India in 1995. In 1996, he left home to study at the famous Dar-ul-Uloom Nadwat-ul-Ullema seminary in Lucknow. But he found its clerical austerity stifling, and returned to Kochi to study at Accel Computers. Fluent in Malayalam, English, Hindi, Urdu and Arabic, Nawaz began writing regularly in the SIMI-linked Kerala magazine Nerariv and the pro-National Development Front newspaper Thejus.

 

By March 2000, Nawaz had become SIMI's office secretary in New Delhi. His friends included Safdar Nagori, the imprisoned head of SIMI's jihadist faction; fugitive Indian Mujahideen commander Abdul Subhan Qureshi; and Saqib Nachan, charged with a bombing on a Mumbai train that left eleven dead.

 

In 2001, Nawaz took a job with computer-services firm Future Outlooks at Ibra in Oman. Later, he joined the Ibn Sina Medical Institute in Dubai — a facility run by a former president of SIMI's Kerala chapter, Dr. Abdul Ghafoor — as its public relations officer. Abdul Aziz, another former SIMI member from Malappuram in Kerala, helped Nawaz get a job at the al-Mihad centre in 2006. In July 2006, he shifted to the al-Noor Education Trust in Muscat.

 

Muscat was the hub from which the 2008 Bangalore bombings were planned and financed. In the summer of 2007, Bangalore Police investigators say, Nawaz met Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba commander Mohammad Rehan in Muscat. Introduced by common friends, the two men discussed armed retaliation against anti-Muslim violence in India. Nawaz refused his offer to train in Pakistan but agreed to recruit Kerala residents to the Lashkar's cause.

 

Jihad at the ginger plantation

 

The police do not know precisely what led Nawaz to work with the Lashkar but the fraught communal climate probably was a factor. In 2002, a drunken New Year's fight in the beach village of Marad sparked off violence that lasted a year, claiming thirteen lives. Hundreds of Muslim families fled the area. Nawaz was not in India at the time but he turned to a man who was.

 

Tadiyantavide Nasir joined the far-right Islamic Sevak Sangh in 1991, at just fifteen years of age. Police records document his chaotic, violent life: a murder charge, of which he was acquitted; an abortive attempt to assassinate the former Kerala Chief Minister, E.K. Nayanar; the burning of a Tamil Nadu bus to protest the arrest of ISS leader Abdul Nasser Maudany on terrorism charges; and a bombing outside the Kozhikode Press Club to highlight his cause.

 

Nasir was not a SIMI member but knew many of its members well. From 2005, Nasir began to tap Nawaz for funds to set up a jihad training camp on a remote ginger plantation near Hasatota in Karnataka's Kodagu district.

 

In 2007, the police say, he met key SIMI operative Qureshi — who, using the code-name Tauqir, liaised between the Indian Mujahideen's regional cells. Later, Nasir's cell supplied ammonium nitrate and integrated-circuit timers to the Indian Mujahideen's Mangalore-based commander Riyaz Ismail Shahbandri. Shahbandri's lieutenant Mohammad Zarar Siddi Bawa is the key suspect in the 2010 German Bakery bombing at Pune.

 

In 2007, Nawaz met Nasir in Kerala and discussed plans for an attack on Bangalore. By 2008, investigators say, the Lashkar's Rehan offered some $2,500 to finance the operation. Islamists living in the Gulf, notably fugitive terror commander CAM Bashir, raised additional funds. That March, Nawaz travelled home to Kerala. He also travelled to Bangalore, to look at possible targets. Nasir's group later tested two bombs near Kozhikode.

 

On July 23, 2008, Nasir and his group arrived in Bangalore in a hired Scorpio jeep, loaded with fourteen improvised explosive devices. Nine went off two days later, killing two people, injuring twenty.

 

Later that year, Nasir sent five cadre to Jammu and Kashmir, to train with a Lashkar commander in the Lolab valley near Kupwara. Nawaz had set up the training opportunity but police and Army personnel soon detected the strangers. Abdul Faiz and Mohammad Fayyaz from Kannur, Muhammad Yasir from Kochi, and Abdul Rahim from Malappuram were shot dead. Abdul Jabbar, the fifth volunteer, is under trial.

 

Bus tickets found on the body of one of the jihadists helped unravel the operation. Nasir fled to Bangladesh, aided by Lashkar operatives based out of Dhaka. It was not until last year that the Research and Analysis Wing located Nawaz in Oman, setting off a transnational manhunt that led to the arrest of Nasir and the Lashkar's Karachi-origin resident commander in Dhaka, Mubashir Shahid.

 

SIMI's jihadist faction had hoped the infrastructure set up by Nawaz and Nasir would help a separate cell that it had given birth to in Bangalore a decade ago. In 2000, a young SIMI ikhwan (full time worker) Peedical Abdul Shibli had moved to Bangalore to work at IT giant Tata Elexi. Recruited by the Islamist group in 1997 while he was a student in Thiruvananthapuram, Shibli was among Nawaz's key activists.

 

Shibli soon set up Sarani, a hostel for north Kerala migrants to Bangalore, offering them an Islamic environment. It ran in Bangalore's Vivek Nagar area, before moving to larger premises in Eejipura and then Bismillah Nagar. Kerala SIMI ideologues would often lecture residents here. Few Sarani residents, though, were stereotypical fanatics. Shibli's key recruit, Wipro-General Electric employee Yahya Kamakutty, for example, travelled to the U.S. at least thrice in 2000-2001 alone.

 

In 2001, following its public declarations of support for Al-Qaeda, SIMI was proscribed; but Sarani continued to run. SIMI chief Safdar Nagori visited the hostel in 2002 for three days, as did several other senior ideologues, unmonitored by local intelligence services.

By early 2006, Shibli was working full-time for SIMI's now-covert jihadists. In April 2006, SIMI held a secret meeting in Bangalore. Later, at a meeting held in Ujjain from July 4-7 2006, SIMI committed itself to an Islamist jihad against the Indian state. In April 2007, SIMI held a training camp at Castle Rock near Hubli, under the cover of hosting an outdoors event for Sarani residents. Another camp was held in Bijapur in June 2007, followed by a meeting at Dharwar in August.

 

Police failure

Recruits received bomb-making and firearms instruction from Subhan at camps held near Indore in September and November, 2007. Instruction in assembling fuel bombs was provided in December 2007 at a camp held outside Ernakulam. Of the forty-odd individuals the police believe attended these camps, over half were Bangalore residents. The police arrested several, including Shibly, Kamakutty, Husain and Raziuddin Nasir, who planned to bomb western tourists in Goa in the winter of 2008 but over half are still missing.

 

Many believe Bangalore's police simply did not take the threat seriously enough. No effort was made to install even basic defensive measures like closed-circuit cameras around the Chinnaswamy stadium. But there is a larger failure, too. For all the technological investments in intelligence made since the November 2008 carnage in Mumbai, the attacks in Pune and Bangalore have made clear that the police are yet to penetrate the jihadist cells responsible for the terror offensive from 2005 onwards — a failure that bodes ill for the future.

 

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THE HINDU

PAID NEWS UNDERMINING DEMOCRACY: PRESS COUNCIL REPORT

IT EXPLICITLY NAMES NEWSPAPERS AND CHANNELS — INCLUDING SOME OF THE BIGGEST GROUPS IN THE COUNTRY — SEEN AS HAVING INDULGED IN THE "PAID NEWS" PRACTICE.

P. SAINATH

 

1. The report traces the emergence of the paid news phenomenon over years and phases
2. Seeks a pro-active role from the Election Commission in initiating action against offenders

 

"The phenomenon of 'paid news' goes beyond the corruption of individual journalists and media companies. It has become pervasive, structured and highly organised and in the process, is undermining democracy in India." So finds the draft report of inquiry conducted into the phenomenon by the Press Council of India to be discussed by the full Council on April 26 in Delhi. The Hindu has obtained a copy of the report to be put up at that meeting.

 

The report is titled "Paid News: How corruption in the Indian media undermines Indian democracy." It marshals a vast amount of material on the issue and is a compendium of media malpractice. It explicitly names newspapers and channels — including some of the biggest groups in the country — seen as having indulged in the "paid news" practice. The report could run into rough weather for that reason, with a few Council members reluctant about naming names. (Though it gives space and weightage to the denials of the media groups under the scanner.)

 

The "lack of consensus" over naming names also extends to the report's reflection of the views of journalists' unions which have called for strengthening the Working Journalists Act. The unions assert that the contract system of employment now in vogue undermines the independence of the journalist and the primacy of the editor. The Delhi Union of Journalists even informed the Council that "selected journalists had been targeted by managements of media companies for not acquiescing with such malpractices".

 

Interestingly, many prominent politicians and public figures either deposed before the inquiry panel or made written submissions to it. Others also handed the panel their statements on the subject elsewhere. Across the spectrum, points out the report, even politicians normally loath to antagonise the media have complained bitterly about what many of them see as little more than extortion. A Sub-Committee of the Press Council, comprising Paranjoy Guha Thakurta and K. Srinivas Reddy, conducted the inquiry. Their report quotes opposition leader Sushma Swaraj's statement that the "paid news" menace had "started out as an aberration, went on to become a disease and is now an epidemic".

 

The report speaks of the "deception or fraud" that paid news entails as having three levels. First: "the reader of the publication or the viewer of the television programme is deceived into believing that what is essentially an advertisement is in fact, independently produced news content." Second: "By not officially declaring the expenditure incurred on planting "paid news" items, the candidate standing for election violates the Conduct of Election Rules, 1961, which are meant to be enforced by the Election Commission of India under the Representation of the People Act, 1951." And third: "by not accounting for the money received from candidates, the concerned media company or its representatives are violating the provisions of the Companies Act, 1956 as well as the Income Tax Act, 1961, among other laws."

 

The report notes the "huge amount of circumstantial evidence that has been painstakingly gathered by a few well-meaning journalists, unions of journalists, other individuals and organisations together with the testimonies of the politicians and journalists who have deposed before the Press Council of India." And says this "goes a very long way in establishing the fact that the pernicious practice of paid news has become widespread across media (both print and electronic, English and non-English languages) in different parts of the country. Interestingly, this phenomenon appears to be less pervasive in states (such as Kerala or Tamil Nadu) where the media is clearly divided along political lines."

 

The report traces the emergence of the paid news phenomenon over years and phases including such forms of space selling as MediaNet and Private Treaties. "In pursuing its quest for profits," it says, "it can be argued that certain media organizations have sacrificed good journalistic practices and ethical norms". What began as individual or one one-off transgressions, it points out, became institutionalised over the years. "Private Treaties" involve deals where corporates pay media companies in shares for advertising, plus other, favourable treatment. The "Private Treaties" have also disturbed the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) which, as early as July 2009, wrote to the Chairman of the Press Council of India, Justice G.N. Ray, that such strategies "may give rise to conflict of interest and may, therefore, result in dilution of the independence of [the] press vis-à-vis the nature and content of the news/editorials relating to such companies". SEBI "felt that such brand building strategies of media groups, without appropriate and adequate disclosures, may not be in the interest of investors and financial markets as the same would impede in them taking a fair and well-informed decision".

 

The "Private Treaties" structure lost its sheen when the stock market crash of 2008 saw those shares acquired from corporates plummet in value. However, the media companies were still to be assessed for tax purposes at the old values prevailing at the time of such contracts. "Paid news" was one way out of this trouble. Since all the transactions were illegal and off the account books, it benefitted both media owners and politicians.

 

The report explores several ways to curb the menace of "paid news". It seeks a far more pro-active role from the Election Commission for instance. It calls on the ECI to set up "a special cell to receive complaints about 'paid news' in the run up to the polls. Where a prima facie case is established, it calls on the ECI to initiate action against offenders.

 

It asks that the ECI nominate independent journalists or public figures to help monitor the phenomenon during elections. It calls upon media organisations to desist from having their correspondents "double up as agents collecting advertisements for their organisations and receiving a commission on that revenue", instead of regular salaries, retainers or stipends.

 

The report also calls for giving regulatory bodies like the Press Council more teeth. It further appeals to media organisations to adopt a number of principles that would curb "paid news". However, it recognises that self-regulation and civil society oversight, while welcome and useful, can tackle the problem "only to an extent". There would have to be effective use of existing laws to "apprehend those indulging in practices that are tantamount to committing a fraud on the public".

 

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THE HINDU

FAITH IN KABUL AT A NEW LOW IN KANDAHAR

THE ASSASSINATION OF THE DEPUTY MAYOR FURTHER ERODED ANY SENSE OF SAFETY LEFT AMONG KANDAHARIS, WHO OVERWHELMINGLY FAVOUR NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE TALIBAN.

RICHARD A. OPPEL JR. AND TAIMOOR SHAH

 

Late on Monday night, Azizullah Yarmal, Kandahar's Deputy Mayor, walked into a large mosque in his city and faced toward Mecca. He knelt down in unison with the others, leaning forward so his head touched the floor in ritual prayer.

 

That was when gunmen, unseen by the bent-over worshippers, shot him to death. Killings of local notables have become a routine occurrence in Kandahar but the slaying of Mr. Yarmal, perhaps the most admired public official in the violent city, shook people to the core.

 

As American and NATO troops prepare for a summer offensive in Kandahar — what could be their most critical push in more than eight years of war — any sense of safety in the area is being worn away by assassinations, bombings and other attacks on American and western contractors, political officials and religious leaders.

 

The violence has further eroded support for the government and foreign forces among a population in Kandahar that remains broadly sympathetic to the Taliban and that more than anything seems to fear continuing conflict.

 

In a recent survey, Kandaharis favoured negotiations with the Taliban by a margin of 19 to 1 over continued fighting. Five of six Kandaharis viewed the Taliban militants as "our Afghan brothers", while four of five also said most members of the Taliban would stop fighting if given jobs.

 

Those views seem certain to complicate the planned large-scale offensive in Kandahar, which aims to use a surge of new foreign troops — and the prospect of more fighting — to drive the Taliban to the negotiating table.

 

The survey was commissioned by the U.S. Army's Human Terrain System, a programme intended to help the military better understand the social and cultural underpinnings of regions where troops are deployed.

 

The study polled almost 2,000 residents in the city of Kandahar and the surrounding Kandahar province, examining security in nine districts of Kandahar, excluding the most dangerous areas. Conducted by Glevum Associates, a Massachusetts research firm, the poll has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus four percentage points.

 

In five districts of Kandahar, the Taliban has more influence than the government, the study found. And by December — when the survey was conducted — residents were already saying that security was deteriorating.

 

"The situation in Kandahar is getting worse day by day," said Hajji Muhammad Ehsan, a tribal elder and a member of the Kandahar provincial council, in an interview on Tuesday. "People are tense, and there is no safety."

 

Echoing the opinion of many Kandahar elders, he added, "The only way out of this conflict is to talk with the opposition, to bring them into the system and give them an equal portion."

 

Kandahar was the birthplace and power centre of the Taliban before the U.S.-led invasion in 2001, and in the years of occupation it has gained strength by feeding off a feckless and corrupt government that has favoured a handful of politically connected and powerful tribes.

 

Recognising how central that problem is to Kandahar's chaos, the military plans to hold forums to bring local elders and government officials together in hopes of reconnecting with disenfranchised residents and giving them an alternative to the Taliban.

 

But the Kandahar study, first reported on the Danger Room blog of Wired magazine, illustrates just how tall an order that will be for a generation of Afghans conditioned — with good reason, many NATO officials concede — to believe that a Taliban government is a better deal than the official Afghan administration.

 

While Kandaharis blame the Taliban and other militants for insecurity, slightly more than half say the Taliban are "incorruptible". That is a stark contrast to the local government, whose corruption, the study found, had forced two of three residents surveyed to seek help elsewhere, including from the Taliban.

 

There are exceptions, of course, and perhaps the most notable was Mr. Yarmal. For many Kandaharis it was clear why he was killed: He was one of the few honest, effective and esteemed public officials in the city.

 

The Taliban offered a terse explanation. "We have killed him because he was working for this puppet government," said a spokesmen, Qari Yousuf Ahmadi, in a telephone interview. "We will target all those who are working for the government." Taliban spokesmen deny any interest in talks with the government as long as foreign troops remain.

 

In the poll, the Afghan National Army and National Police were the forces most cited for bringing security. But the support was tempered by another finding: Afghan Army and police checkpoints and vehicles were also cited most frequently as perceived dangers while travelling on roads in Kandahar province — ahead of roadside bombs, Taliban checkpoints and criminals.

 

Military officials say the Kandahar findings suggest that security needs to be improved before serious negotiations with the Taliban can take place.

 

"The strong support for reconciliation reinforces our contention that stabilising Kandahar is essentially a political process," said Lieutenant-Colonel Tadd Sholtis, a spokesman for the commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General Stanley A. McChrystal.

 

"However," he added, "worsening opinion about insecurity caused by the Taliban and criminal elements suggests that the political process has to be supported by some means of improving security — which may be necessary before any meaningful reconciliation is possible."

 

Indeed, the assassination of Mr. Yarmal was not even the only attack of note in Kandahar on Monday. Hours before, militants tied a bomb to a donkey cart and led the donkey to a checkpoint in front of the home of one of President Hamid Karzai's most important political allies in Kandahar, the former governor of the Spinbaldak district.

 

The former governor, Hajji Fazluddin Agha, who had also served as Mr. Karzai's top campaign official in the province, was not hurt when the bomb was detonated using a remote-controlled device. But the blast killed three of his nephews, who were 15, 13 and 12. Two bystanders and two policemen were wounded. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack.

 

In an interview after the attack, Hajji Fazluddin, shaken and panicked, said his nephews were killed because they were playing near the donkey.

 

"When it reached the checkpoint, they pressed a button and it detonated," he said, describing how the militants set off the bomb. "The children were blown to pieces. They had been playing with the donkey." — New York Times News Service

 

(Richard A. Oppel Jr. reported from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar. Sangar Rahimi contributed reporting from Kabul.)

 

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THE HINDU

GOOGLE HITS BACK IN PRIVACY ROW

REVEALS GOVERNMENTS' OWN EFFORTS TO GET INFORMATION ABOUT USERS.

CHARLES ARTHUR

 

Google has hit out at state attempts to clamp down on the internet by revealing governments' own requests to get information about users.

 

It released a web page on Tuesday with a map showing country by country where it has had government requests or court orders to provide details about users of its services or to remove content from the YouTube video service or its search results.

 

The release of the tool, announced on its official blog, comes as it has had to counter complaints from data protection authorities in 10 countries that its Street View product, which provides pictures of public streets, and its ad hoc social networking service Buzz "were launched without due consideration of privacy and data protection laws" and that Buzz in particular "betrayed a disappointing disregard for fundamental privacy norms".

 

Details provided by Google cover requests between July 1 and December 31 2009, and show, for example, that in the U.K. there were 1,166 requests for data about users and 59 requests to remove web pages in Google's services such as YouTube, or from its search results for the web. It complied with 45, or 76 per cent, of the 59 requests, of which 43 were about YouTube videos. It does not specify which government agency — such as the police or others — made the request.

 

Launching the new tool, Google says that "We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship" and links to a list which already shows that Brazil, where Google's social network Orkut is hugely popular, leads the world with 291 removal requests — with Germany, India, the U.S., South Korea and the U.K. behind it. The "censorship" numbers also include non-governmental court-ordered removal of sites or results for defamation or criminal proceedings — though the company will try to clarify that in future updates to the data, probably every six months.

 

However, China has no listed requests because, as the online tool explains, "Chinese officials consider censorship demands as state secrets, so we cannot disclose that information at this time." If China were included it would almost certainly be in the top spot, because its government only allowed Google to operate inside the country if it hid thousands of web pages from search results.

 

Google portrayed the data release as part of its continuing championing of openness of information, which fits into its mission "to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible". David Drummond, the company's chief legal officer, said in a blogpost about the new tool that while it regularly received demands to remove content such as child pornography (which it has a policy of removing at once), it also receives demands to take down other content to aid police or other enquiries. "The vast majority of these requests are valid and the information needed is for legitimate criminal investigations," noted Mr. Drummond. "However, data about these activities historically has not been broadly available. We believe that greater transparency will lead to less censorship." A Google spokesman insisted that the timing of the release was coincidental with the privacy complaint in a joint letter from data protection authorities from the U.K., Canada, Israel, France, Spain, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Germany and the Netherlands. "We've been working on this for months and months," he said.

 

But the criticism over Google's data practices, and Street View and Buzz in particular, led data protection authorities to call on Google to collect "only the minimum amount of personal information needed" for a service and to make it clear how that information will be used, as well as offering "privacy-protective default settings", ensure personal data is adequately protected, and make it easy for people to delete accounts.

 

Google is coming under increasing pressure from governments to reduce the amount of data that it keeps about its users, and to reduce the length of time that it stores it.

 

The data provided do not include requests from normal non-governmental users such as individuals or companies for the removal of content such as pictures, blogposts or YouTube videos. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

 

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THE HINDU

U.S. NAVY PLANNING "GREAT GREEN FLEET"

SUZANNE GOLDENBERG

 

The United States Navy is set to be both green and mean with the dawning of an new eco-friendly assault force that will mind its carbon footprint as it destroys its enemy. It is to launch "the Great Green Fleet", a fighting force of ships, submarines and planes powered entirely by biofuels. The first group will be tested in 2012, and the navy plans for it to be operational by 2016.

 

The push for greener fighting forces runs across the Pentagon. The military accounts for nearly 80 per cent of the U.S. government's energy consumption and the two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have made strategists acutely conscious of both the massive cost and serious security risks of the gas-guzzling ways of the past. By the time it arrives in the war zone, a gallon of gas can cost up to $400, according to a study by the Pew project on national security, energy and climate. The U.S. military is also anxious to cut down on fuel convoys to reduce troops' exposure to roadside bombs and other risks.

 

While a large proportion of Americans remain sceptical about global warming, the Pentagon does not. Its long-term strategic review earlier this year officially recognised global warming as a security threat. "The Department of Defence takes climate change seriously," said Amanda Dory, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Strategy.

 

The Pentagon has committed to procuring 25 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources by 2025. It is also looking to convert its fighting machine to greener sources of fuel.

 

On Thursday, the navy will test an F/A-18 Super Hornet — the biggest gas-guzzler in the U.S. air fleet — powered by a 50-50 mix of jet fuel and camelina, an oil seed grown in Montana. The army is also investing in portable wind generators and working to take its huge base in Fort Irwin California off the public electricity grid in the next decade, using a 500MW solar panel array. The Marine Corps has a campaign aimed at reducing energy and water use over the next 10 years. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

 

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

IPL, BCCI PROBE MUST BE THOROUGH

 

The suspected sordidness that underlines the leadership of the Indian Premier League under Lalit Modi, and the presumed transgressions of the norms of propriety by Shashi Tharoor when he was in the council of ministers until only a few days ago, are a metaphor for much that is undesirable in public life in India — both in the private sector and in government and politics. Mr Modi, as is appropriate, will get a due hearing, at the level of the IPL council and the wider BCCI board to which he reports in his capacity as IPL commissioner and a BCCI vice-president. On this will depend whether he stays or goes as head of IPL. Given the scale of foul play, and financial and other irregularities being discussed prima facie, the government has mounted a full-scale investigation from commercial and economic angles into IPL affairs, and the heat could be felt by the BCCI as well. The outfit is full of prominent political figures and businessmen and there is no knowing at this stage who might get singed. It is fair and proper, however, that the necessary process is being gone through and no one is being sent home on the basis of whims and allegations, no matter how serious the suspicions of wrongdoing against them. The demand has been made that the affairs of the IPL be scrutinised by a joint parliamentary committee. On the face of it, this is not sustainable. Typically, a JPC is not instituted to look into the affairs of a private enterprise unless governmental wrongdoing is indicated.

In the case of Mr Tharoor, it is good in the end that he did the sensible thing and put in his papers. If he had done so a few days earlier, before the clamour for his head began, he would have been better placed to claim the high moral ground to which he alluded in his statement to Parliament on the circumstances of his departure. But all things considered, the former minister does deserve a chance to clear his name through a proper investigation which he has sought. It is to be hoped that the government will permit him that opportunity. It is only then that the former minister and the IPL chief would have both got an equal hearing. From the government's perspective, Mr Tharoor's resignation was a necessity — not only in the interest of propriety, but also given its political compulsions to keep the Opposition in Parliament in good humour on the eve of the passage of the Finance Bill. Also, Dr Manmohan Singh would not have liked the shadow of taint to appear on his government's record. In the case of Mr Tharoor, there has unfortunately been some snickering on the side by hard-boiled political types. It was said that he had it coming, that he had been slow to adapt to the games that Indian politicians play. These basically amount to an invitation to obscure sleaziness. There is also a subtext here — that successful professionals from other fields are a misfit in public life and should not seek to enter the political arena which must continue to remain the fiefdom of so-called professional politicians. It is to be hoped that the major political parties in the country will give short shrift to any such proposition. In fact, inducting well-educated and public-minded professionals from all fields into our representative bodies and legislatures is likely to raise the timbre of political life in the country.

Soap operas do not raise issues of propriety or criminality. This is why the IPL affair, in which the conduct of a minister came in for critical examination, must not be confused for a soap although it had all the right dramatic ingredients.

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

EMPOWERING OR OPPRESSIVE?

RIGHT TO VOTE = RIGHT NOT TO VOTE

The Gujarat governor returned the Gujarat Local Authorities Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2009, which contained provisions for compulsory voting in elections to local bodies. Though chief minister Narendra Modi appears keen on this, the governor gave three reasons: (i) compulsory voting violates the citizens' right to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19 of the Constitution; (ii) to punish voters who fail to vote violates their fundamental freedom in the matter of voting; and (iii) experience of other countries shows that it is difficult to implement compulsory voting.

The Supreme Court declared in the  People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) case that "vote" is a form of speech, as the voter indicates his preference for one of the contesting candidates silently. The court was concerned about the voter's right to know the antecedents of the candidates. Article 19(1)(a) says that all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression. The freedom to vote includes the right not to vote. This right is subject to any law made by the state which imposes reasonable restrictions in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement of an offence. Compulsory voting does not fall within the above category.

Former President R. Venkatraman had suggested compulsory voting, but there were no takers.
Democracy is rule by consent of the majority of voters who exercise their franchise. If the candidates set up by political parties at elections are not acceptable to the voters because of their criminal antecedents, corrupt background or incompetence, which are common complaints in India, it would be oppressive and unethical to compel voters to vote.

The right to dissent is basic to democracy. It is a basic human right which includes the right not to vote, although this cannot be compared with right to life which cannot be waived. In P. Rathinam's case (1994) 3 SCC 394, the Supreme Court discussed the legal and ethical aspects of the question of the right to die. Euthanasia is not accepted by several legal systems. In the case of voting, the issue is of freedom to vote. "Freedom" necessarily implies choice and includes the option not to vote.
Our courts are overburdened and unable to enforce criminal law speedily.  If failure to vote is made an offence, it will be impossible to implement. The better way to ensure high polling is by choosing candidates of character and competence with a record of public service. The decision of the Gujarat governor is unexceptionable.

— P.P. Rao is a noted jurist

Will alter caste, religious equations

In a democracy, the government is of the people, by the people and for the people. If that's the case, people must participate in the democratic process by voting in elections. This is an integral part of the democratic process. How can India be an exception to such a proposition?

Voting cannot merely be a right; it must be as much a duty as a right that citizens are entitled to. The passage of the Mandatory Voting Bill in the Gujarat Assembly is the first step towards making voting as much a right as a duty.

Most of the arguments advanced by opponents of the idea are shallow, flawed, and premised on wrong assumptions. Let me clarify here what the Gujarat government wants to achieve through this landmark bill. The intended legislation is a serious attempt to eliminate passive voters who do not go out to vote but crib about politicians. By bringing them to the ballot booth, we want to ensure maximum participation in the democratic process. This will benefit all and cause harm to none.

The measure will also considerably alter the caste equations in politics that currently dominate the country's polity from the bottom level to the top.

It will help in eliminating money and muscle power that is increasingly used by politicians in elections and plays a decisive role at many places.

Two, it will help eliminate the communal aspect of politics as everybody's vote will decide the fate of  candidates, not just the minuscule votes of one or another community.

We have seen low turnouts in many elections in the country. When the polling is only 40 per cent, a person with just 21 per cent gets elected although the remaining 79 per cent may be against such an individual.
Such a skewed arithmetic of politics will undergo a transformation when mandatory voting is introduced.
Let me make it clear that compulsory voting does not mean you have to vote under any circumstances. There are several escape routes available if a person is genuinely not able to exercise his/her franchise, such as being away on work.

To say that mandatory voting violates personal freedom is not true because it does not force you to vote for a candidate.

You can also choose the "none of the above" option. Rules shall be framed about this.
What we are proposing is revolutionary for India. There is no harm in experimenting with it. It will strengthen our democratic process. Let's not forget that several democracies have followed this system for years.

Jaynarayan Vyas is senior minister and Gujarat government spokesman

The Age Debate

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

RIGHTS OF EARTH

 

We need a new paradigm for living on the earth because the old one is clearly not working. An alternative is now a survival imperative for the human species. And the alternative that is needed is not only at the level of tools, it is at the level of our worldview. How do we look at ourselves in this world? What are humans for? And are we merely a money-making, resource-guzzling machine? Or do we have a higher purpose, a higher end.
The world order built on the economic fundamentalism of greed and limitless growth and the technological fundamentalism that there is a technological fix for every social and environmental ill, is clearly collapsing.
The collapse of the Wall Street in September 2008 and the continuing financial crisis signals the end of the paradigm that put fictitious finance above real wealth created by nature and humans, that put profits above people and corporations above citizens. This paradigm can only be kept afloat with limitless bailouts that direct public wealth to private rescue instead of using it to rejuvenate nature and economic livelihoods of people. It can only be kept afloat with increasing violence to the earth and its people. It can only be kept alive as an economic dictatorship. This is visible in India's heartland as the limitless appetitive for steel and aluminum for the global consumer economy and the limitless appetitive for profits of steel and aluminum corporations is clashing head-on with the rights of the tribals to their land and homes, their forests and rivers, their cultures and ways of life.

The tribals are saying a loud and clear "no" to their forced uprooting. The only way to get to the minerals and coal that feed the "limitless growth" model in the face of democratic resistance is the use of militarised violence against the tribals. Operation Green Hunt has been launched in the tribal areas of India with precisely this purpose, even though the proclaimed objective is to clear out the "Maoists". Under Operation Green Hunt, more than 40,000 armed paramilitary jawans have been placed in the tribal areas which are rich in minerals and where tribal unrest is growing. Operation Green Hunt shows clearly that the current economic paradigm can only unfold through increased militarisation and by undermining democratic and human rights.
The technological fundamentalism that has externalised costs, both ecological and social, and blinded us to ecological destruction, has also reached a dead end. Climate chaos, the externality of technologies based on the use of fossil fuels, is a wakeup call —that we cannot continue on the fossil fuel path. The high costs of industrial farming is running up against limits, both in terms of the ecological destruction of the natural capital of soil, water, biodiversity and air, as well as in terms of the creation of malnutrition with a billion people being denied food and another two billion being denied health because of obesity, diabetes and other food-related diseases.

I believe that we are all members of the earth family — of Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam. And as members of the earth family, our first and highest duty is to take care of Mother Earth — Prithvi, Gaia, Pachamana. And the more we take care of her, the more food, water, health and wealth we will have. "Earth rights" are first and foremost the rights of Mother Earth and our corresponding duties and responsibilities to defend those rights. Earth rights are also the rights of humans as they flow from the rights of Mother Earth — the right to food and water, the right to health and a safe environment, the right to the commons — the rivers, seeds, the biodiversity, atmosphere.

I have given the name "Earth Democracy" to this new paradigm of living as an earth community, respecting the rights of Mother Earth.

Earth Democracy enables us to envision and create living democracies. Living democracy enables democratic participation in all matters of life and death — the food we eat or do not have access to; the water we drink or are denied due to privatisation or pollution; the air we breathe or are poisoned by. Living democracies are based on the intrinsic worth of all species, all peoples, all cultures; a just and equal sharing of this earth's vital resources; sharing the decisions about the use of the earth's resources.

Earth Democracy protects the ecological processes that maintain life and the fundamental human rights that form the basis of right to life, including the right to water, the right to food, the right to health, the right to education, and the right to jobs and livelihoods. Earth Democracy is based on the recognition of and respect for the life of all species and all people.

Ahimsa or non-violence is the basis of many faiths that have emerged on the Indian soil. Translated into economics, non-violence implies that our systems of production, trade and consumption do not use up the ecological space of other species and other people. Violence is the obvious outcome when our dominant economic structures and economic organisations usurp and enclose the ecological space of other species or other people.

According to an ancient Indian text, the Isho Upanishad, "The universe is the creation of the Supreme Power meant for the benefits of (all) creation. Each individual life form must, therefore, learn to enjoy its benefits by forming a part of the system in close relation with other species. Let not any one species encroach upon others' rights. Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence. Non-sustainable consumption and non-sustainable production constitute a violent economic order. A selfish man over-utilising the resources of nature to satisfy his own ever-increasing needs is nothing but a thief, because using resources beyond one's needs would result in the utilisation of resources over which others have a right".

Earth rights are the basis of equity, justice and sustainability. To mark Earth Day 2010, the President of Bolivia, Juan Evo Morales Ayma, is organising a conference on Rights of Mother Earth. The idea is to start a process for adopting a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth on the lines of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Without earth rights, there can be no human rights.

 

Earth rights are human rights.Today, April 22, is Earth DayDr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust

 

Vandana Shiva

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DNA

EDITORIAL

ENERGISING BABUS

NOT MANY PEOPLE WOULD HAVE NOTED THAT APRIL 21 IS CIVIL SERVICE DAY.

 

On this day the prime minister gives away awards to bureaucrats and government officers for good and innovative work done by them. Lack of public interest in the awards, instituted in 2006, flows from the general image that bureaucrats have created for themselves.

 

Among other things, adjectives like tardy, inefficient, unresponsive and even corrupt are tagged to the bureaucracy. As a consequence, the ones who do their jobs well, and even with distinction, get a raw deal.

 

It's a pity, for no good can come from tarring everyone in government service with the same brush.

 

The bureaucracy is the iron frame around which governance is built, and at a time when the talk is of inclusive and responsive government, their role becomes all the more crucial. In this year's awards, there are recipients in varying categories, including bureaucrats who have excelled in promoting communal harmony despite having to demolish illegally-constructed places of worship, and those doling out NREGA benefits in Naxal-affected areas, among other things. No praise is high enough for bureaucrats who execute well in difficult circumstances.

 

The Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and various other allied civil services play a disproportionately large role in tackling some of the important issues of development that confront the country. The political class may be the face and voice of the aspirations of a large majority of our people, but it is the faceless bureaucracy which has to close the loop between political promise and ground-level performance.

 

In an ideal world, bureaucracy need not be bureaucratic. But we live in an untidy world, and hence there is need to have proper metrics to evaluate their performance and responsiveness to people's needs. While the experts can surely figure out a way to do this, the key point is to ensure that people who enter the service with zeal and idealism don't lose it somewhere along the way.

 

The world of bureaucracy is full of routine procedures and processes. These may be necessary to ensure accountability, but ultimately what matters is not input but outcome. The awards presented by the prime minister recognise the outcomes of a few spectacular success stories in the bureaucracy, but if the system has to be energised, recognition systems need to be more robust and widespread.

 

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DNA

EDITORIAL

BEYOND THE ASHES

MAN PROPOSES, GOD DISPOSES.

 

The best-laid plans of mice and men… we know all the cliches. And the current travel crisis caused by the eruptions of the Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallokull — dubbed E-15 by Pentagon officials who have no illusions about their pronunciation skills — shows just how vulnerable we are when faced with nature's fury.

 

Flights over Europe, which have been suspended for more than a week, are only now restarting amidst fears that a new eruption may send another volcanic ash cloud into the atmosphere, affecting visibility even further.

 

An estimated seven million people have been affected, losses for airlines have crossed over $1 billion and the losses to passengers have not yet been tabulated.

 

There is a battle raging over whether excessive safety precautions grounded all flights, without considering the plight of the millions trapped in airports without adequate food and facilities at their disposal.

 

This argument comes up time and again in the face of such calamities. A volcanic eruption can neither be predicted nor controlled, much less contained.

 

Safety then becomes an issue. But when a disaster stops us from carrying on with our busy lives for as long as this one has — with consequences which have a domino effect across the world — then safety for some can easily take a back seat.

 

However, even keeping in mind the problems faced by stranded passengers and the expected economic losses, in such circumstances it is not unusual to err on the side of caution. The alternative is almost too horrific to consider.

 

But what can come in for criticism is that once the extent of the disaster was known, not enough was done to alleviate the problems of the passengers and organise alternative arrangements.

 

Many transit passengers, for instance, were trapped in airports because they did not have visas for the country they were in and so could not leave till the problem was sorted out.

 

Others found that hotels were cashing in on their helplessness. Rather than leave it to individual airlines or airport authorities, this kind of a situation needs a concerted global effort.

 

Meanwhile, the Internet is full of jokes about how the volcanic eruptions are Iceland's revenge on the world for what the banking crisis did to its economy. Somewhere, it seems, the human propensity to see humour in everything can at least be a saving grace until a successful solution is found!

 

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DNA

THE ICEBERG FORMULA

R JAGANNATHAN

 

As more muck emerges from the Modi-Tharoor brouhaha, many people are asking this question: can cricket survive this kind of blatant skulduggery, cronyism and sleaze?

 

It's the wrong question to ask in the Indian context. India is the global headquarters of crony capitalism, and adding cricket to the equation does not make things any different.

 

Let's face it. We have many laws on our statute book, but no Indian businessman has succeeded by sticking to the straight and narrow.

 

We read the rulebooks to see how we can get around them. The Indian Premier League (IPL) has gloriously stuck to the script of mixing business, politics, dubious practices, favouritism and funny money to hit the big time. Since success is its own justification, muck-raking will not do much to dent it.

 

It is best to see the IPL as an iceberg. What you see — entertaining, slam-bang cricket — is only 10% of the reality. Below the surface there is a terrific marketing machine, a giant funding funnel, and extraordinary political and lobbying muscle that makes it all work.

 

The cricketainment works because the subterranean machinery delivers — and not the other way around.

 

So people who ask what will happen to cricket, saintly cricket, because of those "sinners" in IPL are barking up the wrong tree.

 

Take any one element out of the IPL equation and what you would have is a moderately chugging enterprise. You only have to look at how hockey and football are faring to know what would happen to cricket without the funny money fuelling it.

 

If the IPL has gatecrashed into the top five sports business franchises in the world it's because it has put its crony capitalism network to good use.

 

And if we find a Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) fighting its own offspring — the IPL and Lalit Modi — it's because the latter have been too successful, and not because they have used rough and ready methods to get there. Everyone wants to hop onto the gravy train.

 

This is also the reason why the bloodletting won't go too far, whatever may be Modi's fate in the short-run. There is simply too much at stake for too many people for anyone to really want to destroy the IPL.

 

The iceberg structure of the IPL is, in fact, the real Indian success formula, whether you are a politician, a businessman, a criminal or even a religious organisation.

 

What differentiates one from the other is what they choose to put on show above the water's surface. In IPL's case cricket is the icing, while the tricky business goes on underneath.

 

This is true for any business. For example, you may see a real estate business at eye level. But its success depends on inputs like political lobbying, financial legerdemain, and an arm's length relationship with bureaucratic sleazeballs and criminal elements. If you are Dawood Ibrahim, what you see is a criminal on top.

 

But Dawood and Chhota Rajan are also running multinational businesses — some legit, others illegit — and private law enforcement agencies whose writ runs with sections of the business, bureaucracy and ordinary people. Businessmen who sometimes cannot sort out their less-than-legal businesses ask the underworld dons for help. As for politicians, they cannot get elected without an underlying business to support them — whether it is land speculation or commissions on contracts or a media empire.

 

The iceberg model is what keeps the government running, too — though government being government, it can legalise its own wrongdoings. For example, the UPA government fudges its budget accounts by pretending that some kinds of borrowings aren't borrowing (oil bonds).

 

It prints notes to pay off its debt, but when Pakistan does the same at its expense and dumps lookalike currency notes in India we call it economic subversion or terrorism. Both counterfeits and excess currency printing cause economic damage, but we choose to call only the former illegal.

 

The unwritten law of success in India is that you need to be part of a club to succeed. The club will try to keep unwelcome outsiders from helping themselves to easy money — till the outsider can demonstrate he has as much power as the club members.

 

The late Dhirubhai Ambani was considered an interloper by Marwari stockbrokers in Mumbai when he first started playing the markets.

 

They tried to destroy him by ganging up against his trades; it was only when he comprehensively defeated them at their own game that he was accepted grudgingly into the club. He went on to create the country's equity cult. This is what the Kochi IPL team should have known before it decided to do its own gatecrashing.

 

The bottomline is this: while success is the result of hard work, hypersuccess needs different methods. Look below the surface and behind every successful big businessman you will find a robber baron. And vice-versa.

 

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DNA

BEG YOUR PARDON, WHAT'S IPL?

ANTARA DEV SEN

 

You would be forgiven for believing that our glorious nation has nothing but crummy corporate cricket to offer.

 

Shashi Tharoor's ouster and the Indian Premier League (IPL) have been dominating our mindspace for days, our energies have been focused squarely on the deeds of this 'outsider' to Indian politics, this curious Keralite-angrez from the United Nations whose penchant for controversy has matured from tweet nothings to a good old corruption charge. But Tharoor may just be a flamboyant appetiser.

 

The main course is the IPL circus, complete with political intrigue, dodgy characters and dubious money. For a balanced diet we have a side dish of Lalit Modi. Yum.

 

From the start, the IPL proved how lopsided our priorities were. The IPL is not cricket — it's a huge entertainment extravaganza. The rich man's game dominates, it even gets tax breaks — Maharashtra alone has lost Rs500 crore because the IPL got a waiver on entertainment tax.

 

Meanwhile the poor have been starving to death in the state and around the country, prices have been spiralling out of control and the nation has been busy sweeping problems under the carpet and polishing its silver for the Commonwealth Games.

 

Is this spectacular show of crippled priorities vulgar, or just the 'New India'? In Delhi, the polishing panic has peaked, the Commonwealth Games are upon us and we are nowhere near ready. To top it all, there are anxious citizens suing in court for a progress report. Last week, the Delhi government had to assure the Supreme Court that it was indeed committed to clearing the Capital's streets of beggars.

 

It had written to ten states asking them to take back their beggars, it said. There were 13 anti-begging teams on the prowl, as well as two mobile courts for speedy trial.

 

No sir, beggars would not be tolerated. They would be swiftly locked up. Biometric machines would catch repeat offenders who would be jailed without mercy. We won't let India down.

 

Foreigners would not come and see our unwashed, unfed, uncared-for poor, they would not be horrified by the odd tug at their sleeves by the snot-faced beggar urchin. They would not be inconvenienced. We would present to them our sparkling silverware.

 

Our priorities define us. And this attempt to criminalise the poor reflects our current priorities. The poor are a burden — they must be trashed. We don't need to look at their rights, or the cause for their misfortune, we don't need to think of who helped create their misery, what pushed them into this grinding poverty.

 

For if we did, we would be looking at us and our shameful priorities.

 

Poverty is not a crime. Beggars are not criminals. They are victims of a criminal system in a democratic nation that robs the poor to serve the rich. Begging is the last resort of the poverty-stricken. They don't do it out of laziness, as we like to believe, they do it for sheer survival.

 

Anti-poor policies push them to the streets. Corrupt police officials who let beggars operate on a commission and help the leaders of beggar mafias keep them there. The utter failure of the State to make beggars' rehabilitation centres into homes for humans nourishes the process of tormenting the disempowered.

 

The beggar is the victim in an endless cycle of exploitation and torment, and now we are wasting taxpayers'

money on mobile courts and biometric machines and anti-begging squads to clap them in jail as criminals.

 

Or to push them into beggars' homes, which may be worse. Those who force them into begging — whether the State or sundry begging mafia dadas — or live off their earning are not punished.

 

Sure, let's clean up Delhi. And the IPL. But first let's clean up our clogged minds and get our priorities in order.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

ARMY CHIEF IN J&K

TIME FOR BETTER RAPPORT WITH PEOPLE

 

THE maiden Jammu and Kashmir visit of the new army chief, Gen V.K. Singh, comes at a time when some quarters are clamouring for reducing the strength of the army in the state and withdrawing the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA). On the other hand, the Army wants that it should have a free hand to tackle the problems of infiltration and insurgency efficiently. The suggestion of troop withdrawal is predicated on the supposed reduction in violent activities. But the fact of the matter is that there is no step-down in Pakistani perfidy, and if there is any perceptible lessening of the violence, it is only because of the pressure mounted by the security forces. The enemies of the nation would leave no stone unturned to abet the call for troop withdrawal because that suits their gameplan. The policy touchstone should be safeguarding the interests of India. At least along the LoC, a strong Army presence is inevitable.

 

Gen V.K. Singh has opposed the dilution of the AFSPA and has understandably annoyed the separatist forces by this tough stand. Given the situation prevailing in the Valley, the AFSPA may not be politically correct but is inescapable if the foreign designs are to be defeated. However, he must ensure that there are no human rights violations like the death of a 70-year-old person in the forest area near Handwara town in Kupwara district recently. Each such incident plays into the hands of those hell-bent on discrediting the security agencies.

 

What has to be borne in mind is that the Army is there as the last resort. It can be withdrawn only if the situation actually returns to normal. For that to happen, the Centre and the state government have to join hands to give what the common man wants the most: good governance and development. It is poverty and neglect which have alienated most people. Remove these grievances and the situation will turn for the better. Pakistan can be depended upon to continue with its dirty tricks. So will the confirmed separatists. Yet, the new Army chief and Chief Minister Omar Abdullah, who is barely 15 months old in the saddle, can together try to bring about many positive changes.

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

N-CHOE KINDLES HOPE

THINGS CAN, AND DO CHANGE

 

IF N-choe is Chandigarh's shame, Buddha nullah is a blot on Ludhiana. Given the crumbling urban sewerage, fund-starved municipalities and an apathetic officialdom, almost every city and town in Punjab has its own sorry tale of civic neglect. Barring a few cases of rural facelift by NRIs, villages are filthy and without sewerage. The persistent efforts of The Tribune, citizen activism and the Punjab and Haryana High Court's intervention have awakened the sleepy officials of Chandigarh to the need to clean up the seasonal rivulet.

 

If things could go adrift in a planned city, the plight of other towns is not surprising. Chandigarh, fortunately, has a responsive administration. Not so in Ludhiana, where efforts to clean up Buddha nullah have produced no material change. At stake is the health of 10 lakh people. The Sutlej river too has become a health hazard for the residents of nearby villages. Water-borne diseases are common in the area. The industrial units that discharge untreated effluents in the nullah and the river have the backing of powerful politicians. Now an assembly committee has suggested stiff penalties and non-bailable warrants against the owners of the units that pollute the nullah with impunity. The Punjab and Haryana High Court too is keenly monitoring the Buddha nullah case.

Other cities and towns too have their problems, mostly caused by poor infrastructure. A lot of money is available under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission for clearing the urban mess. But Punjab has not been able to use it because of its failure to meet the prescribed conditions like levying user charges and house tax. Money alone is not a constraint. Poor governance is an issue at various levels. A laid-back administration has got used to things as they are. Media scrutiny and public initiatives too are inadequate. N-choe holds out the hope that things can change — if there is a will.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

MAKING VOTING COMPULSORY

GUJARAT BILL IS NOT PRACTICAL

 

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi's proposal to make voting compulsory in the state for elections to local bodies has hit a roadblock with Governor Kamla Beniwal's refusal to sign it. The State Assembly had passed the Gujarat Local Authorities Laws (Amendment) Bill last December. Though the Governor's reasons for returning the Bill to the government will be announced in the next Assembly session, she has reportedly said that the Bill violates the Constitution which does not provide for mandatory voting and that no one can be punished for not voting. She has also asked the government to separate the voting Bill from the Bill seeking 50 per cent reservation for women in local bodies elections. While it would be interesting to watch the state government's next move, one has to take a realistic view of the matter. In India, voting is a civil right and not a civic duty. Consequently, neither the Centre nor the state can make it compulsory.

 

Mr Modi's enthusiasm to increase the voters' participation in the democratic process may be praiseworthy. But his prescription for mandatory voting to ensure political stability and cut costs due to frequent elections is conceptually flawed. One must also look at the problem of its enforceability. Does the State Election Commission have the necessary staff and resources to enforce the proposal? Chief Election Commissioner Navin Chawla has expressed his inability to implement mandatory voting at the national level. More important, in April 2009, the Supreme Court has rejected a PIL in this regard, ruling that how seriously a voter takes his statutory right to exercise his franchise is best left to him.

 

Countries like Australia, Brazil and Argentina may have made voting compulsory. However, for improving the voter turnout, what is imperative is spreading voter education and awareness in the country rather than making voting compulsory and even punishing the defaulters, which the Gujarat Bill envisages. Moreover, if voters did not like any candidate in the fray, they should be given the option of negative voting or rejecting all the candidates by providing a button 'None of the Above' in the electronic voting machines. This would ensure that voters turn up at the polling booths unfailingly and register their choice or the lack of it.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

AFPAK: WILL THEY, WON'T THEY?

TOWARDS CIVILIAN SUPREMACY IN ISLAMABAD

BY B.G. VERGHESE

 

THE passage of the 18th Amendment by Pakistan's National Assembly, rolling back the authoritarian constitutional provisions imposed by General Musharraf during military rule, has been hailed as a major democratic reform. All people of goodwill will wish Pakistan well. As of now, maybe, no more than two cheers are in order.

 

In a formal sense, there is an appearance of civilian ascendancy. The President has been reduced to a figurehead, though saved from corruption hearings on account of his constitutional position. The military has, meanwhile, regained prestige at home as its Waziristan /Swat campaigns have enabled Pakistan to look the US in the eye and win greater recognition for its frontline AfPak posture.

 

The new amendment allows the Chief of Army Staff a four-year-term, which implies a year's extension in service for General Kayani. But there is no evidence as yet that the military has abandoned control over critical policies pertaining to security, nuclear issues and relations with India, the US, Afghanistan and China. A briefing meeting before the Pakistan delegation, led by the Foreign Minister, left for the recent strategic dialogue with the US in Washington, was taken by General Kayani in Rawalpindi with several Federal Secretaries in attendance! The annual defence budget, largely framed by the military, remains a mere one-line entry and is virtually charged to the exchequer without debate. The Kerry-Lugar amendment imposes conditionalities on how Pakistan utilises US military aid; but it remains to be seen how effective this safeguard proves in practice.

 

Even setting aside past default on this count, how auspicious are the omens even today? The latest UN Report on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007 on her return to Pakistan from exile is not very reassuring. Almost a year later, the Zardari administration requested Ban ki Moon to hold a UN inquiry as it feared the involvement of local agencies in what it felt was a staged murder. The three-member commission's report was to be presented on March 15 but Pakistan sought some further inquiries. This request was turned down.

 

Pakistan then argued that the Government of Pakistan could alone release the report. This too was rejected and the commission's 70-page findings were finally presented to the media in New York by its chair, Chilean diplomat Heraldo Munoz, on April 15. The Pakistan Ambassador boycotted the function. According to a columnist of Dawn, Karachi, the Pakistani authorities wished the "establishment" to see the report before they shared its contents with the general public.

 

Why it might have been thought prudent to provide the "establishment" with prior information becomes apparent from the report. It severely indicts the Musharraf regime, of which General Kayani was a part, for wilful negligence and cover-up, as well as the current PPP Interior Minister, Rehman Malik, who was travelling in the stand-by bullet-proof Mercedes car that was, however, found missing from the scene when it could have rushed BB to hospital.

 

The military and the ISI have been virtually accused by the UN Commissioners of preventing an autopsy, hosing down the assassination site, thus removing vital evidence, and obstructing the commission's own inquiries. The report calls on Pakistan to set up a "truth commission" to get to the bottom of the crime. The unfolding in Islamabad will now be watched with interest.

 

Of special concern to India are the UN Commissioners' findings that a probable reason for removing Benazir was her "independent position on the urgent need to improve relations with India, and its implications for the Kashmir dispute which the military regarded as its policy domain". Further, the commissioners found evidence that the Army and the ISI used terrorist groups to further their strategic objectives and that "the bulk of the anti-Indian activity was and still remains the work of groups such as the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which has close links with the ISI". The LeT has morphed into the Jammat-ud-Dawa, headed by Hafeez Saeed.

 

General Musharraf quite clearly lied about Kargil, nuclear proliferator A.Q. Khan (who was no lone wolf), and the use of jihadi terror against India. Zardari once again reiterated on April 5 that his government would not allow the soil of Pakistan to be used for cross-border terror against India. We must await evidence of that commitment. How the Bhutto case is now handled will be one test of that; else a policy of bland denial, counter-charges of Indian villainy and asking India to dialogue will not wash.

 

There will be another test in Afghanistan, where Pakistan has been seeking "strategic depth" and a sphere of influence. The US and NATO are up a gum tree and do not know what to do. President Karzai, whom the West sought to undermine, has called a Loya Jirga or gathering of Afghanistan's tribal elders or highest traditional council on May 2-4 to seek a cross-ethno-cultural consensus on a peace process, national integration of insurgent groups and ground rules for carrying forward this process.

 

This initiative merits support by all regional and international players whose private, self-serving agendas should be subservient to promoting peace and harmony in a traditionally neutral Afghanistan and bringing stability and progress to the entire region. This too will be an acid test of Pakistan's sincerity in making genuinely new beginnings as a good neighbour. Moreover, it will strengthen civilian supremacy and give sustenance to democratic forces in Pakistan. 

 

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

CANINE LOVE

BY SURINDER GOSAIN

 

IT is a story of love and trust that ended in betrayal. Although I have never been comfortable with a dog around, yet this dog, which came quietly to my first floor flat and sat in a corner of my balcony, did not seem to bother me.

 

It was a Sunday last summer when I first noticed her there sitting on a leaf of a newspaper. Besides her was a bowl of milk and another of salad-nibbles mixed with pieces of a chapatti.

 

On enquiry, I came to know that Shrawan, my Man Friday, had furtively made the arrangement for her. The slapdash manner in which she was feasting on the edibles amused me. After the meal, she came near me wagging her tail and began licking my foot and with it started a love-bondage. Later, I ensured that she got a non-vegetarian delicacy at least once a week, besides the usual food.

 

She would come to my flat in the morning and disappear in the evening stealthily. I knew about this routine of her although we met during the day essentially on a holiday. But she greeted me perpetually in the evening as I parked my car and we exchanged pleasantries mutely.

 

With the passage of time, the tacit love between the two mortals began spinning into mutual trust. She started coming to the flat early morning also before I left for office and as a matter of routine saw me off.

 

However, with the arrival of new tenants on the ground floor, her entry to my flat was prohibited. With two toddlers in the family, I agreed to their putting up a grill on the ground floor to prevent entry of any "such brute". Whenever she saw me standing on the balcony, she gaped at me and the grill between us.

 

Lately, the dog's visits near my house became less frequent and then almost for a month she was not on the scene. One evening, as I reached home, she came running towards me. Following her were three puppies. She gave me one look and another uncanny one at puppies as if she was introducing them to me.

 

Last week, Shrawan told me that the dog, usually hiding herself in a corner, was biting one and all passing by our house. He took me to the balcony and what I saw upset me.

 

Saddened, I rang up the People for Animal to take the dog away. They tried their best to clutch her onto a leash but without any luck. As they sought our help in the task, I told Shrawan to coax the dog inside our boundary wall. The dog got entrapped as she anticipated no threat from any of us.

 

I saw her being forced onto a van along with her puppies, while the dog looked at me. Tears rolled down her eyes and she looked at me as if she was asking: "Why did you betray?" Biting my lips, I bade her goodbye.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

OF NEWS AND TRIVIA

MEDIA SHOULD REALISE ITS RESPONSIBILITY

BY SAJLA CHAWLA

 

HERE are some headlines from our newspapers: "Sunanda Pushkar: The Minister's 'External Affair'", "Preity and Ness together again", Carmen Electra regrets getting fake breasts", "Shoaib Malik: Victim or rogue?" and "I don't feel the need to marry John: Bipasha"

 

Do you feel strange after reading such news items? Is there a fraternity, like me, who wonders what Preity and Ness being apart or together has to do with us? If Bipasha does not want to marry John, are we supposed to rejoice or lament?

 

For days and days together the media carried the story of Sania and Shoaib and one poor deserted wife or not a wife! Maybe a one liner would be enough for us to know what the tennis sensation of this country is doing. But to go on and on about it?

 

Why is then the Press doing this? Why do our esteemed TV channels, with seemingly great commitment to news, do this? Who are they catering to? Is it to the great number of people who live on celebrity gossip and hence lead a voyeuristic life? Perhaps, their own lives are so mundane and boring that all the fun is to be derived vicariously from other people's escapades and other people's miseries.

 

In catering to the masses, as is claimed by the media, are they not creating a readership of people who will read this type of news so religiously? Does this say anything to you about the society we are living in? Don't some of us, who, when they see such items, feel a distinct sense of the bizarre and the absurd?

 

The media, especially, newspapers, magazines and TV channels, are a very powerful entity in our contemporary times. They have the power to influence public opinion and thus they inherently have a responsibility towards that public.

 

The media perhaps does not realise its own power and is very often not acquainted with the responsibility it shoulders or rather should shoulder. That sense of responsibility is somewhere lost now in the race for higher ratings and debating on non-issues. How much do we really know about Shashi Tharoor and his so-called lady love, to comment on their relationship and who are we to conduct a mass scale courtroom drama to ascertain whether Shoaib is a rogue or a victim? More importantly, how do their personal lives impact our lives in anyway?? Is their personal story going to change the quality of our lives? Is learning details about their sex lives going to bring a great revolution in society?

 

The TV channels have almost lynched the ex-minister and his friend. Propriety has been perhaps transgressed by him but is it reason enough to hound him so mercilessly? Haven't we seen bigger scams in this country where the government's money and hence the people's money has been looted by politicians?

 

Many esteemed, so-called feminist journalists have tried to rip Sunanda apart with trivial details of her life like her past relationships and her supposed plastic surgery. In what way is that relevant to the citizens of this country and why is the Press creating this sort of inane readership and viewership? The right to expression is fine, but does it have to do away with the judiciary and conduct nationwide media trials very often on people's personal lives? And all this while the perpetrators of communal violence, dalit murders, rapes and corrupt officials are at large and thriving!

 

This country has 60 percent of its people below the poverty line. There is a Maoist and Naxal threat. There is no safety or respect for women as is obvious from the number of infanticides, feticides, witch-hunts, rapes and honour killings. There is not much credibility in the working of the government; there is hardly any accountability either. We live in an unsafe world where thousands are homeless and live on the streets of the metropolitan cities, like in the extreme cold of 2 degrees C, in Delhi, where newborns lie uncovered and unattended to on a concrete footpath, while the elite classes, boil and sanitise the bottles of their children or have maids to do so for them. Yet the media hardly takes up these issues and if they do, it is often to sensationalise and then no follow-up.

 

The media depicts the lavish lives of the rich and the famous. A poor man feels more starkly the difference between the classes. The media is one such powerful estate, which can bring about social awakening and change. Often, they do so, with great results. But very often they focus on non-issues while this big country is caught in such toils and travails and real hardcore survival issues. It is time that the media reassess its role in society and work for development, rather than get caught in trivia.

 

Do we want to create a nation of thinkers or a nation of gossip mongers? The media holds the key. Let them use it wisely, for all of us.

 

The writer, a former Delhi University teacher, is based in Goa

 

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

ONLY MAVERICKS TRIGGER REFORM

BY CHANDRA MOHAN

 

I was a guest at a convocation the other day. While we were being dolled up in those gold-trimmed robes, conversation naturally swung to Jairam's recent tirade against this colonial outfit and its crass incongruity to our dust and heat.

 

The first to flash across my mind were naturally the proudly displayed pictures in every home of ecstatic young faces dressed in the ceremonial gold-trimmed black, red and scarlet collecting graduation scrolls. If such is their cherished value, wasn't Jairam being too harsh? But then, wasn't he also correct? The legacy is grossly incongruent with our heat. Power cuts only add to the misery.

 

Fancy robes, caps and sashes and their fine-tuned gradation were adaptations by the Roman Church to symbolise hierarchy in the fast-expanding priesthood required for propagating Christianity in the newly acquired Roman territory. The Pope was all white with gold trim; cardinals in red and ermine; archbishops in white and violet and so on.

 

The robe design to suit the Mediterranean and temperate climates was natural.

 

This Vatican practice was later adapted by Oxford and Cambridge u niversities to academics. Because of the pioneering role of these universities in Western education, copying of their dress-code by every university in the Western world was natural. For us, it is certainly a colonial legacy.

 

This conversation brought back memories of another colonial legacy. Grey-haired compatriots would recall that till the seventies a dark suit was the standard dress code for our corporate and business worlds. Air-conditioning was not so common those days and in the sweltering heat and humidity of Calcutta and Bombay suits were oppressive. By the time you ended the day, shirt sleeves and collars were all grime and sweat. As doyens of modern industry, auto-industry bosses always dressed immaculately following latest fashions from Harrods and Paris.

 

In 1979 Rahul Bajaj was the Chairman of the AMA and George Fernandes, Union Minister for Industry, was the chief guest at the association's AGM in Ashoka Hotel. Despite the fact that George had already driven out IBM and Coke from India, expectancy of pro-industry announcements by the minister ran high.

 

Everyone, including Rahul, was taken aback, when George launched a tirade against the auto industry: "...Industrialists are like rats who desert a ship and run away the moment a leak develops and they foresee trouble. All that they are interested in is lining their pockets and maintaining their fancy lifestyles and London suits …. "

 

Safari suit was born out of that tirade. It became the national dress code for business next year onwards.

 

The academic world, however, is not so simple. Each of its many fine-tuned levels is a coveted honour and distinction: DSc, PhD, M Phil; masters and graduates. Standards are zealously guarded by the fraternity and clearance of stipulated theoretical and practical standards is mandatory. Symbols which broadcast levels are, therefore, important ego-boosters.

 

Can we not replace those unwieldy and sweaty legacies by something which suits our climate? But it must serve the same purpose. It must also be Unisex. It must look elegant with every style commonly worn by Indian students. Significance to Indian heritage would be ideal.

 

Deeper thinking on solutions led me to the angavastram. With its elegance, heritage stature and wide use for ceremonial occasions it could certainly fill the bill. It can be worn over any dress. Infinite variations in background colour and number and design of gold and silver braids provide all the fine-tuning flexibility required for academics.

 

If we can go the whole hog to rename towns, shouldn't the HRD Minister assign the task of evolving an Indian dress for academic ceremonies to a committee of Vice-chancellors and Directors of IIMs & IIT's? A national competition to which our famous fashion designers like Rohit Bal, Tarun Tahliani and H2O/CUE are also invited, would surely bring out interesting results.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

BANGALORE DIARY

SHUBHADEEP CHOUDHURY

GILL? MUST BE KPS

 

Since he successfully scuttled the Indian cricket team's tour to Pakistan in 2008 citing the 26/11 incident, Union Sports Minister M S Gill has not been in the news much. The 74-year-old minister was described as "K P S Gill" during his recent visit to Bangalore.

 

While MS, because of his disappearance from the news space, has got obliterated from public memory for the time being, the other Gill, owing to his eventful tenure as the police chief of Punjab during the days of militancy and his knack for courting controversy, has become a permanent feature in the mindset of the people in this country.

 

So when M S Gill came here recently and shook hands with Karnataka Chief Minister Yeddyurappa, photographs released by the state government of the meeting described the Union minister as K P S Gill. It took three hours for the state government to correct the mistake and restore to the Union minister his name.

 

Astroturf ground

The game of hockey is close to the heart of all Punjabis. It turns out that the "Madrasis", too, love the game. The Madras Engineering Group ("Madras Sappers"), known for its personnel's nimble skills with deadly explosives and erection of bridges in difficult terrains, recently got an astroturf hockey ground at their sprawling campus in Bangalore.

 

This is apparently the second such ground belonging to the Indian Army. The 6591 sq metre ground in Bangalore has been created by a German company at an expense of Rs 3 crore. The ground has been certified as being of the global class I category by the Federation of International Hockey.

 

Jewel thieves

An all South-American gang did a hit in Bangalore only to get busted later. Four persons, including a woman, were arrested by the Bangalore police from Goa for stealing gold ornaments worth more than Rs 1.5 crore from a Bangalore hotel.

 

The ornaments were brought to Bangalore by jewelers from Jaipur for an exhibition. Two of the culprits are from Colombia, one from Venezuela and one from El Salvador.

 

The picture of one of them captured in the Hotel CCTV camera led to their arrest. No other clue was left by the gang members who teamed up in Malaysia and visited various Indian cities looking for suitable objects to steal.

 

WW II veterans

The Karnataka Government has enhanced the monthly honorarium for the World War II veterans and their widows from Rs 1,500 to 2,000 with effect from April 1, 2010. In other states the WW II veterans continue to get Rs 1,500 or less. 

 

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MUMBAI MERROR

EDITORIAL

WOODPECKER AND MISTLETOE

CHARLES DARWIN SAYS THESE TWO REPRESENT THE MOST BEAUTIFUL CO-ADAPTATIONS OF NATURE. AUTHOR JERRY A COYNE REVISITS DARWIN'S THEORIES IN HIS BOOK WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE

 

Browsing in a bookshop for a friend who has been asked to teach Environmental Studies, I was surprised to find a book on evolution published this year. Jerry A Coyne, author of Why Evolution Is True, anticipates the question in his introduction. "After all," he says, "nobody writes books explaining the evidence for atoms, or for the germ theory of disease." Scientists don't need convincing about evolution, but "things are different outside scientific circles.

"To many, evolution gnaws at their sense of self." At the sense of the importance of mankind in the scheme of things, at the meaning of life, of morality. Ann Coulter, a conservative commentator is quoted on the subject. She claims "liberalism lets them off the hook morally. Do whatever you feel like doing – s***w your secretary, kill grandma, abort your defective child – Darwin says it will benefit humanity." Coyne comments, "Darwin, who never said anything of the sort, would be appalled." He also feels, on the basis of various polls, that anti-Darwin feeling is increasing along with the spread of fundamentalism.

Actually, as Coyne points out, the writings of great scientists are filled with a sense of wonder at the beauty of the world. Darwin wrote in 1859, "How have all those exquisite adaptations of one part of the organisation to another part, and to the conditions of life, and of one distinct organic being, been perfected? We see these beautiful coadaptations most plainly in the woodpecker and the mistletoe; and only a little less plainly in the humblest parasite which clings to the hairs of a quadruped, or feathers of a bird…" Darwin also writes, "When I view all beings not as special creations, but as the lineal descendants of some few beings which lived long before the first bed of the Cambrian system was deposited, they seem to me to become ennobled."

 Einstein, like other great scientists "saw the study of nature as a spiritual experience… Deriving your spirituality from science also means accepting an attendant sense of humility before the universe and the likelihood that we'll never have all the answers." And in relation to morality, Coyne says, "Evolution tells us where we came from, not where we can go." Our genetic heritage "is not a straitjacket that traps us forever."
Why Evolution Is True is a readable book, which gives us updates on research, and quotes from poets, singers (Cole Porter) and Gilbert and Sullivan who refer to evolution in their work. However, Coyne does not mention a clever, well-informed and amusing novel by the Italian writer Italo Calvino called Cosmicomics (1965, trans 1968). In each section of this work, a different member of the evolutionary chain tells his story.

 In the last section of the book, we have a mollusc called Qfwfq. Qfwfq says, "If that's the time you want to know about, there isn't much I can tell you. Form? I didn't have any; that is, I didn't know I had one, or rather I didn't know you could have one… Every now and then I was seized by fantasies, that's true; for example, the notion of scratching my armpit, or crossing my legs, or once even of growing a moustache… It was a rich and free and contented condition, my condition at that time, quite the contrary of what you might think… When you're young, all evolution lies before you, every road is open to you, and at the same time you can enjoy the fact of being there on the rock, flat mollusc-pulp, damp and happy. If you compare yourself with the limitations that came afterwards, if you think of how having one form excludes other forms, of the monotonous routine where you finally feel trapped, well, I don't mind saying life was beautiful in those days."

 

Coyne's Why Evolution Is True is a readable book, which gives us updates on research, and quotes from poets, singers, who refer to evolution in their work

 

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EDITORIAL

FERTILISER PRICE MISMATCH

NBS TEETHING TROUBLES SHOULD NOT THWART FURTHER REFORM

 

Within days of changing over to the much-hyped nutrient based subsidy (NBS) regime for fertilisers, doubts have arisen about its success in achieving the twin objectives of reducing fertiliser subsidy and remedying the imbalance in fertiliser use. Being a half-hearted exercise in reform, the new policy has failed to improve price parity between urea and other fertilisers. This is essential to ensuring a balanced use of all the three nutrients — nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potash (K). The NBS system, even while envisaging fixed subsidy linked to the nutrient content of different fertilisers, also simultaneously decontrols the farm gate prices of fertilisers other than urea. Though the government has asked the fertiliser industry not to hike the prices of decontrolled fertilisers by more than 5 to 6 per cent in the initial year of implementation of the NBS system, even this modest increase has upset the price mismatch between urea and other fertilisers, which is the root cause of higher application of N vis-à-vis P and K. While the 10 per cent hike in urea price by the government (after keeping it constant at Rs 4,800 per tonne since 2002) has meant an effective increase of only Rs 480 per tonne, the prices of phosphatic and potassic fertilisers have gone up by over Rs 600 to Rs 700 per tonne and those of complex fertilisers containing even the micro nutrients, such as sulphur, zinc and the like, by even a bigger margin. Thus, after the introduction of NBS, the disparity in the prices of different fertilisers has actually exacerbated. The situation may worsen when the industry's commitment to maintain price discipline for one year is over. There is, therefore, little hope that the new system will adequately address the nutritional imbalance concerns.

 

That said, the NBS system is not in itself an unsound recipe for promoting need-based fertiliser use based on nutritional health of the soil and the requirement of different crops. That is why industry and agriculture experts welcomed it. The problem has arisen because of the government's reluctance to also decontrol, or suitably hike, the price of urea. As long as the price of urea is pegged to an arbitrarily determined level, the mismatch in the pricing of different fertilisers would not go. If, on the other hand, the NBS regime is allowed to operate properly, it has the potential to promote competition among different fertiliser producers, encouraging them to come out with diversified products having situation-specific nutrient combinations and competitive prices. For, while the subsidy element is uniform for all fertiliser manufacturers, those having higher efficiency and low overheads can offer their products at relatively lower prices to corner higher market share. Such competition will ultimately benefit the farmers, improve soil health and lead to higher crop output. Another potential advantage of the NBS regime is that improved profitability and reduced time lag between the sale of fertilisers and realisation of subsidy by the manufacturers from the government can improve the fiscal health of the fertiliser industry. This is necessary to attract fresh investment and capacity addition which the sector needs desperately. This requires taking fertiliser sector reforms forward.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

BECAUSE THEY ARE THERE!

MULTIPLE PLATFORMS IN A MULTIPOLAR WORLD

 

When George Mallory was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he reportedly said, "Because it is there." That is about the best answer heads of state and government can give these days for attending all the summits they do. In the bad old days of the Cold War, there was only one summit and at that peak sat the United States and the Soviet Union. The first post-War economic crisis of the 1970s led to the creation of a second summit of significance — the G-7 — which morphed into the G-8 when the Soviet Union collapsed and the West hugged the Russian bear. The post-Cold War world, however, is full of summits. The decline of the West, the rise of China and the emergence of a wide range of middle powers like India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia have contributed to the creation of multiple platforms that heads of state and government are quite happy to run away to every now and then for a break from domestic headaches. Little wonder then that they often meet in exotic places to discuss esoteric issues and do some good business on the side. So who's complaining?

 

Summits, like a lot of household stuff, lie around long after their use-by date. Consider BRIC, for example. A clever marketing idea coming out of the now-distressed Goldman Sachs meant to promote business for some well-heeled Wall Street types in Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi and Sao Paolo. No one paid much attention to it till the Russians felt left out of the global summit mania. The Chinese and the Indians were running around the world attending all manner of summits and the Russians were not even being welcomed with much warmth by the G-7. Worse, an assertive US was pushing Russia around. So, Vladimir Putin very cleverly took a Sachs idea and created a new platform, BRIC. On the other hand, IBSA was supposed to be the grouping of the three developing country democracies lobbying hard for membership of the UN Security Council and for greater clout in the World Trade Organisation. With both UN reform and WTO talks in cold storage, no one knows what IBSA should be doing, especially after China barged into the group at Copenhagen, using climate change to create BASIC. There are now dozens of such summits all around the world. But, when the US created the G-20 and incorporated China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Africa and Indonesia in the global high table, no one quite understood what to do with smaller platforms. So, it is not surprising that China and India did more bilateral business in Sao Paolo and pleased their host President Lula. The Russians and the South Africans were happy to be there and the rest of the world was busy with whatever it was doing. Returning home from all that summitry, each head of government felt like anyone does getting back to work from a good holiday. President Hu Jintao went back to handling the consequences of an earthquake and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh came back to handling a political storm.

 

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

INDIFFERENCE ABOUT THE BIG RUPEE RISE?

THE MASSIVE 18% APPRECIATION IN THE RUPEE BETWEEN MARCH 2009 AND MARCH 2010 IS THE LARGEST 12-MONTH GAIN IN HISTORY

SHANKAR ACHARYA

The Indian rupee has appreciated by a massive 18 per cent over the year March 2009 to March 2010, as measured by the RBI's six-currency, trade-weighted, real effective exchange rate (REER) index. This is by far the biggest rupee appreciation in a year, ever since the unified, market-responsive exchange rate system was initiated in March 1993. Actually, it's the largest 12-month appreciation of the rupee ever, no matter what the exchange rate system. Even if one omits the unusually low level of the REER index in March 2009 and takes April 2009 as the base instead, the appreciation since then to March 2010 has been a hefty 14 per cent. These numbers would be even higher if the REER index calculation used consumer prices (as for the other partner countries) instead of wholesale prices. The last comparable bout of rupee appreciation occurred between May 2006 and May 2007, when the REER appreciated by 11 per cent, including a steep 7 per cent surge between March 2007 and May 2007.

 What's going on and why? As I pointed out in my last column ("Rupee rises despite higher deficits!", April 10), the current bout of massive appreciation comes at a time of widening current account deficits in the balance of payments and high inflation, which has been eroding the international competitiveness of our enterprises. Indeed, our recent high inflation (relative to trading partners) is a good part of the explanation for sharply elevated REERs. My anxiety over recent exchange rate trends deepened when a senior policy-maker asked me last week why there had been relatively little public complaint about the current, unprecedented bout of rupee appreciation from either industry (exporters and import-competers) or newspaper analysts? Especially when one compares to the widespread concern expressed during the rupee surge of spring 2007, a concern which led to corrective policy steps. Is everyone asleep at the wheel today?

I have thought about the policy-maker's intriguing question and have come up with the following answers. First, and most importantly, both industry and analysts (and perhaps policy-makers) seem to suffer from "dollar fixation", that is they focus almost exclusively on trends in the dollar-rupee parity. If you do that, then an average dollar rate of around Rs 45 in March 2010 does not seem particularly worrisome, especially when compared to the Rs 40 per dollar rate that prevailed over much of 2007-08 (see graphs). Indeed, the rupee was at 44 per dollar before the steep appreciation of spring 2007. So what's the big deal about Rs 44-45 per dollar today? The simple answer is that if you are interested in competitiveness, as we should be, then looking at single-currency nominal parities is wholly inadequate. You have to take into account the behaviour of other relevant currencies and India's inflation relative to major trading partners and competitors. That's precisely what a REER index tries to do. The brute fact is that whereas a Rs 44 per dollar rate coexisted with a REER index of 107 in March 2007, today that dollar rate goes with an REER level of around 114, which is much too high to sustain healthy industrial development and a sustainable current account deficit.

Second, the present bout of rupee appreciation has been more slow and steady (though cumulatively greater) than in the previous episode. It has taken seven months for the REER to appreciate 11 per cent since September 2009; in 2007 it surged 7 per cent in just two months between March and May. In a way, the rupee appreciation problem has crept up on us when we were distracted by other pressing priorities like economic recovery and inflation.

A third possible reason for misplaced complacency about recent exchange rate trends is the fact of a strong, ongoing industrial recovery and a more modest but noticeable export recovery, from the steep downturns induced by the global crisis of 2008-09. Why worry about the exchange rate when industry and exports are bouncing back at double-digit annualised growth rates? We have to worry now (and take corrective policy action) if we want to sustain strong industrial growth in the future and beef up the somewhat anaemic recovery of exports recorded so far (exports are still running well below levels two years ago). It is worth remembering that a 10 per cent rupee appreciation is like a 10 per cent tax on exports and a 10 per cent subsidy for imports.

Fourth, the relatively muted reaction to the massive rupee appreciation may be because those being hurt the most, in the first round, are relatively weak-voiced. These are the small scale units in labour-intensive sectors such as garments, textiles, leather products, gems, metal-working and so forth, catering to both external and domestic markets. Indications are that they were hit hard by the global recession and now their recovery is being throttled by a steadily appreciating rupee. If the government (and RBI) are really serious about all their slogans about "inclusive growth" and supporting small scale units, their most potent policy step could be to reverse at least some of the real rupee appreciation that has already occurred.

Actually, the volume of concern and commentary about the recent rupee appreciation may not remain quite as muted as my interlocutor supposed. Not if you judge by the rising frequency of newspaper articles and editorials expressing concern about the subject. Industry associations may not be far behind. And once television channels get hold of it, well… Shashi Tharoor could tell you a thing or two about how quickly perceptions can change.

Finally, I am somewhat concerned about the apparent change of approach in RBI on exchange rate management in recent months. From March 1993 to March 2007, successive RBI governors subscribed to a policy of "managed float", in which the central bank conducted forex market intervention not only to iron out short-term volatility but also to ensure a broadly competitive exchange rate policy. Then came a year of deliberate rupee appreciation, which probably contributed more to the initial industrial slowdown than the usual suspect of monetary policy. The year 2008-09 was the year of global crisis. Since June 2009 RBI appears to have deliberately adopted a much less interventionist stance, in line with a more "free market" doctrine. If true, this would be ironic, as it comes at a time when empirical research is increasingly supporting the more eclectic and interventionist approach to exchange rate management that stood India in good stead for 15 years. Actually, it would be more than ironic. It could constitute a serious policy error.

However, I am hopeful. Ten days ago, the government and RBI agreed to "replenish" the Market Stabilisation Scheme to the tune of Rs 50,000 crore, thus arming the central bank with significant capacity to sterilise forex purchases. Let's wait and see.

The author is Honorary Professor at ICRIER and former Chief Economic Adviser to the Government of India. Views expressed are personal

 

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

A WORLD TOO FLAT FOR COMFORT

A VOLCANIC ERUPTION IN A NOT-SO-PROMINENT REGION HAS HAS TRIGGERED AN UNPRECEDENTED TSUNAMI OF HUMAN AND ECONOMIC DISRUPTION

ARVIND SINGHAL

The world is flat as Thomas Friedman told us in 2005. How much flatter it has become since then has been so startlingly demonstrated in the last one week! An otherwise not-so-unusual event — that of a volcanic eruption in a not-so-prominent region — has already triggered an unprecedented tsunami of human and economic disruption whose ripples are now being felt across all the continents. Millions of individuals are stranded in various parts of the world leading to a rapidly compounding misery of personal suffering, stress and, in many cases, severe economic and professional consequences.

 Businesses of all types, and not just those related to aviation industry, are reeling in the face of various chain reactions set in motion by the disruption of aviation services. Business conferences and exhibitions, many of them meticulously planned with several months of painstaking effort, have to be cancelled to avoid the risk of highly depleted participation by the targeted attendees. Routine and not-so-routine business meetings have been either cancelled or rescheduled all across the world since one or more participants happened to be stranded somewhere where they were not supposed to be.

Hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of students and teachers are unable to make it to their classes. Sports, music and other performers are unable to perform at events scheduled months and sometimes even years ago. If this situation continues for a few days more, then global manufacturing supply chains will begin to show severe signs of disruptions and global distribution supply chains will show signs of rupture with depleted range of products in the retail shelves. Farmers in countries such as Kenya suffer heavy losses as their cargoes perish at airports. Indeed, even those operating in the conflict zones of Afghanistan and Iraq have not been spared the incredible disruptive effect of this single event, and the war-injured have to be evacuated to other regions, rather than the logistically closer bases, in Europe.

One can argue that this particular event is one of those "black swan" events that Nassim Taleb alluded to in his highly acclaimed book of the same title some years ago — an event whose occurrence and form cannot be predicted, and hence conventional scenario-building and contingency-planning efforts are largely ineffective. Disturbingly, the world has seen at least three other major "black swan" events already prior to this one. The first was the September 2001 attacks on the US, then the subsequent SARS epidemic in early 2003, and then the subprime crisis of 2008 triggered, perhaps, by the collapse of Lehman Brothers. Each created ripples of unprecedented magnitude and of many, many dimensions across the globe.

While it is impossible to predict when and how the next "black swan" will emerge, the occurrences seem to be happening more frequently, and their impact becoming more pervasive as the world gets even more "connected" and global businesses even more inter-dependent. Indeed, a "flat and getting flatter" world is a reality. This process cannot be, arguably, reversed or even slowed. What may be more feasible is for individuals, businesses and even governments to take a pause (and many millions will indeed have a lot of time available at their hands right now) and reflect upon the inherent risk and the eventual price that a single-minded quest for either global-recreation (vacationing) or for cutting the last cent in the sourcing costs by optimising the supply-chain at a global level in a bid to compete harder or to improve returns for the shareholders, can extract from the individuals, businesses and, indeed, society.

Do we really need to always travel for leisure to far-off places which we believe are less travelled, but in reality, are getting more and more travelled? Do we really need roses from Kenya or fruit from southern Africa in the middle of winter? Do we really need to travel for face-to-face business meetings when some of them can be substituted with more investments in video/audio conferencing? Do we really need to create "off-site" meetings for hundreds and sometimes thousands of employees where the sites are a country or sometimes even a continent away? Do we really always need to find the lowest-cost manufacturing location in different continents when there is room somewhere downstream in the value chain to absorb higher production costs but manufacture closer to the point of eventual consumption?

Alas, the world is already too flat for comfort!

arvind.singhal@technopak.com

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

TOILERS OF THE SEA

A FOURTH OF THOSE WORKING ON SHIPS ACROSS THE WORLD ARE FILIPINOS, WHO GENERATED $3.4 BN OF REMITTANCES LAST YEAR

BARUN ROY

Think of Filipinos abroad, and images immediately come to mind of nurses in American hospitals, musicians in Hong Kong bars, drivers in Iraq, mechanics serving Saudi oil companies, or domestic helps in faraway homes. And we read of billions of dollars they send back home every year in what's decidedly one of their country's biggest sources of foreign exchange.

Last year, they sent home a whopping $17.3 billion, making the Philippines the fourth-largest recipient of worker remittances in the world, after India, China and Mexico. This year, the inflow is expected to reach $18.1 billion.

 But it's hardly remembered that Filipinos, in hundreds of thousands, are also at work abroad as seamen on foreign ships and claim a large share of the remittance pie. In fact, of all the world's ship workers afloat at any given time — some 1.6 million — 25 per cent are Filipinos, which makes the Philippines the largest single source of ship hands for the world's merchant fleet. In 2009, seafarers alone produced an inflow of $3.4 billion, 12 per cent more than a year before.

It's said that the first Filipino ever to hit the international seas was a man named Enrique, whom Ferdinand Magellan, a 15th century Spanish explorer, had bought as a slave and taken with him to circumnavigate the world. But not before another Ferdinand, President Marcos, turned a dictator in 1972 and drove the country towards economic ruin did Filipinos start taking up seafaring, among others, as a serious profession. Today, Filipino seafarers are a coveted lot, preferred by foreign ship-owners for their loyalty, language ability and skills. They are paid well — as much as $8,000 a month for an officer — and are trained to international standards by the country's many well-recognised maritime schools.

The demand keeps growing, and the schools, turning out some 25,000 graduates every year, are busy upgrading their facilities and courses. Maritime circles expect a worldwide shortage of some 90,000 officers by 2015 and the authorities in Manila are anxious that the Philippines must do everything to ensure it doesn't drop out of the International Maritime Organisation's White List. It has been on that list for many years now, an acknowledgment of the quality of maritime education provided in the country.

It can be said that the Philippines is well protected in the international job market. It occupies a large spectrum. If Filipinos have been a fixture on the world's flags-of-convenience ships, Filipino singers, musicians, and dancers have been no less in cities from Hong Kong to Seoul to Tokyo to Dubai to Rio.

They started going out as early as the late 1950s, since the famous Bayanihan Dance Company made a successful debut at the Brussels Universal Expo in 1958 and appeared on New York's Broadway the following year. A decade later, the equally famous Philippine Madrigal singers broke into the international scene with aplomb at the first Choruses of the World festival at the Lincoln Centre in New York.

For the Philippines, these were epochal events and threw the door open to a wider world. There was something exotic about those performances, carrying the flavours of native music and dances to audiences largely unused to them. This, plus the Filipinos' natural performing talent and a special way of connecting with the audiences, readily endeared them to bar managers and show organisers across the world.

There was something else — a wonderfully open and outgoing disposition that the Filipinos inherited from their former Spanish colonial rulers, and an incredible passion for western performing arts that they imbibed from the Americans, who came to occupy the country afterwards. No other group of people in Asia at that time could claim to combine those two traits — along with a high degree of literacy and knowledge of English — so well in their character as the Filipinos did. In fact, the Filipinos were Asia's first westerners and its first international citizens in the field of performing arts.

So far, this has worked very well for the Filipinos, minimising the impact of poverty in an economy damaged by the long years of Marcos' predatory dictatorship. But, as the economy gets bigger at home, throwing open newer occupations and opportunities, and as competition from others becomes stiffer, it might not work as well for long. Both by volumes and rates of annual increase, inward remittances might fall over the next decade. That's the general assumption.

Still, nobody is panicking for three simple reasons. First, overseas Filipinos cannot be easily dislodged from the specific niches that they occupy, like seafaring and entertainment. Remember, we aren't talking of truck drivers, security guards, or machine operators. Second, a bigger home market will still be too small to absorb all the talent that's on offer. And third, literacy, language skills, and an ingrained cheerfulness of manner will always mark Filipinos apart as desirable buys in the international labour market.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

WHY, HOW AND HOW MUCH?

LIABILITY PROVISIONS SHOULD BE REVISED PERIODICALLY TO ENSURE THEY ARE ADEQUATE AND ALIGNED WITH INTERNATIONAL PRACTICE

ANSHU BHARADWAJ

The government has recently drafted the "Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill (CNLB), 2010" and plans to introduce it in Parliament. Several important issues have been raised in the public debate on the Bill.

Do we need this Bill?

Most countries with nuclear power programmes have enacted legislation to cover the liability in the event of a nuclear accident and are also party to one of several international conventions such as the Vienna Convention, the Paris Convention, and the Convention on Supplementary Compensation (CSC). India stands out with neither a national liability legislation, nor membership in one of the international conventions. The government is fully responsible for compensation in the event of a nuclear accident in any of the current reactors.

 

 Further, the Indian nuclear industry is now expected to grow several fold from the present 4,120 Mw, with a fleet of indigenous reactors and those built with international assistance. Such a large nuclear programme warrants legislation to cover all aspects of civil liability, including possible trans-boundary damage. In the absence of a civil liability law, it would be difficult for India to add a large number of reactors as planned, and each reactor would have to be fully indemnified by the government.

Who should own the liability?

A nuclear reactor consists of complex systems, each with materials, equipment, monitoring and control instruments procured from manufacturers from different countries. Their selection, pre-operation testing and subsequent performance are all subject to constant review by the plant operator and a regulatory body.

There have been two major accidents in commercial nuclear plants: Chernobyl (USSR) and Three Mile Island (US). In both cases, it was gross error on the part of the operations personnel at key stages during the accidents that turned these into disasters. It is vital that the operations procedures linked to a design are strictly followed. Importantly, safety checklists for operation should not, under any circumstances, be overridden by operators' impulsive action. This highlights the need for continuing operator training that can never substitute for greater compensation.

In the event of an accident, assigning absolute, "no fault" liability to the operator enables the victim to claim compensation without delay and litigation. It also forces the operators to choose the best suppliers and ensure safe operation. The proposed Bill gives the operator the right to recourse, if the accident has resulted because of negligence on the part of the supplier of material and equipment. But, this is purely an internal matter between the operator and such supplier.

In India, as of now, the state-owned Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited (NPCIL) is the only "operator" building and operating nuclear power reactors. The nuclear liability rests with NPCIL and indirectly with the government. With the entry of private operators into the nuclear industry, the logic of operator liability is unchanged in accordance with global practices.

Is the liability amount sufficient?

The estimation of liability depends on the likely damage a nuclear accident could cause to human life, environment, property and economy.

The Chernobyl accident was a catastrophe — graphite fire, hydrogen explosion and fuel meltdown led to the destruction of the reactor and direct expulsion of vast quantities of radioactive content into the atmosphere. The cost of the Chernobyl accident has been estimated at hundreds of billion dollars1. In contrast, in the Three Mile Island accident, despite significant fuel meltdown, the containment structure was intact and allowed little release of radioactivity. Currently, reactors are so designed that the likelihood of fuel meltdown and breach of containment would be less than one in a million. The point is that liability laws cannot be designed to cope with a catastrophe. In the event of a catastrophe, civil liability ends and the government takes over like in case of major floods, tsunami, cyclones and earthquakes.

The US' Price-Anderson Act (PAA) of 1957 was based on a theoretical study of radioactivity release from a 200 Mw reactor that ignored the presence of the containment structure and other safety features2. Despite the impressive advances in safety measures since then, the US is continuing with the same provisions as before. According to the PAA, the operator is now liable for up to $300 million through American national insurers. The nuclear industry contributes up to $11.9 billion and beyond this, the government bears the liability.

The Paris Convention, which includes most West European countries, has raised the operator's liability to euro 700 million. The installation state is expected to provide an additional euro 500 million and another euro 300 million would be available by collective state contribution. These amendments of 2004 are not in force yet since most countries have not ratified the convention, though they have signed it.

In 1997, the IAEA adopted the Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage (CSC). It proposes a minimum of 150 million Special Drawing Rights, or SDRs ($450 million) as operator liability. Additional amounts are to be provided through contributions from state parties collectively on the basis of installed nuclear capacity.

The liability provisions now prevailing in various countries show a wide range (Table 1). Each country has fixed the liability limits based on a combination of several factors, such as experience with nuclear power, perceived risk of accident, participation in any international agreement, etc.

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

LIVE AND LET DIE

 

There is a quantum of solace for Britain's sexiest superspy amid the current financial crisis that has shelved the latest James Bond movie. The travails that the world has gone through since his last outing in 2008 could spur a dozen new storylines, benefiting even this canned movie as it is still noncommitally called Bond 23'. The potentially villainous protagonists thrown up recently are innumerable, so 007 can bestir himself, shake off his martini hangover, polish his Walther PPK and reactivate his licence to kill. When there's trouble at HQ — not with M but with MGM — leading to the shelving of his golden jubilee year film, the man who has vanquished evil brains such as Blofeld and Goldfinger has to take matters in hand. It just won't do for the superspy to be laid low by a Dr No; he has to take on the 21st century members of SPECTRE, the SPecial Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion.

The choice of modern avatars of Bond's old powerhungry foes is wide: a crazed Wall Street manipulator bent on world dominance — by destroying the US economy with a devilish sub-prime lending scheme; a shadowy hedge fund operator shorting stocks around the globe, private equity players over-leveraging key companies (with key points gleaned from MGM's current troubles on the same count) to trigger a world-wide crisis , a cabal of machinating bankers accumulating damaging debt burdens and then blackmailing governments to part with billions to prevent an economic catastrophe, sinister scamsters luring investors and audiences into an addictive new game and then systematically subverting it to amass billions. After all, the heady mix of big money, highrollers, devastating secret weapons, helpless governments and, of course, bootylicious babes has worked before for Bond.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

DÉJÀ VU ON RESERVATION

 

 

The renewed agitation for reservation for the Gujjar community in Rajasthan underscores the pitfalls of the paradigm of patronage politics. Given the privileging of competitive identity politics in India, quotas have become a battleground of sorts with social groups striving for ever more backwardness. This phenomenon has been most clearly, and violently, demonstrated in Rajasthan , with its attendant segregation of polity along eversharpening caste lines. The BJP's promise, in the run-up to the 2003 assembly elections, to change the classification of Gujjars from other backward class to scheduled tribe kicked off this particular spasm.

The Vasundhara Raje government couldn't deliver on that pledge, and since then an agitation by the community has almost been an annual feature. In July 2009, the Rajasthan government did announce 5% reservation for the Gujjars but that added to the total reservation in the state going up to 68%. Following which, the Rajasthan High Court, in keeping with the Supreme Court's capping of reservation at 50%, stayed that order of the state government . The current march on Jaipur by members of the Gujjar community came after their demand to freeze government hiring while the reservation issue was sorted out. The whole mess represents the race among social groups to reach the bottom of the pyramid in an attempt to get a share of the reservation pie. A clear consequence of the malaise of political parties envisaging the electorate as competing caste groups.

The Rajasthan High Court has now asked the state government to set up a high-power committee to look into the Gujjar demand. Such committees have been set up before. And there is imminent danger of the agitation turning violent again. In the quota-based patronage system , the Gujjars feel they are losing out. And the agitation is a reminder of the violence that attends on this socio-political process. Some make-shift reprieve may yet be found, but the whole situation posits the need to break the paradigm of competitive identity politics.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

MARKET STABILISATION BONDS

 

Even with a lower fiscal deficit projected for the current financial year, the government's borrowings from the market this year would be Rs 91,000 crore higher than last year, said RBI governor Subbarao in his credit policy statement. But will that be all? What about the bonds that will have to be mobilised to form the central bank's war chest on the exchange rate front? Considering the trend in capital inflows and the need to keep rupee appreciation in check, the RBI would inevitably have to intervene in the foreign exchange market to mop up dollars. When the central bank purchases dollars , it injects fresh liquidity into the system. To prevent such a flood of rupees created as a result of dollar purchases from pushing up the money supply above the desired level, the RBI then absorbs the rupees by selling government bonds.

The bonds used for this purpose are the so-called Market Stabilisation Scheme (MSS) bonds. Right now, their supply with the RBI has dwindled to some Rs 2,700 crore. And these are poised to mature in May. A war chest of fresh MSS bonds would inevitably have to be created, to take on the flood of capital that would inundate India this year. While the MSS bonds are not used to finance the government's expenditure , and do not figure in the fiscal deficit, they do represent a claim on the liquidity in the system by the government . So when these government bonds are issued, as part of the mechanism to stabilise the foreign exchange market, the total government borrowing would go up beyond the level required to fund the fiscal deficit. By how much, of course, is the crucial question. If we expect the central bank to be obliged to add $10 billion to its reserves, in the interest of rupee stability, and it sterilises some 80% of the counterpart rupees created in the process by selling MSS bonds, it would need to have some Rs 36,000 crore worth of MSS bonds in the first place.

Of course, the RBI could raise the cash reserve ratio, to mop up the rupee rush created by foreign capital inflows , instead of selling MSS bonds. That's just another way of tightening liquidity. The short point is, liquidity could be tighter than estimated on fiscal counts alone. Unless, of course, further capital controls are deployed.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

THE FATE OF A MEGAPOLIS

PRABHA JAGANNATHAN

 

On April 17, the temperature of Delhi stood at a record 43.7 degree Celsius, the highest in 52 years. The Friday before that, the maximum

 

temperature was the highest in 29 years. In November 2006, Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit observed that the sparrow population of Delhi seemed to be mysteriously disappearing. According to the Wildlife Protection Society, two major reasons could be the increasing use of chemicals and pesticides in farmlands in and around Delhi, heightening the toxicity of food for grain-feeding birds and the swift shrinkage of the sparrow's habitat in tandem with the rapid expansion of the city. In addition, the higher chemicals/ pesticides used have also decimated insects on which the little avian species feeds.

A city court directed a 67-year old man to plant 210 trees in January 2009 as punishment for chopping down 42 trees in June 2003. In February this year, India joined the UN's Plant for the Planet: the billion tree campaign after having planted 2.5 billion trees since 2007. That very month, the Delhi government drastically enhanced the security deposit for felling trees in the capital region while carrying out developmental work, from the existing Rs 1,000 to Rs 28,000 under the Delhi Preservation of Trees Act, 1994. In a country where an IPL team commands Rs 1,500 crore against a measly Rs 300 crore for re-charging water bodies, this would be piffle to a developer.

These newsbytes are milestones on a dystopic future we should fear. There is a direct ecospheric link between Delhi's disappearing vultures, sparrows, its green cover and its maniacally transmogrifying urbanisation. The survival of all fauna, including humans, depends on sustainable usage of natural resources. A mass movement is imperative to sensitise people to the impact of mindless urbanisation on the region's climate , flora and fauna and the forest cover of Delhi. An attendant strain on natural resources has meant a phenomenal rise in the sales of air conditioners, gensets, inverters, inverter batteries and energy guzzling lifestyles . But the tree, the single most life and earth-affirmative , energy conserving answer to a rapidly climate challenged world of today, has been assigned a step-child status.

Some 10,000+ trees were counted in the NDMC region by 2009-10 . According to the civic authorities, the city has been losing some 200-250 trees annually for the last five years, mainly during storms and heightened dry weather. That's official. At least twice that number gets routed routinely for parking lots, shopping malls, Metro building work, road expansions, flyovers, and huge commercial and residential complexes. One citizen's petition put the number of trees felled for Metro Phase I alone at 30,000 and projected felling of some 2,500 trees for the Phase I on the BRT corridor. But with Delhi's ecological footprint spreading to subsume neighbouring regions, urbanisation without a mandatory green responsibility has been institutionalised into a norm.

In her Vatavaran report in 2008, Dr Iqbal Malik reveals the total village area in Delhi in the 1940s was about 900 sq km out of a total 1,458 sq km. This went down to 797 sq km in 1991 and 558 sq km in 2003. Simultaneously , villages also dwindled down to only 209 in 1991 from 348 in 1951 and a lower 135 by 2008. Urban villages lost their right to a Panchayat or Gram Sabha with direct community participation under the Constitution (73rd) Amendment Act. Rapidly diminishing rural lands pressured down cultivated lands in Delhi to only 3,4981 ha in 2007 against 48,445 ha in 2003. In the last 60 years, with increasing purchase of village and rural lands by government and private developers (often in nexus with villagers) in and around Delhi, there has been indiscriminate felling of trees and mutilation of green areas. Cultivable land belonging to one million one hundred thousand people disappeared gradually, the report holds.

In Look Afresh at Urban Greens, Monika Koul and A K Bhatnagar maintain "adequate tree cover is crucial for economic and ecological security. Experts recommend that at least a third of India's geographical area should be tree clad for sustainable environment and economic development... "

The concept of a Tree of Life as a manybranched tree illustrating the idea that all life on earth is related cuts across philosophies, mythologies and religions. And we may need a rejuvenated Chipko movement to espouse that core principle of live and let live.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

BALANCING THE OPPOSITES

VITHAL C NADKARNI

 

Are you a red or an orange or blue or green? Normally, it shouldn't matter as long as you're human —nothing to it — and subscribe to a minimalist code of conduct that marks members of the global fraternity known as Vishwakutumbam in the Indic tradition. On the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, however, subtle differences of shade seem to resonate with a significance that goes beyond stereotypes.

Of course, green is not passé . Not yet anyway. But 'Turq' is definitely in. This comes from the shade Turquoise which stands for a new brand of environmental existentialism that combines traditional green with a shade of blue, as in blue-sky open-minded thinking. (It also happens to be the colour of the masthead of The Times of India's new Crest Jewel Edition!)

Like the young Turks in an earlier age of politics, the new environmentalists are being looked upon as catalysts of non-revolutionary change, people who are guided by science and humanism rather than by nostalgia or technophobia. Stewart Brand, author of the original Whole Earth Catalog, calls it 'ecopragmatism' in his new manifesto.

He says the shift of shade was mainly necessitated by climate change. Forty years ago, he could say in the Catalog, "we are as gods; we might as well get good at it" . Photographs of earth from space that he put on the cover had that euphoric, god-like perspective. Now he says "we are as gods, we have to get it." The tentative has changed to imperative because of potentially disastrous change flowing from climate change. The planetary perspective now is not just aesthetic matter of shades, he emphasises. "It's not just perspective . It's a worldsized problem that will take worldsized solutions that involves forms of governance we don't have yet. It involves technologies we are just glimpsing . It involves what ecologists call ecosystem engineering . Beavers do it, earthworms do it. They don't usually do it at a planetary scale. We have to do it at a planetary scale."

That calls for cosmic-scale thinking that harmonises opposites . That's what Oriental Yin-Yang does as does Ardhanarishawarathat unites power (Shakti) with potential (Siva). The ancient seers evoked this powerful vision by meditating on the unitary whole which is always greater than the fragmentary parts. This animates the whole earth where it's always night and day at the same time.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

CENTRAL BANK HAS TRIED TO BALANCE LIQUIDITY AND INFLATION CONTROL

The Reserve Bank of India in its monetary policy raised the cash reserve ratio, repo and reverse repo rates by 25bps (to 6%, 5.25% and 3.75% respectively). Overall, a well calibrated move that was largely in line with market expectations and will suck liquidity of about Rs 12,500 crore out of the system. The RBI's view to focus on inflation and managing expectations for inflation is pragmatic and prudent. It seems to be relatively comfortable with the levels of sustained growth that are currently reflected through higher corporate earnings growth and the uptrend in exports and services. Inflation has risen steadily over the last few months along with a substantive rise in foreign exchange inflows.

The central bank has an unenviable task of managing the financial version of the 'impossible trinity' — manage the currency, inflation (including expectations associated with inflation) and liquidity. We need to be cognizant of the fact that the RBI has to manage these objectives while not impeding India's growth prospects. The economic growth seen by India in recent years has been unprecedented. It is therefore also the objective of the RBI (and the government) to ensure that this engine of economic growth is not impaired.

Much has been said about RBI's response to the sharp rise in headline inflation. The fact is that both WPI and CPI have seen extraordinary surges. Though food inflation has hogged much limelight, the non-food component is also seeing substantial rise. Higher inflation is also reflected through higher global commodity prices. There is clear evidence that the biggest driver of inflation is supply side constraints. The RBI has, even in this policy, highlighted the need to increase and expand capacities across sectors. Additionally, there is also a very real prospect of an increase in inflation with corporations having better pricing power, uncertainties related with the upcoming monsoon season, the price of oil and finally increase in domestic consumption. It also needs to be noted that the RBI is quite capable of tightening more dramatically if inflation does not come under control over the next couple of months or so.

The RBI is balancing the need to contain inflation while ensuring sufficient liquidity in the system to push the government borrowing programme. In its post-meeting statement, the RBI explicitly said that "debt management considerations warrant supportive liquidity conditions".

The actions of the RBI are prudent. Its wisdom and experience was tested during the global crises in 2008-09 when no bank in India failed, nor did the system experience a sustained liquidity shock. The RBI has done an admirable job of managing a relatively unwieldy economy in the face of daunting objectives.

Additionally, from a reforms standpoint, it is encouraging to see that the RBI is open to issuing guidelines for new bank licenses. Leaving the real estate sector alone in the near term may be an astute decision with the current glut in the commercial real estate sector in Mumbai. One can always argue whether more can be done. However, at a macro level, it may be said that RBI has done justice to the unassailable position it holds in our financial system.

(Views are personal)

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

THE RATE HIKE IS AIMED AT TAMING INFLATION AND SUPPORTING GROWTH

DHARMAKIRTI JOSHI, CHIEF ECONOMIST, CRISIL LTD

By raising the policy rates and CRR by 25 basis points each, the RBI has attempted a balancing act to achieve three objectives — tame inflationary expectations, support growth and manage government's borrowing programme smoothly. The RBI's monetary policy announcements need to be viewed in the context of its mandate and the various concerns with respect to the state of the economy.

The three immediate challenges before the RBI relate to inflation, economic growth and the government borrowing programme. On the growth front, the risks still exist but they have significantly reduced over the last few months. Growth is getting broad-based with private consumption demand, investment and credit off-take starting to look up. The global economic recovery, particularly in emerging Asia has been faster-than-expected. Despite the weak growth prospects in advanced economies, the better-than-expected performance augurs well for India's export sector. So a gradual withdrawal of monetary stimulus in India, which the RBI has effected in its April policy will not derail the growth process.

The same comfort however cannot be derived from inflation dynamics, which continues to be significant challenge facing the economy today. Both consumer price inflation (15%) and wholesale price inflation (9.9%) are in the uncomfortable zone. The non-food manufactured sector inflation steadily rose to 4.7% in March, 2010 from a negative rate a few months ago. This reflects the emergence of demand side pressure on prices. In 2009-10, inflation continued to surprise the RBI on the negative side. When WPI inflation started picking up at a pace faster than RBI's expectation in the second half of 2009, the price pressure was essentially localised to food items. The tightening of policy would not have tamed food inflation. So the RBI refrained from explicit tightening initially. But when inflation became more general in nature, the RBI responded gradually, first by withdrawing liquidity and then raising policy rates by 25 bps in March 2010. In its recent policy move, the RBI continued with its gradualistic approach despite a significant pick up in inflation. This was guided by some concerns on the growth front but largely by its responsibility of smooth conduct of the government borrowing programme.

Had it not been for the large borrowing programme of the government, I would have expected a sharper increase in CRR and policy rates to tame inflation. The RBI's challenge of balancing multiple objectives is evident from its observation in the recent policy, "While monetary policy considerations demand that surplus liquidity should be absorbed, debt management considerations warrant supportive liquidity conditions". The risk in the RBI's otherwise well-balanced action is the surprise on the inflation front, which could emanate from monsoon failure as well as a spike in global commodity/crude prices. If the inflation does not descend as is expected, the RBI may have to raise interest rates sharply later.

On the whole, if we consider the multiple objectives of the RBI and the concerns facing the economy, the RBI has tried to carefully balance them. The monetary policy gradualism, reflected in the April announcement, is perhaps the best course that the RBI could have taken in today's scenario.

(Views are personal)

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

CONSUMER PROTECTION A FAR CRY IN HOUSING MKT

PARRY SINGH, MD, RED FORT CAPITAL

AGREE: The role of prudent state-based regulators providing single window clearances, as prevalent in developed counties, is welcome. However, the project registration requirements must be reasonable and the process streamlined to add value to developers and buyers alike.

Apart from home buyers, developers can benefit from state regulator endorsements and single window clearances which assure that all projects meet minimum common standards.

Nonetheless, it must be noted that developers are already battling complex bureaucratic hurdles. Sometimes years pass before simple approvals are procured.

It is hoped that the regulators do not become another bottleneck adding red tape and loss of time, reminiscent of the "Inspector Raj" that would culminate in added cost and delays for buyers. This opportunity is availed in a proper manner to bring in reforms towards a single window clearance objective by integrating the various roles and responsibilities of different authorities to accelerate the approval process of a development project.

The creation of a regrouped authority in each state, combining the roles of various sub-authorities and providing single window approvals, would benefit developers in achieving speedier execution. In addition, customers will benefit as they will get assurance that purchase contracts meet minimum requirements, project disclosures are appropriately detailed and recourse mechanisms are sufficiently available if needed.

The regulator should also co-ordinate efforts to ensure digitisation of land records to address issues related to land title which continues to be a major concern in the country. This will facilitate easier land buying for developers and accelerated home loan approval process.

The regulator should also bring about more robust guidelines for intermediaries who play a key role - especially real estate brokers and mortgage specialists. Licenses should be provided to real estate brokers based on minimum standards and practices. This will ensure that the buyers buy apartments only from licensed brokers who follow a high ethical standard.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

CONSUMER PROTECTION A FAR CRY IN HOUSING MKT

NIRANJAN HIRANANDANI, MD, HIRANANDANI CONSTRUCTION

DISAGREE: There is a shortage of 25 million houses in India. This is worrisome. Those who buy houses have an emotional attachment to the asset and the real estate sector even today is dominated by unorganised players.

Consumer protection in this context is key and it is an issue that is haunting the industry at present. The rate at which the number of consumer grievances is increasing in the country is indeed alarming. However, setting up of a regulator is not the solution to this problem.

Introducing a regulator in the real estate industry would mean going back to the license raj which India was subjected to several years ago. In today's day and age when the economy is moving northwards and the country is flaunting its liberalisation policy, why should one go back to the pre-1991 era where any expansion or development in a sector required prior approvals of the government.

Besides, real estate as an industry is already over regulated with various rules and regulations which vary from state to state. Adding a regulator will only have a strangulating effect. Why should one have an inspector raj at this point in time?

Undoubtedly, there are problems relating to consumer grievances or there are bouts of buyer-builder showdown but those can be addressed with the help of a strong legal system. The country should have separate consumer courts dealing with problems pertaining to the real estate industry alone.

If India can have a separate motor accidents compensation tribunal, for real estate, too, the government should take steps to set up a specialised real estate consumer court. After all, it is not a regulator but a court that gives justice.

The government must recognise the importance of real estate in the country. It contributes heavily to the GDP growth. It is also one of the biggest creators of jobs in the country and is still considered 'sunrise' and has a long way to go. This is the sector to be looked out for over the next 10 years and opportunities will be critical.

Success in this industry is related to supply and the buzzword, affordable. What sectors such as automobile, aviation and telecom witnessed in the past decade following the 'affordable' mantra, real estate will witness the same in the next 10 years.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

FOR A SINGLE FINANCIAL REGULATOR

T K ARUN

 

What the spat between insurance regulator Irda and the markets regulator Sebi shows is that we need a completely new regulatory regime , and not another layer of coordination at the top. There could be an intermediate regime in which the RBI continues to regulate the banks and preside over the high-level coordinatory committee on the financial sector while all other segments of the financial sector are brought under a single regulator.

It has become fashionable to poohpooh the idea of unified regulation of the financial sector, citing the example of Britain's Financial Services Authority, which failed to prevent the financial meltdown after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, although it was a single, unified regulator for all banking, insurance, debt, stock and derivative markets in Britain. This is populism , not analysis. It neglects two factors. One, finance in Britain was and is globally integrated, whereas regulation was still mainly national and it is only now that substantive efforts are being made for global coordination in the regulation of finance , through the G20 mechanism.

Two, while structure determines what kind of functions it can sustain, it does not guarantee that function will necessarily follow. Without wings, a bird cannot fly. But wings by themselves do not guarantee flight. Icarus is a mythical example. Closer home, we have Sampadi, the elder brother of wilful Jatayu, who flew so high and so close to the sun as to get scorched and could be saved only by Sampadi flying above him, shielding him from the sun but getting burned himself and turning into a flightless bird. Or even with wings, a bird could simply drop like a stone if it folds, midflight, its wings and tucks one firmly under the other. A real bird is unlikely to behave in this fashion. But Britain's FSA certainly did. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's SuperTHUD!

What was bad about the FSA was not its unified structure, but its regulation, as the Turner report points out. There are several reasons to commend the FSA's structure . And these lie in the nature of the financial sector where boundaries between different financial services/products are increasingly getting blurred, merging the turfs regulated at present by individual sector regulators. Having multiple regulators in this situation can lead either to regulatory arbitrage, if a regulator stays well within its boundary, or to a clash of regulators , if a regulator persists in regulating all the action on its turf, even if some actors originally belong to a domain under the supervision of some other regulator.

Consider a securitised mortgage. A loan is given by a bank to help someone buy a home. The bank now converts the loan into thousands of units and sells these to investors. These investors now have claim to the debt servicing carried out by the borrower. The bank gets its money back upfront and can now lend again to another home loan seeker. At the same time, a perfect maturity transformation takes place, with minimal cost. A bank has short-term , relatively speaking, deposits while its loans will be repaid over a long time. There is thus a mismatch between the maturity of its liabilities (deposits ) and the maturity of its assets (loans). Using short-term deposits to finance longterm investment is maturity transformation , a key task of financial intermediation . Securitisation of loans achieves this at minimal cost. The investors who buy the securities into which the loan has been converted know that the bonds would be redeemed only after a long period — the maturity profiles of the asset and the liabilities now match.

So, securitisation is a great idea. It works because investors can sell them on the market, if they want to, and are not locked in for the maturity of the loan. Securitised loans involve two regulators. The banking regulator, which supervises the bank that originated the loan and converted into securities. And the markets regulator who presides over the trading of the securities. Suppose an insurance company writes insurance against default of repayment for these securities, made available in the form of credit default swaps. Now, credit default swaps stand, in popular imagination, second in line after the credit rating agencies in the hall of financial crisis infamy. AIG, the American insurance giant, went broke because it wrote too many credit default swaps too readily for too many too-clever-by-half financial engineers. But credit default swaps are perfectly useful things. The current thinking is that credit default swaps, should be standardised, centrally cleared and traded on exchanges. In the latest credit policy, the RBI has talked of introducing over-the-counter credit default swaps. Soon, India, on par with other G20 nations will have exchange trading of credit default swaps. If we have exchange-traded securitised mortgages, backed by exchange-traded credit default swaps, we will have serious convergence of banking, markets and insurance on the same financial product. Who should regulate it? All three sectoral regulators, each one treading on the other two's turf, or by single regulator which has the authority to hold every player in the chain accountable at every stage of their action?

The biggest hurdle in creating a single regulator for the financial sector is separating the monetary authority out of the RBI, which also serves as regulator of banks and manager of the country's forex reserves and the government's debt. Combining all these functions in itself helps the RBI to manage its monetary policy also better, argue people like Y V Reddy . This is true, but this is not the only way to manage the whole thing. The sort of coordination that the Bank of England, the FSA and the Treasury showed in tackling the crisis shows the way to go. But this calls for enormous institutional learning and maturing, including in parliamentary capability to oversee regulation.

Acquiring such maturity could take time. Pending that, the RBI could continue as it is, but all other regulators in the financial sector can be scrapped and a single regulator instituted with specialised divisions that constantly communicate with one another and lack the public presence and egos that sectoral regulators tend to have. Coordination between this regulator and the RBI could still take place at the HLCC. If the finance ministry were active and the RBI governor, decisive, the HLCC could have prevented an overt regulatory collision but to fix the problem for the long term, we need unified regulation.

 

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

STRONG MARKET, HIGHER PRICES HELP LIFT MARGINS: SESA GOA MD

 

The Vedanta Resources group firm Sesa Goa said its net profit for the fourth quarter surged to Rs 1,215.1 crore on account of strong demand for iron ore from countries such as China. In an interview with ET NOW , Sesa Goa MD PK Mukherjee explains why the fourth quarter has always been the best quarter for the company. Excerpts:

What has gone right for Sesa Goa this quarter — margins have shown a significant uptick?

The last quarter of the year is always a best quarter for Sesa Goa traditionally because this is the totally monsoon-free quarter, volumes are higher and also the market is very strong, price is also on the upside, so that has contributed for this quarter.

 

How sustainable is the volume growth and the increase in margins that you have seen in Q4?

Uptick in margin is a function of two factors — cost of sales and price. Price is determined by the market, and we try to keep our cost of sales to minimum. Volume is in our hands, to the extent we can evacuate from the mines and load it onto the ships.

Where do you see price realisations for 2011?

The market right now is very volatile. Current prices have reached historical highs, it has crossed 2008 price level on FOB basis. So there is a concern among steel producers throughout the globe. So long, the price remains at this level, definitely it is a huge bottomline addition, but Sesa continues to be the lowest cost producer of the world, so in any price situation, Sesa would continue to post a good number.

How is freight cost shaping up and will that go up in the next quarter as well?

Freight cost has moved up from last... but the increase is much smaller compared to the rise in iron ore price. In the 2008 peak, Brazil to China freight went up to $90 per tonne level. Today, it is less than 50% of that.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

ASIA TO DRIVE GLOBAL GROWTH, BUT US MAY SURPRISE ON THE UPSIDE'

APURV GUPTA

 

The global economy could grow above 4% this year driven by Asia, but the US economy is likely to surprise on the upside, says Christian Nolting, managing director, regional head of portfolio management & lead strategist, Asia-Pacific, Deutsche Bank in an interview with ET. Mr Nolting is bullish on emerging markets like Korea, China, India and Indonesia. But he feels institutional investors are booking profits in emerging markets because of the run-up in prices, and deploying that money in developed markets.

What is the current composition of your global portfolio? What is your outlook on equities in general?

Currently, we have almost an equal allocation for bonds, equity and alternate assets. The equity allocation has been increased from 15% a year ago to about 36% currently, including a 5% holding in private equity. If we look at different asset classes in this environment, equities are our favourite. We think that the global economy could grow above 4% this year driven by Asia, but also US should surprise on the upside. Currently, about 9% of our portfolio is invested in emerging market equities and 22% in developed markets.

What is your broad investment strategy for different asset classes?

We believe there is a need to take an asset class call in order to outperform the markets. This could only be done by maintaining an active portfolio and not through 'buy and hold' strategy. Investors following a 'buy and hold' strategy in the US generated negative returns of 9% in the past 10 years. Similarly, in the case of Asia (excluding Japan), returns were about 45% for the same period. In order to generate superior performance, there is a need for more decisive and dynamic asset allocation calls and not just 'buy and hold'.

What is your outlook on emerging markets, in relation to developed markets?

Among emerging markets, we are bullish on countries like Korea, China, India and Indonesia. However, the run-up has been very fast over the past one year. We are seeing some institutional investors booking profits and shifting their investments to developed countries, which look to provide some good returns in the near future. Due to high growth expectations, emerging markets like India are already crowded. Hence, they are not as cheap as they were before. Money may shift to developed markets like US and Japan if this trend continues.

What is your outlook on India? Which are the key areas of concern?

We expect the Indian economy to grow at a decent rate. However, one of the major worries is high inflation. Inflation has become a major cause for concern in the entire Asian region. In the case of India, inflation is still higher. This is expected to moderate from the second half of this calendar year due to a high base and a lag impact of tightening of liquidity by RBI. Another important factor that will be watched by investors would be monsoon. If we look at historical data, monsoon is expected to be good this time.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

RE PLAYS SPOILSPORT FOR HCL TECH, BUT FOCUS ON GLOBAL MARKETS SAVES THE DAY

ANDY MUKHERJEE

 

HCL Technologies joined its peers TCS and Infosys in signalling a revival for India's $60-billion IT industry. The company's top management —

including Anil Chanana, executive vice-president, finance; Anant Gupta, president, infrastructure services division; Ram Krishna, corporate vice-president and Sanjeev Nikore, president and global head, consumer services and manufacturing, HCL Technologies — shared their views with ET NOW's Andy Mukherjee about the top trends and earnings for the third quarter ended March 2010. Excerpts:

HCL Tech's journey starting in 2005 until now has been a remarkable case of a phoenix rising from the ashes... So what exactly has happened at HCL Tech in this period to make this transformation happen?

Anant Gupta: Some of the key points are really fundamental changes in what we were doing. If you look at the philosophy of the services that we are focused on, we were not geared up for the growth which we wanted to drive in the transformation phase. So, really, it was a question of defocusing from what we were doing and looking at open spaces which were there, aligning some of our best embroiders into newer areas so that we could drive growth in that specific place. So, for example, if we were focused on infra in the domestic market, but we completely defocused from there and went into the Blue Ocean space of the global markets which we all know is a fairly good success story.

Anil, Rs 344 crore in net profit for the quarter vis-a-vis market expectations of about Rs 302 crore. Would you say that currency played spoilsport in this quarter?

Anil Chanana: Yes, the currency did play a part in this quarter. So, our q-o-q growth which is 5.1%, had the currency not played a part, would have been 6.9%. When you look at IT services, we grew 6.6% and in constant currency terms, we grew 8.2% and on top of it, volume growth. So, this quarter has been a volume story, 9.2% volume growth q-o-q. You now go on and take the high risk; I mean we did cross-hires of something like 7,000 employees this quarter.

Manufacturing which was a laggard, now seems to have come back very strongly. What is happening in that space?

Sanjeev Nikore: We have delivered a performance of 9.8% q-o-q growth. If you look at the US economy, it is opening up on the manufacturing side.

Ram, what is your outlook on volume and pricing in your end of the business?

Ram Krishna: Discretionary spending is coming back. There have been strategic initiatives which have been launched by many of the clients which means that yes, there are more project spending.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

IS A PILLAR OF FUTURE GROWTH: THE BODY SHOP

AMIT SHARMA

 

The Body Shop, the iconic British skincare brand, has slashed the prices of about 800 products by up to 35% in India to speed up its growth in one of its fastest growing markets. The pricing markdown only for India was part of an ambitious plan to expand its reach to more people and smaller cities in quick time, says Jonathan Price, managing director, Asia Pacific, The Body Shop . The natural and ethical cosmetics maker will, however, resist major advertisement investment as part of its global policy, Mr Price told ET's Amit Sharma in an interview. Excerpts:

You have slashed the prices of hundreds of products in India. What is the game plan? Who is the new customer you are aiming for?

We have got great response instantly in India. The brand and its ethos have resonated well with consumers here. India is a sensorial place and we are a sensorial brand. But it was clear to me, as well as our franchise partners in India, that we had to get the brand to grow dynamically. So we decided in March last year to take 200 of our top-selling products and really aggressively bring the pricing down, remembering that this is a permanent price reduction, not a gimmick. Because we had been listening to our consumers.

We then decided that the next stage for us was to become more affordable and more accessible. But the two had to go hand in hand. So we had to go to tier 2 and tier 3 cities and towns and we extended the price reduction to a total of 800 products. There is a 10-35% reduction in prices, which will now allow us to really penetrate the smaller towns and cities. We have become more affordable in order to help more people experience our brand, learning about the brand and its values.

This price reduction is only in India. We are doing other things in other countries, but nothing to this scale. There is no doubt that when we came into India, we were targeting high-end consumers, the upper economic strata, but we are absolutely clear that we want to move down the economic pyramid. If we can get the message of responsible consumerism further down, to more and more people, then its good for the brand.

Where does India stand in The Body Shop's global operations?

By the end of this year, we will have 35 stores here out of a total of 2,500 globally. It's still a very small part, but is a pillar of future growth for us. The size, wealth, dynamism of the country, all augur really well for the growth of The Body Shop brand here. It is certainly a priority market for me.

We want to be in a position to say that we are in 30 cities in India and in 65 stores by the end of this fiscal year. It's a pretty dynamic growth for us in a market where we are merely four years old. I do not think that there is no other freestanding retailer in India that can speak of such growth.

The Body Shop is a brand that pioneered cause marketing and responsible consumerism. Now most multinationals talk about sustainable growth and the human angle. Any comment?

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, an awful lot of companies boast of a lot of things and do not necessarily back up the talk. But then there is another part of me that actually feels proud that I am associated with a company whose founder was so passionate about issues of global concern. Today companies are talking about the same things that Dame Anita talked about over 30 years ago. And, yes, the general consciousness among global businesses is in the right direction. Protecting the environment, conserving resources, human rights. These are really important things that we need to talk about as corporations. And it is happening, so I feel proud about that.

The Body Shop has not been known to leverage mass media advertising but you are part of the L'Oreal group, which is a big advertiser. Will the brand advertise more in India to get across to more consumers?
We as a brand stand alone in that sense. We fund our own advertising. And The Body Shop philosophy has been that we do not invest heavily in marketing. We are fundamental believers that our stores are our major investments. They are the face of the brand and the associates who work in the stores are the other marketing association. That's always been the philosophy. That said, we will do targeted events around new product ranges. We will put some marketing spend behind that. But it will be very targeted and will be done in a different, quirky way.

 

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                                                                                                               DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

IPL, BCCI PROBE MUST BE THOROUGH

The suspected sordidness that underlines the leadership of the Indian Premier League under Mr Lalit Modi, and the presumed transgressions of the norms of propriety by Mr Shashi Tharoor when he was in the council of ministers until only a few days ago, are a metaphor for much that is undesirable in public life in India — both in the private sector and in government and politics. Mr Modi, as is appropriate, will get a due hearing, at the level of the IPL council and the wider BCCI board to which he reports in his capacity as IPL commissioner and a BCCI vice-president. On this will depend whether he stays or goes as head of IPL. Given the scale of foul play, and financial and other irregularities being discussed prima facie, the government has mounted a full-scale investigation from commercial and economic angles into IPL affairs, and the heat could be felt by the BCCI as well. The outfit is full of prominent political figures and businessmen and there is no knowing at this stage who might get singed. It is fair and proper, however, that the necessary process is being gone through and no one is being sent home on the basis of whims and allegations, no matter how serious the suspicions of wrongdoing against them. The demand has been made that the affairs of the IPL be scrutinised by a joint parliamentary committee. On the face of it, this is not sustainable. Typically, a JPC is not instituted to look into the affairs of a private enterprise unless governmental wrongdoing is indicated. In the case of Mr Tharoor, it is good in the end that he did the sensible thing and put in his papers. If he had done so a few days earlier, before the clamour for his head began, he would have been better placed to claim the high moral ground to which he alluded in his statement to Parliament on the circumstances of his departure. But all things considered, the former minister does deserve a chance to clear his name through a proper investigation which he has sought. It is to be hoped that the government will permit him that opportunity. It is only then that the former minister and the IPL chief would have both got an equal hearing. From the government's perspective, Mr Tharoor's resignation was a necessity — not only in the interest of propriety, but also given its political compulsions to keep the Opposition in Parliament in good humour on the eve of the passage of the Finance Bill. Also, Dr Manmohan Singh would not have liked the shadow of taint to appear on his government's record. In the case of Mr Tharoor, there has unfortunately been some snickering on the side by hard-boiled political types. It was said that he had it coming, that he had been slow to adapt to the games that Indian politicians play. These basically amount to an invitation to obscure sleaziness. There is also a subtext here — that successful professionals from other fields are a misfit in public life and should not seek to enter the political arena which must continue to remain the fiefdom of so-called professional politicians. In fact, inducting well-educated and public-minded professionals into our representative bodies and legislatures is likely to raise the timbre of political life in the country.

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

RIGHTS OF EARTH

BY VANDANA SHIVA

We need a new paradigm for living on the earth because the old one is clearly not working. An alternative is now a survival imperative for the human species. And the alternative that is needed is not only at the level of tools, it is at the level of our worldview. How do we look at ourselves in this world? What are humans for? And are we merely a money-making, resource-guzzling machine? Or do we have a higher purpose, a higher end.

The world order built on the economic fundamentalism of greed and limitless growth and the technological fundamentalism that there is a technological fix for every social and environmental ill, is clearly collapsing.

The collapse of the Wall Street in September 2008 and the continuing financial crisis signals the end of the paradigm that put fictitious finance above real wealth created by nature and humans, that put profits above people and corporations above citizens. This paradigm can only be kept afloat with limitless bailouts that direct public wealth to private rescue instead of using it to rejuvenate nature and economic livelihoods of people. It can only be kept afloat with increasing violence to the earth and its people. It can only be kept alive as an economic dictatorship. This is visible in India's heartland as the limitless appetitive for steel and aluminum for the global consumer economy and the limitless appetitive for profits of steel and aluminum corporations is clashing head-on with the rights of the tribals to their land and homes, their forests and rivers, their cultures and ways of life.

The tribals are saying a loud and clear "no" to their forced uprooting. The only way to get to the minerals and coal that feed the "limitless growth" model in the face of democratic resistance is the use of militarised violence against the tribals. Operation Green Hunt has been launched in the tribal areas of India with precisely this purpose, even though the proclaimed objective is to clear out the "Maoists". Under Operation Green Hunt, more than 40,000 armed paramilitary jawans have been placed in the tribal areas which are rich in minerals and where tribal unrest is growing. Operation Green Hunt shows clearly that the current economic paradigm can only unfold through increased militarisation and by undermining democratic and human rights.

The technological fundamentalism that has externalised costs, both ecological and social, and blinded us to ecological destruction, has also reached a dead end. Climate chaos, the externality of technologies based on the use of fossil fuels, is a wakeup call —that we cannot continue on the fossil fuel path. The high costs of industrial farming is running up against limits, both in terms of the ecological destruction of the natural capital of soil, water, biodiversity and air, as well as in terms of the creation of malnutrition with a billion people being denied food and another two billion being denied health because of obesity, diabetes and other food-related diseases.

I believe that we are all members of the earth family — of Vasudhaiva Kutumbkam. And as members of the earth family, our first and highest duty is to take care of Mother Earth — Prithvi, Gaia, Pachamana. And the more we take care of her, the more food, water, health and wealth we will have. "Earth rights" are first and foremost the rights of Mother Earth and our corresponding duties and responsibilities to defend those rights. Earth rights are also the rights of humans as they flow from the rights of Mother Earth — the right to food and water, the right to health and a safe environment, the right to the commons — the rivers, seeds, the biodiversity, atmosphere.

I have given the name "Earth Democracy" to this new paradigm of living as an earth community, respecting the rights of Mother Earth.

Earth Democracy enables us to envision and create living democracies. Living democracy enables democratic participation in all matters of life and death — the food we eat or do not have access to; the water we drink or are denied due to privatisation or pollution; the air we breathe or are poisoned by. Living democracies are based on the intrinsic worth of all species, all peoples, all cultures; a just and equal sharing of this earth's vital resources; sharing the decisions about the use of the earth's resources.

Earth Democracy protects the ecological processes that maintain life and the fundamental human rights that form the basis of right to life, including the right to water, the right to food, the right to health, the right to education, and the right to jobs and livelihoods. Earth Democracy is based on the recognition of and respect for the life of all species and all people.

Ahimsa or non-violence is the basis of many faiths that have emerged on the Indian soil. Translated into economics, non-violence implies that our systems of production, trade and consumption do not use up the ecological space of other species and other people. Violence is the obvious outcome when our dominant economic structures and economic organisations usurp and enclose the ecological space of other species or other people.

According to an ancient Indian text, the Isho Upanishad, "The universe is the creation of the Supreme Power meant for the benefits of (all) creation. Each individual life form must, therefore, learn to enjoy its benefits by forming a part of the system in close relation with other species. Let not any one species encroach upon others' rights. Whenever we engage in consumption or production patterns which take more than we need, we are engaging in violence. Non-sustainable consumption and non-sustainable production constitute a violent economic order. A selfish man over-utilising the resources of nature to satisfy his own ever-increasing needs is nothing but a thief, because using resources beyond one's needs would result in the utilisation of resources over which others have a right".

Earth rights are the basis of equity, justice and sustainability. To mark Earth Day 2010, the President of Bolivia, Juan Evo Morales Ayma, is organising a conference on Rights of Mother Earth. The idea is to start a process for adopting a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth on the lines of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Without earth rights, there can be no human rights.

Earth rights are human rights.

- Today, April 22, is Earth Day

- Dr Vandana Shiva is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

HOW OBAMA MADE US INDISPENSABLE AGAIN

BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

I've been thinking about the US President, Mr Barack Obama's foreign policy lately, but first, a golf tip: I went to Dave Pelz's famous short-game school this winter to improve my putting and chipping, and a funny thing happened — my long game got better. It brings to mind something that happened to Obama.

The President got healthcare reform passed, and it may turn out to be his single most important foreign policy achievement.

In politics and diplomacy, success breeds authority and authority breeds more success. No one ever said it better than Osama bin Laden: "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse".

Have no illusions, the rest of the world was watching our healthcare debate very closely, waiting to see who would be the strong horse — Obama or his Democratic and Republican healthcare opponents? At every turn in the debate, America's enemies and rivals were gauging what the outcome might mean for their own ability to push around an untested US President.

It remains to be seen whether, in the long run, America will be made physically healthier by the bill's passage. But, in the short run, Obama definitely was made geopolitically healthier.

"When others see the President as a winner or as somebody who has real authority in his own house, it absolutely makes a difference", the defence secretary, Mr Robert Gates, said to me in an interview. "All you have to do is look at how many minority or weak coalition governments there are around the world who can't deliver something big in their own country, but basically just teeter on the edge, because they can't put together the votes to do anything consequential, because of the divided electorate". President Obama has had "a divided electorate and was still able to muscle the thing through".

When President Mr Dmitri Medvedev of Russia spoke by phone with Mr Obama the morning after the healthcare vote — to finalise the New Start nuclear arms reduction treaty — he began by saying that before discussing nukes, "I want to congratulate you, Mr President, on the healthcare vote", an administration official said. That was not just rank flattery. According to an American negotiator, all throughout the arms talks, which paralleled the healthcare debate, the Russians kept asking: "Can you actually get this ratified by the Senate" if an arms deal is cut? Winning passage of the Healthcare Bill demonstrated to the Russians that Obama could get something hard passed.

Our enemies surely noticed, too. You don't have to be Machiavelli to believe that the leaders of Iran and Venezuela shared the barely disguised Republican hope that healthcare would fail and, therefore, Mr Obama's whole political agenda would be stalled and, therefore, his presidency enfeebled. He would then be a lame duck for the next three years and America would be a lame power.

Given the time and energy and political capital that was spent on healthcare, "failure would have been unilateral disarmament", added Mr Gates. "Failure would have badly weakened the President in terms of dealing with others — his ability to do various kinds of national security things... You know, people made fun of Madeleine (Albright) for saying it, but I think she was dead on: most of the rest of the world does see us as the 'indispensable nation'".

Indeed, our allies often complain about a world of too much American power, but they are not stupid. They know that a world of too little American power is one they would enjoy even less. They know that a weak America is like a world with no health insurance — and a lot of pre-existing conditions.

Gen. James Jones, the President's national security adviser, told me that he recently met with a key North Atlantic Treaty Organisation counterpart, who concluded a breakfast by congratulating him on the healthcare vote and pronouncing: "America is back".

But is it? While Obama's healthcare victory prevented a power outage for him, it does not guarantee a power surge. Ultimately, what makes a strong President is a strong country — a country whose underlying economic prowess, balance sheet and innovative capacity enable it to generate and project both military power and what the political scientist Joe Nye calls "soft power" — being an example that others want to emulate.

What matters most now is how Mr Obama uses the political capital that healthcare's passage has earned him.

I continue to believe that the most important foreign policy issue America faces today is its ability to successfully engage in nation building — nation building at home.

Mr Obama's success in passing healthcare and the bounce it has put in his step will be nothing but a sugar high if we can't get our deficit under control, inspire a new generation of start-ups, upgrade our railroads and Internet and continue to attract the world's smartest and most energetic immigrants.

An effective, self-confident President with a weak country is nothing more than a bluffer. An effective, self-confident President, though, at least increases the odds of us building a stronger country.

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

EMPOWERING OR OPPRESSIVE?

RIGHT TO VOTE = RIGHT NOT TO VOTE

P.P. RAO

The Gujarat governor returned the Gujarat Local Authorities Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2009, which contained provisions for compulsory voting in elections to local bodies. Though the Chief Minister, Mr Narendra Modi, appears keen on this, the governor gave three reasons: (i) compulsory voting violates the citizens' right to freedom of speech and expression guaranteed by Article 19 of the Constitution; (ii) to punish voters who fail to vote violates their fundamental freedom in the matter of voting; and (iii) experience of other countries shows that it is difficult to implement compulsory voting.

The Supreme Court declared in the People's Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) case that "vote" is a form of speech, as the voter indicates his preference for one of the contesting candidates silently. The court was concerned about the voter's right to know the antecedents of the candidates. Article 19(1)(a) says that all citizens shall have the right to freedom of speech and expression. The freedom to vote includes the right not to vote. This right is subject to any law made by the state which imposes reasonable restrictions in the interest of the sovereignty and integrity of India, the security of the state, friendly relations with foreign states, public order, decency or morality, or in relation to contempt of court, defamation or incitement of an offence. Compulsory voting does not fall within the above category.

The former President, R. Venkatraman, had suggested compulsory voting, but there were no takers.

Democracy is rule by consent of the majority of voters who exercise their franchise. If the candidates set up by political parties at elections are not acceptable to the voters because of their criminal antecedents, corrupt background or incompetence, which are common complaints in India, it would be oppressive and unethical to compel voters to vote.

The right to dissent is basic to democracy. It is a basic human right which includes the right not to vote, although this cannot be compared with right to life which cannot be waived. In P. Rathinam's case (1994) 3 SCC 394, the Supreme Court discussed the legal and ethical aspects of the question of the right to die. Euthanasia is not accepted by several legal systems. In the case of voting, the issue is of freedom to vote. "Freedom" necessarily implies choice and includes the option not to vote.

Our courts are overburdened and unable to enforce criminal law speedily. If failure to vote is made an offence, it will be impossible to implement. The better way to ensure high polling is by choosing candidates of character and competence with a record of public service. The decision of the Gujarat governor is unexceptionable.

— P.P. Rao is a noted jurist

Will alter caste, religious equations

Jaynarayan Vyas

In a democracy, the government is of the people, by the people and for the people. If that's the case, people must participate in the democratic process by voting in elections. This is an integral part of the democratic process. How can India be an exception to such a proposition?

Voting cannot merely be a right; it must be as much a duty as a right that citizens are entitled to. The passage of the Mandatory Voting Bill in the Gujarat Assembly is the first step towards making voting as much a right as a duty.

Most of the arguments advanced by opponents of the idea are shallow, flawed, and premised on wrong assumptions. Let me clarify here what the Gujarat government wants to achieve through this landmark bill. The intended legislation is a serious attempt to eliminate passive voters who do not go out to vote but crib about politicians. By bringing them to the ballot booth, we want to ensure maximum participation in the democratic process. This will benefit all and cause harm to none.

The measure will also considerably alter the caste equations in politics that currently dominate the country's polity from the bottom level to the top.

It will help in eliminating money and muscle power that is increasingly used by politicians in elections and plays a decisive role at many places.

Two, it will help eliminate the communal aspect of politics as everybody's vote will decide the fate of candidates, not just the minuscule votes of one or another community.

We have seen low turnouts in many elections in the country. When the polling is only 40 per cent, a person with just 21 per cent gets elected although the remaining 79 per cent may be against such an individual.

Such a skewed arithmetic of politics will undergo a transformation when mandatory voting is introduced.

Let me make it clear that compulsory voting does not mean you have to vote under any circumstances. There are several escape routes available if a person is genuinely not able to exercise his/her franchise, such as being away on work.

To say that mandatory voting violates personal freedom is not true because it does not force you to vote for a candidate.

You can also choose the "none of the above" option. Rules shall be framed about this.

What we are proposing is revolutionary for India. There is no harm in experimenting with it. It will strengthen our democratic process. Let's not forget that several democracies have followed this system for years.

— Jaynarayan Vyas is senior minister and Gujarat government spokesman

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

WHO KILLED BENAZIR?

BY MAHIR ALI

Given that the mandate of the United Nations (UN) commission of inquiry into the assassination of the former Prime Minister of Pakistan, Benazir Bhutto, did not extend to identifying the culprits, its value depends ultimately on the extent to which it brings us closer to that goal.

Although the shrill defensiveness of spokesmen for the former military ruler, Mr Pervez Musharraf, and the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) government's exuberance in expressing its sense of vindication suggest otherwise, the UN report does not in fact reveal much that wasn't already known.

The inadequacy of official as well as party-initiated security arrangements on that fateful day in December 2007 is hardly a revelation — although it's not hard to understand the PPP's stance that similar conclusions by a domestic inquiry would have been greeted with accusations of political motivation.

On the other hand, whereas the UN panel may have genuinely been shocked by the contrast between the level of security provided to pro-Musharraf ex-Prime Ministers Shaukat Aziz and Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, and that offered to Bhutto, such discrepancies are pretty much par for the course in Pakistan's political culture.

By December 2007, the tentative agreement between Musharraf and Bhutto had kind of crumbled, although they were both keeping their options open. The Pakistan Muslim League (PML) faction that ruled Punjab, meanwhile, had been bitterly opposed to that understanding anyway; it is not particularly surprising, then, that its administrative machinery stopped well short of offering Bhutto a cordon sanitaire in Rawalpindi.

It is arguably more curious why, in view of these circumstances, the PPP did not step up its own security arrangements, given that there was no dearth of death threats.

The UN panel makes allowance for the fact that the PPP is a political party rather than a security organisation and goes relatively easy on the lack of clarity that surrounded its arrangements. But its report does not help to resolve the mystery of why the bullet-proof black Mercedes that was supposed to serve as Bhutto's back-up transport disappeared in such a rush. Nor does it clarify whether Benazir emerged from her vehicle's escape hatch of her own accord, or was persuaded to do so.

On the other hand, while she may have escaped serious injury had she not exposed her head and shoulders, that hardly excuses the fact that a teenage assassin was able to get so close to her vehicle.

The plethora of outright lies and half-truths subsequently offered by the police is certainly suspicious but not necessarily self-incriminating. The UN panel attributes it in part to the police's reluctance to irritate Pakistan's all-powerful intelligence agencies, whose possible involvement in the assassination has inevitably been the subject of speculation.

It's hardly controversial to claim that there was a cover-up. The crucial question is, was it intuitive — that is to say, based on the unproven assumption of involvement by state actors from the murky depths of the military-intelligence networks — or the consequence of clear instructions from the powers-that-be?

The UN sheets home the blame for the refusal to permit an autopsy to city police officer Saud Aziz, who evidently turned down requests from doctors, rather than to the Pakistan President, Mr Asif Ali Zardari. The latter exculpation is one of the more dubious aspects of the report, though: Zardari could surely have requested an autopsy even after his estranged wife's body had been taken from the hospital to Chaklala airport. The absence of a post-mortem makes it impossible to tell whether there were any bullet wounds, for instance.

The report does note, however, that the Musharraf administration was much too hasty in announcing that a lever on the escape hatch accounted for Bhutto's fatal injury and that the suicide bombing was ordered by Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud. And then there's the fact that the assassination site was hosed down after only 23 pieces of forensic evidence had been collected, in circumstances that ought to have yielded thousands of clues.

The clean-up is reminiscent of the actions that followed the assassination of Murtaza Bhutto outside his Clifton home in Karachi a decade earlier — and in that particular case the city police's culpability is beyond reasonable doubt.

Although Fatima Bhutto's recently published memoir, Songs of Blood and Sword, is unfortunately peppered with inaccuracies about circumstances of which her knowledge is inevitably second-hand, there is plenty of poignancy in her recollections about her father and, in particular, the circumstances in which he was eliminated. Then, too, the police version of events was layered with lies.

Fatima's efforts in seeking to formulate the story of her father's life are commendable, but she apparently fails to realise that, in speaking to her, former friends, acquaintances and lovers of her father are unlikely to cough up the whole truth, not least because of the tragic circumstances in which he met his end. That makes it a flawed memoir, but it's nonetheless more readable than the ghostwritten PR publications of the woman she adored as Wadi Bua, but subsequently grew to detest.

Fatima castigates her grandfather for putting his sons in an invidious position by declaring that they would avenge his murder, perhaps not realising the extent to which Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was given to rhetorical flights of fancy. It's possible he would have avoided politics altogether had he any inkling that three of his four children would die prematurely by unnatural means on account of their paternity.

The Zardari government, meanwhile, has acted against some of those accused of obfuscation in the UN report, but it remains far from clear whether fresh investigations will meaningfully resolve the question of who killed Benazir Bhutto. There can be little question. However, that those who love to claim that democracy is the best revenge would acquire a lot more credibility if they could be bothered to introduce it into the party that thrives on laying claim to the Bhutto legacy.

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

DON'T YOU SEE GOD IN OTHERS?

BY FRANCIS GONSALVES

Who doesn't know the story of Adam and Eve? In the first account of creation in Genesis Chapter 1, God creates human beings in "God's image and likeness" (v.26). The second narrative in Chapter 2 is more fleshy and earthy. Like a potter, "God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being" (v.7).

Most folks don't have problems with the story so far. But those who misunderstand the literary genre of Genesis begin to sneer when it talks about the creation of woman: "God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man; then God took one of his ribs… And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman" (Gen. 2:21-22). In puerile man-versus-woman digs on who's greater, the bone of contention is, quite literally, that woman was moulded from man's rib-bone after him, thereby making her inferior. To this, women have retorted, "Surely, God was disappointed with his 'rough mould' Adam, and made Eve delightfully different!"

Basing man-woman superiority-inferiority on the Genesis creation myth is not only naïve exegesis, but it has dangerously led to the debasement of woman down the ages with Eve caricatured as temptress. So, dumping skewed scriptural interpretations, let's try to understand the two Biblical myths as originally intended.

By claiming that humankind is created in God's image and likeness, the Bible holds that God creates a being not identical with, but similar to, Godself. In the ancient Near East, the king was regarded an image of God, who re-presented God and reigned on God's behalf. Here, not only kings, but each and every wo/man is an image of God, created not only to procreate (like all other creatures) but to co-create. Unlike other creatures, only wo/man can speak and listen, reflect and respond. God gifts wo/man with response-ability to keep the cosmos happy, healthy, harmonious.

Created not to slavishly worship God but to function as care-taker of creation, while wo/man is the crown of creation, like all other creatures s/he too is moulded from mud. Like a caring nurse resuscitating a breathless patient, God "breathes into man's nostrils the breath of life" (2:7). This God-given "breath of life" is not air, in general, but the "I" of God reflected in every wo/man. Christianity refers to this as soul, a rough parallel in the Upanishadic tradition being atman. Indeed, we're all interconnected, not by someone "out there" whom I see, feel and know as object, but by the Ultimate Subject by which I see, feel and know.

Consequent to "divine rib surgery" although the man rises with one rib less, with the woman he truly becomes "more". From loner to lover, silent Adam bursts into song: "This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!" (2:23). Woman complements man, completes him; together, they image God.

Biblical apologists vainly label these creation accounts as historic and scientific in the modern sense of these terms, much as evolutionists err by dismissing them as distortions and deceit. While believers depend on revelation, and scientists on research, to reach conclusions about the Ultimate Source of Life, we can all — crossing the cruel confines of gender, caste, religion and race — celebrate our common earthiness, stop creating God in our image, and cooperate with God to mould everything and everyone in God's image. If only we'd look at everyone and everything with God's eyes and sing with Adam: "This is flesh of my flesh!" we'd create heaven on earth.

— Francis Gonsalves is the principal of the Vidyajyoti College of Theology, Delhi. He is involved in interfaith dialogue and peoples' initiatives for fostering justice, harmony and peace. He can be contacted at fragons@gmail.com [1]

 

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

DANTEWADA~II 
CAUGHT NAPPING AGAIN

CASUALTY figures are not the sole index of operational success, failure or gravity. Unfortunately many use that yardstick, so it is not surprising that in the absence of immediate reports of death or injury only marginal attention was accorded to the implications of the Maoists simultaneously striking at four or five CRPF camps in Dantewada district on Tuesday. Yes, in the same general area where they had gunned down 76 paramilitary/police personnel a fortnight ago. Most worrying are reports that once again the rebels struck when the men were resting. True this time around fire was promptly returned, but it would be safe to assume the CRPF were not adequately alert: else the movements of some 300-400 Maoists (that figure could be inflated, "losers" always say they were outnumbered) ought to have been detected, and neutralised. Has the massacre of 6 April taught the paramilitary virtually nothing? Are CRPF personnel so poorly-trained that they cannot exploit ground conditions to their advantage (the "jungle is neutral", a strategic expert had declared during the Burma campaign) and always surrender the initiative to the insurgents? Or is morale so shattered ~ by a combination of the 6 April reverse, pathetic casualty-evacuation systems and medical back-up, appalling living conditions, poor leadership, lack of coordination with the local police and divided political opinion on the "military option" ~ that the troopers lack the will to fight? An efficient force would have hit back strongly after the massacre rather than hunker down and allow pot-shots to be taken at its camps. A fresh evaluation of these harsh realities is critical to the continuance of the "offensive", every small strike further emboldens the rebels, enhances their sway over the local populace.

 A Maoist strike ought to have been anticipated. It was their way of "replying" to P Chidambaram's assertions in Parliament over the last few days: just as Dantewada-I was a counter to his projection that Naxalism would be eradicated in a couple of years. Lessons from the Punjab insurgency (with which the minister was well-acquainted) point to a vicious response to every governmental claim/promise of turning the tide. Maybe it is now necessary to set up a separate ministry of Naxal affairs to singularly focus on both counter-insurgency and socio-economic issues along the Red Corridor. The home minister has other things on his plate ~ getting involved in the mission to oust Lalit Modi for example!

 

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

UN INDICTMENT

DOUBLE WHAMMY FOR PAKISTAN

IT has been a double whammy for Pakistan, one almost coinciding with the other. The President has been reduced to a titular head, with Asif Ali Zardari himself inking the critical legislation that has severely curtailed the authority of the office. If that bitter paradox wasn't damning enough, the United Nations committee, in its report on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December 2007, has exposed the almost calculated failures of the Pervez Musharraf dispensation. There is no hedging in the UN's assertion that Zardari's wife and the leader of the Pakistan's People's Party could have been saved had she been provided with adequate security in Rawalpindi, the army headquarters. Not that suspicions of an ISI hand have been confirmed; but the subtext of the UN presentation makes it clear that the ruling military dispensation did little or nothing to protect her. It is upfront on the point that the police and security agencies (aka ISI?) conducted a half-baked investigation at best and ensured a cover-up at worst.

The two developments over the past week have denuded the credibility of the Pakistan government, a setback no less for the GHQ after the recent bonhomie of its brass with the State Department in Washington. And the plot merely thickens when the report makes the resounding observation that the calculated failure of the Pakistani authorities in December 2007 goes "beyond mere incompetence". Certain facts were generally known, but the chief value of the report is that it has drawn an inference that no government in Pakistan would have had the nerve to try. That the police hosed down the scene of crime "could not have happened without the knowledge of the higher authorities". It is fairly established that Rawalpindi's police chief had acted on the orders of a Major-General. The report is emphatic that "the failures of the police and other officials to react effectively to Ms Bhutto's assassination were, in most cases, deliberate". That failure was embedded in the "fear of the involvement of the intelligence agencies". More than two years later, the UN's perception somewhat confirms Benazir's fears that politicians and the Intelligence were plotting to kill her. It is not often that the world body so severely indicts the Intelligence establishment of a member-nation ~ it exists "to undermine democratic governance". The UN report is implicit that Pakistan is a failed state; it is improbable that it will ever undertake an earnest follow-through on the report. In the splinter nation of Bangladesh, Sheikh Hasina has at least brought her father's assassins to their nemesis.

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

SECOND TERM

RULING BODO PARTY WINS CONVINCINGLY

CONTRARY to predictions that Bodo Territorial Council executive chief Hagrama Mohilary's Bodo People's Front would face stiff opposition from the newly-formed United Democratic People's Front ~ an umbrella organisation of 50 indigenous groups ~ in the 9 April election, the ruling party has returned to power with a convincing majority. By winning 32 of the 40 seats, it improved on its previous tally of 26, Mohilary himself winning by a margin of 27,000 votes. Significantly, the BPF, a Congress ally, fought the election on its own in deference to the wishes of its supporters who opposed any seat-sharing arrangement as they were angry with the ally for not supporting their demand for a separate Bodoland. In 2005, the Congress did not field any candidate, but this time it contested 24 seats and won three. While the opposition Bodo People's Progressive Front led by Rabiram Narzary and the UDPF managed one each, the Asom Gana Parishad, which had one seat, drew a blank and the BJP again failed to find a toehold. This is somewhat curious, because it was LK Advani who, as Union home minister in 2001, had persuaded Mahilary, then chief of the militant Bodo Liberation Tigers, to come to the negotiating table, which ultimately led to the signing of the 2003 Bodo Accord and the formation of the BTC under the Sixth Schedule.

For Assam chief minister, Tarun Gogoi, the result is a happy augury that after the 2011 assembly elections too the partnership will continue as the two are to contest unitedly. Gogoi runs the government with the support of 11 BPF members, three of whom are ministers. No one can give short shrift to BPF because without its support no party can form a government. In Mahilary's first term the Bodo region witnessed large-scale violence ~ 300 were reportedly killed in fratricidal clashes. How he tackles this in view of the anti-talk National Democratic Front of Boroland's continued belligerency remains to be seen.

 

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

MAOISTS AND IPL

ALTOGETHER A DEADLY MIX

RAJINDER PURI

AFTER the Dantewada massacre the debate in Parliament on the Maoist threat was unusual. The speeches were entirely constructive. Yashwant Sinha of the BJP pointed out the dangers arising from politicians colluding with Maoists for electoral advantage. Sharad Yadav of the JD-U wanted the government to focus on corruption that allowed insurgency to flourish. Mulayam Singh Yadav of SP wanted the government to investigate the role of neighbouring nations in encouraging insurgency. Lalu Prasad of the RJD deplored the failure of state governments to tackle insurgency. Even Congress critics Digvijay Singh and Mani Shankar Aiyer, who outside Parliament had criticized the Home Minister's strategy for dealing with insurgents, displayed differences of nuance rather than of substance. Subsequently the minister papered over differences by clarifying that a strong law and order approach was not intended at the expense of development. It was unique to witness the Congress, the BJP and the CPI-M all on the same side for tackling the issue. Why did this happen?

It happened because the massacre of 76 CRPF personnel in a single ambush signaled the declaration of open war against the Indian State . Our politicians were jolted out of their complacency. They arose above petty partisan interests in defence of the nation. The impact of the jolt however was momentary. Very quickly the politicians have slipped back to their old ways. It looks once again like politics as usual. The politicians should reflect. Can they afford to lapse into their traditional style of functioning? If they had this delusion it should have been removed by the IPL crisis. Although the IPL crisis allegedly entails corruption it could prove to be very different from earlier scandals of corruption. The political impact of future revelations related to this crisis may far outweigh the damage wrought by previous scandals.

Sleaze affects cricket

FOR several decades this scribe was a consistent critic of political corruption and attempted to expose several scams. But things changed. His ardour to probe corruption cases cooled. The reasons for that were two-fold. First, despite convincing exposure, despite public perception that corruption had indeed occurred, invariably the scam was covered up and the guilty politicians escaped unscathed. Secondly, over time corruption became so widespread that to pursue individual cases seemed irrelevant. To target one case amidst scores of other cases not being probed appeared futile and unfair. Corruption had ceased to be an aberration. The very system of governance had become fully corrupt. Interest in details of individual cases waned. The spread of corruption deadened public sensitivity.

The IPL affair may change all that. The reason is that for the first time the sleaze is affecting not defence deals or thermal power contracts or other government transactions related to high politics and economy. The sleaze affects India's most popular activity ~ cricket. The corruption involves politicians, Bollywood stars and business ~ all the celebrity stars that hog television and print media space. Their shenanigans are tumbling out of the closet. And the circle of guilt may continue to expand. As in gangster wars politicians may destroy each other. Add to this the ostentatious lifestyle that attends IPL matches, with skimpily dressed imported cheer leaders, and with after-match party binges. This attracts public attention as did no earlier corruption scam. This scam is related to daily fare. Eventually the high lifestyle pervading IPL cricket will start to tell. It is reminiscent of the decadence in Nero's Rome. It focuses on the ruling elite as never before. And the large mass of unemployed youth with families groaning under unprecedented price rise may not be amused.
 Taken together the Maoist threat and the IPL corruption make a deadly mix. The corruption, the breakdown in governance, the terrorist threat, and the official complicity revealed will hasten a downward slide that could become irreversible. How can this decline be reversed? Only two possibilities suggest themselves. If the present political class is to reverse the trend it will have to act like it talks. It will have to take dramatic action that restores some credibility to its tattered image.

National government

FIRST, if a real war against terrorism, corruption and lack of governance is to be fought nothing less than the formation of a national government for the next four years would suffice. True, corrupt politicians are hardly credible warriors against corruption. But some device will have to be created by which secret amnesty for past corruption in exchange for half the assets of the guilty person surrendered to the state could be negotiated. Any failure to comply with the offer beyond a cut-off date would invite remorseless prosecution. Participation in the government would give a stake for success to all parties participating in the national government. To root out corruption, fight terrorism and ensure governance there would be more work than what all the MPs in Parliament could handle. Those in government would have to implement policies, those in the respective party organizations would have to monitor the implementation. Even the most optimistic forecast would give the chance of this actually happening less than five per cent.

The second possibility for the decline to be reversed would require a revolution. That does not in any way imply success for the Maoists. The orchestrated sympathy for the so-called Left insurgency by human rights activists and intellectuals pampered by the West becomes easily understood in the light of the tactical and moral support rendered to Maoists by the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (RIM) headquartered in Chicago . But that is a subject that can be considered at another time and on another occasion. Genuine revolution implies a paradigm shift in political culture and values. It would imply not the violation of law but its implementation. It would imply not the escalation of violence but its cessation. It would require a new class of activists quite different from those who dominate politics today. Before any such class can be organized to seize power democratically there would have to be an acknowledged collapse of the present system. And after the collapse there can be no guarantee whether the nation would experience revolution or disintegration. Prospects appear gloomy and uncertain. So how will politicians respond?

The writer is a veteran journalist and cartoonist

 

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

ASIANS MUST THINK FOR THEMSELVES

IF ASIA IS TO TAKE ITS RIGHTFUL PLACE IN THE WORLD AS AN EQUAL WITH THE WEST, THERE WILL HAVE TO BE MUCH MORE ORIGINAL ASIAN THINKING, NOT ABOUT PAROCHIAL ASIAN VALUES, BUT ABOUT VALUES AND PRACTICES THAT APPLY UNIVERSALLY, SAYS ANDREW SHENG

 

My Singaporean friend, Professor Kishore Mahbubani, wrote a provocative essay in 1998 called "Can Asians think?" I personally found the title rather offensive – of course we can think. But what he really meant was "can Asians think out of the Western intellectual box?" For most of us who are trained in or by the West, we used to think that our icons of best practice are the wonderful theories, science, technology and institutions that the West has brought to Asia.

But the current global crisis has shocked us to the core. That the best of the West, such as the Wall Street iconic firm of Goldman Sachs, could be charged by the SEC of fraud, is stunning to those who look to them for standards of professionalism, innovation, intellectual brilliance and moral integrity.When our teachers are no better than us, then we would really have to think for ourselves.

There are signs now that Asians are beginning to do so. In a new book by Michael Lim Mah-Hui and Lim Chin, "Nowhere to Hide: The Great Financial Crisis and Challenges for Asia", published by Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, the authors argue that the current global financial crisis should be examined from three different levels: theory and ideology; financial industry practices and structural imbalances in the international economy. Written from a multi-disciplinary point of view, the book examines the crisis not only from a review of how the Efficient Market Hypothesis took hold of Wall Street, but also transformed its business practices and flourished on the penchant for consumption and debt arising from the US balance of payments deficits. Michael Lim taught political science in the University of Malaya, then became a banker and worked at the Asian Development Bank. Lim Chin is a Professor of Economics at the NUS Business School, Singapore.

Just as Asians suffered from the hubris in the years of the Asian Miracle, so did the gods of Western economics and finance. Nobel Laureate economist Robert Lucas, in his address to the American Economic Association in 2003 proclaimed that "the central problem of depression-prevention has been solved for all practical purposes". Current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, lauded for his rescue of financial markets with "whatever it takes", stated in his famous 2004 speech on the Great Moderation (years of low volatility growth and low inflation) that "improved monetary policy … made an important contribution not only to the reduced volatility of inflation .. but to the reduced volatility of output as well".

Central bankers patting themselves on the back made no mention of the contribution to low inflation from the cheap goods and services provided largely from Asia. On the contrary, in his equally famous speech in 2005, he argued that the "significant increase in the global supply of saving - a global saving glut -… helps to explain both the increase in the US current account deficit and the relatively low level of long-term real interest rates in the world today".

I am always puzzled by the logic of this argument, because this is like a banker blaming his problems on his depositors because they save too much. The question is where did their high savings come from? The answer is because the depositors earn their income from the high-spending banker.

And why is the banker spending so much? Because the long-term real interest rates are too low! If you listen to Alan Greenspan, in his April 2010 FCIC testimonial defence of low interest rate policies, "by 2002 and 2003 it had become apparent that, as a consequence of global arbitrage, individual country long-term interest rates were, in effect, delinked from their historical tie to central bank overnight rates". In other words, central banks have little impact on low long-term interest rates and, therefore, by extension of this logic, no one is responsible for the asset bubbles.

This is exactly the theoretical failure and dilemma of Western policy making pointed out by Lim and Lim. Californian physicist Frithof Capra had already identified in 1983 that the segmentation and fragmentation of academic disciplines and government bureaucracy meant that no one is responsible or accountable for the state of world affairs. It's easier to blame it on the others, meaning other departments and other countries.
If Western intellectual thought and policy formulation appears to be incomplete or flawed, what are the challenges for Asia? Lim and Lim asked the right questions, but did not answer them fully in their book. You can actually find several answers in the foreword for the book by former Reserve Bank of India Governor Venu Reddy. Dr. Reddy was vilified by the investment bankers for not willing to open up India's financial system fast enough during his tenure, but after the crisis, it was clear that his steadfast and prudent approach shielded the country from the worst shocks from financial shenanigans and large capital flows.

Dr Reddy argued that post-crisis, growth in Asia will remain strong. Commensurate with the growing workforce will be the major challenge in education and upgrading of skills. He foresees that Asia can become a global financial hub because of its large pool of capital human skills, but a major challenge will be leadership in thought and innovation. Providing the environment for that leadership will require good governance. He sees growing intra-regional cooperation but realistically warns that major shifts in economic power in the world take place over a long period and may not be smooth. Wise words indeed.

If Asia is to take its rightful place in the world as equals with the West, there will have to be much more original Asian thinking, not about parochial Asian values, but about values and practices that apply universally. I recommend this book by Lim and Lim as one of the beacons in that direction.

The writer is author of the book "From Asian to Global Financial Crisis". He is also Adjunct Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing and University of Malaya and was formerly Chairman of the
Securities and Futures Commission, Hong Kong

 

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

THE HOSTESS BITES BACK

IT'S MEANT TO BE A DREAM JOB BUT JAPAN'S MODERN GEISHAS HAVE HAD ENOUGH, SAYS DAVID MCNEILL AND CHIE MATSUMOTO

 

Even in in an area of Tokyo famous for its night-time colour and licentious thrills, it was a sight that turned thousands of heads: attractive women in cocktail dresses punching the air and shouting slogans."Pay us what we deserve!" and "stop harassment!" screamed the women – some in masks – as they marched unsteadily on high heels through Kabukicho, Japan's largest red-light district, last month. The protesters were almost outnumbered by the curious press pack, which came to ogle a group of workers not previously known for their militancy – nightclub hostesses.

Pouring drinks, looking sexy and laughing at the bad jokes of well-off men; to most Japanese, hostess work doesn't sound terribly hard. And, at about 4,000-yen (£28.25) per hour, it's increasingly coveted by young women keen to avoid office drudgery for a third of that amount. "Most women in this industry can't even earn enough to make a living", says Yu Negoro, who has worked on and off as a hostess for a decade since her early twenties. Like other young hopefuls, she dreamed of easy money when she first donned an evening dress at a club in the glitzy Ginza district. But in her early thirties she made just 1,800 yen (£12.70) an hour as hidden costs imposed by her employer ate into her pay.

"I was making the same amount of money as assembly line workers at auto factories", she said. Boozing, long hours and the threat of violence took their toll and she quit.

An updated cousin of Japan's centuries-old geisha tradition, hostessing has been regularly put in magazine surveys in the top 10 most sought-after occupations in Japan, after movie actresses and TV "talent". Securing a premier-league post in a Ginza club, where politicians, lawyers and organised crime bosses come to relax, seemed to be a prize worth suffering for.

Hostesses were considered a different breed from prostitutes, with class and enough education to discuss politics and the economy with the elite. The best had careers and reputations akin to TV celebrities.But recession has boosted the number of recruits and stoked competition in the "water trade", as night-time entertainment businesses are euphemistically called – probably a reference to pre-modern bathhouses offering sexual services.

The pressure is mounting as newcomers get younger, with many starting in their teens. Some even come to job interviews with their mothers, says another hostess, Rin Sakurai.

Activists say employers impose fines for showing up late, taking sick days, applying make-up badly and a host of other "offences". Such treatment is illegal but rarely taken seriously by the authorities. Some women end up owing their employers money. Those who do complain can face violent reprisals, says Ms Sakurai, 26, with the steely gaze of a veteran negotiator.

"It's a seamy business", she says. Yakuza gangsters run much of the trade and news of a "troublemaker" quickly spreads. "The woman can never work in the same district again", she adds.

Ms Sakurai took her problems with the profession one step further. She quit a job where she says she was cheated out of wages and repeatedly sexually harassed by her boss, and joined a labour union. Then she began recruiting others.
For a week after she announced her membership to her former bosses, she was nervous enough to keep looking over her shoulder. "I'm still scared of going home alone from work", she says. Today, she is president of the 30-strong Japan Cabaret Club Union. "An increasing number of younger women think they can earn a good living in this business without even trying", says Ms Sakurai. "They come for a job interview because they want to be able to buy lots of brand-name goods. But the idea that this is easy is a complete myth".
The young apprentices are paid to attract men into high-end bars and cabaret clubs and to encourage them to drink alcohol. For every drink ordered, the women get a commission, and competition is intense.Repeat customers are prized, so most hostesses spend much of their private time sending alluring e-mail messages and making phone calls to regular clients. Some businesses demand that mobile phones be left at their pillow side just in case clients call in the middle of the night.

The hint of sexual frisson is never far from the surface although the job does not involve selling sex, a balancing act many women find difficult to maintain. Ms Sakurai, who constantly had to swat away the unwanted attention of clients and bosses, finally quit after being harassed by a manager. She joined the business at 18, out of curiosity, and worked in nightclubs in Kabukicho and the entertainment district of Roppongi, where she was ranked among the top three hostesses at her club. She was quickly struck by the gulf between the slick media portrayals of her profession and the grimy reality on the ground.

The illusions hamper the mission of the union, which wants Japan's Labour Standards Bureau to take the perils of hostess work more seriously. Eventually, it hopes that the profession will be treated like any other, with the same rules and standards. The Independent

 

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

SEASON OF JOY

PARAMANANDA PAL

The cuckoo was cooing almost to the point of becoming hoarse quite early in the morning. I was awakened by this harbinger of spring outside the window, The darkness had still not been dispelled.

Last evening when I was watching from the fourth floor balcony the big banyan tree adjacent to our building, I had observed that it had shaken off most of the old leaves. It took hardly a week for the big tree to become covered with new leaves, as if it was putting on a new apparel of light green. The crows and other birds nesting in the branches and the squirrels sighed in relief.

The spring appears to be a season of joy for birds. The parrots chirping loudly resume their evening flights encircling the treetops. Occasionally pairs of black Moyna with red patches in their tails are seen hiding behind the leaves. During the day, the kingfisher with its coloured feathers makes a temporary stopover on a branch under the shadow of fresh leaves. Startling everybody with its shrill, the fork-tailed Titir suddenly flies past the trees.
Our residential area in Kolkata abounds in old trees, some of which appear ageless. With plentiful greenery around, the climatic conditions here are better than in other parts of the city. In the neighbourhood, two or three Palash trees stand proudly with long red flowers that attract small birds. Despite the breeze causing the branches to tremble, the birds are not bothered but sway with the flowers continuing to suck the nectar by lowering their long beaks into the flowers.

The Gulmohur trees, popularly known as Krishnachura and Radhachura, also sway in the wind. Their flower buds have started appearing but will bloom only after the Palash flowers fade away.

The spring appears to be the season for the trees to come out with new green apparel - a riot of green interspersed with red Palash flowers. The occasional flowering into magenta or light red and white of the Bougainvillea looks as if it has been painted carefully.

But when the spring set in, can summer be far behind? As the flower buds of the Gulmohur trees bloom in red, yellow and violet and the cuckoos look for opportunities to lay eggs in the unguarded nests of the crows, the breeze gets warm heralding the onslaught of summer.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

INFLATION WORRY

 

The Reserve Bank of India's annual monetary policy announced on Tuesday was not as aggressive as most expected, but in his policy statement, the RBI governor, Duvvuri Subbarao, underlined a big worry: inflation. As part of the continuing calibrated rollback of the economic stimulus that was introduced to help the economy weather the effects of the global economic crisis prevailing through much of 2008 and 2009, the RBI raised its repo and reverse repo rates — the rates at which banks borrow from and lend to the central bank — by a quarter of a percentage point, or 25 basis points. The RBI also increased the cash reserve ratio — a reserve requirement — by 25 bps, reducing the amount of liquidity within the banking system. Both these measures — increasing policy rates and tightening liquidity — were aimed at addressing the pervasive and high inflation that consumers have been experiencing for months now, mostly in runaway food prices. Strictly speaking, monetary policy tends to use the wholesale price index or producer prices as an indicator in monetary policy making, but as the governor had pointed out in his January review, food price-led inflation (which is supply-side led) was becoming more generalized; rising incomes, capacity shortages and a liquidity overflow were driving up the demand side inflation too, which is the RBI's area of responsibility. Technicalities aside, the RBI is the watchdog of inflation in public perception.

 

The policy statement outlined three concerns about the risks of high inflation: higher incomes could push up demand, higher oil prices could fuel inflationary pressures, and better economic performance could bring in higher capital flows (and thus more liquidity).The policy measures — in response to these concerns in the main — were met with both relief and worry, though in different quarters. As the governor pointed out, policy rates are still negative in real terms (or adjusted for inflation). So until real policy interest rates become neutral, there is wiggle room. A more aggressive policy stance — reflected in higher policy rate or CRR increases — would have almost certainly raised interest rates and forced many companies to rethink their investment plans, and perhaps dented the pace of economic recovery.

 

On the flip side, it could have sent out a strong signal regarding the central bank's commitment to price stability. But the slightly softer approach is in line with the consistency of the policy thinking of the RBI governor: in other words, keeping the tightening calibrated, while also giving the central bank enough room to manoeuvre by raising rates quickly, should circumstances warrant it. So the tone of the policy statement is a little more concerned than that from other quarters of the government when it comes to inflation risks.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

PARTY TIME

 

Mukul Sangma could not have asked for a better birthday gift. He was sworn in as Meghalaya's chief minister on his birthday. But the circumstances which led to the fall of his predecessor, D.D. Lapang, do not make it a happy beginning for Mr Sangma. Dissidence within the ruling party or coalition is common in the Northeast. Unstable coalitions make the tenures of chief ministers far more uncertain than elsewhere in the country. But Meghalaya seems to have become the worst example of political instability. When Mr Sangma took over from Mr Lapang, whose term lasted less than a year, he became the 22nd chief minister of the state. As in the latest case, the changes of guard rarely had anything to do with policy or issues of governance. It is routine for elected representatives to change their loyalty from one leader to another or from one party to another. The result is that leaders are more concerned with keeping their flock intact than with governing the state.

 

All this has taken its toll on the development agenda for the state. Unlike several other states in the region, Meghalaya is free from any major ethnic insurgency and the violence that goes with it. There have been smaller insurgent groups, but their impact has been limited. Yet the state's leaders have failed to capitalize on peace and use it to pursue development goals. Mr Sangma now has an opportunity to do this, especially in areas such as tourism and hydel power generation. The state's high literacy level also makes it eminently suitable for investments in new technologies. Mr Sangma's promise of involving the youth in development raises hopes of a new approach. But there have been others before him who sought to use the youth, not for development, but to build a support base for themselves. What Mr Sangma can do depends, though, on how long his present supporters in the party keep him in his job.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

 

 

VIABLE UNIVERSITIES

SET CONFLICTING GOALS, CENTRES OF HIGHER LEARNING CANNOT PROSPER

ANDRÉ BÉTEILLE

 

The universities cannot continue to be viable if they are set contradictory objectives. In the typical case, the Indian university is expected to produce hundreds of thousands of graduates every year, and these numbers keep rising. But it is also expected to maintain and even advance standards of teaching and research in all significant branches of learning. Those who advise the government know that these two objectives cannot be met simultaneously by the same institution or the same kind of institution, but their desire to be of service to the nation leads them to hope that they will somehow be able to square the circle.

 

In most cases, an institution finds it hard to free itself from its own history. The first universities that came into being in 1857 in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras were set up primarily for conducting examinations and awarding degrees, and not for undertaking research or even teaching. Research was done in institutions outside the universities, such as the Asiatic Society or the Indian Association for the Cultivation of Science, and teaching was done mainly in the colleges. At their foundation, our universities were not designed to be communities of scientists and scholars and they knew little of the unity of teaching and research, unlike the great universities that were being created or revived in the Western countries throughout the 19th century.

 

It will be folly to believe that the British who set up the first universities in India intended them to be communities of scientists and scholars of the kind that had grown over a long period of time in the West. Few among them believed that universities such as those at Cambridge and Oxford could grow in the Indian environment. They intended the Indian universities to serve the more limited purpose of producing graduates for employment in the new occupations that came up in the wake of colonial rule.

 

Yet it would be wrong to say that the universities and colleges brought nothing new into the life of the nation. They were among the first open and secular institutions, and their graduates were the ones who took the lead in creating and sustaining the institutions of a new kind of civil society. They also played an important part in the transmission, if not the creation, of modern knowledge with its distinctive ideas, beliefs and values. Moreover, by the beginning of the 20th century, some islands of excellence had emerged at Calcutta, Allahabad and a few other universities where scientists and scholars of outstanding ability were making significant contributions to knowledge. But under colonial rule, the universities did mainly what they were set up to do, that is, produce increasing numbers of graduates of indifferent quality.

 

The coming of Independence brought about a change in the horizon of possibilities. The colonial administration was at best half-hearted in its support of the universities. The academic profession in the country expected much more from the leaders of independent India than from their colonial predecessors. At first things seemed to augur well for the universities. The first prime minister of independent India, Jawaharlal Nehru, placed a high value on science and scholarship and took a personal interest in the universities. He himself had never studied in an Indian university but had been a student at Cambridge, one of the great universities of the world.

 

The government wasted no time in setting up a University Education Commission in 1948. It was headed by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, who had been a professor at both Calcutta and Oxford. A more broad-based Education Commission, designed to cover all levels of education, was set up less than 20 years later under D.S. Kothari, then a professor of physics in Delhi, who had earlier studied under R.G. Fowler at Cambridge.

 

Those who provided the leadership for the development of the universities in the early years of Independence were persons of wide experience and outstanding ability. They were untiring in their efforts to build institutions that would compare with the best in the world. But in the end, their efforts did not bear the fruits that they had hoped for. Despite the best efforts of the leaders of the community of scientists and scholars, the universities have failed to free themselves from their older legacy of having to produce more and more graduates.

 

With increasing financial and other support from the government, the universities began to expand in number as well as size. There are now many more universities than there were at the time of Independence, and they are, on an average, much larger in size. Thirty years after Independence it was becoming increasingly clear that the expansion of higher education was being driven more by social and political pressures than by pressures of the advancement of knowledge. The social and political pressures for the admission of more students and the production of more graduates began to undermine the very ideals of the university that inspired the leaders of the academic profession at the time of Independence.

 

The mass universities that have come to dominate the Indian scene are very different from the universities that Radhakrishnan, Kothari, V.K.R.V. Rao and others had known in the West and had hoped to build in India after Independence. The traditional type of university now accommodates many more faculties and departments than universities anywhere in the world did until World War II. What we must ask today is whether the universities can fruitfully combine teaching and research if they have to accommodate all recognized branches of study from physics to philosophy while including film studies, gender studies, peace studies and an ever-growing array of new subjects that seek accommodation within each one of them.

 

Perhaps the all-purpose university of the 19th and early 20th centuries has outlived its utility in the 21st century. If the university is to be viable as a centre of advanced study and research, it may have to limit the ambition that it earlier had of covering all branches of existing knowledge. At the same time, a university will scarcely deserve to be called one if it confines itself to a single subject. There is really no good reason to swing from the extremes of inclusion to the extremes of exclusion. A university can serve as an effective institution of teaching and research if it limits itself to a cluster of related subjects, and restrains its ambition for indefinite expansion.

 

It appears to me that we can still create universities that will be communities of learning, combining teaching and research, provided they are able to limit their scale and scope. Such universities will of course have to conduct examinations and award degrees, but the conduct of examinations and the awarding of degrees need not become their sole or even their main concern as inevitably happens in the mass universities.

 

The author is Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Delhi School of Economics, and National Research Professor

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

DYING FLAME

SUMANTA SEN

 

Forty-three years ago, Naxalbari had come to be seen as the spark that would set the Indian prairie on fire. Not only did that not happen, but when Kanu Sanyal put an end to his life last month, he saw around him not a trace of the uprising that his then mentor, Charu Mazumdar, had organized, with Jangal Santhal, Sourin Bose and others in the forefront. Even today's Maoists are not to be found in the area — which, of course, might have brought some comfort to Sanyal, as he had denounced them repeatedly and openly. But, obviously, any such comfort could take nothing away from the great sense of frustration of the man who was known to all as one whose honesty and integrity of purpose could never be questioned.

 

Twenty years before Naxalbari, Telangana had occurred. The peasant uprising there was much better organized, with leaders like Puchalapalli Sundaryya, Manikini Basavpunniah and Rajeswara Rao in command. Unlike in Naxalbari, in Telangana, the squads fought with arms. Yet Telangana also died, and now the region is once again featuring in the news in an entirely different context. The agitation could have dragged on had not Josef Stalin told a delegation from the undivided Communist Party of India that it was not a 'national liberation struggle' but a 'bourgeois agitation' that was being carried out in Telangana. Stalin's words caused such a shock to the party leadership that Sundarayya and others were often rebuked for taking their own time in withdrawing the agitation.

 

The pragmatism of Stalin was not there when Naxalbari took place. Instead, it was hailed by the Chinese communists who had their spokesmen in the Communist Party of India (Marxist) — in his autobiography, Sundarayya recalls how Beijing tried through them to give the new party a pro-China tilt.

 

Too late

 

The Chinese could not have failed to see that an uprising in a remote corner of Darjeeling district did not have much of a future. Even then, Beijing Radio kept on with its encouragement, which, perhaps, it had to do since the Communist Party of China was eager to emerge as the 'centre of world revolution'. Thus Mao, unlike Stalin, did not have any wise counsel for Naxalbari leaders when he gave them an audience in Beijing. If the Chinese had not been so preoccupied with their own interests, then the disastrous consequences of Naxalbari — the senseless killings of individuals seen as class enemies and the State reprisal that took the lives of so many young men and women — could perhaps have been avoided.

 

Both Naxalbari and Telangana highlight the problem that communists in this country have always faced, namely the problem of how to go about their task in an essentially agrarian economy. Always seeing the industrial working class as their vanguard, they were never sure of the ways of progressing in the countryside. Matters were not helped by the guidance from the Communist Party of Great Britain, which at best, had only an academic idea of the Indian reality.

 

Communists who came from the villages thus led isolated movements in their own backyard, with the party never being able to think of an integrated peasant movement. The communists have even lagged behind in battling social issues like casteism, and now there is a pathetic attempt at trying to equate class with caste. That, of course, helps to some extent at election time. But even for electoral success, the communists must live among the peasants.

 

Sanyal had understood this at the end of his seven-year jail term but, by then, it was too late. Prakash Karat believes that the party should come close to the peasants by organizing a huge rally against Mayavati. In their own way, the Maoists are equally mindless. Did Sanyal have such thoughts when he put the noose round his neck?

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

RIGHTEOUS AMONG THE NATIONS

IF ISRAEL WERE TO HONOUR AN ARAB WHO SAVED JEWS FROM THE NAZIS, WOULD IT MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE TO THE MIDDLE EAST CRISIS? ASKS SOMAK GHOSHAL

 

In 1942, during the German occupation of Tunisia, a 31-year-old landowner, Khaled Abdul-Wahab, risked his life to save 24 people of two Jewish families from the Nazis. Of the 100,000 Jews who lived in Tunisia at that time, 5,000 were sent to the labour camps, where at least 46 died. Abdul-Wahab, who died in 1997, is now hailed as the 'Arab Schindler' after the German industrialist, Oskar Schindler, saviour of Jews in occupied Poland, whose life is the subject of Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List. Abdul-Wahab has become the focus of a campaign to have the title of "righteous among the nations" conferred on him. This is a special honour reserved by Israel for gentiles who had helped rescue Jews from the Nazis. Of the 20,000 names that have been so far accepted by Yad Vashem, the body that selects candidates for this honour, more than 60 are Muslims, mostly Albanians and Bosnians. Abdul-Wahab is the first Arab who has been recommended for this list by the Jewish historian, Robert Satloff.

 

The case Satloff makes for Abdul-Wahab's inclusion is unimpeachable. It is not only fortified by the testimony of Anny Boukris, whose family was saved by Abdul-Wahab, but also by Satloff's conviction that such a move would help both Arabs and Israelis overcome a familiar blind spot. Satloff argues that by honouring Abdul-Wahab, Israel would be able to lessen the virulent anti-Semitism of the Arab world. The Arabs would realize that "they were willing to help their Jewish neighbours" in the past, an understanding that would go on to foster a new attitude among the Jews as well.

 

Since violence between Israel and Palestine spirals out of control at the drop of a hat, such a domino effect of good sense is unlikely to spread across the Middle East if Abdul-Wahab finally finds a place in the pantheon of Holocaust heroes. There may be sound ethical logic in honouring Abdul-Wahab, but the prevailing anarchy in the Middle East is likely to keep such a gesture firmly locked within the realm of liberal fantasy. Even more crucially for Israel, honouring an Arab would amount to conceding moral ground to Palestine and, by extension, a very different kind of territorial ground as well: after all, any resolution of the conflict between Israel and Palestine hinges significantly on ethical and historical claims on land.

 

Israel's decision to acknowledge Abdul-Wahab would also deal a blow to the ultra-orthodox Zionist project that has guided it since the devastating Six-Day War of 1967. Israel has not only sought to define itself in terms of the historical injustice suffered by the Jews but has also tried to perpetuate its victimhood to justify the systematic disempowerment of the Arab majority in Palestine. Having put the Arab world under a convenient blanket of anti-Semitism, Israel passed the Nakba bill — criminalizing the commemoration of the Palestinian catastrophe of 1948 — in its first Knesset reading. This was Israel's way of upholding Jewish suffering as being more valid and authentic than Palestinian misery, thereby making its atrocities on the latter defensible. It set off a trend of competitive victimhood with Palestine that would become central to Israel's self-definition, its raison d'être.

 

The narrative of Jewish suffering — first in Europe, then in Palestine — is profoundly inscribed into the fabric of the Israeli State. This history is so deeply embedded in the body politic of Israel as to scarcely allow any alternative version to complicate the question of justice. Yet justice has no basis without a notion of truth, however disturbing it may be, and Israel is far from ready to face the ground realities. There is steady encroachment of land in East Jerusalem as Israel continues to build settlements defying an agreement with the United States of America. A draconian order to prevent 'infiltration' has been recently amended from its original 1969 version to allow the military to deport anyone they please from occupied West Bank. So the number of homeless Palestinians goes up every day, thanks to a devious law that abets a virtual genocide.

 

Although the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, did apologize to the US president, Barack Obama, for announcing plans to extend housing projects on the eve of Joe Biden's visit, the apology is more an acknowledgment of Israel's strategic blunder than a genuine expression of regret. But in spite of Biden's magnanimous affirmation of friendship with Israel, after all it had done to humiliate him, Obama has refused to soften his position, being justifiably irked by the impasse in the Middle East.

 

Into his second year in office, Obama is yet to extract any information from Iran regarding its supposed nuclear programme. Israel and Palestine are heading towards an untenable two-state solution, with no hope of ever approaching any understanding on land sharing. Although the US was so far reluctant to act as a mediator, Obama is unwilling to brook any further delay in the Middle East. The US's prolonged dilly-dallying in the Israel-Palestine conflict has already cost it billions of dollars apart from eroding its credibility with the Islamic world. Obama is perhaps the first US president to have made a causal link between stability in the Middle East and security at home. Tied to both these parameters is the safety of US soldiers fighting the war on terror.

 

Having armed Israel with state-of-the-art weapons to counter the homemade artillery of the Hamas, the US is caught in a limbo over its allegiance to Israel and imperative to secure the lives of its troops. So exceptional times have brought forth an exceptional outburst from President Obama. With Israel apparently shaken, this could be the ideal opportunity to step up pressure on it to recognize Abdul-Wahab's contribution. It is improbable that the ultra-right coalition, led by Netanyahu's Likud Party, would ever succumb to it. But then, Israel is full of surprises, and politicians there do go a long way to stay in power. The former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, was once described as "a post-ideological leader", after his ostensibly centre-left Kadima Party revealed a chameleon-like capacity to change colours.

 

If push comes to shove, Israel may just accept Abdul-Wahab into its hall of fame. But such a move, if it transpires, would give little basis for hope. For Israel, which has failed every test of sincerity with its unrelenting assault on Palestine, a symbolic gesture has no effect on the world of realpolitik. A defeat in an ethical battle of wills is easy to concede so long as the real war out there remains firmly under control.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

THE MANY WINDING WAYS TO CLOSURE

FORGIVE AND FORGET

 

Can people be recompensed by an apology from a once-hostile nation?

 

Saying sorry can be a great leveller at times. The need to apologize is essentially a personal one, and indicates a feeling of some sort of remorse on the part of one who wishes to apologize. But how do the dynamics of the relationship between the one who apologizes and the one who receives the apology change when a head of State is expected to ask forgiveness of the people of another State on behalf of his government?

 

The crime for which the apology is extended may or may not have been committed during the tenure of the present leader. This was precisely the case when the prime minister of Russia, Vladimir Putin, was asked, in 2010, to apologize to the Poles for the Katyn forest killings that took place in 1940. Although Putin expressed deep anguish for the victims of the massacre and their families, he stopped short of offering an official apology.

 

An apology is considered a valid tool for resolving a crisis and bringing amicability in the relations between nations, according to international law. The United Nations' International Law Commission's Draft Articles of 2001 on Responsibility of States for Internationally Wrongful Acts are categorical about the occasions when a formal apology from a head of State is desirable. Article 37 of the Draft Articles states that a nation, which has breached international protocol and caused harm to another country, must provide "satisfaction" to the latter regarding its regret. This satisfaction could be in form of a statement of apology. The question of issuing an apology does not arise if the loss of the injured nation can be monetarily compensated for. Or unless the erring nation is unable to restore to the aggrieved nation the conditions that existed before the wrong was committed. Only then is an apology called for.

 

But the law is ludicrously silent when it comes to the role and the reaction of the so-called injured nation. It is taken for granted that if the people of this country are apologized to (as a last resort on part of the law-breaking State), order will be restored. The possibility of an apology being rejected is not considered, or even conceived of. It also means, effectively, that the offending nation can wash its hands of obligations towards the people of an injured nation once the former has apologized for its 'mistakes'.

 

It is vital to note that States usually issue apologies to people. Alison Dundes Renteln, in "Apologies: A Cross-Cultural Analysis", makes a comparison between Japan and America to show how the act of apologizing is culture-specific. For the Japanese, begging forgiveness is part of their behavioural code, and as such, it is expected of anyone who is considered to have given any offence, however slight. But for the Americans, it implies owning responsibility for an act that they, more often than not, wish to shrug off. This is why American lawyers usually advise their clients to refrain from saying sorry when involved, say, in a car accident, as it can be considered an admission of guilt.

 

State apologies remain not only impersonal, but also obliterate the memories of the millions of individual hurts that the people of the injured nation have suffered. In an attempt to seek closure for some heinous crime, the international law expects the aggrieved not only to gracefully forgive, but also to forget.

 

INSIYA POONAWALA

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******************************************************************************************DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

REASON TO REJOICE

"WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAMME IS A MUST."

 

Public confidence in India's criminal justice system has received a boost with justice finally being done in the Jessica Lal murder case. The supreme court has reaffirmed the life imprisonment verdict handed out to Manu Sharma by the Delhi high court. The road to justice in the case has been long and tortuous. This, despite the fact that it was an open and shut case. The victim was shot dead by Sharma in full view of scores of witnesses. One would have thought then that the conviction would follow soon. But this was not to be with Sharma, the son of a politician and a former Union minister, using his money, muscle power and political clout to tamper with evidence and intimidate witnesses. Every trick in the book was used to squash the case. A trial court acquitted him, triggering public outrage. But perseverance in the path of justice by Jessica's friends and family backed by civil society defeated Sharma's plan as they appealed to the Delhi high court, which found him guilty and awarded him life imprisonment. Sharma then appealed to the supreme court. His brazen violation of parole norms a few months ago drew attention to his continuing clout, raising concern over whether he would be able to apply pressure to swing the supreme court verdict in his favour. Monday's verdict indicates that the county's apex court has stood firm in upholding the cause of justice.

The supreme court ruling provides closure on a murder done 11 years ago. But some of the issues the case triggered remain alive. The case underscored the fact that the cause of justice cannot be enhanced simply by having a powerful judiciary. It drew attention to the need to put in place a witness protection programme so that witnesses can come forward and bear testimony without fear. Little has been done in the years since to put in place such a scheme. While the supreme court has on occasion intervened — as in the Gujarat riots cases, for instance, to enable witnesses to testify without fear, what the country needs is more than ad-hoc help.

For millions in this country who have believed that battles with the rich and powerful almost always go in favour of the latter, the verdict is reason for celebration. It is a reminder that the small man or woman can still hope to win if s/he pursues justice through the courts.

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

STEADY APPROACH

 "RBI HOPES TO FIGHT INFLATION WITHOUT HARM-ING GROWTH."

 

The Reserve Bank of India's (RBI) decision to raise the repo rate, reverse repo rate and the cash reserve ratio (CRR) by 25 basis points can be termed as the apex bank's slow, but steady approach to tackle the problem of inflation. In fact, many in the banking circles were expecting the RBI to take stronger measures considering the rapid increase in inflation rates. But the RBI's twin moves — make money dearer and mop up liquidity (about Rs 12,500 crore will be sucked in by way of increased CRR) — is a clear signal that it will continue to pursue the anti-inflationary policy in a calibrated way. The fact that RBI Governor D Subbarao has not ruled out increases in CRR and in key rates in the future is a clear pointer that more monetary tightening will happen if the situation demands.

RBI's steady approach is certainly the right policy prescription for the moment as it is aimed at maintaining a balance between price rise and growth. While containing inflation is important, the cost of money must not be pushed up so much that the industry and the business start to groan. Banks are already complaining that although the economic growth is expected to be higher, the credit off take in the first four months of 2010 has not improved much. Of course the slackness in the credit market and ample liquidity in the system are making things a bit easy for the borrowers.

Besides, there is no guarantee that RBI's actions will have the desired effect in curbing the price rise which depends on many factors beyond the central bank's control. Wholesale rate of inflation is 'artificially suppressed' in India because the government does not allow the prices of petroleum products and fertilisers to be revised in line with the increase in international prices. Curbing liquidity may not help much because the primary reason behind price rise is the shortage of food stuff. As the supplies of vegetables, fruits, pulses, cereals, edible oil, sugar — major contributors to food inflation — are far lower than demand, their prices will continue to remain high. Economic recovery has also made India a hot destination for foreign funds looking for higher return from here compared to near zero return in developed economies. This is also increasing money supply and putting pressure on prices. Clearly, tackling inflation effectively needs long term planning.

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

MANAGING WITH 'GURUS'

A TRUE MANAGEMENT GURU HAS THE TIME, THE TRAINING AND THE INTELLECTUAL ABILITY TO MAKE SENSE OUT A WIDE VARIETY OF EXPERIENCES.

BY ALOK RAY

Many economists — especially economic theorists — are not particularly enamoured of the so-called 'management gurus.' To them, many of the 'insights' propagated by the gurus are nothing but common sense nicely packaged in jargons or catchy phrases.

In order to generalise and sell their ideas, they oversimplify the complexities and pick and choose only those cases/experiences which support their 'insights,' while sweeping under the carpet any contrary evidence.

Practical business people — who are otherwise very good in doing things but are not that good in conceptualising ideas or experiences — love to speak in jargons to sound 'professional' and appear in sync with the ongoing fashions in management theories. Hearing management gurus (specially the most expensive ones) is a short cut to achieve their objective.

I, for one, strongly differ from some of my economist friends on this issue. Here, I would take the example of Professor C K Prahalad (CKP). Here was a man with impeccable academic credentials — an MBA from IIM-A, a PhD from Harvard Business School and a distinguished chair professor in business strategy at the University of Michigan Business School — in addition to authoring several best-selling and highly regarded books in the field of business strategy.

Among the many ideas associated with his name the two best known and the most popular are 'core competence', and 'wealth at the bottom of the pyramid'.

Practical business people are often faced with a dilemma. For example, whether to go for diversification in a number of areas or consolidation of business in its established area of strength ('core competence'). There are pros and cons either way. The company boss sees only a very small part of the reality through his business interactions.

On his own, he does not have the time or the ability to see the broader picture and the emerging trends in different parts of the world. At best, he has some hunches born out of his own (limited) experiences with the external world. But he is not sure to what extent his feelings are supported or validated by experiences of a lot of other people.

Here comes the role of a true management guru. He has the time, the training and the intellectual ability to make sense out a wide variety of diverse experiences and to move from particulars to the general. He can support his insights with data and experiences drawn from many sources. Being a consultant to many organisations is an added strength. He has access to inside information on the inner working (both successes and failures) of many organisations which individual firms are not aware of.

Higher chances of success

For instance, he has studied cases of companies going for diversification and others going for consolidation in the area of core competence. Even when he finds that firms following the core competence strategy has a greater chance of success than others, he has to understand the reasons and the mechanisms why a particular strategy works or not.

He thus transcends isolated experiences and comes up with a more general theory complete with the conditions (and how they interact) for success or failure. That makes him a 'guru' — not just a consultant.

Take another example. Inclusive growth has become the new buzzword in development economics. The idea that the demand constraint on the overall growth rate of an economy can be removed by making use of the huge latent market among the poor people has long been established by economists.

But the next question is: how to operationalise this growth strategy? Only the government cannot do this job. So, how to harness the power of the private sector? Economists would say that a good investment-friendly climate needs to be created. But even when such a climate exists, why and how would businesses dig the wealth lying hidden under 'the bottom of the pyramid'?

Here people like CKP step in and convince the company bosses that it is in their self interest to rethink their conventional business models and go for a different type of model focusing on innovating new products, services, processes, distribution channels and marketing methods specifically targeted to the poor consumers, without compromising on quality.

CKP produces evidence, drawing upon his experiences and case studies from all over the world (like innovating detergents that use less water, selling shampoo/cooking oil in small sachets, Rs 10 calling card, sewing machine at Rs 200 monthly installment, cataract operations for $30 or a prosthetic limb for $25, compared with $10,000 in the US). That it has worked and offers practical guidelines on how to go about doing this in specific cases.
Inclusive growth —which was just an idea for the economists and an ideal or slogan for politicians — comes closer to being a realty, thanks to management gurus like CKP.

(The writer is a former professor of economics at IIM, Calcutta)

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

 

TURKEY'S EU ENTRY MAY SUFFER A SET BACK

CYPRUS AND GREECE ARE GEARED UP TO USE THEIR VETO POWER TO BLOCK TURKEY'S ENTRY INTO THE EU.

BY MICHAEL JANSEN

 

The election victory on Sunday of hardline Turkish nationalist candidate Dervis Eroglu in the Turkish Cypriot presidential election is a consequence of the partitionist policy pursued by Ankara for decades. Turkey may suffer if Eroglu scuppers negotiations to reunify the island, divided since Turkey occupied the north 36 years ago, and Cyprus and Greece block Turkey's entry into the European Union (EU).  

Eroglu, 72, is a disciple of Rauf Denktash, the veteran Turkish Cypriot leader who saw himself as the Muhammad Ali Jinnah of Cyprus. Denktash and his supporters in Ankara used inter-communal conflict to promote this cause before and after independence in 1960 and in 1974 achieved de facto partition when the Turkish army invaded and occupied the northern 36 per cent of the island and ethnically cleansed Greek Cypriots from the area. Turkish Cypriots living in the south, controlled by the internationally recognised government of the republic, were compelled by Turkey to relocate to the north.

Turkey based 35,000 troops there, paid an annual subvention to the separatist administration, installed 'advisers' in its ministries, and settled 110,000-160,000 of its own citizens in the area. They now outnumber native Turkish Cypriots. In 1983 the 'Turkish Republic of North Cyprus' issued a unilateral declaration of independence recognised by no country but Turkey.

While Turkey consolidated its hold, Ankara encouraged its surrogate regime to engage in long-drawn out negotiations with Greek Cypriots for the reunification of the island in a bizonal, bicommunal federation. Greek Cypriots, the UN and the EU insisted that Cyprus, a small island with just over a million inhabitants, should reunite in a single state with a single citizenship and sovereignty. But Denktash and Ankara sought to impose a 'two state solution' involving two sovereign states linked cosmetically by a loose confederation.

Serious negotiations

As Cyprus prepared to enter the EU in 2004, Turkish Cypriots under the leadership of Mehmet Ali Talat — the politician defeated by Eroglu in the presidential poll — mounted popular demonstrations with the aim of staging a coup against Ankara's partitionist policy. They demanded serious negotiations for reunification in a polity acceptable to both communities.

Ankara played along, sidelined Denktash, promoted Talat, and appeared to adopt the reunification-federal formula. But Turkey's real intentions were revealed when a plan, drawn up by UN officials under instruction from Turkey's friends, the US and UK, was rejected by Greek Cypriots. Instead of reuniting the island, the plan reaffirmed its division, separation of the two communities, and Turkey's dominance of the north.

End deadlock

Greek Cypriots were castigated for rejecting the plan, isolated until 2008 when they elected to the presidency Demetris Christofias, the communist party boss. He pledged to end the deadlock and reach a deal with Talat, who had been elected Turkish Cypriot president in 2005. The two men, old friends, met 70 times in 19 months and achieved some progress but did not reach a deal. Turkey did not permit Talat to negotiate freely as a Turkish Cypriot looking after Cypriot interests.

Furthermore, ahead of the election, Talat was being undermined by mainland Turkish opposition parties which dispatched activists and funds to the Eroglu campaign.

While Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan backed Talat, his call for voters to cast their ballots for 'reunification' rang hollow. Erdogan had, after all, promoted the 'two state' line ever since his moderate fundamentalist Justice and Development Party won power in 2002.

Now it is payback time. Eroglu says he is ready to negotiate with Christofias. But Eroglu holds that they should start from scratch rather than from the point the process broke off. He continues to demand separate sovereignty, the continuing presence of Turkish troops and the right of Turkey to intervene in Cypriot affairs. Since Greek Cypriots reject  these propositions, negotiations are expected to collapse. Cyprus and its ally Greece will then use their vetoes in the EU to block Turkey's entry.

Ergogan, who has staked his party's rule on securing EU membership for Turkey, will lose credibility ahead of the coming parliamentary election. Denied EU entry, Turkey could also lose the opportunity of containing its controlling military and developing a truly democratic political system. Turkey's relations with Greece could deteriorate, weakening the eastern flank of Nato at a time the US and Britain, facing the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, seek to strengthen the organisation. Therefore, Washington and London could also pay a price for supporting Turkey's partionist policies.

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

NRI SABOTEURS

JUST AS THERE ARE 'BOUNCERS' IN PUBS, I WISH THERE ARE A FEW IN MULTIPLEXES TOO.

BY MEERA SESHADRI

The ubiquitous NRIs are everywhere — on the roads, in offices, in families, even in malls and multiplexes. Yes, they are the 'Nuisance Radiating Indians.' Recently, I was at a multiplex, to watch a much-hyped English flick. The auditorium was already packed chock-a-block. I plonked myself on theatre seat. But little was I aware that there'd be NRIs around, to sabotage my sublime joy.

Even after the un-spooling of opening credits, the lady beside hadn't stopped jabbering over her cellphone. In these times, wherein even scavengers possess their personal cellphones, strange that some people presume they are 'making a splash' by stylishly speaking over their mobiles! This female was speaking in such strident tones that people seated even six rows away, could overhear every single syllable that she spewed.
It didn't take time to know she was yapping with her spouse. As she rattled in raucous tones, you were forced into knowing details about her life — her husband's name, the place he worked in, the name of her friends with whom she had come to watch the film, even about food that was placed in her fridge on that day, what all to be re-heated, consumed and chucked! Phew!

Soon after this aural assault, another woman in front row had launched on her equally jarring monologue. In her guttural voice, she was giving graphic details about her busily engineered life, elaborately ladling out info about the tasks she had on that day's agenda. At the end of it, people heaved a sigh of relief to know her child's tuition teacher being fixed; her home's electricity bill, paid; the monthly groceries, delivered home; and minor misunderstanding with maid, sorted out!

Seated beside this lady, was a 'billing n' cooing' couple, amorously feeding each other with bhelpuri, from the same spoon/plate. Every fourth second, the girl would loll against the man to whisper sweet nothings. The way she was cooing, I thought she'd chew off half his ear, along with bhelpuri. One wondered, of all places, why she had to choose the theatre, to unleash her reservoir of love.

And then there was a brat behind, who I suppose had come for the film's second viewing, as he was reeling out racy details of things that would happen in next scene. To add to nuisance value, there were babies, bawling in their baby slings. With these folks foiling my fun, my gusto to watch the film had got fully extinguished.
Truly, these NRIs are unique breed by themselves, a veritable embodiment of callous attitude. Just as there are 'bouncers' in pubs, I wish there are a few in multiplexes too, to haul up and hurl outside these NRIs, whenever they tend to create nuisance of any sort.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

CANDIDLY SPEAKING: EXPOSING HYPOCRISY, CANT, FALSEHOOD

BY ISI LEIBLER

 

Melanie Phillips's new book stuns readers with a ferocious exposé of the strains of insanity in political correctness

 

 

Award-winning columnist Melanie Phillips, recipient of the Orwell prize for journalism in 1996 and author of acclaimed Londonistan, has written an explosive new book systematically exposing chapter and verse of the hypocrisy, cant and blatant falsehoods which currently dominate much of contemporary Western thought. The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle Over God, Truth and Power will leave readers breathless as they follow her perceptive and ferocious exposé of the strains of insanity inherent in the "correct" attitudes currently being promoted by politicians, pseudo-academics and much of the Western media.

The book encompasses an extraordinarily wide range of prevailing public perceptions, which Phillips methodically demonstrates as not merely being utterly false but frequently deliberately fabricated as a vehicle to promote bizarre agendas. In addition to the author's commendable writing skills, what makes this book particularly impressive is her almost renaissance mastery of a multitude of complex issues – combined with a knack for communicating them in a form that most readers are able to comprehend.

In addition, she substantiates her assertions with research backed by meticulous documentation.

Phillips strongly repudiates the commonly accepted view that faith and reason are incompatible, persuasively demonstrating that in many cases the opposite is true. Her central thesis is that the trivialization of religious belief, rejection of the Judeo-Christian heritage and post-modernism, have all combined to erode the foundations upon which our civilization is based. This in turn created a vacuum which opened the floodgates for the emergence of a host of irrational cults and weird, even insane conspiracy theories.

Some of the bizarre examples cited by Phillips include the wacky belief that Princess Diana was assassinated to prevent her from marrying a Muslim; Tony Blair's wife belief in the transcendent properties of stones and the utilization of her and her husband's hair and toenails to detect signs of "poisons and blockages" in their bodies; the allegation that AIDS was created in a CIA laboratory; the pagan practices of the "Kabbala" followers of Madonna, the icon of Western modernity, who wear red threads on their wrists to ward off the evil spirit and meditate on stem cells to achieve immortality of the body; the allegations that the 9/11 attacks were either created by the Mossad or were an inside job by the Bush administration; and the "post religious mythology" inherent in the hubris and narcissism employed in the Obama election campaign.

THE MORE significant practical implications of these trends are reviewed as separate sections of the book. The opening chapter titled "The Myth of Environmental Armageddon" deals with global warming which has swept the planet. Phillips ruthlessly dissects the lies and distortions employed to promote what she regards as one of the greatest scientific scams of the modern age, "reminiscent of a medieval witch-hunt," with dissenting scientists being hounded from their posts by the equivalent of a secular inquisition.

In relation to the Iraq war, she alleges that irrespective of the rights and wrongs of ridding the world of Saddam Hussein, the chattering classes have concocted bogus conspiracy theories in which legitimate differences over a divisive war have been reduced into accusations of a plot by neoconservatives to promote the interests of Israel. She claims that the UN and its Human Rights Council, which most Western progressives regard as the arbiter of acceptable behavior, exemplify the reversal of reason by "putting the foxes in charge of the henhouse."

She explains why the United Kingdom has emerged among the vanguard of countries which have repudiated rationality and reason.

A number of chapters are devoted to the most extreme example of the denial of reality – the double standards and shameless bias reflected in the attempts to demonize and delegitimize the embattled Jewish state. In the chapter titled "The Jihad against Western Freedom," Phillips highlights the double talk and refusal to relate to reality in the Middle East. She concludes that it is a byproduct of the lack of determination by the West to resisting new forms of "soft totalitarianism" in which the onward march of Islamic aggression is compromised, with the US becoming marginalized and the war on terror vilified.

Phillips points to the bizarre linkages and alliances forged between these irrational elements with conflicting agendas. They include veteran leftists, purported campaigners for human rights, neo-fascists and Islamists who have merged to form "the red-black-green-Islamic axis."

The World Turned Upside Down is a courageous expose of many of the myths and fallacies which are being imposed on us and which our society has absorbed.

One is not obliged to endorse each of the extraordinary individual case studies selected to recognize that Phillips makes a highly convincing case to substantiate her broad thesis about the corruption of rationality which now dominates much of liberal society. She is effectively sounding a clarion call for reversing the tidal waves threatening to overwhelm Western civilization by the collapse of modernity and rationalism in which verifiably false statements are continuously reiterated, while truth and lies, right and wrong, victim and aggressor are all reversed. Phillips warns that this brainwashing is threatening to lead us into a new anti-rational dark age.

In a concluding chapter summarizing her findings, Phillips observes that today as during the Middle Ages, if universalism has become the accepted dogma, Jews (substituted by Zionists and Israelis) have again become the contemporary heretics to be burned. "It was the Jews who gave the world the concepts of an orderly universe, reason and progress – the keys to science and our modern age. In repudiating Jewish teaching and its moral codes, the West has turned upon the modern world itself. The power of reason offers no protection against bigotry... Today it is once again among the most progressive and enlightened people... the secular rationalists and the most liberal Christians, who march behind the banners of human rights and high minded conscience, that one finds the most virulent hatred of Israel and medieval prejudice against Jews... In turning upon the State of Israel – the front line of the defense of the free world against Islamist assault on modernity – the West is undermining its defense against the enemies of modernity and the Western civilization that produced it. The great question is whether it actually wants to defend reason and moderation anymore, or whether Western civilization has now reached a point where it has stopped trying to survive."

This cri de coeur is a stunning and thought-provoking book that should be read by all who seek to understand the sources of the malaise of this generation in Western society.

ileibler@netvision.net.il

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

IPAD IMBECILITY

BY JPOST EDITORIAL STAFF

 

The Foreign media have a field day at Israel's expense when its Communication Ministry bans US iPads from entering the country. 

 

Israel has finally made it to the headlines without connection to our continuous existential struggle. While this nation was celebrating Independence Day, foreign broadcasters and publishers had a field day at our expense.

What attracted attention this time was the Communication Ministry's edict not to allow American-purchased iPads  into Israel.

For once Israel wasn't being demonized for ostensible intransigence or worse in the Palestinian context, but instead, derided as the only western state to bar the latest hi-tech gadget.

There was ample cause for scoffing – it's incongruous when a country on the cutting edge of hi-tech research and development bans – even if temporarily – the hottest hi-tech device. Worse, no advance notice was publicized and travelers who bought their iPads in the US and declared them dutifully at customs were taken aback by the arbitrary decree.

Their iPads were provisionally confiscated and the owners were informed that, beyond the first 48-hours post-confiscation, they would have to shell out a hefty per diem "storage" surcharge. The length of said wholly involuntary storage is anyone's guess.

But have no fear, our resourceful customs authorities have offered a way out.  Passengers whose iPads have been held up may sell them via an overseas-bound vendor. To this end, affected passengers need to locate and make a deal with someone flying abroad, then produce his/her plane ticket by way of proof. A customs employee will afterwards deliver the iPad to the plane (for a NIS 200 fee) and hand it over to the designated iPad custodian.

NO WONDER all this has occasioned almost universal ridicule. The sudden reversal of Israel's routine policy on non-commercial imports – and an eminently sensible one at that – embodies bureaucratic capriciousness and imbecility at its worst.

Why did the Communications Ministry abruptly order customs not to release iPads into Israel?

The official excuse is that the devices aren't compatible with local Wi-Fi configurations (standards for transmitting data over high-frequency local wireless networks). But the same strong-signal problems exist with other devices – including a variety of laptops, cell-phones, the iPhone and BlackBerrys – which are not banned. The incompatibility can be easily resolved, to boot.

One widespread speculation is that the local Apple franchise may be leery of private imports, hence the stipulation that the ban will be reversed once Apple releases a version of the device compatible with European wireless specifications.

But we cannot verify that any business interests are behind this bizarre ministry move. All we can say is that the very fact that the rumor mill is being churned so vigorously underscores the preposterousness and pettiness of the ministerial diktat.

This is almost on par with the insistence throughout the 1970s to ban color TV from the country (after decades in which television was altogether blocked in the name of socialist ideals). With hardly any black-and-white sets still being manufactured even back then, Israeli importers were required to install special mechanisms to remove color from our screens.

No sooner was the uniquely Israeli absurdity mandated than a locally invented contrivance was marketed to every household to function as an "anti-color-eraser."

In 1981, after it opted to put an end to the ludicrousness, the government was roundly excoriated and accused of seeking to buy votes.

 

WE HAD every reason to trust that such episodes could be regarded as curios from an era of shortsighted official imperiousness, an era for which few of us retain much fondness or nostalgia. But the iPad confiscations of recent days indicate that the twin grains of high-handedness and irrationality have not been entirely rooted out from our midst.

Does the Communications Ministry perhaps fear that our sidewalk cafes will be inundated with hand-held gadgets? Are ministry functionaries looking out for our wellbeing in the same manner in which the cultural commissars of the 1950s sought to protect our souls from televised decadence or in which their 1970s torchbearers valiantly attempted to hold back the tides of inexorable progress?

Whatever skewed logic triggered this folly, one result is unquestionable – Israel has iPadded itself into an international laughingstock. This hardly bolsters our reputation as a world technological powerhouse.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

RATTLING THE CAGE: YASHER KOAH, JUDGE GOLDSTONE

BY LARRY DERFNER

 

What the organized South African Jewish community pulled last week was beyond shameful.

 

Judge Richard Goldstone, talking last October with a group of liberal North American rabbis, explained why he agreed to head the UN's investigation of the war in Gaza.

 

"I knew," he said, "there would be strong and negative opposition to my doing it on the part of members of the Jewish community and particularly with the government of Israel and its supporters in Israel and the Diaspora. But I really felt that to live with myself and to live with my own conscience, I couldn't justify having gotten involved in the investigations in many other countries and because I was Jewish refuse to use the same norms and the same principles in relation to Israel."

I don't think there is a single Israeli or Diaspora Jew in a high position of leadership today who understands what Goldstone was talking about. What he was talking about, plainly and simply, was moral courage.

It's not here. It's not what Israel is about, not what Diaspora Jewry is about, certainly not the leadership, and not the followers, either, who want to stay inside the warmth of the consensus. To be a good, patriotic Zionist Jew today, you have to pour out your wrath on Goldstone. A "small man," was how President Shimon Peres described him. An "evil" man, a "traitor," was Alan Dershowitz's description.

As far as I'm concerned, neither Peres nor Dershowitz nor any of the legions of other proud, patriotic Zionist Jews who've ganged up on Goldstone are worthy of carrying his briefcase.

 

He is the absolute best of the Jewish tradition. He stands up for justice, he stands up for the oppressed and he speaks truth to power – no matter who holds the power and no matter what it costs him. This is one of the great Jews of our time. Goldstone is the secular equivalent of a Jewish prophet, and by trying so hard to dishonor him, Israel and the Diaspora Jewish establishment have succeeded only in dishonoring themselves.

LAST WEEK the Zionist and Orthodox Jewish establishment in South Africa stooped to forcing him to agree to stay away from his grandson's upcoming bar mitzva in Johannesburg. (Goldstone now lives in Washington DC.) The South African Zionist Federation threatened to lead a protest outside the synagogue, so Goldstone, "in the interest of my grandson," announced he wouldn't be attending the ceremony.

 

The machers of the South African Jewish community were pleased. Avrom Krengel, chairman of the Zionist Federation, said his organization had been duly "sensitive" to the bar mitzva boy and his family. Rabbi Moshe Kurtsag, head of the South African beit din, or religious court, pronounced the outcome "quite a sensible thing to avert all this unpleasantness." No religious or communal leader of South African Jewry said a word against this abomination. Neither did any Jewish leader outside South Africa. Neither did anybody important in Israel.

There were, however, some prominent, independent South African Jews who still knew the difference between right and wrong. "If it is correct that this has the blessing of the leadership of the Jewish community in South Africa, it reflects on them rather than on Justice Goldstone. They should hang their heads in shame," said Judge Arthur Chaskalson, retired president of South Africa's Constitutional Court.

By the end of last week, the ostracism of Goldstone had backfired. The story ran in The New York Times, the British papers, all around the world. The leaders of organized South African Jewry had brought shame on the community, so this week they're in damage control mode, suggesting that maybe it wasn't such a good idea, after all, to destroy a kid's bar mitzva to get at his grandfather.

I'm sure that by the end of this week, the South African Jewish machers will have shoved the whole episode down the memory hole. They're very good at this. So is Israel. Ever since apartheid ended, South African Jewish officialdom has tried to make everyone forget they ever went along the system, while Israeli officialdom has tried to make everyone forget the special relationship they had with the white regime.

In his book Rivonia's Children, Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Glenn Frankel writes that as Afrikaners began to identify with Israel after the Six Day War, leading to the closest of military/diplomatic relations between the two nations, "South Africa's Jews became increasingly identified with the government and less with its opposition in the liberation movement. All of this began to unravel with [Nelson] Mandela's release, and ended upon his taking office. In denying their own culpability, many Jews pointed to the fact that their brethren were prominently involved in the anti-apartheid movement; indeed, some used this to suggest that the Jewish community as a whole had been committed to the liberation cause."

Israel, likewise, professes to have been against apartheid all along, preferring not to mention that from the mid-'70s, as Frankel writes, "the two sides began sharing nuclear technology... Israeli technicians, engineers and retired military officers increasingly took up places as consultants and planners of the new tribal homelands, the nominally independent puppet states that the Pretoria government created out of rural wastelands."

 

None of this is mentioned anymore in polite Jewish company in Johannesburg or Jerusalem.

No, as everyone recalls, we all stood up against apartheid; as Jews, we had no choice.

One day, if Israel ever ends its tyranny over the Palestinians, it will be difficult to find a Jew in this country or the Diaspora who ever supported Operation Cast Lead. It will be difficult to find a Jew in this country or the Diaspora who ever said a bad word about Judge Richard Goldstone.

If Israel ever ends its tyranny over the Palestinians, a whole lot of proud, patriotic Zionist Jews are going to be loaded down, searching frantically for the memory hole.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

COULD WATER IGNITE THE NEXT WAR?

BY DOUGLAS BLOOMFIELD

Israel's 62 years have been marked by some 30 military clashes over this natural resource.

 

 

If the last two decades have been marked by wars over oil, the coming decades could see conflict over a much more precious commodity, water. By mid-century more than half of humanity will be facing water shortages, particularly in the Middle East, according to a UN report, as supply and demand move dramatically in opposite directions.

Talk of Mideast peace focuses on borders, refugees, settlements and Jerusalem, but water may be the greatest – and most neglected – hurdle in an area where consumption far exceeds supply.

 

A severe freshwater crisis threatens the standard of living, political stability and security throughout the region. The crisis knows no national boundaries and is the most dramatic symbol of the interdependency of the region's inhabitants. Scientists and policy makers agree that solutions require international cooperation in a region where history has shown it easier to hate than to help each other.

The rain that falls and the snow that melts in one country flows across borders, and when that flow is threatened, as in 1967 (shortly before the Six Day War) when Syria tried to dam the Yarmuk River, which feeds the Jordan River, conflict can erupt. Israel bombed the dam.

THIS WEEK a top State Department official is visiting Israel, Jordan and Egypt in a diplomatic effort to spur regional water sharing and cooperation.

Jon B. Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies says water, not war, is "the most likely source of political and social unrest in the Middle East over the next 20 years." The underground aquifers are a finite resource "being exploited far beyond their capacity to restore themselves." And as they are drained, wells have to be dug deeper and deeper and the water is less pure.

Geologists warn that Amman may have only 15 more years of water. According to a report in this month's National Geographic, "The Jordan River is now depleted by drought, pollution and overuse... The lower Jordan is practically devoid of clean water, bearing instead a toxic brew of saline water and liquid waste."

In Syria hundreds of thousands of families have had to leave agricultural areas for lack of water and move to the cities, according to a UN report. Poor water management by the government and a lack of modernized agriculture has combined with the water shortage to exacerbate the crisis.

Nonetheless, Israeli requests to discuss water cooperation have been rebuffed by Damascus, according to Bloomberg News.

The World Bank contends Israelis consume four times as much water per capita as Palestinians, but the Israeli government insists the real number is half that. Amnesty International has accused Israel of neglecting the water needs of Palestinians through discriminatory and restrictive policies, but Israel insists it is meeting its obligations under the Oslo Accords.

Israel charges the Palestinians have "significantly violated their commitments" by failing to build sewage treatment plants, by drilling unauthorized wells, refusing to purify and reuse sewage for agriculture, dumping sewage into streams and not taking advantage of water desalination opportunities.

Palestinians accuse Israel of stealing their water, leaving thousands of homes dry, and insist that the security barrier cuts farmers off from their water supply.

An attempt by the European Union to develop a regional water management strategy broke down earlier this month when Israel and the Arabs could not agree on how to refer to the West Bank and Gaza even though, according to news reports, there was extensive agreement on technical issues related to water management.

ISRAEL'S 62 years have been marked by some 30 military clashes over water, as Syria, Lebanon and Jordan tried at various times to divert the Banyas, Dan, Hasbani and Yarmuk rivers to cut their flow into Israel, and Arabs attacked Israel's National Water Carrier.

Israel may be water poor but it is rich in water use technology and one of the world's most scientifically advanced agricultural nations. Making the desert bloom is more than a slogan.

But its higher standard of living and industrialization also mean greater water consumption.

The water crisis in the Arab world is compounded by growing demand, highly inefficient usage, government corruption, domestic instability and poor management, say international experts, leading to inadequate supply, which could spark domestic hostilities as well as conflict with neighboring countries.

Jordan and Israel have been discussing sending water from the Red Sea to the Dead Sea, desalinating some along the way for human use, producing hydroelectricity and restoring the shrinking Dead Sea.

Water is a strategic, economic, humanitarian, public health and political issue that more than any other symbolizes the interdependency of Israel and its Arab neighbors. Yet long-standing political disputes make solutions all the more difficult to develop.

As the problem grows more critical, the chances for conflict grow as well.

bloomfieldcolumn@gmail.com

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

DID BUSH SAVE AMERICA?

BY OFER ISRAELI

The former president's war on terror and subsequent policies reaffirmed the US's world power status.

A year or so after his leaving office seems like a good opportunity to evaluate the George W. Bush presidency. Unanimously, the war against terrorism declared by Bush following the September 11, 2001 terror attacks was the most significant act taken by his administration. It has also, for better or worse, strongly shaped American politics and foreign policy ever since. Along with the actions and counteractions the declaration itself initiated, and alongside the troublesome results of the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush declaration also changed the course of history, successfully confronting a serious but hidden threat to the US. Clearly, if there is a single act that placed America back on track as the world's leading power, it is that declaration.

Recognizing their Lilliputian international status, while correctly understanding the complexity of world politics, Islamic militant organizations such as al-Qaida tried to circuitously achieve their ultimate goal: "...bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy." Their manner of action is totally different from the simple cause-effect understanding prevalent in Western society.

Following the Soviet Union's collapse, al-Qaida and its ilk launched repeated attempts to uproot US hegemony. The US response was very moderate, sidestepping its opponents. This was the case after the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and on US troops in Mogadishu in 1993, on the US military office in Riyadh in 1995, on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, and on the USS Sullivans (that failed) and the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. The logic behind this demeanor was the hope that a moderate response might reduce the growing hostility toward the US. However, the US failure to respond to its challengers was perceived as a sign of weakness.

Osama bin Laden assumed that the magnitude and consequences of the September 11, 2001 terror attacks – still the most destructive in human history – would craftily enable al-Qaida to attain its ultimate goal. In al-Qaida's eyes, the collapse of the World Trade Center and the process that would follow should have had a "butterfly effect," creating a change in existing patterns. Its impact would hopefully cause a global economic collapse and accomplish al-Qaida's ultimate goal of uprooting the leadership of the US.

After theTwin Towers' ashes had settled, Bush, relying on his instincts, accurately assessed the enormous danger. Instead of following the traditional pattern of linear thought that relies on past experience, Bush tried a novel course of nonlinear thinking. The Bush response of declaring war against terrorism came as a shock. It completely shifted the behavior of the US, which then started to play as an aggressive power.

Consequently, once again the hidden and manifest forces in the system moved toward the US and not against it. Ultimately, this caused a great shift, clearly pushing the strategic pendulum back in favor of the US. Bush's new strategy, broadly criticized by many, did bring about several harmful unintended consequences. In particular, this strategy has been one of the causes of the current financial deficit and the Iranian threat. Bush's successor, President Barack Obama, must deal with these.

However, Bush also changed the face of history. The American people, who still believe in the vital role the US is playing as world leader, should be grateful to this man. A more moderate response would probably have pushed the US toward the desperate destiny of past empires, which collapsed completely and left the world stage.

 

The writer is a visiting researcher at the

Center for Peace and Security Studies within

Georgetown University's School of Foreign

Service. He teaches international relations theory

and foreign policy decision-making at the University of Haifa, Tel Aviv University and the IDF Academy.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

THIS ISN'T ABOUT GOLDSTONE, IT'S ABOUT JUDAISM

BY WARREN GOLDSTEIN

Even though he's caused immense damage to the State of Israel, South Africa's shuls should be open to him.

 

At the heart of the storm around the bar mitzva of Judge Richard Goldstone's grandson stands an ancient and sacred principle: open synagogues. The rabbi and lay leaders of the Sandton Synagogue, where the bar mitzva is taking place, consulted with me on how to respond to the threats of protest at the judge's presence at the service. Together, we took the decision that the synagogue is open to the entire family, including Judge Goldstone, and that everything possible would be done to ensure that the bar mitzva be celebrated with the dignity and joy befitting such an important religious milestone.

I am acutely aware of the wrongs perpetrated by Judge Goldstone. Only a few months ago The Jerusalem Post published an article of mine ("It looks like law, but it's just politics," October 15, 2009), in which I criticized his report on the Gaza war as replete with numerous procedural and substantive injustices, all of which tainted its findings legally, factually and even morally. At the time I wrote that his Gaza report "is a disgrace to the most basic notions of justice, equality and the rule of law" and that it is "unjust and wanting in truth."

His severely compromised report has unfairly done enormous damage to the reputation and safety of the State of Israel and its citizens. In the face of much opposition, I have on numerous occasions publicly defended the justice of the cause of the State of Israel, and so feel saddened and outraged at the injustices of the Goldstone Report and its very real practical implications threatening the safety of millions of Israelis.

Nevertheless and in spite of all he has done, there is a great principle at stake here, one which is central to Judaism: open synagogues. A synagogue is the home of God, and it is open to all.

The very first synagogue in history, the biblical Tabernacle, which was constructed 3,322 years ago as recorded in the Book of Exodus, was lead by Aaron the high priest, who was a great unifier of the people and whose life philosophy is described by the Talmud as "loving peace, pursuing peace, loving people and bringing them close to Torah."

These are the values of an open synagogue. It is a place of holiness and should never become an arena of politics, division and pain. The Talmud says that we are commanded to act with compassion and kindness because God does, and we are required to imitate Him.

Open synagogues are inclusive, and welcome in a tolerant and nonjudgmental way all who seek to enter and join in our services and pray to God. I am proud and grateful that in South Africa over many years, our Orthodox synagogues have been beacons of openness and inclusivity. In this respect, our South African community can offer direction and guidance to world Jewry.

Writing in The Jerusalem Post a number of years ago, Rabbi Berel Wein, the world renowned Jewish thinker and historian, said: "One of the tragedies in current Jewish life is the abandonment of all connections to Torah and the synagogue by secular society. Only the 'religious' have a right to synagogue attendance and Torah study. Secular means never stepping foot in a synagogue. What a tragic misreading of Jewish history and life."

IN SOUTH Africa everyone comes to shul, and so it should be. Our synagogues do not turn away any congregants because of what they have done, or haven't done, who they are, or what opinions they hold. And that is probably one of the reasons why, as surveys have shown, South African Jews have the highest proportions of religious adherence and identity in the world, and why in the last two decades there has been  an unprecedented growth of Judaism in South Africa.

Open synagogues are also places of principle and faith, dedicated to prayer, Torah learning and deep spirituality. Many think that tolerance is about compromising principles. All beliefs, whether religious or secular, can lead to narrow, partisan bigotry, and even hatred and violence. Some say that tolerance and openness cannot coexist with passionate beliefs in supreme religious truths and morality. They are wrong. The Talmud says that God is a God of compassion, but also of truth.

 

We need to find a way to combine our passion for our faith and moral principles, with a gentle and warm engagement with people who do not share it. Judaism teaches that in doing so we do not compromise our beliefs. On the contrary we are in fact in sync with them, as the Hebrew Bible says, "Her [the Torah's] ways are that of pleasantness, and all her paths are those of peace." These words, taken from the Book of Proverbs, describe what the Talmud says are among the defining qualities of Judaism.

And that is why I feel so strongly that the synagogue be open to Judge Goldstone, even though he has done so much wrong in the world. This is not about him. It is about the eternal principle of open synagogues, of a Judaism of peace and gentleness, a Judaism of openness and compassion.

The proud and ancient legacy of open synagogues that we have merited to inherit must be defended and strengthened, so that we pass it on to our children.

The writer is the chief rabbi of South Africa.

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

AN ONEROUS SECURITY BURDEN

BY HAARETZ EDITORIAL

 

The Yitzhar settlers' violent assault on troops received special attention because two soldiers were wounded by Jews in the midst of Independence Day celebrations. The Israel Defense Forces was quick to issue a statement saying the army will deal with the event "with the appropriate forcefulness" and promised that the IDF and police will act to bring the perpetrators to justice. An army officer called the assailants "scum."

Regrettably, however, this is not a unique event. The settlers of Yitzhar and other settlements that have become bastions of extremist rabbis have been harassing and attacking soldiers for years.

Security forces sent to protect Israelis who have chosen to settle in the heart of the territories, some of them illegally, have become the target of threats and violence. The settlers throw stones at them, snatch their weapons, sabotage their vehicles and curse at them.

Since the beginning of the settlement enterprise, the settlements have been seen as the security forces' loyal partners. The settlers were provided with IDF weapons, and state-paid security officers were enlisted to impose law and order in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

In recent years, especially since the Oslo Accords, instead of contributing to state security, the settlers have been a burden on Israeli soldiers, Border Police officers and Shin Bet security service people operating in the territories.

Instead of focusing on protecting state borders and the settlers from terror attacks, the security forces have had to allocate troops to protect the Palestinians, Civil Administration inspectors and even soldiers from unrestrained, violent Jewish zealots.

Everyone who has treated the settlers with kid gloves as they systematically attack Palestinians and sabotage their property should not be surprised that those settlers are now directing their violence at soldiers and damaging military property.

It's time for the Yesha council of settlements to root out those it calls "rogue elements." It's time for all law-enforcement agencies to take off their gloves in the struggle with criminals and their rabbis.

The IDF, police, state prosecutor and courts must deal with Jewish law-breakers in the territories as forcefully as they deal with Palestinian criminals.

 

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

OBAMA MUST STOP DEMANDING THE IMPOSSIBLE FROM ISRAEL

BY ARI SHAVIT

 

Will war break out in the summer? In Israel, people still want to believe that the powers stabilizing the Middle East are stronger than the powers destabilizing it. They believe in the ostensible deterrence achieved in the north and south during the Second Lebanon War and Operation Cast Lead. However, Jordan's King Abdullah is not the only one warning about war in the summer. Other international figures who know the region well fear a sudden military escalation. We can't know when the next war will break out, they say. We also can't know where, but the Middle East has become a powder keg. Between the summers of 2010 and 2011, that keg can catch fire.

The main war scenario is that of a conflict with Iran. If next year the United States or Israel uses force against Iran, Iran will strike back. The Iranian attack will be both direct and indirect. The indirect strike will be by Hezbollah. When Israel responds, Syria might not stand idly by. War between Israel, Iran, Syria and Hezbollah will not resemble any war we have known in the past. Hundreds of missiles will land on Tel Aviv. Thousands of people will be killed. Hundreds of missiles will hit air force bases and Israel Defense Forces command centers. Hundreds of soldiers will be killed. The crushing Israeli counterstrike will demolish Beirut and Damascus. Israel will win, but the victory will be painful and costly.

The second war scenario is that of a reconciliation with Iran. If next year U.S. President Barack Obama acts toward Iran the way George W. Bush acted toward North Korea, Iran will go nuclear. If Obama prevents Israel from acting against Iran and does not act itself, Iran will become a leading power in the Middle East. The outcome will be a loss of respect in the Sunni world for the United States and a loss of inhibitions in the Shi'ite and radical world vis-a-vis Israel. A serious conflict could then break out between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Hezbollah and perhaps even Israel and Syria. A violent deterioration could also occur between Israel and other neighbors.

A loss of U.S. strategic hegemony would mean that opponents of the West will shake up the Middle East. A loss of Israel's strategic monopoly would result in attacks on it by old and new enemies. The age of relative quiet that has typified Israeli-Arab relations for the past 35 years will be over forever.

The conclusion is clear: The essential task now in the Middle East is the prevention of war. That's not the same as pursuing peace. Sometimes it's precisely the attempt to achieve an unattainable peace that ignites a war. In the current sensitive situation, there must be no illusions and no mistakes. Political correctness must not be allowed to cause a historic disaster. And when the glasses of political correctness are taken off, a clear picture emerges. To prevent war in the Middle East, the United States and Israel must show strength and generosity, deterrence and moderation. Together they must promote a cautious and gradual diplomatic process that will weaken the region's extremists, strengthen its moderates and curb Iran. They must maintain the democratic alliance that has stabilized western Asia for two generations.

The main responsibility now rests with the United States. The Netanyahu government has made many mistakes over the past year, but so has the Obama administration. The latter has wasted 15 precious months in dialogue with Iran without imposing any sanctions and maintaining the illusion of an immediate Israeli-Palestinian peace. The open, unilateral pressure Washington has exerted on Jerusalem has both distanced peace and brought war closer. Therefore, if the Obama administration does not want the next war to be named after it, it must urgently change its policies. It must demand the possible from Israel, not the imaginary. It must demand what is essential from Iran. It must show determined and sober leadership that will prevent war now and lead to peace tomorrow.

The volcano that erupted last week in Iceland will be nothing compared to the volcano that could erupt in the near future in the Middle East. But the volcano here is a human one. People are stoking it and people can also cool it down. The lives of hundreds of millions now depend on the wisdom and careful consideration of one man: Barack Obama.

 

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

THE COLLAPSE OF RELIGIOUS ZIONISM

BY SHAHAR ILAN

 

Israel is a nation at war, surrounded by enemies, some threatening to wipe it off the map, a nation in constant danger. Most Israelis are mobilized in one way or another in the defense of the country - some full-time, some most of the time and some part-time. That is Israel's secret weapon, the motivation and devotion of its people dedicated to its defense, which helps the country overcome unprecedented odds. Much of our security depends on keeping secret the information we receive connected to military strategy and tactics, weapon systems and operational plans. One of the prices of security is keeping this information from the enemy. This we have learned in the 62 years since May 15, 1948.

Most Israelis are privy to some state secrets because of their military service, their work in the defense industry or contact in some other way with matters that are best kept from our enemies. And they are prepared to protect these secrets. Some have even protected such secrets with their lives. The young soldier Uri Ilan, who had been taken prisoner by the Syrians in 1954, fearing that under torture he might reveal secrets, committed suicide. When his body was returned to Israel a note was found on it on which he had written: "I did not betray, I committed suicide."

Most of us, fortunately, do not face such stark choices and don't find it overly difficult to keep secrets entrusted to us. As parents whose children serve in the Israel Defense Forces know only too well, their children will not reveal to them secrets that are entrusted to them during their service. Don't mothers and fathers have a right to know what their sons and daughters are doing while away from home? But Israeli mothers and fathers understand that their children protect secrets, in the knowledge that the safety of their country, families and comrades depends on it.

An Israeli who has decided to reveal secret information can do it easily nowadays. He does not have to travel to London and approach an Arab embassy. Just put the information on the Internet and before you know it Israel's enemies will know about it. Not only disseminating information has become easy, but obtaining it as well. Just about everything is now stored on computer hard drives, and a push of a button will download many megabytes of information. While great progress has been made to safeguard secret information stored on computers, in the end a great deal depends on the personnel who have access to the computers.

With good reason do we trust our young people serving in the army, but as has been shown recently, a rotten apple appears every now and then, one that can endanger the safety of many. In the case of Anat Kamm, the danger might have been contained if the journalist to whom she transferred the vast store of information she had stolen from an IDF computer, realizing that he now held the keys to something that could endanger his country, had simply reported Kamm to the authorities and returned the information to the IDF where it belonged.

But the Haaretz reporter, Uri Blau, did no such thing. Keeping the information to himself, he began publishing some of it in Haaretz. This seems to have met with the approval of the newspaper and a number of journalists, who insist that it is the duty of journalists to stand up for the right of the public to know and bring to the public's attention information that comes their way even if it could harm the country's security. They surely must know that the vast majority of the Israeli public does not want to know information that is secret and whose disclosure might endanger the state, so the claim that they are serving the public interest is a fraud. They hide behind the claim that they rely on the censor to pass on the information they have submitted for publication, while complaining about the very existence of censorship in Israel.

Is it just possible that these "defenders of the public interest" are actually looking for ways to attack the Israeli government, even if by doing so they provide information to Israel's enemies? Is it possible that sometimes their sympathies are with enemies of Israel, and they are just looking for ways to give Israel a bloody nose?

 

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

THE OTHER END OF THE CORRIDOR

BY AMALIA ROSENBLUM

 

This week we ended the march down the corridor "from Holocaust to Rebirth". The corridor begins on the eve of Passover, continues on Holocaust Remembrance Day and Memorial Day for our fallen soldiers, and ends on Independence Day. We are supposed to come out better citizens.

We usually think of this civics lesson in historical terms ("we shall remember"), but the way our national opinions are influenced by the metaphoric standstill during the siren is also explained by unconscious psychological processes. Terror management theory was inspired by the works of the anthropologist Ernest Becker and is based on the understanding that human beings are the only creatures who are aware that their death is inevitable. This recognition arouses existential anguish that would be paralyzing if people did not develop a defense against it.

Identification with the accepted worldview of the society in which we live is very important in these defenses (self-esteem is the second defense mechanism). This may be a shadow of the concept of group identity that was typical of earlier periods in human history, in which the identity of individuals was derived from the identity of the group they belonged to. If the sense of an individual's identity is defined by that person's affiliation with a group, which the individual sees as an eternal entity that will continue to exist even after the body returns to dust, this self-identification lessens one's existential anguish over the awareness of death.

 

Social psychologists have shown in dozens of experiments, in Israel as well, how conservative tendencies increase when one is forced to deal with existential anguish that brings up thoughts of death. Only the slightest mention of death was enough to arouse anti-Semitism in Christians taking part in experiments; it caused American college students to agree with the sentence "the Holocaust was the way God punished the Jews". Mentions of death caused German subjects to express greater opposition to foreigners, and in one experiment, to sit closer to other German subjects than to Turkish subjects.

The allusion to death can be subtle. In an experiment in Germany, the test group consisted of people who were asked their opinions while standing outside a funeral home, while the control group consisted of people who were asked their opinions while standing 100 meters from a funeral home. That is, it's enough for a person to pass a funeral home to experience an increase in nationalistic tendencies.

It's natural: If a certain psychological tactic can reduce our anxiety about death, then under conditions in which anxiety about death increases, we will have a tendency to resort to this psychological tactic. Therefore, when we are exposed to a stimulus that reminds us that our death is inevitable, we unconsciously move closer to our society's accepted worldview, become more zealous about our national values and suspicious of foreigners.

In light of this, the adjoining of the memorial days to Independence Day seems like an experiment in terror management theory that illustrates the link between the mention of death and a rise in nationalist tendencies. Is that a cause for despair? Not necessarily. Nationalism is a fundamental and ancient defense mechanism that protects both "leftists" and "rightists" from anguish over death. The great Israeli experiment emphasizes civic responsibility to criticize the government: to fight to replace nationalist racist symbols with humanistic ones and to insist on transforming democracy and civic responsibility into significant values in the national ethos.

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

 

 

DIASPORA JEWS SHOULD STOP TRYING TO FIND ISRAEL'S FLAWS

BY ISRAEL HAREL

 

ZURICH - Every year, on the eve of Independence Day, opinion pieces are published abroad that cast doubt on Israel's ability to survive. An analysis of some of these sermons gives rise to the thought that the focus on Israel's blemishes serves as a way for the writers to distance themselves from it.

It isn't only intellectuals in North America who allow themselves to educate us - something to which we have already become accustomed. Yves Kugelmann, a Jewish intellectual from Switzerland who edits the publication "Tachles," is worried, and rightly so, about the growing gap between the Jews of Israel and the Jews of the Diaspora, which he attributes to "a significant change in value systems."

In his opinion, the factors responsible for this widening gap include the attitude toward the Goldstone report (though the vast majority of Diaspora Jews reject this report as vehemently as Israelis do) and the attitude toward the New Israel Fund (whose front organizations provided a sizable portion of the material included in the Goldstone report and engage in overseas slander of cabinet ministers and Israel Defense Forces officers for "war crimes").

According to Kugelmann, two prophets foresaw these developments: Yeshayahu Leibowitz and Jacob Talmon. Luminaries, undoubtedly, in their academic fields, but hardly great visionaries, to put it mildly, as to the morality and future of the Jewish state.

Israel Prize laureate Leibowitz predicted that the IDF would become a Judeo-Nazi army, the state would become fascist, the settlers would emigrate from Israel and convert to Christianity and other equally well-founded prophecies, which made him the prophet, both in Israel and abroad, of the group that views Israel through similar lenses. Even Richard Goldstone, the person most afflicted with Otto Weininger syndrome, steered clear of Leibowitzian terminology.

Talmon's predictions are equally interesting (Kugelmann bases himself on the well-known historian's letter - his "testament," he called it - to Menachem Begin, titled "Homeland in Danger," which was published in Haaretz in March 1980). These predictions have also proven false prophecies, to put it mildly. And the reason is clear: Talmon and his ilk analyzed Israeli society according to a system of prejudices and unjustified fears that they developed toward those ("Begin!") whose opinions and way of life differed from theirs.

Talmon, for example, spoke about "the destruction of the rule of law." Given the way this rule has taken over just about everything in Israel, including its crude intervention in actions by the executive branch, what can be said about this prophecy? And what about "the mass emigration of the elite" that would leave Israel barren in the humanities, social sciences, science and technology? Prof. Zeev Tadmor, a member of the Israel Academy of Sciences and one-time president of the Technion, has found that most of the knowledge created today by scientists of Jewish origin is created in Israel.

Another Talmonic prophecy: A civil war is at the gate. True, tensions between the political camps have risen over the past 30 years (though they remain lower than they were during the pre-state years and the early years of the state), but where's the civil war?

The expert on totalitarian democracy was too quick to extrapolate from events in world history to events in Jewish history and, especially, Jewish sociology. The difficult events we have experienced since he prophesied civil war, like the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the uprootings from Sinai and Gush Katif, prove just how little the man knew about his own people, which has internalized, almost genetically, the lessons of the destruction of the Second Temple.

If Kugelmann is sincere in his concern for the future of relations between the Diaspora and Israel, he must not, even if only as an intellectual, base himself solely on Israel's radical fringe or adopt Leibowitz and Talmon as latter-day prophets. An honest comparison of their vision with what is actually happening in Israel will easily reveal an entirely different picture. Israel today, contrary to their prophecies, is home to a majority of the Jewish people - and they are living here very happily, as all public opinion polls show.

In order for us to continue to be one people, it is vital to maintain a dialogue between the Diaspora and Israel. But those Diaspora Jews who rummage about only in order to find our flaws (perhaps to justify distancing themselves from Israel?) are not making a positive contribution to this essential dialogue.

 

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EDITORIAL

AFTER GOLDMAN

 

After the government sued Goldman Sachs for fraud, a lot of politicians vowed to finally clean up the system. In an important committee vote on Wednesday, 13 senators — including one Republican for a refreshing change — approved a measure that would go a long way toward regulating derivatives, the complex instruments at the heart of the bubble, the bust, the bailouts and the Goldman case.

 

It is still not tough enough to avoid another catastrophe. While the bill rightly calls for most derivatives deals — currently private contracts — to be traded on regulated exchanges, it has too many loopholes. And it doesn't ban the sort of excessive speculation that characterized the Goldman deal.

 

The taxpayers are gaining, but the banks — which make a lot of money on derivatives — are still way ahead.

 

The bill would allow too many trades to be done off the exchanges. Regulators would be able to police them, but there would be no ongoing investor oversight. There are carve-outs for certain corporate users of derivatives and for contracts tailored to unique purposes. The bill also would allow the Treasury secretary to exempt an entire type of derivative known as foreign exchange swaps.

 

Corporate pension funds that invest in derivatives would be subjected to less scrutiny than is required of many other investors. The financing arms of major manufacturers would also escape full scrutiny. All of that is going in the wrong direction.

 

Which brings us back to Goldman. A court will have to decide if the bank committed fraud. The Securities and Exchange Commission says that Goldman designed a derivative — a "synthetic collateralized debt obligation," or C.D.O. — that would have a high chance of falling in value, at the request of a hedge fund client who wanted to bet against it. The S.E.C. charges that Goldman misled investors by not revealing the hedge fund's role in selecting the investments. Goldman says it was not obligated to do so.

 

The current reforms being considered by Congress might at least have made Goldman think twice about that obligation. Both the agriculture and banking committees' bills impose business conduct standards that would require dealers to disclose conflicts of interest.

 

It is not clear if the current bills would require synthetic C.D.O.'s to be exchange-traded. If they were, that would give investors a fighting chance to figure out the game. In addition to providing information about prices and volumes, exchange trading would subject derivatives to a full range of regulations, including disclosure and reporting requirements and stricter antifraud rules.

 

The bills also call for regulators to set adequate capital requirements for major dealers and participants so that there would be a cushion when derivative investments go bad.

 

What all those proposals don't address is whether the type of derivative Goldman was selling should even be allowed to exist. The Goldman deal was nothing more than a bet on the mortgage market, in which one side was destined to win and the other to lose, without "investing" anything in the real economy. The C.D.O. did not hold actual mortgage-related bonds, but rather allowed the participants to stake a position on whether bonds owned by others would perform well, or tank. And that helped to further inflate the housing bubble.

 

That is not investing. It is gambling, and it is abusive. It has no place in banks that can bring down the system if they fail.

 

Yet none of the pending reform bills would ban abusive derivatives. Instead, regulators would be limited to gathering information about potential abuses and reporting their concerns to Congress.

 

The bill does say that the regulator cannot approve "gaming contracts." But C.D.O.'s are often so complex that it may be difficult to figure out if they are, in fact, gaming or a threat to the broader economy.

 

Congress should ban both gaming and abusive derivatives. That would help clarify the difference between pure speculation and true hedging. It would start to restore what has been lost in the crisis: public confidence in the integrity of financial markets.

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

264 DAYS AND COUNTING

 

Nine months. Two-hundred-sixty-four days. However you total it up, it is too long for three Americans to be cruelly, and unfairly, held in an Iranian jail.

 

Shane Bauer, Joshua Fattal and Sarah Shourd should have been released long ago. It now seems that Iran's mullah-led government has made them pawns in the political chess game with the United States over Tehran's nuclear program. That's unconscionable.

 

Unfortunately, it is not surprising given the way Tehran's hard-liners have brutally repressed its own citizens, especially since last June's fraudulent presidential election led to angry protests across the country.

 

The Americans were hiking in the Kurdish region of Iraq when they crossed into Iran accidentally, according to family members. Detained since late July, they were sent to the infamous Evin prison, where political prisoners are routinely incarcerated and often abused.

 

Since then, the Iranians have permitted only two consular visits — in September and October — by Swiss diplomats representing American interests in Tehran. The hikers had to wait seven agonizing months, until early March, for one phone call apiece to their families back home.

 

Iranian officials should comply with the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations and allow regular access to

the three Americans. They should stop manipulating the families and grant visas so the mothers can visit their children. The mothers filed applications in January that are still not approved.

 

The fact that Iranian officials cannot agree on charges against the hikers, or back them up, is a sure sign that something fishy is going on. After the Americans were held for three months, some Iranian officials accused them of spying — but never offered proof. The hikers' Iranian lawyer, Massoud Shafie, told the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran recently that he has seen their file and there is no evidence of espionage. He said both the file and the judge handling the case say that the only charge is "illegal border crossing." Under Iranian law, that calls for a cash penalty — not jail time.

 

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran claims that his country's judiciary is independent. We're deeply skeptical. But let's test the proposition. The court should levy the cash penalty and let the hikers go home. They have suffered too much already.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

 

Many American workers know how a bad economy can chain them to a bad job or a bad boss. But what if you're an immigrant guest worker and that boss holds your visa and can get rid of you with one phone call to the feds? What if he just threatened to call? Which would you choose — to be exploited or deported? To suffer silently here or in destitution back home?

 

There are laws to prevent such exploitation, but they often fail in the real world, which is rife with examples of abuses, and not just among the undocumented.

 

Hundreds of Indian shipyard workers brought legally to Mississippi under the H-2B guest-worker program organized hunger strikes and recently filed lawsuits protesting deplorable working conditions in what they called a system of human trafficking and involuntary servitude. The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security have been investigating. Farm workers and domestic workers regularly rally and plead for legislative help to escape abusive conditions.

 

A new bill from Senator Robert Menendez, a Democrat of New Jersey, and co-sponsored by Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat of New York, seeks to give these workers a chance to speak out. It offers temporary protection against deportation and retaliation for noncitizen workers — both visa holders and the undocumented — who file civil-rights or labor-rights complaints or are witnesses in lawsuits or criminal investigations against employers.

 

This gives time for labor agencies and law enforcement to investigate claims of workplace violations, investigations that now are often short-circuited after complainants disappear or are deported. It also expands a visa program for immigrants who are crime victims.

 

For too long the deck has been stacked against noncitizen workers. While the country has drastically ramped up the arrest, prosecution and deportation of tens of thousands of undocumented workers, it has done little to deal with unscrupulous employers who like their work force cheap, easily intimidated and disposable.

 

When one group of workers is powerless, all workers suffer. Mr. Menendez's bill is essential civil-rights legislation that is long overdue and just in time.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

A CHILD'S BEST INTEREST

 

Children need loving homes. Prejudice shouldn't stand in the way of that. So it is welcome news that a state judge in Arkansas has struck down a pernicious 2008 state law that barred even qualified same-sex couples and other unmarried couples living together from serving as adoptive or foster parents.

 

Arkansas voters approved the measure, known as Act 1, after the Arkansas Supreme Court invalidated a regulation barring gay people from becoming foster parents. The broader ballot measure applied to all unmarried couples, but it was clear that the primary intent was to exclude gay couples from consideration.

 

It followed a mean-spirited campaign by anti-gay activists that depicted the desire of same-sex couples to provide adoptive or foster homes as part of a nefarious "homosexual agenda" somehow threatening to children.

 

The measure was discriminatory and heartless — ruling out potentially loving homes in a state that needs homes for children. A 2009 report by the Arkansas Department of Human Services found 517 children awaiting adoption but only 228 adoptive homes available.

 

Judge Chris Piazza was right that the ban cast "an unreasonably broad net" and made it harder for the state to do "what is in the best interest of the child."

 

He was also right to be troubled that "one politically unpopular group" had been "specifically targeted for exclusion by the act." Still we are concerned by his — gratuitous and erroneous — conclusion that the law violated only state constitutional standards and not federal constitutional guarantees of due process, privacy and equal protection.

 

What is most important is the ruling's recognition of Act 1's discriminatory and unwarranted disqualification of potential parents, no matter how prepared and eager they are to give children a good home. That sound bottom line should survive any appeal.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

OBAMA BACKS DOWN ON SUDAN

BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

JUBA, Sudan

 

Until he reached the White House, Barack Obama repeatedly insisted that the United States apply more pressure on Sudan so as to avoid a humanitarian catastrophe in Darfur and elsewhere.

 

Yet, as president, Mr. Obama and his aides have caved, leaving Sudan gloating at American weakness. Western monitors, Sudanese journalists and local civil society groups have all found this month's Sudanese elections to be deeply flawed — yet Mr. Obama's special envoy for Sudan, Maj. Gen. Scott Gration, pre-emptively defended the elections, saying they would be "as free and as fair as possible." The White House showed only a hint more backbone with a hurried reference this week to "an essential step" with "serious irregularities."

 

President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of Sudan — the man wanted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity in Darfur — has been celebrating. His regime calls itself the National Congress Party, or N.C.P., and he was quoted in Sudan as telling a rally in the Blue Nile region: "Even America is becoming an N.C.P. member. No one is against our will."

 

Memo to Mr. Obama: When a man who has been charged with crimes against humanity tells the world that America is in his pocket, it's time to review your policy.

 

Perhaps the Obama administration caved because it considers a flawed election better than no election. That's a reasonable view, one I share. It's conceivable that Mr. Bashir could have won a quasi-fair election — oil revenues have manifestly raised the standard of living in parts of Sudan — and the campaigning did create space for sharp criticism of the government.

 

It's also true that Sudan has been behaving better in some respects. The death toll in Darfur is hugely reduced, and the government is negotiating with rebel groups there. The Sudanese government gave me a visa and travel permits to Darfur, allowing me to travel legally and freely.

 

The real game isn't, in fact, Darfur or the elections but the maneuvering for a possible new civil war. The last north-south civil war in Sudan ended with a fragile peace in 2005, after some two million deaths. The peace agreement provided for a referendum, scheduled to take place in January, in which southern Sudanese will decide whether to secede. They are expected to vote overwhelmingly to form a separate country.

 

Then the question becomes: will the north allow South Sudan to separate? The south holds the great majority of the country's oil, and it's difficult to see President Bashir allowing oil fields to walk away.

 

"If the result of the referendum is independence, there is going to be war — complete war," predicts Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, one of Sudan's most outspoken human rights advocates. He cautions that America's willingness to turn a blind eye to election-rigging here increases the risk that Mr. Bashir will feel that he can get away with war.

 

"They're very naïve in Washington," Mr. Mudawi said. "They don't understand what is going on."

 

On the other hand, a senior Sudanese government official, Ghazi Salahuddin, told me unequivocally in Khartoum, the nation's capital, that Sudan will honor the referendum results. And it's certainly plausible that north and south will muddle through and avoid war, for both sides are exhausted by years of fighting.

 

Here in Juba, the South Sudan capital, I met Winnie Wol, 26, who fled the civil war in 1994 after a militia from the north attacked her village to kill, loot, rape and burn. Her father and many relatives were killed, but she escaped and made her way to Kenya — and eventually resettled as a refugee in California. She now lives in Olathe, Kan., and she had returned for the first time to Sudan to visit a mother and sisters she had last seen when she was a little girl.

 

Ms. Wol, every bit the well-dressed American, let me tag along for her journey back to her village of Nyamlell, 400 miles northwest of Juba. The trip ended by a thatch-roof hut that belonged to her mother, who didn't know she was coming — so no one was home. Ms. Wol was crushed.

 

Then there was a scream and a woman came running. It was Ms. Wol's mother, somehow recognizing her, and they flew into each other's arms. To me, it felt like a peace dividend.

 

Yet that peace is fragile, and Ms. Wol knows that the northern forces may come back to pillage again. "I don't want war," she said, "but I don't think they will allow us to separate."

 

My own hunch is that the north hasn't entirely decided what to do, and that strong international pressure can reduce the risk of another savage war. If President Obama is ever going to find his voice on Sudan, it had better be soon.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

DANCE OF THE DERIVATIVES

BY GAIL COLLINS

 

The United States Senate. Feel the love.

 

"... You have been great."

 

"... I am grateful, very grateful, for your friendship."

 

"... I want everyone to know how deeply committed you are to reform."

 

"... I also wanted to thank you for your hard work."

 

This was Wednesday at the Senate Agriculture Committee, which was considering the regulation of derivatives. These are extremely complicated financial instruments, and they are under the control of the agriculture committee because, really, when you get right down to it, everything is a crop.

 

"Members of this committee check their partisan politics at the door," boasted the chairwoman, Blanche Lincoln, a Democrat of Arkansas. Then, in between compliments, the members approved Lincoln's bill on derivatives in a series of party-line votes.

 

Except for Charles Grassley, a Republican of Iowa, who sided with Lincoln. Truly, this was a day for the record books. Somebody finally got a Republican to vote for something.

 

And perhaps a sign of things to come. As President Obama prepared to make his big financial reform speech near Wall Street on Thursday, the G.O.P. seemed increasingly eager to find a way to work this one out.

 

"We probably generally agree on 90 percent," said the agriculture committee's ranking minority member, Saxby ("I golf, therefore I am") Chambliss. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, took credit for forcing bipartisan negotiations with his innovative threat-of-a-filibuster tactic. Chris Dodd, the chairman of the banking committee who has been negotiating with the Republicans for months, said it was like a rooster taking credit for the sunrise.

 

The Republican leadership originally seemed to believe that financial reform could be a replay of health care reform, with a political payoff for total obstruction. They're discovering that the only real similarity is that both are almost impossible to explain. People love their doctors, but they tend to hate their bankers. Nobody is going to scare voters by predicting that if the Democratic bill passes, they may not be able to keep seeing the same hedge fund manager.

 

It's a sign of the shift that Blanche Lincoln has gone to the front of the populist pack. She was one of the weakest reeds on the Democratic side of the health care reform debate. Before that, she was obsessed with trying to cut the estate tax. Before that — well, let's be frank. We have no idea what she was up to.

 

Given her record, people had expected a weak, boring package from her committee. But Lincoln came up with rules that were tougher than anyone had expected, requiring derivatives to be traded on public exchanges so investors could compare prices. The banks hate this idea, possibly because it will drive down their profits.

 

For sure because it will drive down their profits.

"The bridge of cooperation has been washed out," said Republican Pat Roberts of Kansas crankily, as Lincoln nudged the bill through committee. He also warned that the senators were "smothering ourselves in the milk of human kindness and hoping it doesn't curdle," nailing down first place in the hotly contested Senate metaphor-making competition.

 

It was the first time Lincoln seemed like an interesting political figure since 1998, when, at 38, she became the youngest woman ever elected to the United States Senate. Now her seat is in jeopardy. Conservatives smell blood. The left is backing her opponent in a primary next month. Bill Clinton expressed his support by saying, "I wouldn't be surprised to see her coming back from the dead." Which is really not what you want to hear from the former president while you're out fund-raising.

 

So it's pretty easy to figure out what caused Lincoln's hard line on financial reform. She is tacking to the left the same way John McCain, struggling in a hot primary in Arizona against a Tea Party-type opponent, is tacking to the right.

 

But let's give her credit for never having gotten desperate enough to claim that cars full of illegal immigrants

were "intentionally causing crashes on the freeway." Unlike some former mavericks we could mention.

 

Americans are certainly in the market for some leadership on the subject of derivatives. It's hard to even figure out how to worry about them, since we have no clue exactly what they are, beyond bets on whether prices will go up or down.

 

Try to think of derivatives as being like the Tribbles in that classic "Star Trek" episode. For all of history, there was no such thing. Then somebody found the first ones, which looked cute and made soothing noises. We liked them fine, until the population grew to be worth about $600 trillion. When they got into the financial engine, all hell broke loose.

 

And there is absolutely no political percentage in allowing them free run of the ship.

 

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USA TODAY

EDITORIAL

EARTH DAY: SMILE, DON'T SHUDDER

BY BJORN LOMBORG

 

Given all the talk of impending catastrophe, this may come as a surprise, but as we approach the 40th anniversary of the first Earth Day, people who care about the environment actually have a lot to celebrate. Of course, that's not how the organizers of Earth Day 2010 see it. In their view (to quote a recent online call to arms), "The world is in greater peril than ever." But consider this: In virtually every developed country, the air is more breathable and the water is more drinkable than it was in 1970. In most of the First World, deforestation has turned to reforestation. Moreover, the percentage of malnutrition has been reduced, and ever-more people have access to clean water and sanitation.

 

Apocalyptic predictions from concerned environmental activists are nothing new. Until about 10 years ago, I took it for granted that these predictions were sound. Like many of us, I believed that the world was in a terrible state that was only getting worse with each passing day. My thinking changed only when, as a university lecturer, I set out with my students to disprove what I regarded at the time as the far-fetched notion that global environmental conditions were actually improving.

 

To our surprise, the data showed us that many key environmental measures were indeed getting better. We also found a disturbing gulf between the chief concerns of rich countries and the problems that actually do the most damage to the world.

 

If anything, this gulf between perception and reality has gotten wider over the years. For example, one of the "core issues" that the organizers of this year's Earth Day say we should be worrying about is the use of fertilizers and pesticides. It may be unfashionable to point this out, but without the high-yield agricultural practices developed over the past 60 years, virtually all the forests of the world would have to have been cleared to make way for food production. And starvation would be much, much more prevalent.

 

Climate change urgency?

Of course, in the minds of Earth Day activists, no environmental challenge is more urgent than the need to drastically cut carbon emissions in order to stop global warming. But is climate change really the No. 1 problem we face?

 

What about indoor air pollution, which happens to be the world's No. 1 environmental killer? In poor countries, 2.5 billion people rely on "biomass" — wood, waste and dung — to cook and keep themselves warm. This year, the resulting pollution will kill about 1.3 million of them, mainly women and children. Switching from biomass to fossil fuels would dramatically improve the lives of more than a third of the world's population. Unfortunately, you're not likely to hear any of this year's Earth Day speakers promoting greater use of fossil fuels in poor countries.

 

I'm not saying we can blithely ignore global warming. Man-made climate change is real, and we do need to do something about it. But in a world in which most developing countries depend almost exclusively on fossil fuels to power their economies, it's both impractical and immoral to insist that the only solution is for everyone to drastically cut carbon emissions. This approach might make sense if we were able to offer developing countries practical, affordable alternatives to coal and oil. But we cannot— and as long as we can't, all we're really doing when we call for massive carbon cuts is asking the world's poor people to continue living lives of misery and deprivation.

 

Help the developing world first

So what should we do? Well, to begin with, we might consider one of the fundamental lessons of the past 40 years of environmental concern. You cannot expect people to care about what the environment may be like 100 years from now if they are worrying about whether their children have enough to eat. With this in mind, we should focus on the many more immediate problems faced by the developing world today — problems such as malnutrition, education, disease and clean drinking water. At the same time, we should take meaningful steps to ensure that the future of the developing world will be powered by green energy. As long as the electricity from sustainable sources such as solar panels costs us 10 times as much as electricity generated by coal-fired generators, no one but rich nations will go green (and then only if there are government subsidies). What we need to do is to promote the kind of technological breakthroughs necessary to make solar panels cheaper than fossil fuels. Once we have done that, no one will have to be ordered to give up coal and oil.

 

Our goal should thus be twofold: first, to confront the most immediate problems facing the Third World; second, to provide developing countries with the energy technologies they need to create a green, prosperous world. Surprisingly, these goals seem to turn off many in the environmental movement. But while they will use Earth Day to writhe in collective shame at the damage that greedy, gas-guzzling Western consumers are delivering to the fragile planet, the rest of us should celebrate our environmental successes and chart out a reasonable path through the challenges that remain.

 

Bjorn Lomborg is the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center at Copenhagen Business School and the author of Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist's Guide to Global Warming.

 

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USA TODAY

EDITORIAL

OUR VIEW ON FINANCIAL REFORM (PART I): REIN IN WALL STREET BEFORE HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

 

With the economy finally starting to rebound, it's worth pausing for a moment to recall the roots of the financial crisis that cost millions of jobs and spawned untold misery.

 

OPPOSING VIEW: Reforms miss the mark

 

No economic downturn in the past century — not even the Great Depression— can be so directly attributed to pernicious behavior by financiers. Lenders put people in wildly inappropriate mortgages, often without even verifying income. The process of securitizing these loans and selling them to institutional investors exposed a bonus-crazed banking culture that amplified risk on a colossal scale.

 

Despite it all, the public remains exposed to risks of a future economic collapse, and possible bailouts, brought on by the very same behavior. That's why financial reform is so important, and why the push-back from major financial institutions suggests that the sweeping proposal pending in the Senate is on the right track.

 

The toughness of the measure is appropriate, even if it is partly the result of election-year calculations. It would force institutions to set aside more cash to cover losses, put risky trades in the open, add consumer protections and set up a process to deal with failing institutions.

 

Perhaps its most amusing — and satisfying — feature is a requirement that large banks plan for their own demise. They would be required to file "funeral plans" making recommendations to regulators and central bankers how best to liquidate them if they fail.

 

One thing the measure would not do, despite what you might have heard, is fund future taxpayer bailouts. That charge — by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell— is a kind of Orwellian doublespeak.

 

The assertion centers on fees that would be collected from banks to fund a $50 billion pool, which would be used to break up and dispose of those that fail. The pool might or might not make it into the final version, as the Obama administration has told congressional Democrats it could be dropped. In any event, all it would do is create a shutdown process much like the one that has been used successfully for decades to close down smaller banks.

 

That is the supposed "bailout." Never mind that no taxpayer money would be involved.

 

The Republicans have more legitimate concerns in making sure regulation does not become draconian and unproductive, but that pitch doesn't sell well in today's virulently anti-Wall Street environment. There are, for example, still too many separate agencies that regulate banking.

 

The legislation has other flaws. It does little to address the fact that bankers' compensation still rewards risk-taking with other people's money. And the issue of what to do with failing banks remains thorny. Further, there's more than ample danger that industry lobbyists — hundreds of them — will succeed in sneaking language into the complex legislation that undercuts its purpose.

 

But the measure does many things needed to limit the chances of another horrific credit crisis and rage-inducing bailout. Members of Congress who think they can just say no to financial reform, the way they did to President Obama's health care overhaul, do so at their own political peril.

 

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USA TODAY

EDITORIAL

OUR VIEW ON CAMPUS CLUBS: RELIGIOUS FREEDOM? YES. BUT DON'T FUND DISCRIMINATION.

REFUSE TO JOIN ANY CLUB THAT WOULD HAVE ME AS A MEMBER," GROUCHO MARX USED TO JOKE. NOW THE SUPREME COURT IS MULLING WHETHER STATE-RUN SCHOOLS MUST LET RELIGIOUS CLUBS WITH DISCRIMINATORY PRACTICES JOIN IN ALL THE BENEFITS THAT OTHER CLUBS ON CAMPUS RECEIVE.

 

OPPOSING VIEW: 'Protect unpopular voices'

The case involves the Christian Legal Society, a network of law student groups that requires members to sign a statement of faith that, among other things, pledges a student to oppose "all acts of sexual conduct outside of God's design for marriage between one man and one woman, which acts include fornication, adultery and homosexual conduct."

 

To be sure, any student who agrees with such faith principles should be able to join such a group, and the group should have an absolute right to recruit members and be active on campus. The tougher question, however, is whether an institution funded with taxpayer dollars must extend formal recognition and benefits to a religious group that discriminates against gay men and lesbians, in accordance with the beliefs of many American churches.

 

The answer should be that no religious group has a claim on public support — just the right to practice its beliefs without interference.

 

The issue reached the high court this week after the University of California's Hastings College of Law refused to authorize the Christian Legal Society as a "recognized student organization" because it violates the school policy that any official student group must be open to all students. The issue is a volatile one that provokes charges of discrimination against religious groups.

 

It need not, as long as Hastings and other public institutions treat every group equally. Hastings attempted to satisfy that standard by allowing the society to meet on campus but refusing to recognize it as a club that could, among other things, tap into student fees.

 

Critics of the Hastings non-discrimination policy argue that the policy is unworkable because it would force groups to admit members directly opposed to the groups' beliefs and aims. "To require this Christian society to allow atheists not just to join, but to conduct Bible classes, right? That's crazy," said Justice Antonin Scalia during Monday's arguments.

 

Justice Samuel Alito took the same tack, imagining a small Muslim student group with 10 members overwhelmed by "50 students who hate Muslims (and) show up and they want to take over that group."

 

Those arguments are logical, but Hastings didn't seek to dictate the Christian group's rules, just to maintain its standards for receiving the benefits that official recognition bestows.

 

In a related case, the court ruled in 1983 that Bob Jones University, a religious institution, could be denied tax-exempt status because of its racist policies.

 

The attorney for the Christian Legal Society protested that the group should and would not discriminate on the basis of gender or race, but had every right to discriminate on the basis of belief. That prompted Justice John Paul Stevens to ask sharply, "What if the belief is that African Americans are inferior?"

 

Although student groups do lose out if they can't get formal recognition and benefits, those aren't constitutional rights. Hastings and other schools should bend over backward to allow students to practice their religion freely, but without putting the school or taxpayers who fund it in the awkward position of endorsing discrimination.

 

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USA TODAY

EDITORIAL

HOW BAD SCIENCE OPENED DOOR FOR MALARIA

BY RICHARD TREN AND DONALD ROBERTS

 

Since it was first observed 40 years ago, Earth Day has grown from a handful of campus rallies into a global celebration of the environment and has raised ecological awareness around the world.

 

Unfortunately, the politics surrounding Earth Day have also done long-term harm, damaging our ability to fight deadly diseases today.

 

Back in the 1940s, scientists realized that the chemical dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, or DDT, could stop epidemics of insect-borne diseases such as typhus. Its lifesaving potential was considered such a boon to mankind that the scientist who discovered it, Paul Mueller, won the Nobel Prize. The chemical would soon surpass all expectations in controlling malaria around the world and go on to save millions of lives.

 

It was so effective that it eradicated the disease entirely in Europe, the U.S. and some island nations such as Taiwan. In the West, Malaria was defeated as an endemic disease more than 50 years ago. Now, though, it's a re-emergent disease of the poor, ravaging populations in South America, Asia and across sub-Saharan Africa. Spread by mosquitoes, malaria kills almost 1 million people a year and inflicts suffering on hundreds of millions more. But it didn't have to be this way.

 

Early environmentalists made pesticides one of their chief bugaboos. Rachel Carson, who helped launch the modern environmental movement, was among them.

 

In her now-famous 1962 book Silent Spring, she argued that DDT, when sprayed on a Michigan campus to halt the spread of Dutch elm disease, would spread far and wide and harm robins' ability to reproduce.

 

Carson was no doubt well-intentioned, but it turns out that she was flat out wrong about the effects of DDT. It didn't spread the way she thought it did, and no studies have ever been able to show that environmental exposure to DDT — even in large quantities — harms human health. It is less dangerous to humans than any number of natural chemicals, including some vitamins and medicines that we consume without a second thought. And when used in small quantities in malaria control, DDT protects people from deadly mosquitoes.

 

The public-health benefits it confers far exceed any of the unproven, theoretical risks.

 

A disease's comeback

All this is now widely known. But environmentalists' early crusades against pesticides have since taken on a global momentum of their own. Carson's anti-pesticide stance was taken up by many ecologists and led to the decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to ban DDT. By then, malaria had been eradicated in the USA, but it was still a scourge across much of the world. Nevertheless, international aid donors and health organizations began to abandon DDT.

 

In 1997, just as poor countries were suffering from a global pandemic of dengue fever and re-emerging malaria, the World Health Organization's policy-setting body adopted a resolution calling on all countries to reduce the use of insecticides for disease control. DDT was specifically identified as one that should be phased out.

 

Just 10 years later, the European Union took up the campaign. And in January of 2009, the European Parliament approved new rules to ban certain chemicals used in common pesticides. The new regulations created a great deal of uncertainty, and the implications are still not fully clear.

 

The harm that could come out of this is very real. Reckless rulemaking scares away would-be producers, even before a ban goes into effect. As we know from DDT's history, with fewer manufacturers in the marketplace, prices go up, making the chemical harder and harder to obtain.

 

As a result of the EU process, over the past few years, around 75% of the pesticides used in farming in Europe have disappeared from the market.

 

Trade worries, too

Bans also have other unintended consequences. For instance, some developing countries have stopped using DDT not because it wouldn't work in malaria control, but for fear that their agricultural exports would not be allowed into Europe if tiny and inconsequential residues were found on produce.

 

Meanwhile, malaria continues its deadly scourge, with no realistic alternative to fighting it on the scale that DDT can achieve.

 

The lesson is that we wouldn't have the crisis we do today if we hadn't put feel-good politics ahead of solid science decades ago. Thursday, the citizens of more than 180 countries will celebrate their commitment to the environment on Earth Day. This year, let's commit to putting science first. The consequences of not doing so last a very long time.

 

Richard Tren is the director of Africa Fighting Malaria, and Donald Roberts is a retired entomologist and professor of tropical public health at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. They are the authors of The Excellent Powder: DDT's Political and Scientific History.

 

 

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TEHRAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

WHAT LINKS THE BANKING CRISIS AND THE VOLCANO?

BY GEORGE MONBIOT

 

Man proposes; nature disposes. We are seldom more vulnerable than when we feel insulated. The miracle of modern flight protected us from gravity, atmosphere, culture, geography. It made everywhere feel local, interchangeable. Nature interjects, and we encounter – tragically for many – the reality of thousands of miles of separation. We discover that we have not escaped from the physical world after all.

 

Complex, connected societies are more resilient than simple ones – up to a point. During the east African droughts of the early 1990s, I saw at first hand what anthropologists and economists have long predicted: those people who had the fewest trading partners were hit hardest. Connectivity provided people with insurance: the wider the geographical area they could draw food from, the less they were hurt by a regional famine.

But beyond a certain level, connectivity becomes a hazard. The longer and more complex the lines of communication and the more dependent we become on production and business elsewhere, the greater the potential for disruption. This is one of the lessons of the banking crisis. Impoverished mortgage defaulters in the United States – the butterfly's wing over the Atlantic – almost broke the global economy. If the Eyjafjallajökull volcano – by no means a monster – keeps retching it could, in these fragile times, produce the same effect.

We have several such vulnerabilities. The most catastrophic would be an unexpected coronal mass ejection – a solar storm – which causes a surge of direct current down our electricity grids, taking out the transformers. It could happen in seconds; the damage and collapse would take years to reverse, if we ever recovered. We would soon become aware of our dependence on electricity: an asset which, like oxygen, we notice only when it fails.

As New Scientist magazine points out, an event like this would knacker most of the systems which keep us alive. It would take out water treatment plants and pumping stations. It would paralyze oil pumping and delivery, which would quickly bring down food supplies. It would clobber hospitals, financial systems and just about every kind of business – even the manufacturers of candles and paraffin lamps. Emergency generators would function only until the oil ran out. Burnt-out transformers cannot be repaired; they must be replaced. Over the past year I've sent freedom of information requests to electricity transmitters and distributors, asking them what contingency plans they have made, and whether they have stockpiled transformers to replace any destroyed by a solar storm. I haven't got to the end of it yet, but the early results suggest that they haven't.

There's a similar lack of planning for the possibility that global supplies of oil might soon peak then go into decline. My FoI requests to the British government reveal that it has made no contingency plans, on the grounds that it doesn't believe it will happen. The issue remains the preserve of beardy lentil-eaters such as, er, the U.S. joint forces command. Its latest report on possible future conflicts maintains that "a severe energy crunch is inevitable without a massive expansion of production and refining capacity".

It suggests that "by 2012, surplus oil production capacity could entirely disappear, and as early as 2015, the shortfall in output could reach nearly 10m barrels per day". A shortage of refining and production capacity is not the same thing as peak oil, but the report warns that a chronic constraint looms behind the immediate crisis: even under "the most optimistic scenario … petroleum production will be hard pressed to meet the expected future demand". A global oil shortage would soon expose the weaknesses of our complex economic systems. As the cultural anthropologist Joseph Tainter has shown, their dependence on high energy use is one of the factors that makes complex societies vulnerable to collapse.

His work has helped to overturn the old assumption that social complexity is a response to surplus energy. Instead, he proposes, complexity drives higher energy production. While complexity solves many problems – such as reliance on an exclusively local and therefore vulnerable food supply – it's subject to diminishing returns. In extreme cases the cost of maintaining such systems causes them to collapse.

Tainter gives the example of the western Roman empire. In the third and fourth centuries AD, the emperors Diocletian and Constantine sought to rebuild their diminished territories: "The strategy of the later Roman empire was to respond to a near-fatal challenge in the third century by increasing the size, complexity, power, and costliness of … the government and its army. … The benefit/cost ratio of imperial government declined. In the end the western Roman empire could no longer afford the problem of its own existence." The empire was ruined by the taxes and levies on manpower Diocletian and Constantine imposed to sustain their massive system. Invasion and collapse were the inevitable result.

He contrasts this with the strategies of the Byzantine empire from the seventh century onwards. Weakened by plague and re-invasion, the government responded with a program of systematic simplification. Instead of maintaining and paying its army, it granted soldiers land in return for hereditary military service: from then on they had to carry their own costs. It reduced the size and complexity of the administration and left people to fend for themselves. The empire survived and expanded.

A similar process is taking place in the UK today: a simplification of government in response to crisis. But while the public sector is being pared down, both government and private enterprise seek to increase the size and complexity of the rest of the economy. If the financial crisis were the only constraint we faced, this might be a sensible strategy. But the energy costs, environmental impacts and vulnerability to disruption of our super-specialized society have surely already reached the point at which they outweigh the benefits of increasing complexity.

For the third time in two years we've discovered that flying is one of the weakest links in our overstretched system. In 2008 the rising cost of fuel drove several airlines out of business. The recession compounded the damage; the volcano might ruin several more. Energy-hungry, weather-dependent, easily disrupted, a large aviation industry is one of the hardest sectors for any society to sustain, especially one beginning to encounter a series of crises. The greater our dependence on flying, the more vulnerable we are likely to become.

Over the past few days people living under the flight paths have seen the future, and they like it. The state of global oil supplies, the industry's social and environmental costs and its extreme vulnerability mean that current levels of flying – let alone the growth the government anticipates – cannot be maintained indefinitely. We have a choice. We can start decommissioning this industry while there is time and find ways of living happily with less of it. Or we can sit and wait for physical reality to simplify the system by more brutal means.

(Source: The Guardian)

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

 

FROM THE BOSPHORUS: STRAIGHT - A THANK YOU TO OUR 'ACCIDENTAL READERS'

 

There is nothing funny about natural disasters or the disruption of millions of lives by the vicissitudes of a volcano's eruption in Iceland. But a funny thing did happen to the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. We think our anecdote worth sharing, along with a few words toward those whom we can only call our new, "accidental readers."

As we have noted earlier in this space, this was more than a story of stranded tourists in Antalya, the rupture of air freight exports in Istanbul, alerts along our Black Sea coast that the "ash cloud" was near. We reported all this of course. But we shared in the agony as well: a manager unsure of his attendance at a London wedding as we went to press last night, a reporter traveling with the foreign minister unsure of which city would be his next, an editor's best laid plans for a business meeting in Paris gone awry.

But then early Tuesday, the overseer of our complex distribution system, a nationwide matrix of planes, trucks and 3,000 news agents, showed up to report a mysterious anomaly. Suddenly, our newsstand sales had spiked dramatically upward. Drama for us is measured by the hundreds, not thousands. But while it may not take much to make our journalistic hearts race, word of a huge group of new readers indeed did. But we could not figure out why.

Then someone on the metro desk had a bright idea (they always do). We called the two main companies that distribute imported newspapers in languages other than Turkish. Of course we learned that the Guardian, Le Monde and Handelsblatt have been stuck in London, Paris and Frankfurt for the past five or six days. A few random calls to news agents in the logical locations... and sure enough, they had all been ordering extra supplies of the Daily News.

We don't want to gloat over the problems of our colleagues. We realize we are a unique newspaper, one without competitors in any conventional sense and that these gains will surely be fleeting. But we do want to say "Thank You" to our accidental readers. We are a serious newspaper, many say the most serious in Turkey. But we also are not afraid to break a convention or two. So we hope you found our Istanbul-centric daily look at our country, the region and the world an interesting change from your regular fare. We know we split an infinitive or two, that some of our headlines reflect an accent and that reading the business pages upside down is embarrassing if you are in public. But surely you will concede that we are an interesting newspaper. We hope your lives were not seriously disrupted by the collapse of European air travel. And we hope a look at the Daily News was not the only silver lining of the ash cloud, that the extended stays also brought a moment to reflect as so many millions stood still.

 

We hope to see you again.

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

GÜL'S CALL FOR CONCILIATION REMAINS UP IN THE AIR

SEDAT ERGİN

 

As Parliament continues to discuss the constitutional amendments package, the point we have reached puts President Abdullah Gül into a difficult position.

 

Because a) His call to the government and the opposition for dialogue didn't work; b) He has to make a very difficult decision on splitting the package into smaller pieces if a referendum stage is needed; c) The possible outcomes of bringing a presidential system into Turkey and its reflections on Gül.

 

Gül wants conciliation

Let's go back a little in order to evaluate Gül's position and let's check what he said on the subject. On Feb. 18, the day that the constitutional change was brought to the agenda, Mr. President said the following:

 

"We need judicial reform very quickly. But as we do this, the dead-end or vicious cycle shouldn't be deepened. The atmosphere should never be politicized, nor should it cause quarrels or polarization. We should never ever allow any of these."

 

Through his words, Gül had something in mind totally different from the current situation, the amendment methods and style. Obviously, Mr. President envisaged a framework of solution based on conciliation.

 

In the meantime, I could say that the Republican People's Party, or CHP, leader Deniz Baykal encouraged Gül about a possible dialogue with the government, suggesting a split in the package.

 

In fact, Gül, on his way to Oman last week, reiterated his remarks, especially on doing this change without politicization.

 

"I see goodwill efforts between the government and the opposition. I see that the opposition is trying… I have asked everyone to join together. It means we still have a chance. Frankly, I suggest that they talk…"

 

As Erdoğan did not change the game plan…

Gül, sharing his views with Parliament Speaker Mehmet Ali Şahin, asked him to make shuttle diplomacy between the government and the CHP.

 

It was expected that the sides could push the break following Gül's move and use shuttle diplomacy. However, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan expressed no intention to change the game plan despite Gül's efforts.

 

Şahin, on the other hand, said: "The things that I can do are limited. If the party groups ask of me anything, I will try… But I don't see that's a possibility," implying no involvement in the situation.

 

So, by looking at these answers I could say that Gül's call didn't work. His remarks remained up in the air.

 

As said, "In pluralist democracies, constitutional amendments are not done through big consensus," Gül was expressing disappointment the other day. However, Mr. President's remarks, "I hope that a process of more consultation, cooperation and consensus is realized," signaled that "there is always a possibility of rapprochement." So, he still prefers a way of conciliation.

 

Gül's difficult choice

There is a critical factor behind Gül's conciliation efforts. If the CHP supports the package apart from three articles and if these articles are approved by over 367 votes with the CHP's support, Mr. President could face a very critical decision: Whether to take the entire package to a referendum or to ask for a popular vote only for these three articles.

 

The three articles are about the structural changes in the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors, or HSYK, in addition to making political party closures more difficult.

 

Prime Minister Erdoğan wants a referendum for the entire package. In this case, it will not be an easy decision for Gül.

 

But, of course, a critical development amid discussions is that Erdoğan has started a debate over having a presidential system in the country. With this, the nature of the move to change the Constitutional Court's structure changes dramatically. It appears that the package is a step to prepare the infrastructure of a presidential system rather than a step to have more democracy.

 

However, the debate over if we should have a presidential system in Turkey creates uncertainties about the tenure of Gül and his political future.

 

* Mr. Sedat Ergin is a columnist for the daily Hürriyet in which this piece appeared Tuesday. It was translated into English by the Daily News staff.

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

IS TURKEY TRYING TO DO BETTER?

 

I have written many articles on how Turkey ranks among the worst when it comes to Internet freedom. The infamous ban on Youtube and the ease of shutting down a website are usually the pillars of my arguments. I am also known to complain a lot about the negative stance that the government takes against the infringements of human rights, especially of the freedom of speech. Many other journalists have also thought that the government is not going to do anything to change the situation.

 

However, a workshop on the law no. 5651 about rules governing the Internet is about to change my mind for the positive. The workshop is sponsored by Türk Telekom, Turkey's main fixed-line phone company and held in Kartepe in the northwestern province of Kocaeli. I could not follow it, but a very good journalist broadcasted through Twitter about the topics that were being discussed. Lawmakers, judges, prosecutors, Internet service providers, journalists and activists gathered to speak about how to create better regulations concerning the Internet realm.

 

Law 5651 states that anyone can complain about a website's content, and if the content is promoting drug use, child abuse, criminal behavior, self-destructive behavior, pornography and gambling, or if the content is an insult against a person, especially against Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the website can be banned within hours. If the content falls into one of the categories above, local authorities do not even need a court order to ban it. This is done to protect people from possible harms that can occur during the time necessary for a court to make a final decision. The law also says the main responsibilities of nongovernmental organizations about the Internet are to report harmful content to authorities rather than promote freedom.

 

Prosecutors who act according to this law can get lost at many times. For example, as it is reported from Kartepe, a prosecutor has asked how he can proceed with a case in which a person claims that his credits are stolen from his account at Knight Online, an online computer game. Another asked how he can find and prosecute a person who made an online profile of another person. Another interesting question was whether or not to press charges against a British person who gambles on British websites from Turkey.

 

It is very clear that even though there might be a few prosecutors who misuse the laws, the majority do not know how to deal with situations caused by the Internet. Many of them find a solution through total bans, like I have written about in my previous articles. If they cannot control it, just ban it, according to them.  

 

Kürşat Kayral, the prosecutor who became famous for banning Youtube for content against Atatürk, said he didn't touch Facebook even though there was a group entitled "Those who want to meet with Kürşat Kayral's midwife," directly referring to a Turkish curse.

 

So I am now more optimistic about the fact that at least prosecutors are trying to do their best to learn about what they are dealing with. Especially remarks on how they don't actually need to ban a website but can block a certain piece of content was very educational for the prosecutors as far as I could follow.

 

At the address www.google.com/governmentrequests you can find requests from various countries to Google in the form of data requests or website removals, etc. I would have thought that Turkey would rank among the top, but actually it is way behind Brazil, Germany, India and the United States as the leaders. Turkey has less than 10 requests whereas the U.S. has 3,580 data requests about users and 123 site or blog removal requests.

 

It is possible that Turkey ranks low on Google's list because users in Turkey cannot reach the content on certain websites because of bans, and maybe it doesn't really matter for the authorities for the banned websites to be listed in the Google search.

 

I wish the day would come of knowing for sure when law no. 5651 will be as equally sophisticated as in the U.S. or Germany.

 

ersu.ablak@konakmedya.com

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

IN DEFENSE OF BLASPHEMERS

ELDAR MAMEDOV

 

The United Nations Human Rights Council, at the behest of a number of Muslim countries led by Pakistan, adopted a non-binding resolution condemning the "defamation of religion" as a violation of human rights. Turkey´s "moderate Muslims" from the Fethullah Gülen movement have hailed this move as "a step in the right direction to deal with the growing problem of Islamophobia."

 

They are wrong, for "protection of religion" is a bad and dangerous idea. Here is why.

 

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, or ICCPR, declares that everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression, which includes freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds. The ICCPR provides for the freedom of religion and conscience. However, there are no norms in the international law that defend religions. The international human rights system protects the rights of an individual, not political, philosophical or religious ideas and beliefs of any kind. But what proponents and supporters of measures against the "defamation of religion" seek are laws to "protect" religious beliefs, not individual rights.

 

To justify their demands, they point to the phenomenon of Islamophobia defined as hatred and hostility toward Islam and Muslims. In their view, attributing negative and derogatory stereotypes and beliefs to Islam legitimizes discrimination, racism and violence against Muslims.

There is no question that in the post-Sept. 11 climate many Muslims do suffer from prejudice, stereotypes and fear in parts of Western societies. Some Westerners do perceive Muslims as a monolithic block fundamentally hostile to the Western way of life. The alarming rise of far-right xenophobic demagogues in some European countries only makes the task of engaging with Muslim communities all the more urgent.

 

But one thing is to ensure full respect for the individual rights of Muslims, including the right to practice their religion freely within a secular and democratic framework. However, to ban any critique of their religion, or certain aspects and interpretations of it, is something completely different. All citizens, whether Muslim, Christian, Jewish or atheist should have the right to criticize and even ridicule any religion or belief, prophet, rule, rite, prohibition, etc. Historically, free debate on religion, including a healthy dose of satire, was at the root of the European concepts of tolerance and freedom of speech, which is exactly why so many Muslims are so much freer in Europe than in most countries of the Muslim world. Therefore, attempts to ban "defamation of Islam" amount to an unacceptable attack on the freedom of speech and must be resisted.

 

In fact, it is not Islam that should be protected, but the individuals whose human rights are severely violated by the application of anti-defamation laws in some Muslim countries. In the prisons of the Islamic Republic of Iran there are hundreds of people facing death penalty for "fighting God," their sole "crime" being expressing political opinions about the situation in their country. In 2008 a journalism student in Afghanistan was sentenced to 20 years in prison for blasphemy after he was found guilty of spreading information about women's rights in Islam. In Pakistan, a country that sponsored the anti-defamation resolution in the U.N., blasphemy laws are used regularly and extensively against religious minorities, especially Ahmadis. There are scores of writers, artists, human rights defenders, religious dissidents who had to flee their countries lest they run the risk of being punished under blasphemy laws.

 

Turkey's record in this regard is not convincing. The Turkish state still does not officially commemorate the Sivas massacre of 1993, in which thirty-seven intellectuals belonging to the Alevi sect were murdered by Sunni extremists, and the militants' main target, Aziz Nesin, a well-known leftist writer and a Turkish translator of Salman Rushdie's "Satanic Verses," only narrowly escaped death.

 

Last year another Turkish novelist, Nedim Gürsel, was accused by the directorate of religious affairs, a public entity, of denigrating religious values in his book "Daughters of Allah." He was eventually acquitted, but many Turkish writers and artists point to increased levels of self-censorship as result. In a social climate increasingly affected by the political pietism of the Islam-rooted ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, and its allies, including the Gülen movement, to openly deny belief in God is becoming dangerous. Astonishingly, while constitutional reform is discussed to bring the country closer to the EU, no effort is made to enhance the freedom of expression. The possibility of repealing the blasphemy article 216 of the Turkish penal code, which was used to prosecute Gürsel, is not even discussed.

 

Fighting religiously based discrimination and prejudice is the right thing to do. But re-enforcing anti-blasphemy laws, which is what the ill-conceived U.N. anti-defamation resolution calls for, would constitute a sure step toward religious despotism. Too bad that Turkish "moderate Muslims" from the Fethullah Gülen movement fail to see this.

 

* Eldar Mamedov is a political adviser to the Socialists and Democrats group in the European Parliament, but is writing in a personal capacity

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

MILITARY SERVICE BY PAYMENT: A LIE

MEHMET ALİ BİRAND

 

Rest assured, we are torturing these people.

 

According to some numbers, there are hundreds of thousands and according to others tens of thousands of young people fooled regarding the issue of military service by payment.

 

The winds of a lie keep blowing. One of the biggest wounds bleeding in people inside and outside of Turkey is

the issue of military service by payment.

 

Some have a job and did not join the military because they were afraid they would lose their jobs if they did. Others are absent without leave for one reason or another. There are thousands of men whose age has passed the age to solve their military duty that makes it hard to make them join the military.

 

So what's to do?

 

Will we ignore these thousands of men and keep them on the "absent without leave" status? Will we sent for the police or find another solution?

 

The General Staff has definitely made up its mind including below reasons:

 

There is need for military personnel and no alternative present. 'Absent without leave' might conflict with the principle of equality. It would create a negative effect implying that those who have the means to pay can protect themselves but those without have any means have to serve their military duty even if it means for them losing their lives. The number of people who would be able to pay for it would be insufficient to create such a privilege.

 

To tell the truth, like Umur Talu puts it, where in Turkey is such a principle of equality valid that we should be sensitive about it now.

 

I wish that it hadn't been applied in 1999 for the last time as well.

 

After applying it so many times, how correct would it be to say "No" this time?

 

The general staff's attitude is quite clear.

 

Their attitude involves a military logic, whether you like it or not. But on the other side there is a problem.

 

What's to do?

 

Will we continue like this?

 

Will we have to wait for these people to retire?

 

Like I said upfront, the winds of a lie keep blowing.

 

And a politician who is reactive to the military is keen on solving the problem.

 

There has to be a compromise. And it can be found. Nothing is unsolvable. We can't just disregard it saying "Such a thing is impossible."

 

Let's not play with our people.

 

We can't call some of these men young anymore but we need to set the situation right for those who are in the status of 'absent without leave'. We won't get anywhere with lying to them. They are the ones to suffer

 

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

THE NEW BOOM IN MALARIA

PHILIP STEVENS

 

Next Sunday is World Malaria Day and the world's eyes will naturally turn to the vast belt of tropical Africa, where poverty and lack of healthcare make the disease among the top killers of children. But the real story is quietly unfolding thousands of miles away in Cambodia where new, drug resistant strains of the parasite are emerging. Left unchecked, these new strains could make whole classes of modern drugs useless, seriously undermining the fight against malaria.

 

For the last few years, patients have had a powerful new drug – artemisinin, derived from the sweet wormwood plant indigenous to China. Unlike other increasingly elderly classes of malaria drugs, artemisinin has until recently been completely effective in clearing malarial parasites from patients' blood, making it the most effective malaria treatment available today.

 

Back in 2005, however, researchers working on the common borders of Cambodia, Laos and Thailand began to notice parasites were taking longer to clear. In November 2009, further studies found artemisinin resistance already in Myanmar, China and Vietnam, where between 12-31 percent of patients still harbored the parasite after three days' treatment.

 

According to Dr. Charles Delacollette from the World Health Organization, "The fear is what we're observing right now could be the starting point for something worse regionally and globally." Around 880,000 people died of malaria in 2006 but, if the most powerful anti-malarial gun is spiked by drug resistance, this figure could escalate rapidly.

 

One of the biggest drivers of drug resistance in this Greater Mekong area is bad medicine. Research published in the academic journal Public Library of Science in 2008 showed that up to half of all artemisinin drugs in the region contained too few active ingredients, proscribed chemicals or both.

 

When malaria drugs contain sub-therapeutic levels of active ingredients, the can be enough to fool quality inspections but not enough to knock out the parasite. Aside from harming the patient directly, this helps the parasite learn how to outwit the drug and then multiply, which it appears to be doing with increasing ease.

 

All other malaria drugs have suffered this fate. Chloroquine, the cheapest and most common malaria drug, is becoming increasingly useless in almost all endemic countries. Resistance to another important drug combination, sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, is now global.

 

It is vital that the same fate does not befall artemisinin. Given that drug resistance is currently only sporadic and localized, it may not be too late. The key is taking steps to improve the quality of the drug supply.

 

Certain parts of South East Asia are awash with substandard Chinese-made artemisinin. Some are copies made by legitimate yet inefficient companies but many are made by criminal counterfeiters, often in deeply unsanitary conditions.

 

To stem this tide, the region's governments have to give far greater protection to intellectual property. In particular, the manufacturers of certified, high-quality medicines need to be sure that bootleggers are not infringing their trademarks. As any business or consumer knows, trademarks signal the quality of a brand. But if other people start copying a trademark with impunity, it might as well not exist.

 

Unfortunately, countries such as Cambodia, Thailand and Laos – and indeed most countries where fakes are a problem – do little to uphold trademarks. Courts are corrupt and bureaucratic, and it can take years and cost millions to successfully conclude a prosecution. This legal vacuum gives free rein to the counterfeiters, crowding out more expensive but reliable drugs.

 

Some have called for stricter regulation but this will not help much in countries where corruption is a problem and regulators themselves often become compromised by counterfeiters. In 2007, China executed the head of its drug regulator for allegedly accepting bribes from counterfeiters. Also in 2007, drug inspectors in Orissa, India, were accused of working in cahoots with counterfeiters.

 

World Malaria Day will no doubt focus on activists pleading for more money for medicines and bednets. But unless weak governments and their neighbors in Asia get a grip on fake drug production and trade, the outlook for malaria victims is about to get a whole lot worse.

 

*Philip Stevens is a Senior Fellow at International Policy Network, a London-based think-tank.

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE PALESTINIAN REFUGEES

ALON BEN-MEIR

 

President Barack Obama's meeting with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Palestinians' President Mahmoud Abbas last September fuelled speculation that there would be palpable progress in the Middle East peace process. Yet so far all attempts at reconciliation have yet to be translated into action. Continuing Israeli settlement activity on the West Bank and in Jerusalem has kept George Mitchell and his colleagues in the American negotiating team shuttling back and forth to the region, but the historically contentious issue of the Palestinian refugee crisis remains. This has already disrupted numerous efforts toward a final agreement, and is likely to present the biggest hurdle for negotiators in the future.

 

Instead of waiting for final status talks to resume, the international community, led by the European Union, should now take steps to improve the political atmosphere surrounding the Palestinian refugee issue. There is only one realistic solution that could be envisaged as part of a two-state solution, and that means compensation, resettlement and rehabilitation in the West Bank and Gaza. The EU must therefore take the lead and use its formidable economic and political clout to help bring the tragedy of the Palestinian refugees to an end. By doing so, it would establish itself as an indispensable interlocutor in the Arab-Israeli peace process, thus enhancing its own strategic and economic interests in the Middle East.

 

Of all the issues that divide the Israelis and Palestinians, spanning as they do territorial claims, secure borders and the future of East Jerusalem, the Palestinian refugee problem continues to stymie all pragmatic solutions. The majority of Palestinians believe that the creation of Israel in 1948 precipitated the problem, so the solution lies in the Right of Return to the state of Israel as a matter of principle. Israel has hotly refuted this argument, and in every encounter with the Palestinians since 1988 has made it clear that to sustain its Jewish majority, which the Israelis consider a sine qua non for any agreement, the solution must be found through resettlement and rehabilitation in the West Bank and Gaza. This will fulfill the call for Palestinians to return to their homeland, albeit not to their original homes. Other refugees may opt to resettle in their present country of residence as long as these countries are prepared to accept the refugees as their own citizens.

 

Many Palestinian and Arab leaders have since 2000 conceded, in private as well as in negotiations with Israel, that apart from a symbolic 20-30,000 refugees returning to Israel proper as part of family reunification, the solution lies largely in resettlement and compensation in the new state of Palestine. Such a solution is based on the 1967 Resolution 242, of the U.N. Security Council, which calls for "achieving a just settlement to the refugee problem." This is opposed to the 1948 Resolution 194 of the U.N. General Assembly, where article 11 states that "the refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date." It should be noted that in every final status negotiation between the two parties, a solution to the Palestinian refugees was discussed only in the context of resettlement and compensation. The understanding between the two parties was based on the premise of U.N. Resolution 242, which superseded the non-binding Resolution 194.

 

Considering the historical magnitude and the politicization of the Palestinian refugee issue, it is necessary at this point to change the political formula. Waiting for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal to be signed could take years, and as matters stand the refugee issue could collapse any final status agreement, as happened in Camp David. To change the political dynamics, the EU should take direct action to alleviate the crisis as a precursor to a future peace deal.

 

The EU has championed the cause of Palestinian refugees since Israel's inception, and has been the largest donor to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, for Palestine refugees. Considering, too, the natural alliance the Palestinians have with the EU as a possible balance to the close U.S.-Israeli relationship, the EU is in an ideal position to dramatically change the status of the 4.5m refugees registered by the U.N.

 

To have a substantial impact on the way this conflict has been framed, the EU will need to take a number of steps to change the entire structure in which the refugees exist. This would require capital of perhaps up to $10 billion, far more than the 264 million euros allotted for UNRWA – as well as a close relationship with the Palestinian Authority and neighboring Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, where many of the refugee camps are located. Raising the funds to support the resettlement of refugees would help to lay the foundation for the state of Palestine, but needs to be accompanied by a support system.

 

This would be in line with the plans of the Palestinian Authority's Prime Minister Salam Fayyad to establish a de facto state in the West Bank and Gaza. Fayyad's state-building vision has engendered Western enthusiasm along with financial and political support from the Obama Administration and the EU. Fayyad emphasized that "the government will do all within its power and authority to bolster on the legal right and the living conditions of the refugees in the occupied territory, particularly in refugee camps, including the provision of all the resources it can afford to support and alleviate the suffering of the refugees in all aspects of their lives."

 

Every country that speaks of the need to find a solution to the Palestinian refugees must contribute to this effort, including the U.S., Russia, China, the oil-rich Arab states and Israel itself. Re-settlement of the refugees means large-scale investment in jobs, contracts for housing and schools and measures to ensure that existing Palestinian communities can absorb the influx. The EU needs to partner with the PA to create a ministry for resettling refugees. Improving the economic situation in the West Bank and Gaza will be key if Palestinians are to be motivated to leave the refugee camps.

 

This approach is fundamentally different to previous attempts, because it is based on finding a solution to the refugee crisis before any final status negotiations. Billions of dollars for resettlement will have the effect of changing the debate and forcing people to think about how to use the money constructively. The EU must also emphasize that this is not a controversial idea, as past negotiations have been based on the premise of UNSC 242 and the concept of re-settlement into the West Bank and Gaza.

 

Ultimately, the solution to the refugee problem must be linked to a future viable Palestinian state. If that is not achieved as part of a package, Palestinians and Arabs will feel they were "bought." This is why it is absolutely critical that the resettlement of refugees should facilitate rather than obstruct the creation of a Palestinian state.

 

Moving Palestinians out of refugee camps and into viable communities in their future state will also have a huge impact across the Arab world. Not only should the Arab states help the EU to fund this project, but they should give logistical and organizational support for a significant transfer of people. Arab states that have used the plight of the refugees to cover up for their own shortcomings can finally do something beneficial for the people who have been living in squalid conditions for decades. And Israel should welcome this development as it would help to mitigate the call for a return to Israel proper. By taking the lead and raising money, the EU can assure the Israelis that all the money and permits for construction will be for the sole purpose of moving Palestinians into their future state.

 

The goal must be to change the current situation of the refugees, not by giving them U.N. aid, but by establishing the funding and grounds where refugees can start returning to their homeland and investing in their new communities. For the 60 percent of refugees already living in camps in the West Bank and Gaza, this will mean working with the PA to pull their families out of refugee status and into proper housing. There is absolutely no reason why refugees living in camps in the Palestinian territories under complete PA control should continue to live in appalling conditions when they are under the control of the Palestinian Authority. Perpetuating their suffering for political reasons is unconscionable, especially when the lives of so many children are at stake.

 

Resolving the Palestinian refugee problem requires not only money from the EU, but above all political and organizational know-how to overcome the many detractors whose political fortunes depend on the continued plight of the refugees. What is now needed is a bold and visionary solution that is totally consistent with the right of return to the future Palestinian state.

 

* Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at New York University. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

ALARM BELLS ARE RINGING

YUSUF KANLI

 

It is indeed nice to be away for some time from Turkey's hot agenda even though being physically away does not necessarily mean being really away in this age of telecommunications. Furthermore, northern Cyprus is not sufficiently "away" from Turkey to feel cut apart from the discussions and developments in Turkey. After all, as a citizen of both Turkey and Cyprus, being in my "motherland" does not mean being away from the motherland where I lived most of my life.

 

Developments of the past few days in the Turkish Parliament regarding the sugar-coated constitutional amendment package show clearly that the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, will not be able to garner the required two-thirds majority or 367 votes in parliament needed to undertake the amendments without going to a national referendum, and the package will be legislated with support slightly more than the minimum three-fifths majority, that is 330 votes required to pass amendments through referendum.

 

Apart from the sugar-coated articles of the package – which indeed would perhaps be supported by the opposition parties, as well, should the AKP compromise and separate them from the contentious articles of the draft – the changes the AKP wanted to undertake are feared of converting the Turkish republic into an AKPocracy after Parliament, the presidency, the Higher Education Council and universities are all taken under effective control of the ruling AKP. Many other key institutions of the country are manned by AKP's "almond mustached" supporters, the military has been perfectly domesticated, and now the high courts of the country will as well be domesticated or forced to come under the strong influence of the government, if not direct control.

 

These fears might be "over exaggerated," and the AKP might indeed want to achieve an "enhanced democracy" in Turkey. Yet, to what extent is the imposition of the view of the majority of others compatible with the notion of democracy? And to what extent is a majoritarian obsession with having "the majority undertake whatever we want in any fashion we want," and the idea that the "majority should not be obliged to compromise with the minority for the sake of achieving a wide consensus" and that the "majority should not be expected to succumb demands of the minority" be considered as product of a democratic mindset?

 

Alarm bells are ringing for Turkish democracy. Even though we have complaints about the current status of Turkish democracy, unfortunately the days, weeks and months ahead, during which this package will be legislated and submitted to a referendum, might be far bleaker should our people - deceived with the articles providing a sugarcoating to the package - vote in favor of the AKP draft, which will be offered to a referendum as an integrated whole.

 

As if these discussions and worries are not enough, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came up with a bright idea that Turkey should perhaps consider changing its present system of parliamentary democracy – which has been taken hostage by the majority leader, the prime minister, because of the crooked legislation covering political parties and elections – with a presidential system.

 

Indeed, the process of moving on to a presidential system started with the Parliament deciding three years ago for the popular election of the president and the nation approving that constitutional amendment. Erdoğan himself has conceded, saying this week that allowing the president to be elected by the people was an exercise in preparing the nation to move to a presidential system.

 

Erdoğan's aim is quite apparent. Soon after the next general election, when the time comes to elect the next president of the country in line with the constitutional amendment, the issue will be referred to a national vote. Erdoğan wants to be the first-ever popularly elected president of a Turkey administered with a presidential system. Thus, the current package is the second step of preparing the nation for such a strong presidency, and that's why the powers of the president were so vastly increased despite existing complaints that presidential powers were excessive and should be curtailed.

 

This will be the discussion for the next election campaign and the agenda of Turkey in 2011 and 2012 until the presidential election. Erdoğan wants to carve himself an autocratic presidency, which would run the country in any fashion he likes.

 

Should Turkey move on to a presidential or semi-presidential system? Before making a decision, Turkey should weigh the pros and cons of this issue while taking into consideration its imperial past, the tendency in our people to worship the powerful and, of course, the failure of the Republic to move on to a really enhanced and advanced democracy over the past 60 years since the country moved to a multiparty democracy.

 

Alarm bells are ringing…

 

 

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 I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

MEETING ON THE BRINK

 

The prime minister has sought the support of the provinces in working out a plan to tackle an energy crisis that has already brought the country to its knees. The chief ministers have been met with, proposals sought and requests made for cooperation. Mr Gilani seems to believe that deciding on a load management plan is a task for the centre and implementing it is one for the provinces. This makes them responsible for controlling riots we have seen breaking out in Punjab. The task is not one the provincial managers will envy. Other issues of energy management, including the payment of dues to WAPDA by defaulting provinces, have also been discussed and some strategies, early closure of markets being one of them, have been agreed upon. According to some reports, announcements today as the energy conference comes to an end may include measures we have seen before, such as the advancing of clocks, a two-holiday week for six months, staggered factory working schedules and the diversion of gas from industry to power generation. There are indications that some RPPs and IPPs may again figure in the final framework of the energy plan with their installation speeded up. Implementation of some aspects of the power-conservation plan has begun in Punjab, with streetlights being switched off and other measures adopted. The province has already banned business after 9pm. The Ministry of Water and Power – perhaps the most criticised of government departments – has been asked to work with the provinces to discuss more possibilities.

Will all this take us anywhere at all? Similar measures in the past to tame the power deficit and reduce demand have borne little fruit and are unlikely to do so now. Closing markets early could instead add to the suffering of traders who are already complaining of massive losses inflicted by power cuts. In some cities a desperate business community has already taken to the streets. We need more drastic measures. Despite reported US objections, power must be purchased from Iran. The interests of our own people must be put ahead of all else – and all else here also includes the money that many believe would pour into certain pockets if the RPPs arrived. There are also accounts of offers of power from China and of investment in solar energy that could save us from a worsening crisis in the future. It is also measures of this nature that we should devote some thinking to. We find ourselves in desperate situation in terms of industrial production, jobs and public goodwill. This calls for strategy that is both for now and the future – otherwise we are already staring disaster in the face.

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

FACE IT!

 

There had been an assumption that we had weathered the storm and that given the instability associated with the power crisis and the Taliban insurgency that now was not the time to raise fuel and power tariffs or impose a new tax – VAT. The prime minister's office had issued confident statements that the next IMF tranche would be paid as announced – but it now seems that this may not be the case and the IMF really is digging its heels in. Our 'Plan B' was for the Federal Board of Revenue to enforce the amended General Sales Tax Bill. But the FBR staff have been given no training in the collection of the new tax and the retailers are decidedly unhappy about paying it – and they have not been told how to complete the paperwork anyway.

There is no such thing as a painless or popular tax, yet we are in a position where either we expand our tax revenue by direct or indirect means or we remain forever a begging nation. There are going to be years of pain if we are to walk our way out of the mess we are in today and taxation is one of the aids to mobility available to us. Widening the tax net through VAT is one way of doing it. Our government seems to have gambled on the IMF blinking first, but what really needs to be happening is for the government to bring within the tax net those rich and powerful people who have avoided it for the last sixty-odd years. Yes, we need the $12 billion that we negotiated and agreed to the conditionality of. No, we cannot plead ignorance or inconvenience or that its half past four on a Friday and we need to pop out to get some ghee.

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

A FRIEND IN NEED

 

The way the wheels of governance move in our country is sometimes bewildering to witness. But, under the Zardari presidency, they move consistently in a certain direction – benefiting those who rank among the chief aides and cronies of the head of state. In the past, awards, key posts and other favours have been bestowed on such persons. We now see the president doing even better. Our present interior minister's 1996 dismissal from the FIA has reportedly been converted into a 'retirement'. This means that the man, removed from his post under the Civil Services Act, will not face the risk of disqualification from parliament as a dismissed government official. To add insult to injury, he can also collect backdated perks.

There is a question here. Is our president completely oblivious to public opinion? Quite beyond issues of morality which have over the decades had less and less significance in an increasingly corrupted society, can politicians completely ignore the sentiments of people? Thanks, in part, to a vigilant media that lies outside official control, people constantly watch what is going on and most of them are quite horrified by it. The latest 'favour' bestowed on a man who has already received many will further reduce respect for the government and will put yet more blots on those who constitute it.

 

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I. THE NEWS

REDEFINING NATIONALISM

DR MUBASHIR HASAN

South Asia is a very special region. Mighty empires have risen and fallen on its soil. It has seen eras of great prosperity and poverty and epochs of profound knowledge and ignorance. Over thousands of years, the peoples of this land have been assimilating knowledge and technology from outside, always choosing their own particular way of learning. The accumulated experience has helped it to discern what to accept and what not to accept from other civilisations.

South Asia is the only region in the world shaped by all the great religions. This is not for the first time that South Asia is trying to re-emerge from a period of decline. It has done it before, time and again.

Sixty years after independence, it is obvious that the peoples of South Asia have not collaborated with the efforts made for their "progress and development" by the proponents of the modern Western civilisation.

The difficulties in discerning a new vision for South Asia are most challenging. Our way of looking at ourselves is deeply infested with the ethos of the Western civilisation, a non-South-Asian entity. We tend to view South Asia through Western eyes, in terms of concepts associated with the civilisation of the modern industrialised West. For example, "peace among nations" in the contemporary sense of the phrase would mean "peace among the nations which are armed and positioned to go to war" with each other.

The concept of "shanti among nations" sounds anachronistic. What it ought to mean today is the articulation of a new vision. Similarly, the words "progress" and "prosperity," which have well-defined meanings in the West, present problems of understanding in the South Asian ethos. Unfortunately, most of us are hardly equipped to look at South Asia through South Asian eyes. A Persian couplet says:

Darmian-e-qaar-e-darya takhta bandam karda-eeBaz mee goi keh daman tar-makun, hoshiar bash(You have tied me to a plank in the bottom of the riverand then you ask me not to let my clothes get wet.)

 

The analogy of the Greek legend of the rape of Leda by Zeus, the god from Mount Olympus who descended upon the bathing beauty in the form of a swan, is applicable, as analogies can be, to the rape of South Asia by imperial Britain. Leda's rape resulted in the birth of Helen who was kidnapped by Paris. A war followed, Troy was burnt and King Agamemnon killed. The rape of South Asia over several hundred years resulted in its political enslavement, economic exploitation, social disintegration and cultural mutilation resulting in the birth of imperialised states. The question posed by the great Irish poet W B Yeats, a nationalist himselfDid she put on his knowledge with his powerBefore the indifferent beak could let her drop?

was answered in the affirmative. The great encounter in South Asia resulted in the birth of new state powers, deeply scarred, impressed and imbued with the rapists' worldview. As a result, many Troys were burnt and many Agamemnons lay dead -- Mujibur Rehman and Ziaur Rehman in Bangladesh; Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Rajiv Gandhi in India; Liaquat Ali Khan, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Benazir Bhutto and Zia-ul-Haq in Pakistan; Solomon Bandarnaike, Jayawardene, and Premadasa in Sri Lanka. South Asia developed its own internal imperial structure.

The newly emerged states of the region adopted the ideology and politics of nationalism that had evolved in the leading industrialising, expansionist and imperialist nations. Their choice of a capitalist, socialist or mixed capitalist-socialist mode of production had little impact on their nationalist and political agenda. Although based on different philosophical approaches, idealist and materialist, both converged insofar as the aims which were overwhelmingly materialist in content: Produce more, consume more, and the rest will take care of itself.

The agenda of nationalism meant inculcation of these doctrines:

(a) The nation-state constitutes a kind of holy unit. Each nation was sovereign. It is law unto itself. It can do no wrong. Its superiority over other nations is a matter of faith. Each nation has a destiny. Its population is superior to that living across the border.

(b) An individual conferred with the title of "citizen" owes his or her highest loyalty to the nation. Any infringement can be tantamount to treason. He or she must live for the nation, and be prepared to sacrifice all for the nation.

(c) Each nation has its distinctive culture; indeed, for larger nations a distinct civilisation superior to all others.

(d) A nation's territory is sacred. It has to be defended at all costs with all the armed might that the national economy can scrounge the money for.

(e) The nations lying across the border are considered potential enemies.

 

(f) Each nation must covet more territory and extend its political and economic influence over territories in other national boundaries.

(g) Each national economy constitutes a separate entity.

 

Perhaps the most profound negative impact of adopting the ideology of nationalism is the sanctification of preparing for and perpetrating violence on a massive scale to achieve political ends. The new South Asian states adopted the Western axiom about war considered as "politics by other means." Massive violence to be inflicted by one nation-state on another, not only upon other states but also upon its own people in the name of the nation-state was accepted as a holy doctrine.

The ideology of nationalism sanctifies violence of several kinds:

(a) Imperial violence -- violence against other nation-states, and against nationalistic aspirations within the federation or union,

(b) Violence that is concomitant with governance,

(c) Violence committed against each other by communities, ethnic groups and castes.

Nationalism of the imperial kind permits a nation to commit violence on another nation without any sense of guilt. Conquest through war legitimises all. Wars there had always been. But before the era of nationalism, kings with professional armies fought wars between states. The professional soldier could fight for a king today and against him the next day. The people were not party to a war.

In the era of nationalism, wars have become national wars. The people of one country are supposed to fight those of another. Violence is inflicted by an entire nation over another. Acts of violence beget heroes as well as martyrs. To kill in the name of the nation is sacred. Zbigniew Brzezinski estimated 187 million deaths to have taken place due to wars and strife between nations in the last century. On a BBC programme last month, Tony Benn spoke of four million deaths in Africa during the last four years. The ideology of nationalism has claimed a horrendous toll, indeed.

The ideology of nationalism does not answer the question of what constitutes a nation. Masses of people claim to be a nation on the basis of race, religion, language, ethnicity, tribal identity or territory. They are willing to use violence to further their national aspirations. The nationalist ideology justifies this for them. They may want increased representation, increased financial allocation, autonomy, or secession, all in the name of national self-determination. Violence dominates the scene, weakening the nation-state in the domestic and international spheres. All the South Asian states face this problem in one form or the other.

The concept of nationalism must be redefined in such a way that national loyalties no longer breed parochialism, arrogance, bigotry, hatred and violence. The citizens' love for their state, its armed might, honour, destiny, its unique personality, its superiority over other nations must be replaced by a patriotism that serves as a vehicle for peace and humanism.

The writer, a former federal minister, is among the Indian and Pakistani delegates meeting to discuss 'A Common Destiny', the first of a series of seminars on strategic issues organised by Aman ki Asha, Apr 22-23, Lahore. Email: mh1@ lhr.comsats.net.pk

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

NAME CHANGE, NAME-CALLING

FASI ZAKA

One of the most telling comments I received recently was from a friend who said to me: "You know, I never said something about the whole Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa name to you because I thought as a Punjabi that you may think my opinions are suspect as an outsider."

 

Well, as a Pakistani he has every right to hold an opinion on it, and to voice it. Underlying the whole drama surrounding the renaming of NWFP, and the tragic loss of life, has been a longstanding historical resentment between many different ethnic groups. This change in name didn't create it; it merely brought it to the surface.

When I was younger and used to leave my hometown, Peshawar, to go to other parts of the country, I was often taken aback at the prejudice and hostility against Pakhtuns. It gave me, as some of my close friends like to say, "a chip on my shoulder."

But that being said, victimhood wasn't the only thing I saw. Within my province I was also struck by the very same behaviour against the other ethnic minorities by Pakhtuns, and found it equally distasteful. When I see the reaction of the people of Hazara, I know why they respond so fiercely now.

The truth is, the ANP, the PPP and the PML-N have all been criminally short-sighted. Hazara-Pakhtunkhwa is a beautiful name, one that could have been more encompassing. While the ANP has been playing to the gallery recently on this issue to deflect the total lack of good governance in the province, they have strategically lost the game.

The ANP always articulated the grievances of the Pakhtuns by citing the case of the centre withholding hydel profits to the province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. But now that some people of Hazara are so charged that they want a new province, some major hydel resources will end up there, making the future leverage of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa weaker, both in resources and bargaining position. Recently on the issue of the name change the ANP ominously mentioned they would go the way of Bangladesh if their demand was not met.

That was, for lack of a better word, stupid. First off, they brought to mind a history of Pakhtun nationalism that has long since died. No one wants separatism anymore. What is the option, joining Afghanistan? Even the ANP, which is enjoying the spoils of power, wouldn't want it. But this old spectre keeps raising its head, doing more damage than good.

 

The demand for a new name was entirely legitimate, both in terms of law and democracy. But what is legal isn't always preferable. The ANP could have been more encompassing, playing stately politics rather than cheap shots. And the same is true of the PML-N, and now, increasingly, the PML-Q.

Fearing change, any change, is only natural. For the fear-mongers who regularly appear on TV, the world hasn't come to an end with the new name. Which is why, maybe we should see the silver lining in the demand for new provinces, both Saraiki and Hazara.

Smaller administrative units should give us efficiencies and, in addition, keep the aspirations of the people involved satisfied. It would also solve one of Pakistan's longstanding issues, the excessive power of the province of Punjab.

This power imbalance hurts us a lot. Because, going to back to the friend of mine who was reluctant to comment when I did have a discussion with him, it was obvious what the real problem was.

Whenever someone is suspicious of provincial demands in Pakistan, the argument is almost always, why not just be Pakistani? That's a good argument, but the devil is in the details. The dominant cultural identity of Pakistan is that of the establishment, mostly Punjabi oriented. Sometimes when one is asked to be Pakistani, what they are asking one to be is the Punjabi establishment.

That is, again, short-sighted. One can very well be Sindhi, Baloch and Pakhtun and still be vehemently Pakistani. Yes, of course, some fringe groups will take this provincial identity thing too far, but that's side groups, not the main ones whose interest is in being part of the federation.

The whole Hazara-Pakhtun issue of recent times is an excellent example of just how narrow people have construed what it means to be Pakistani. It's not anti-Pakistan to want the name of your province to change, neither is it anti-Pakistan to want a new province. Right now, it's not the change in name that's hurting us, but the name-calling.

The writer is a Rhodes scholar and former academic. Email: fasizaka@yahoo.com

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

THE TEXT BEHIND THE PRINT

KAMILA HYAT

The writer is a freelance columnist and former newspaper editor

Broadly speaking, the UN report into the December 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto has been immediately labelled as offering up very little that is new.

To some extent at least this is true. We are indeed all aware that security failures contributed to her death; that the governments at both the federal and provincial levels failed to offer sufficient cover and that lapses in the arrangements put in place occurred at various points in time. Realistically speaking, we are also aware just how difficult it can be to protect a public figure out before a massive gathering of people. The nature of populist politics demands that leaders appear at such events. Indeed, Benazir Bhutto was well aware of the risks of doing so and chose to go ahead anyway. As a politician she really had little choice but to do so.

However, beyond its more obvious conclusions, the three-member UN panel makes suggestions that throw light on the working of national life in our country – even if they fail to draw up a definite conclusion as to who killed Ms Bhutto. The black-and-white answer on this count that many people were evidently hoping for was always unlikely. The observations from the commission do, however, raise some intriguing questions. The fact that its head, a former Chilean ambassador, would be familiar with the manner in which the military and other powerful agencies manipulate countries may have been a factor in this. Chile after all is a nation that knows a very great deal about military intervention in the civilian process and how this can destroy nations.

The text of the report narrates how key phone calls to the chief police officer resulted in the swift hosing of the crime scene – an issue which has surfaced repeatedly in the investigation of the case. The panel, based on its interviews, believes the instructions came from the head of the Military Intelligence. Unsurprisingly, no one seems willing to say this on record. Previous orders of a similar nature from the army have been noted, often in the case of other crimes. Police sources say that in the absence of such orders, the washing away of evidence would never have occurred. It is hard to say where the truth lies. Incompetence, after all, is hardly a rarity in our country. This is perhaps truest of all when applied to police work. But even here there are perhaps some limitations to the degree of incompetence. On their own, even our police might have opted to preserve the crime scene – a fundamental in any process of investigation.

There are other points made in the report: calls that might have prevented doctors from performing an autopsy; instructions that ensured the shifting of the body beyond the hospital premises even before her family arrived and other interventions that seem unusual. The apparent efforts by the intelligence to obstruct the UN investigation have also been noted. The possible motives are unclear.

 

The question of course is what benefits the 'establishment' would derive from Ms Bhutto's death. The UN's attempts to offer answers give us some lines to think along. The chain of reasoning put forward, at first glance at least, appears weak, unconvincing. There is conjecture that Benazir's willingness to open up the nuclear weapons arsenal to western inspection or reach compromises with India on matters between the two nations might have been factors in the desire to eliminate her. This is in some ways at least not easy to believe. But then the paranoid mindset of the establishment and the degree of hatred it holds for India, is also, to most of us, almost inconceivable. Perhaps these sentiments were enough to lead to a murder plot that involved a great deal of evil, and also the kind of precise planning that is not easy to come by.

Other questions remain open. The role of the man who is now the interior minister has been questioned. So has the security cover offered to Ms Bhutto by her party itself. But without support from more powerful quarters, it is hard to believe an opposition party or figures within it could have carried out so meticulously a killing that was designed to leave no margin for error. The intelligence agencies that play so huge a part in the life of our nation would surely have picked up such a plan un-backed by the wielders of power. The phone-tapping practices that have steadily expanded since the 1980s after all are intended to achieve a state with ears everywhere.

A huge volume of answers is required. Realistically speaking, it seems unlikely they will ever be offered up. Solving murders is after all not something we like to do, especially when key political figures are involved. Conjecture, speculation, myth and the insidious rumours spread by agencies form as much a part of our history as facts. Newspaper newsrooms have learnt to live with 'planted' stories, accepting them as a source of scarce information.

But there are issues on which we should at least aspire to gain insight and to understand a bit better. One of these is the links between the establishment, militants and some politicians. The UN report makes a reference to this nexus. Again, it picks up on the insinuations made in this regard by Benazir Bhutto in some of her final letters. There were whispers too, in the dark days that immediately followed her death, of connivance between key figures with influence in the corridors of power and Taliban militants who might actually have carried out the bombing that killed her.

These links need to be explored. They are significant in terms of the country as a whole. In the past far too much of what has happened in our country has been sculpted and moulded by the intelligence apparatus. The media has – in some cases knowingly – played along. The tie-up between the establishment and the Taliban has placed us at the precarious spot on the cliff where we stand today. If we are to clamber safely off and reach secure ground this link needs to be unravelled, any role in the death of a key politician examined and answers found so we can move beyond the realm of rumour towards the sense of certainty that has so far eluded us.

Email: kamilahyat@hotmail.com

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

ON JCSC CHAIRMEN

IKRAM SEHGAL

A passing comment made without any malice in my article "Airpower In COIN operations," "what does four-star Tariq Majid do for a living?" made those on the receiving end of the earful from him go ballistic, paraphrased by the Shakespearean adage, "Hell hath no fury" and/or words to that effect. The normal suave veneer came off and the fangs were bared in passing on the "severe displeasure." One must forgive them, "dual (or even triple) personality" seems to be a necessary ingredient in today's military personality for those who aspire to be upwardly-mobile. It reminds you of Peter Ustinov from Romeo and Juliet, "As for being a General; at the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords we were all generals, only some of us never grow out of It."

My longstanding advocacy for making the JCSC a strong and effective institution is a matter of record. I was pointedly asked whether I knew that the JCSC controlled the National Command Authority (NCA)? My article "Joint chiefs," written as far back as April 17, 1999 (page 528 of Leave the Army Alone), will confirm my early recommendations about the NCA's creation and its control by the JCSC. Dr Hamid Hussain helped me coalesce my reaction to something one has not really encountered from those in uniform in over 25 years of writing. Respect for the uniform, for the institution as well as professional ethics, restricts me to a polite intellectual discourse.

To quote Dr Hamid Hussain, "the Chairman JCSC post was created in March 1976 when Pakistan's higher defence organisation was reorganised by the very powerful civilian prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Instead of strengthening the newly created organisation he continued to work directly only with the chief of the army staff (COAS), Gen Zia-ul-Haq, thus contributing to the Chairman JCSC's position remaining essentially a ceremonial post. To quote the late Maj Gen Tajammal Hussain, when Gen Muhammad Sharif was appointed as the first Chairman JCSC, one of his old JCOs congratulated him, stating 'Sir, Mubarak ho! Aap Pakistan fauj key Chaudhri Fazal Ilahi ban gaye hein' (Congratulations, Sir, you have become Chaudhri Fazal Ilahi of the Pakistani Army). Fazal Ilahi was then president of the country, essentially a ceremonial post with no powers."

Successive chairmen of the JCSC (or uniformed Fazal Ilahis, if you will) were: (1) General Muhammad Sharif (1976-1978) was the senior-most lieutenant general when Bhutto decided to pick Lt Gen Zia-ul-Haq as the army chief. Well respected by contemporaries, he had no influence over the decision-making process at the GHQ during the tumultuous days in 1977 which led to the martial law. (2) With Zia ruling the country wearing the hats of army chief, chief martial law administrator and president, there was nothing left for Admiral Sharif (1978-1980) who followed Gen Sharif as chairman of the JCSC. (3) Among the inner circle during deliberations prior to the 1977 coup, Gen Muhammad Iqbal Khan (1980-1984), who like Sharif was an outstanding soldier, followed next.

(4) A close associate of Zia as well as related to him by marriage of the children, Gen Rahimuddin Khan (1984-1987), could be scathing. He asked a GOC who laid on a lavish lunch, complete with shamianas (tents), carpets, silverware and crockery in the middle of the desert for Zia, "Where is the 'mujra' (dancing)?" Instead of visitors being served in mess tins, we now get the complete "works" (Kayani should change this gross aberration to military simplicity to go with his other reforms). (5) Gen Akhtar Abdur Rahman (1987-1988), easily the longest-serving ISI chief, was, together with Zia, the architect of Pakistan's Afghan war.

(6) With Gen Mirza Aslam Beg as COAS running things after the death of Gen Zia, Admiral Sirohey (1988-1991) was only an interested bystander. (7) Gen Shamim Alam Khan (1991-1994) had no role to the play in the musical chairs that Gen Waheed oversaw as COAS in 1993. (8) Air Chief Marshal Farooq Feroz Khan (1994-1997) dutifully performed a ceremonial role as chairman. (9) Gen Jahangir Karamat (1997-1998) wore two hats, as COAS and chairman of the JCSC, but failed in making the JCSC effective. (10) Respect for the chairman of the JCSC post can be gauged from when Pervez Musharraf (1998-2001) warned Nawaz through brother Shahbaz, "I'll not be kicked upstairs as chairman JCSC" and "I don't care who he picks as chairman JCSC." Nawaz failed to create a false sense of security by making him concurrently chairman of the JCSC on Oct 8, 1998. (11) Gen Muhammad Aziz Khan (2001-2004) was a close confidant of Musharraf. (12) Gen Ehsan ul Haq (2004-2007) served Musharraf well as director general of Military Intelligence during the October 1999 coup. (13) Acting as the corps commander of Lahore who was out of station, Gen Tariq Majid (2007-present) as GOC of 10th Division secured Punjab during the 1999 coup for Musharraf. For the slots of chairman of the JCSC and COAS, Kayani and Tariq were in the running. Musharraf probably chose Kayani as COAS because, in interaction with him, Kayani was taciturn, quiet and not very assertive, in contrast to Tariq.

Dr Hamid Hussain says "the purpose of the JCSC was coordination among three services to provide supposedly a unified military input to civilian leadership. The main focus of the organisation was to be on joint operations between the three services. Working reasonably well in a very few countries, one example being the US, in Pakistan there is inherent conflict between chairman JCSC and chief of the army staff positions, the latter sees any increase in the power of chairman of the JCSC as encroachment on his territory. The COAS will always use the 'unity of command' principle to thwart such efforts. Strict boundaries between various posts are less important than efforts towards a functional and institutional process which is not highly personalised. What is the contribution to higher direction of war by the chairman of the JCSCs? Maybe even a basic level intellectual activity or any writing worth reading from any of the 13 Chairman JCSCs? The general impression is that the post has been used mainly to provide some perks and privileges of four-star rank to 'loyal' subordinates. They were engaged mainly in benign opening ceremonies of institutions, attending passing-out parades and visiting some third-tier countries with no bearing on higher direction of war."

The three chairmen of the JCSC I knew personally and admired tremendously, both as individuals and professionals. GOC 33rd Division at the end of the 1971 war in the desert was Gen Sharif.

One did not mean to disparage Tariq either as an officer or as a person, but he probably took umbrage. Tai Kung's advice to King Wu in 11 BC, "War is won outside the borders of the state, but the general's merit is established within it." I only wanted to reiterate my strong reservations about the appointment thereof in its present form.

Maybe the 14th chairman of the JCSC will consign the "neither seen, nor heard, nor heard of" subaltern status of the unlucky 13 preceding him as an aberration of the past to be corrected and make the JCSC what it should be, a credible mechanism to combine the armed forces into one effective fighting machine.

The writer is a defence and political analyst. Email: isehgal@pathfinder9.com

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

THE EVIL WITHIN US

MYSTIC VIEW

AMAR JALEEL

 

This world is slippery,

Drowned in darkness,

Stride carefully_

Peep, who lives within you?

-Bulleh Shah

More than three decades ago a brilliant surgeon taught and practiced at Dow Medical College, Karachi. I fail to recall his name. However, his story is more captivating than his name. For the sake of narrative let us give him a name. Let us call him Professor Dr Ahmed.

Bestowed with an attractive personality, Professor Dr Ahmed was a soft-spoken gentleman. He took personal interest in the patients operated upon by him. Their rehabilitation was his immediate concern. It was generally whispered that he financially helped the needy once they were discharge from the hospital. What actually was mind-boggling for his colleagues was the success ratio of his operations. Not once had he faltered in carrying out some of the most complicated operations he performed! It was incredible. It was amazing that an earthly person could be so perfect in his professional performance. But Professor Dr Ahmed was like that. Perfection, commitment, and dedication to duty were the hallmark of his fame.

One ominous day, to everyone's shock and dismay a police party arrived and whisked Professor Dr Ahmed away. He was known for his integrity and steadfastness. He had not embezzled funds nor had he extracted gratifications from his patients. In short he had never ever misused his authority. Then, what was the cause of his apprehension at the hands of the police! Professor Dr Ahmed's arrest was bewildering for his colleagues and his former patients alike. His detention became an enigma, a riddle, a jigsaw puzzle.

Professor Dr Ahmed's friends and well-wishers promptly intervened. In return they received a stunning revelation of their life-time. There was nothing wrong with his qualifications. Dr Ahmed's degrees, certificates, and testimonials were genuine. The blunder that landed him in trouble was that he was an imposter. He was not Dr Ahmed. The degrees, the certificates and the testimonials did not belong to him. The testimonials and the degrees belonged to a doctor by the name of Dr Ahmed who had once practiced at Lyallpur now called Faisalabad. He was no more alive. He had passed away a long time ago. The imposter, then called Ibrahim, was a male nurse who assisted Dr Ahmed in his private practice. He won the heart of Dr Ahmed with his dedication and devotion towards his duty. He stood by the side of Dr Ahmed in the operation theatre for years.

As providence would have it, one day the issueless Dr Ahmed passed away. Ibrahim, otherwise a conscientious person, was besieged by greed. He collected the framed degrees, certificates and testimonials of Dr Ahmed displayed on the walls of his clinic, and absconded. He proverbially vanished. The clinic of Dr Ahmed was closed, and at its place emerged a grocery shop. After some time Dr Ahmed was forgotten by the people of Lyallpur. His chapter was closed, once and for all.

The male nurse/assistant Ibrahim changed his name to Dr Ahmed. He greased the palm of the concerned officials, and easily obtained a National Identity Card. He opened clinics in far-off villages. After practicing surgery in the villages, and gaining confidence, he moved to smaller towns. In about ten years he had cultivated immense confidence in undertaking complicated operations. However, he refrained from practicing in the cities. One day Ibrahim (who had become Dr Ahmed by then) caught sight of an advertisement in the newspapers for the appointment of doctors in Sindh. He applied, appeared in the interview, impressed the selection board, and was given the job in Dow Medical College, Karachi.

How the male nurse Ibrahim alias Dr Ahmed was identified as an imposter is another incredible story. It leaves you caught in the cobweb of intriguing thoughts.

A family from Layallpur had brought a critically wounded boy in his teens to Karachi for treatment. The boy was left almost dead in a car crash. Not being satisfied with the treatment the boy received in the various hospitals of Punjab, his parents brought the injured boy to Karachi. Ibrahim alias Dr Ahmed left no stone unturned in the treatment of the boy. He proverbially performed a miracle. He snatched the boy from the jaws of death, and brought him back to life. The happiness of the parents knew no bounds. They felt overtly grateful to Dr Ahmed. They were surprised when the doctor refused to accept a penny over and above what was due to him. He instead advised them to donate the gifts and the huge amount they intended to give him to Dow Medical College. What he accepted was an invitation to join them in a farewell dinner before their journey back home. Dr Ahmed accepted the invitation.

The grandfather of the boy kept watching Dr Ahmed during the dinner. In fact, the old man had kept an eye on Dr Ahmed from the day he had arrived along with his family for the treatment of his wounded grandson. In Dr Ahmed he perceived the image of a young male nurse Ibrahim he had always seen during his visits to the clinic of Dr Ahmed in Lyallpur decades ago. After the dinner the old man sat by the side of Ibrahim alias Dr Ahmed, and asked, "Do you know me?"

"No sir," was the soft, but prompt reply the old man received.

While seeing him off along with his family the old man took Ibrahim alias Dr Ahmed aside, held his hand, and said, "I shall always remain grateful to you for taking special care of my grandson. But, I shall always lament that he was treated by an imposter."

Before leaving, the old man dismissed the pleadings from his family, and lodged an FIR stating that Dr Ahmed was an imposter and in reality he was a male nurse Ibrahim who worked at the clinic of the late Dr Ahmed who had practiced at Lyallpur a long time ago.

The writer is a creative columnist and a short-story writer.

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

TURKISH LESSONS

TAYYAB SIDDIQUI

High-level visits by head of states and governments are considered a normal diplomatic activity between two countries, primarily meant to strengthen bilateral relations. The recent visit of Abdullah Gul, the president of Turkey, however, held special significance for Pakistan which is currently in a vortex of civil unrest, political turmoil and economic meltdown. The four-day visit, both in terms of substance and protocol, reflected the mutual sentiments of esteem and affection the nations share. The decision to upgrade strategic partnership and enhanced economic cooperation along with the determination to jointly struggle to defeat militancy and terrorism is welcome.

The Turkish leadership has demonstrated a pragmatic approach in foreign relations and a commitment not to compromise on its fundamental principles of state ideology. Turkey shares amiable relations with Syria, Iran, Russia and the West. The independence of its foreign policy is best reflected in its relation with Israel, as Turkey is among those few Muslim countries which not only have diplomatic relations with Israel, but it also has close defence cooperation with Israel besides its long-term programme of arm purchases.

Despite this relationship, Ankara has severely condemned Israel's policy in Gaza and occupied Palestinian lands. In a harsh criticism of Israel's policy, Ankara compared Gaza to a "concentration camp" and urged the international community to take action against the Israeli leadership for crime against humanity. In a memorable episode Prime Minister Erdogan accused Israel of "barbarian acts" during a seminar with President Shimon Perez at the World Economic Forum in Davos last January. He stormed out of the meeting saying to the Israeli president, "You know well how to kill people". Turkey later followed this condemnation by excluding Israel from the joint military exercises as per the military cooperation accord signed in 1996.

Turkey, of late has involved itself in regional issues and showed particular interest in the situation in Afghanistan. It has hosted quite a few meetings between the leader of Pakistan and Afghanistan in Istanbul. The agreement between Iran and Pakistan on the IPI pipeline project was also signed in Istanbul.

Turkey is among those handful of countries on whom Pakistan can rely during its adversity and also for substantive support for different economic projects. Three MoUs were signed to explore the potential and enhance collaboration, focusing on trade enhancement, energy and agro-based industries. Another landmark decision was to upgrade railway link from Islamabad to Istanbul via Zahidan and Tehran, costing $20 billion.

Turkey, with its 70 million population and a highly strategic geographic location has displayed the ability to integrate in the West and yet have a $20 billion annual trade with Russia. Similarly, its political and military relations with Israel do not reflect on its relations with the Muslim World. Domestically Turkey boasts of a consolidated democracy and accommodated popular sentiments for Islamic unity without jeopardising its secular identity. Pakistan can learn a lot from Turkey's experience of crafting a foreign policy based on public aspirations and yet avoid conflict with its international obligations. The manner in which the Erdogan government has handled its relations with the army in the wake of an abortive military coup, hatched in 2003 and revealed now, without straining relations should also be instructive for us. How Turkey overcame the deadly campaign of terror and violence by PKK in the 90s is yet another area we can profitably learn from.

The writer is a former ambassador. Email: m.tayyab.siddiqui @gmail.com

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

SHAMEFUL SITUATION, SHAMEFUL APPROACHES

 

AS power crisis is deepening with the passage of every day and people are taking to streets to protest against scheduled and unscheduled load-shedding that is taking heavy toll, the Government seems to be clueless about the strategy to pull the country out of abysmal blackouts. One gets a clear message that the Government is unable to read the writing on the wall as on the one hand it has increased the electricity tariff, which is already alarmingly high, up to Rs 1.50 per unit and on the other hand it is contemplating cosmetic measures to overcome a problem of serious magnitude.

This state of affairs is not commensurate with the status of the country, which is a nuclear power and has necessary resources and potential to prosper but regrettably the conduct of the successive governments remained shameful as they miserably failed to tap the real potential of the country. The proposals that dominated deliberations of the two-day National Energy Conference clearly show that our policy-makers are devoid of necessary vision as they focused mainly on tried but unproductive measures like two holidays, advancing clocks by an hour and closure of shopping centres at eight in the evening. If this is the approach then switch off power supply to entire country and you will become surplus in electricity! Raja Parvez Ashraf, who made commitments umpteen times about the end of load-shedding by December 2009 is again out counselling short, medium and long-term plans to tackle the situation. One would ask him what happened to previous plans and why they could not produce any positive results in two years. This state of affairs is unacceptable to the people and that is why protest demonstrations against the curse of power outages have become order of the day. These could take an ugly turn if the authorities again failed to come up with concrete measures to provide immediate relief to the masses. There is almost universal consensus amongst experts that the problem can be addressed without further delay if the Government resolves the issue of circular debt, which is not allowing IPPs to operate on full capacity. Window dressing would not work and the practice of hiking power charges every now and then will have to be discarded to pacify the people and allow the economy to move on.

 

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

WE WISH CM RAISANI WAS RIGHT

 

BALOCHISTAN Chief Minister Nawab Muhammad Aslam Raisani has talked about the huge potential of the Gwadar Port saying that the fully operational port would play a major role in boosting the country's economy. He also pointed out that the port would not only cater for the needs of the country, especially bulk and containerized cargo but also provide transit facilities to the landlocked Central Asian Republics.

No one can dispute the claims of the worthy Chief Minister as Gwadar Port was intended for these very objectives but the question arises why we are still nowhere close to our goals in this regard. The port became officially operational about three years back but only 86 ships anchored there during this long period. The potential is no doubt there but we are indulging in criminal negligence and delay in its realization. Take the example of transfer of land from Navy to the port for which the Chief Minister convened a high-level meeting on Tuesday. According to Minister for Shipping Babar Khan Ghauri, the land in question is required for making the port facilities functional including establishment of a modern container terminal and areas for the Free Trade Zone. However, the issue has been lingering on since long and even now a sub-committee has been formed to discuss all alternatives and come out with its report in two months. One can, therefore, understand how much time the issue would consume further. In the first place, successive Governments lost considerable time in initiating the long-conceived project of Gwadar Port and the credit goes to the previous Government for its launching and completion with the assistance of our Chinese friends. The port was considered to be a gateway to Central Asia, a regional hub for trade and a Dubai like facility to attract foreign vessels but alas so far all these objectives remain unfulfilled. We would urge the Prime Minister and the Chief Minister Balochistan to take personal interest in the matter and clear all bottlenecks in the way of fuller functioning of the port.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

RESIGNATIONS OF FAKE DEGREE HOLDERS

 

ANOTHER Member of the Punjab Assembly Rana Mubashir Iqbal has resigned from his seat after a voter of his constituency had challenged his graduation degree in the Supreme Court. Earlier two MNAs Jamshed Dasti and Nazir Jatt had to resign after their degrees were found fake and if one goes back, Haji Pervez Khan, MNA from Rawalpindi was forced by his party leadership to resign after he failed to prove his innocence in an examination scandal.

Fake degrees had been selling in Pakistan but for seeking jobs. However after former President Pervez Musharraf made mandatory for the candidates contesting National and Provincial Assembly elections, some aspirants obtained fake degrees and made to Parliament. There is no doubt that issuing or obtaining bogus degree is a criminal act and those found guilty of this crime must be tried under some section of the Criminal Procedure Code. Those who have resigned had committed fraud to the nation and the Election Commission, pocketed undue perks and privileges from the national exchequer and therefore deserve trial and punishment like other citizens committing fraud. They must also be made to reimburse to the State the salary and the monetary cost of the benefits that they availed while holding public office under false pretence as they were not genuinely elected representatives of the people under the law of the land. Not only this, the institutions that granted them these fake degrees should be blacklisted and prosecuted under the relevant law. Such people who committed fraud to get themselves elected could commit bigger frauds in the future while holding public office and must not be trusted. While it is refreshing that the PML-N took principled stand and forced its members to resign when they were found indulging in corrupt practices, it is regrettable that Jamshed Dasti managed to get PPP ticket again at the cost of more committed and honest workers, which would earn a bad name to the party and create resentment among sincere cadres. We believe that the political parties must ensure ethical and moral accountability of their representatives if they want to see democratic institutions to be strong and above board.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

WAGING WAR AND MAKING PEACE

HAMID ALVI

 

The first half of the current decade witnessed the United States fighting bloody wars on two fronts i-e Iraq and Afghanistan. In both cases the United States had chosen enemies from among the Muslims states; in both cases the U.S had based the justification for going to war on threat to its national security; and in both cases the reasons given for waging war had remained unconvincing expect a handful of Americans and those who have directly benefited from the conflict, have consistently disapproved. The origin of the both points of confrontations has been attributed by the U.S to the happening of 9/11, its alleged executioners Arab youngsters, and its planners who according to United States are spread all over the world. All elements of the enterprise were supposed to be put together by Al-Qaida which in turn master minded the terrorist drama.

Osama- Bin- Laden, a Saudi citizen was assigned the position of Al-Qaida chief .In short an organizational structure was created which did not exist before 9/11.So much so that even in a Muslim country as big as Pakistan, none in the educated classes knew much about Al-Qaida and Osama. May be some Afghans involved in the Russo- Afghan war knew him because of his involvement in the war, but that is about all. This scribe Who covered the Afghan war for US Information Service had no clue about Osama and his comrades until seeing him mentioned (one line)in an Egyptian paper in the wake of American embassies bombing in east Africa, that was 1998.surprisingly now there are millions of boys named Osama. It is almost a case study of "mister no body" turned an Islamic hero, an individual how changed the course of history merely through the power of faith and money

The reason given by the US for going to war in Iraq was two folds. One, that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons which posed direct threat to US security and security of its friends. Hence it must be stopped at all cost from going nuclear. Two, Iraq was hob nobing with Al-Qaida and Osama, and that it was involved in 9/11. The history has proved that both allegations were in correct. In the case of first one the U.N inspectors turned the country upride down but find no traces of nuclear war heads Finally the U.N men left the soil of Iraq certifying absence of nuclear weapons. What the experts, claimed to be neutral, could not find in Iraq the occupation army of the United States could not do it either. Simply because Iraq was not manufacturing high or low grade devices. As regards the presence of Al-Qaida in Kurd region, that proved a patent lie. It was to take many more years for the growth of Al-Qaida in Mesopotamia .the U.S itself stopped campaign when it found no evidence. And discovered that secular Iraqi and the religion based Al-Qaida had nothing in common and most religious institutes were more or less banned in Iraq. This was the situation that prevailed on political and religious fronts when President Barak Obama rose to power and announced the policies of withdrawal from Iraq and opening the doors for peace in Afghanistan.

Ubama's domestic policies, particularly on the economic fronts, have lost support among his conservative and religious voters although such denominations have never been enthusiastic supporters of the Democratic Party. Still Ubama's victory showed that many things have changed and the liberal and conservative elements had forged an unofficial alliance. Prevailing political trends however, indicated that the alliance was not going to last very long. The white black romance was a short lived phenomenon. Within a year Obama was beginning to lose the charismatic shine which had brought him to the white House. On the domestic front, Obama's support was eroded by the declining economy and on the International front it was failing due to escalation of war. Iraq was somewhat settled but the trouble in Afghanistan was on the rise. By the end of 2009 United States troop strength in Afghanistan. Had surged to hundred thousand fighting men and cost of war went up to billion a year. This is not what the American voters had expected by the first year of Obama presidency to yield. The president was found in quandary. On the one hand he wanted to please his peace lobby and other he wanted U.S Supremacy prevail and defeat of Al-Qaida ensured. Eight years of war against Al-Qaida and Taliban have produced none of the above mentioned results. Those who had predicted defeats of Taliban were disappointed and those who stood for unwinability of guerrilla war, fought where regular armies are not trained to operate, turned out to be more realistic. History of the world is replete with examples that those who waged war realized soon after that their objective can't be achieved through fighting where as peace could possibly deliver what is sought after the fighting. The Afghan war is no exception to what is being discussed. For more than years of warfare thousand of military and civil personnel have being killed; unaccountable number of men, women and children have received fatal or near fatal injuries; a large number of homes, all over the country, have been destroyed and an enormous numbers of school bombed out leaving no facility behind to educate the children. Under these condition the United States, a super power un matched in history, reverted back to the same positron which it's predecessors had taken before. It began to look for those among its enemy who would talk peace.

Feelers were thrown out to check if the Taliban peace terms could possibly be acceptable to U.S allies particularly Pakistan.Nothing however, was made public and rumors of any contact were denied. The question which should have been settled before launching the afghan war, as to who represents the Taliban, is being asked now. The Taliban, basically a pukhtoon ethnic community, was united though from six factions during the jihadi war against Soviet Union. Likewise their leadership through heaving rise denominations fought the war like one man. Thus when the peace talks opened at Geneva in eighties, it was clear to all as to who were the Afghan leaders. Surely these leaders could be identified even though they fought a long drawn out patricidal war after victory against soviets. The American leadership is talking in terms of good Taliban and bad Taliban like good cop and bad cop of western movie. Although the atmosphere is still very foggy, the experts talk about parties whose post war interest are somewhat clear. For instance the United States which has linked its security with that of Afghanistan would like to withdraw but leave behind an effective and pro U.S Government. Pakistan's security interests demand close ties with any future Government across the Afghan border. Lately India has started claiming its right to ally with anti-terrorist efforts in Afghanistan unless the Americans are ready to make determined efforts to create commonality of interest between India and Pakistan, peace could never return to the unfortunate land of Afghanistan. As far as Pakistan is concerned India claim is preposterous and a major obstruction on the way to peace.

Another obstruction to peace is the fear of both Pakistan and Afghanistan that American may depart from the scene, like they did after the anti-soviet war, without doing the reconstruction work and stabilizing the region's economy. This perception is strengthened by the U.S statements emerging off and on from the White House. For i

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

DISGRACING DEMOCRACY

RANDOM THOUGHTS

BURHANUDDIN HASAN

 

Pakistan was conceived by its founder as a democratic country, but unfortunately the people who were to inherit it were the product of the British colonial rule which was as bad, even worse than the rule of the Mughal kings. The question arises do we deserve it? If so why democratic governments have failed repeatedly during the entire history of Pakistan? These are the two vital questions that we must ask and try to find a convincing answer. If we look back, Pakistan had seven democratic governments from 1947 to 1958, four of them failed to frame a constitution which is the first agenda of business in any democratic dispensation. However, after much wear and tear, the fifth government of Choudhry Mohammad Ali, who was not a politician but a bureaucrat, produced a constitution in 1956 which lasted for only two years.

On October 09, 1958 President Iskandar Mirza abrogated the 1956 constitution and promulgated martial law with General Ayub Khan as Chief Martial Law Administrator. This ended a decade of turbulent democratic history of Pakistan which had thrown the country into a terrible political turmoil due to intrigues and insidious machinations of Ghulam Muhammad, Iskander Mirza and their political, feudal and bureaucratic conies. Proclaiming martial law, Iskander Mirza made a statement which partly holds true even today, he said, "For the last two years, I have been watching with the deepest anxiety, the ruthless struggle for power, corruption and exploitation of honest patriotic and industrious masses, the lack of decorum and the prostitution of Islam for political ends. The mentality of the political parties has sunk so low that I am unable any longer to believe that elections will improve the present chaotic internal situation and enable us to form a strong and stable government capable of dealing with the innumerable and complex problems facing us today. The Constitution which was brought into being on 23rd March 1956, after so many tribulations, is unworkable. It is full of dangerous compromises. Pakistan will disintegrate internally if the inherent malaise is not removed." On the night of 27 October, 1958 three Generals walked up to Iskandar Mirza's bedroom and asked him to sign a letter of resignation. That left Ayub in undisputed command and he immediately assumed the office of the President. He debased democracy in many different ways to suit his purpose and finally gave a new constitution to the country in 1962 to rule as an autocrat under its cover. This constitution was abrogated by General Yahya Khan in 1969 who ruled Pakistan till 1971, when the country was disintegrated.

When President Ziaul Haq departed form the scene on 17 August, 1988 after more than eleven years f military rule which saw one of Pakistan's worst periods of human rights abuses and suppression of freedom of expression, he left the country in the same state of flux and uncertainty which existed when he seized power in a military coup. Pakistan became the stage of ridiculous "musical chairs" of politicians when nine governments of elected as well as caretaker were formed in a period of little over eight years. The major players were Benazir Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif. Both ruled for two incomplete terms each and both were dismissed by civilian presidents – Ghulam Ishaq Khan and Farooq Ahmed Leghari, on charges of mis-governance and massive corruption. The Chief of Army Staff General Pervaiz Musharraf threw the second Nawaz Sharif Government out on October 12, 1999 and the game of "musical chairs" ended. The elected representatives were by and large not aware of their rights and responsibilities and no effective system was evolved to make the legislators aware of their responsibilities. During the periods of military rule the political process which on its own momentum develops new leadership in the country came to a halt. Whenever, democracy was restored, the process did not continue long enough to allow new leadership to emerge. The educated classes mostly from the middle class remained largely unconcerned about the political process. They were either ignored or got disillusioned because they saw no prospects for them in the process. The educated middle class, professionals, scholars, minorities and women need to be encouraged to join the political process more actively.

Why India succeeded in maintaining democratic system of government while Pakistan failed is in my view due to the following reasons: a) Shortly after independence, India framed a constitution, which is the blue print for parliamentary democracy. b) The front line congress leadership which inherited about one hundred years of democratic traditions in the party was totally committed to parliamentary democracy and was trained to work with selfless devotion for this purpose. c) Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India was a hard core democrat and had the good fortune to lead his country for 16 years which laid a solid foundation for sustained democracy and the style of governance. d) As a first step of great courage, the Indian government abolished more than 50 princely states and carried out comprehensive land reforms because they were convinced and rightly so, that true democracy cannot take root in a feudal environment. Pakistan did not do any such thing. e) Indian leadership had the wisdom to grant full autonomy to its states in their internal affairs to ensure a workable federal structure. The root cause of repeated failures of democratic system in Pakistan is its feudal and Sardari Nizam which is anti-thesis of democracy. Secondly, nobody can inherit democracy from his or her parents nor by adopting a certain name from somebody else, as has happened in Pakistan. The democratic parties too, have to go through the process of election of their Chiefs, which is unheard of in Pakistan where political families inherit the parties like personal property. True democracy is not possible unless the political parties introduce elections in their own ranks before demanding them in the country. Likewise, the process of election will remain fake and rigged unless the voter is educated enough and free enough to vote according to his own free will. Since democracy in Pakistan is in the hands of rich feudal lords, who have their own best interests to serve first, which is acquiring as much wealth as possible during their tenure in office. They cannot pay any attention to people's problems such as increasing poverty and daily escalating prices of food and other essential items of daily use.

Pakistan is also facing an acute energy crisis since the present government has taken office, but the minister for water and power has not been able to do anything except stupid promises. If he had any self respect he should have tendered his resignation or should have been fired by the prime minister. But he is continuing in office without shame or remorse. Ultimately, a $557 million scam has surfaced in audit reports in projects of rental power plants from abroad and independent power projects initiated by PEPCO. Another one billion dollar scam of LNG import from France is before the Supreme Court. These two major corruption scandals in two years speak volumes about the PPP's style of governance. Likewise an influential MNA Jamshed Dasti, who was elected on a false certificate of Islamic education was disgraced by the Supreme Court and had to resign from his seat, has got the P

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

AFTER A DECADE OF US WAR

SYED M TARIQ PIRZADA

 

Even after a decade of experience with US policies, and dictations, the military, and now the political leadership of Pakistan, are refusing to recognize fundamental conflicts of interest separating the two States. The denial continues as to the existence of sharp differences over the whole range of their multiple national security objectives, and policies. On the other hand, the people are amazingly showing a great deal of clarity on major issues.

The people have rightly argued that the US proposed strategic expansion of counter insurgency operations in parts of Balochistan and Punjab, as referenced in the infamous Kerry-Lugar Law was, and is, about battle-zone expansion, and massive intrusion in the political, and domestic management of Pakistan. The joint communiqué( March 24-25) issued after two days of what is being described as strategic dialogue between Washington, and Islamabad, further confirms a much enlarged US-oversight being sought over Pakistan The important public debate that commenced a few months ago, and that also included Pak Army's rare "one time" strong reservations on the US legislation, keeps reemerging, and reminding as to how the US policy and strategy threatens people's state-interest. The immense US pressure, for a wider military-campaign against the so called "Taliban Quetta Shura" and the Al-Qaeda, and Taliban presence in Pakistan, and joint operations

with the US, like Mullah Baradar's capture at Karachi , in heavy Pakistani population centers, is, undoubtedly announcing, to no one's surprise, the overall US strategic goals being pursued at the cost of this poorly defended land. Needless to say, that the architect of the expanded war into Pakistan is none other than the stead fast Obama, the US President, whose pre-election commitment to enhanced military operations in the Islamic republic offers, after some eight years war, the only solution to save the US, and its allies, from the "Pakistan-based" Al-Qaeda, and Taliban, whose " location is known, and whose intentions are clear", (Obama's State of the Union).

The reality is that under the umbrella of anti-terror partnership, the US is in conflict with Pakistan despite Islamabad's open ended, and nearly a decade long cooperation in Washington's anti-terror war. The US message becomes all the more clear when the assessment by the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Pakistan etc, David Sedney, bluntly summarizes that "our relations with Pakistan are complex, and that there is tension on both sides. There are things that Pakistan wants that we are not able to do, things that we want Pakistan is not able to do. There are a lot of areas where we still have a lot of open questions, and where there are issues that continue to fester from the past. Sometimes the discussion between both sides got very difficult, and while, at times very very positive. The US is confident that Pakistan has the ability to maintain security of its nuclear weapons. This is an area that's very sensitive, important to the Government and the people of Pakistan. we are saying that we have confidence in the government, people, and the military of Pakistan. The US role in Afghanistan is to continue. A relationship, marred by complications, tensions, open questions, and issues from the past, and implicit doubts on the security of Pak nuclear weapons, and threats, is certainly bound to be short-lived when even a span of a decade of anti-terror collaboration between the US and Pakistan, could not do as little as even the partial removal of the afore-mentioned road-blocks of continuing mutual distrust. The Obama statement( issued on the eve of Nuclear Security Summit, April 12-13) that the nuclear weapons could fall into the hands of Al-Qaeda and the terrorists, echoes the same element of distrust. On the one hand the US says that Pakistan's nuclear weapons are safe and secure, but on the other hand, the same trust crumbles with his basic stance that the nuclear weapons or materials could fall into the hands of the terrorists. The Sedney scenario- an eye-opener to Pak dreamers of the US strategic partnership- clearly explains that there is nothing more to what is fundamentally Washingtion-dictated, one dimensional, need based, anti terror cooperation that testifies to the predominance of shallowness in Pak-US ties.

The people are speaking their mind that the war against terror continues to undo everything from the State sovereignty to the national economy to the conventional, and nuclear defenses of Pakistan. The contradiction is obvious. To the US, the war against terror knows no limits. To the people of Pakistan, the limits are known: the US war ought to end, Pakistan's co-operation must stop, let national security prevail, and that US-Pak relations be thoroughly reviewed. A deep division between the government, the people , and the armed forces is no small a challenge.? To the present regime, the survival of Pakistan depends on the continued US support and assistance, and that Washington is the ultimate strategic direction.. The Zardari doctrine accepts that the US war on terror is Pakistan's war, of which the benefits, as it suggests, both economic, and political, are far too significant than the otherwise sensitive issues of sovereignty, and national

security. The armed forces are some where in the middle of fighting a US- war, and managing it's huge damage to national security, and Pak strategic interests regarding Afghanistan, Kashmir, nuclear assets, and India's containment in the region. They are, certainly, undertaking an unpopular balancing act between the US dictation, and, state-interest.

The people, the largest Muslim nation between South Asia, and the Atlantic, and a nuclear power, who also happen to be the target of US- inflicted daily global humiliation, are angrily watching their honor, security, and economy compromised by the Drone dance, and the worst case military and political interference by the US. The net outcome : The government's failure continues; the armed forces struggle, while the US hurts the country. The unaddressed question of India's strategic gains from the anti-terror US war brings to light the following:(1) nine years of Pakistan's demonization by the US, as a safe haven of terrorism, that has destroyed Pakistan's image as a state, has been hugely capitalized by India to project it self in the West as a state that can be trusted vis-a-vis Pakistan, one that can rein in Pakistan in South Asia, one that can prevent it from "exporting terror" to the US-led West, and one that can play significant stabilizing role in Afghnistan, and the region in general. Despite any role in the war against terror, the Indians, over these nine years, have strategically succeeded, with the US backing, in suppressing the issues of Kashmir, Siachin, and Sir-creek—the supreme national security interests of Pakistan- whose resolution is being torpedoed, inter alia, by (1) a well planned Indian delay in the initiation of substantive negotiations, especially onKashmir,(2) the massive expansion of India's political, economic, and military might against the backdrop of Pakistan's under-grown political, economic, and military muscle, (3) and the stunning absence of a potent leadership in Islamabad, all of which are, together, hurling Kashmir, and the other issues in to a hole of permanent oblivion.

Why is Islamabad asking for continued US role in Afghanistan? David Sedney's assurance to Pakistan that the US role in Afghanistan will continue, does point to some fear within the cross section of leadership that it might not manage the Afghan-Taliban following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. One thing is certain that the Afghan-Taliban were never a threat to Pakistan during their rule from 1996-2001, and even today, it is not in their interest to threaten the Islamic republic.

What is seemingly difficult for the political and military leadership is to fly without the wings of Washington. The White man's shadow does bring comfort to the leadership, as one can see, but after all is said and done, a shadow is a shadow that can not be the equivalent of the inner thrust needed for the independent flight . The US- led West knows that Pakistan is glued to its mode of colonial dependence, and the war on terror is, thus, using a nuclear state as a disabled colony.

 

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

AMBASSADOR OF MUSLIM-HINDU UNITY

YASIR ALI KHAN

 

The hall of the hotel was outnumbered by the participants during the launch of Jaswant's book in Islamabad that proved popularity, respect and dignity the Indian leader got in Pakistan due to his courageous writing and exposing true picture of the history. A large number of people including, intellectuals, politicians, students, diplomats, retired beau crates and journalists were present at the occasion. Everybody was fervent to interact and listen Indian leader. Even a female human rights activist started raising anti-Musharraf slogans during the ceremony, asking the host (a close aid of Musharraf) to let speak Mr. Singh for maximum time. She might have forgotten that she was not leading 'Go Musharraf Go' rally but there to appreciate the Indian leader for what he did to remove misconceptions about founder of Pakistan in his book.

Joginder Jaswant Singh" who served on three key posts of Indian government has described in his book the "epic journey of Jinnah from being the ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity, the liberal constitutionalist and Indian nationalist to the Quaid-e-Azam of Pakistan". He has contested the popular Indian view that Jinnah was the villain of the 1947 partition and removed misconception about Mr Jinnah in this respect. What Singh has said in his book is absolutely true which resulted in his expulsion from the party. No leader from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the past had held such views about Muslims. It is a pity the BJP has demonized a man of Jaswant Singh's stature in the same manner as Jinnah has been demonized. The way his book has been banned in Gujarat and the manner in which he has been ousted from the BJP are tragic.

Jaswant's book, praising Mohammad Ali Jinnah, is not the first time that Singh had to face resentments by the extremists Hindu's. In his previous book titled "A Call to Honour: In Service of Emergent India in 2006", he alleged that there was a mole in the Prime Minister's Office in the nineties during the tenure of P.V. Narasimha Rao of the Congress who leaked information to American sources. Soon after the release of the book, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh disputed this and asked him to name the mole. Singh then said he had sent him a letter, but Manmohan Singh said the letter neither had any signature nor the name of the mole.

He defended himself saying he had a "strong hunch" that information was being leaked from the PMO. His latest book, 'Jinnah — India, Independence, Partition', lauds the founder of Pakistan and holds India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru and its first home minister Vallabhbhai Patel responsible for the country's partition in 1947. Now Indians after the release of Jaswant's book are listening the echo of those actions taken by Jinnah to unite the Indians, but as Jaswant said it is Nehru who kept pushing Muslims towards partitioning, those narrow minded congress leaders left no option for Muslims but to have a separate homeland, In 1946 League led by Jinnah agreed on Cabinet Mission's recommendations to keep India united after having autonomous provinces but again it is Congress who stand in the way of United India and ironically it is Muslims who had to pay the price of the arrogance of congress as Jaswant said in his book . "Look into the eyes of the Muslims that live in India and you truly see the pain with which they live. We treat them as aliens. No Indian or Pakistani politician/Member of Parliament has ventured an analytical, political biography of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, about whom views necessarily get divided as being either hagiographical or additional demonology. The book attempts an objective evaluation. Jaswant Singh's experience as a minister responsible for the conduct of India's foreign policy, managing the country's defence (concurrently), had been uniformly challenging (Lahore Peace Process; betrayed at Kargil; Kandahar; The Agra Peace Summit; the attack on Jammu and Kashmir Assembly and the Indian Parliament; coercive diplomacy of 2002; the peace overtures reinitiated in April 2003). Singh asks where and when did this questionable thesis of 'Muslims as a separate nation' first originate and lead the Indian sub-continent to?

Why then a Bangladesh? Also what now of Pakistan? Where is it headed? He said one should examine the real reasons for transformation of Jinnah from Gokhale's Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity to Pakistan's Quaid-e-Azam. Gandhi called him the greatest leader, Arnold Toyanbee, a historian, called Jinnah, the greatest politician of the century world had produced. Jaswant Singh said, "we need to correct it' meaning the views that Jinnah was not the principal villain of the partition of the country. Singh was of the view that the creation of Bangladesh was consequences of Indo/Pak policies. He called continuation of peace talks between two states vital for both Pakistan and Indian.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

 

SETTING THE TRAP ON IRAN

VIEWS FROM ABROAD

DAVID IGNATIUS

 

The Obama administration's strategy as it devises sanctions for Iran is to build a sticky trap — so that the harder the Iranians try to wriggle out of the sanctions, the more tightly they will be caught in the snare. It's a clever idea. But even if it works with mousetrap precision, it's unlikely to stop the Iranian nuclear program. That's one reason why Defence Secretary Bob Gates and other officials are pressing to explore the "what-ifs" about Iran — and to accelerate planning for contingencies that could arise as the confrontation deepens.

The White House didn't like the New York Times' characterisation of a memo Gates wrote in January as a "wake-up call," given all the work the administration has already done on Iran. But the Times' story captured the urgency with which Gates and other officials see the problem — and their fear that sanctions, however well constructed, may not do the trick. Gates's memo called specifically for "prudent planning and preparation" for the showdown with Iran, according to one senior official quoting from the text. The defence secretary requested that the "principals committee," the top officers of the National Security Council, discuss the range of issues and options that might arise. The next step in this pressure campaign is the sanctions regime being crafted by Stuart Levey, under-secretary of the Treasury for terrorism and financial intelligence.

This will have several interlocking components: The showpiece will be a new UN Security Council resolution to add sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and its affiliated companies, along with other Iranian firms involved in manufacturing, transporting and financing weapons shipments and other illicit activities. The administration knows the resolution will be watered down by Russia and China, but it wants the UN sanctions anyway — as a platform for additional measures by the United States and its allies. It's these private and unilateral sanctions that will have real bite: As the Iranians try to evade them, their deception will trigger additional punitive measures. "If you focus on bad conduct, their evasion doesn't undermine sanctions but escalates them," explains one senior official. An example of how the sticky trap can work is the case of the state-owned Bank Sepah. The United States imposed sanctions in January 2007, alleging that the bank had financed development of missiles that could carry nuclear weapons.

The United States hit them with sanctions, too, and pressured international banks to stop doing business with them. Banks that allegedly helped the Iranians evade controls were whacked with big fines. To settle US government charges last December, the British bank Lloyds agreed to pay $217 million and Credit Suisse agreed to pay $536 million. Most global banks have decided that doing business with Tehran isn't worth the risk. The trap also squeezed the state-owned Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Line, which was cited in 2008 sanctions by the United States. The company allegedly tried to escape the dragnet by renaming some of its ships. The British stripped the shipping line of its insurance; the Iranians sought coverage in Russia and then Bermuda, but they were pursued by US monitors who argued that the company's deceptive conduct was evidence of its unreliability as an insurance risk.

For policymakers, the discussion is beginning to shift to the sensitive area suggested by Gates's memo — the space between sanctions and outright military action. What options would the United States and its allies have, short of war, to raise the cost to Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program? Are there means of subverting, sabotaging or containing such a program without actually bombing Iranian facilities? We won't be hearing a lot of public discussion about this gray area. But that's where senior officials will focus more of their energy in coming months, as they prepare for the possibility that Levey's clever trap won't work. — The Washington Post

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

SLAIN POLICE

 

The operation officer of Bangshal police station, Gautam Roy, was gunned down, on his way home at the dead of night. The assassination has stunned everyone as it is extremely unusual for a working policeman and that, too, in uniform, to be the target of assailants. This is an embarrassing incident that questions the very basics of our law enforcement system. If policemen, whose job is to ensure the safety of the common men, are not safe then what about the people they are supposed to protect?

Circumstances of the tragic killing need to be established. Often the most obvious suspect may not be the real culprit. The dead police officer was also the Investigating Officer (IO) of a high profile murder case in which he arrested some of the associates of the principal accused Shaheed. And that raises the possibility of Shaheed's men going for the policeman.

SI Gautam Roy died in uniform and the courage he has shown in challenging the strangers he encountered is praise worthy. His wife and two children will have reasons to be proud of him. We hope his sacrifice will be a lesson and inspiration for his colleagues in the police force who will remember him for his bravery.
We also certainly hope that the government will take up the matter seriously and take stern action against those found guilty. Otherwise, it will badly demoralize other working policemen. That way, the whole purpose of keeping a police force is defeated. 

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

RODENT INVASION

 

The European Commission's donation of 1.2 million Euros for remote areas of the Chittagong Hill Tracts bordering India and Burma to counter rat attacks may cause many to raise their eyebrows. But the sustained rodent attack for long three years by an ever accelerating proliferation of rat population following the flowering and fruition of bamboos in a roughly 50-year cycle called 'mautam', as derived from Mizo, language of Mizoram,  is not a matter of joke. Beginning in 2005 in that north-eastern state, mautam took place in its neighbouring state Manipur and headed for the hilly districts of Bangladesh in the west and then for Myanmar's Chin state.

How overwhelming an impact the blossoming en masse of a particular type of bamboo called Melocanna Baccifera  can leave is best understood from the fact that the famine that followed the 1958 bamboo fruition in Mizoram, with the central government ignoring the local people's prediction, led to formation of famine-fighting squads and then to the Mizo National Front which fought for independence. In 2005 though, the issue was no longer ignored and a famine could be averted there. In Bangladesh there was hardly any preparedness for the rat invasion that accounts for farmers' loss of crops and stored food.

The EU donation comes as a belated move to save the people from starving in the remote hill districts. Because it is a localised phenomenon, there is little spotlight on the issue. This should not be the case for reasons understandable. We believe, improved pest management, as devised today, can be an answer to the problem. Three to four years are a long period for an agrarian community. Even if the flowering and fruition of bamboos occur over a 50-year period, the famine that follows in their wake can have lasting impact on a population. There is need for research to develop a suitable rodent management method, preferably biological type, so that the hill people do not face another such virulent attack about 50 years from now.

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

 

A FREE COUNTRY..!

 

I've just discovered that I'm paying exorbitant electricity bills whereas the farmer is getting away with it free so I decided I'd do something about it: "Whatcha doin?" asked the wife as she watched me lugging huge flowerpots into the sitting room.

"Starting a farm."

"In our sitting room?"

"Where else?" I asked as I placed a huge pot next to the piano.

 

"Free electricity," I said.

"We won't have to pay for the sitting room current?"

"They're giving free electricity for farmers, see it says so in the papers."

"Lets put some plants some trees and plants in the bedroom and kitchen and bathrooms," said the wife.

"Sure," I said, "I like your enthusiasm. We're really getting into farming aren't we?"

"Can I tell our neighbours?" she asked.

"Why not?" I said, "Let's all become farmers!"

"We don't need to put off the TV or geyser or our lights anymore," she said.

"If it's free who's bothered."

"We can do away with the switches, we don't need to switch off the electricity anymore!" I said.

"We can go in for an electric car," said the wife.

"And air-conditioners in all the rooms, including bathrooms and the dog's kennel," I said.

I watched as my neighbours all became farmers.

"You think the government will agree we are entitled to free electricity?" asked the worried wife.

"Just tie a rope round the fan," I told her. "Now phone the government and say I threaten suicide. Call the press and TV."

"Why are you attempting suicide?" asked the first reporter.

"I can't pay the electric bill," I said sadly as I tied and untied the rope round my neck.

"What about your family?" asked a TV journalist.

"I hope the government will compensate them," I said.

"What will we do without you?" screamed my wife loudly.

"Face the camera," I whispered in her ears, "and peel onions for some tears."

"Any last words?" asked the reporter.

"Free electricity!" I croaked.

"The government has announced free electricity for us!" shouted the wife running from the phone to me. I untied myself from under the fan and waved at my neighbours, waved at the reporters and waved at the TV crew.

And that's the formula folks, become a farmer, threaten suicide and you'll get everything free in this country..!

—bobsbanter@gmail.com

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

WORSENING ELECTRICITY CRISIS

DR. MOHAMMED NAWAZISH

 

How do we define a liveable city? Quality living in cities depends on some primary factors like safety, education, hygiene, health care, culture, environment, recreation, political-economic stability and public transportation. The Economist.com in December 2006 clearly declared Dhaka as the second worst liveable city in the world. With its ever-expanding vicious concrete cobwebs, narrow squirmy streets and a perpetual tsunami of rowdy traffic, the city must have elevated its position to No. 1 in the black list during the intervening years.
Against this backdrop, the newer traumatic crises add fuel to raging fire. No description is good enough to depict the extent of people's suffering on account of total and absolute power, water and gas sector failures. The worst part of all, there even is no faint sign of improvement in near future as our top leaders overtly agree that the country has to pass through the fiery limbo a few more years. In a macro context, our development efforts in each segment of production and distribution from home-based to factory-based work houses are crumbling down; the dream of building a digital Bangladesh is fast evaporating, and forced unemployment rate swishing upward. The miserable quandary in the rural areas represents a situation half-famine and mostly sub-human existence.

Leaving aside the much talked-about critical reversals in different vital fields, we may divert to all time high scarcity of electric power that has already crippled our domestic, industrial and economic backbone. I distinctly remember load shedding was not uncommon even in the sixties but surely nothing comparable to the present day nightmarish extremity. Seemingly strange, the quasi-colonial post-1947 government even got aware of the rising demand of power and initiated positive steps to go for producing more electricity in the backward eastern wing. In 1948, Electricity Directorate was created in order to plan and improve power supply situation. In 1959, Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) was created and the power sector promptly took up some ambitious schemes. The Electricity Directorate was finally merged with WAPDA. The aim was to give more autonomy to an organisation for development of the basic infrastructure to economic uplift. During this time relatively higher capacity plants were built at Siddhirganj, Chittagong and Khulna while the Kaptai hydropower project was designed and implemented. Three generators of Kaptai produced 130 MW, a comparatively large power plant for that time. A major and difficult project - Dhaka-Chittagong 132 KV transmission line was taken up and successfully completed. Even a large chunk of land was allocated at Ishwardi for establishing a nuclear power station as far back as in late fifties. These were remarkable milestones of power development efforts in pre-liberation Bangladesh.

The tempo continued after the liberation of the country and the PDB, REB and later DESA were created in staggered succession to put in extra thrust to a speedy and coherent move to the target. But somewhere in the length of time the clock started ticking inconsistently and the earlier tempo swamped into a stereotype of detested bureaucratic quagmire.

The tussle between the bureaucrats and technocrats, the aid giving agencies and local experts, the party musclemen and the stubborn protectors of rules, the unpardonable failure of experts to anticipate the dimension of the impending doom, and, above all, the agonising failings of the policy makers to dictate the correct and firm guidelines immensely contributed to the creation of the present overwhelming disaster forcing us into the bottomless pit with no way to escape. PDB statistics indicate that their present generation capacity is 5250 MW (against a demand of +6000 MW) though the maximum they can produce is 4296 MW. The cause of the standard shortfall is unexplained. Even then, this is rather a pinky picture; seldom do they cross a shortfall margin of 1500 MW. Breakdown of aging machines and grid complex, ill-maintenance, non-availability of parts, occasional accidents, inadequate supply of energy source, tremendous leakage, lack of expertise and many more can be labeled as possible culprits. But red tape reigns supreme, no doubt in that.
Light and more light - this being the wild cry of the day, we have been hearing a lot of puffy words of consolation, though often unclear and contradictory. The head of the government vowed to raise power production to 7000 MW by 2013, and ensure electricity for all by 2020. There is no mention of the anticipated demand escalation by 8 to 10% each year and the crucially negative role to be played by the exploding population.

Doors are flung open to private entrepreneurs and foreign companies. Though a positive move, the process is complex and time-consuming with profound possibility of work dereliction, kicking up man-made obstacles, and cost upswing during the implementation phase. Internally, it will take a good many years to economically exploit our much-extolled coal reserve and the hypothetical nuclear energy to establish power generation plants. Prospect of relief is still a golden stag far off the horizon but, for the sake of survival, we have to kick-start right now some short-term target-oriented measures for immediate implementation. The longer strategic versions will take time to mature but meanwhile some vents will have to be created to let us out partially at least of the present state of bitter impasse.

I end with two observations on the current ruthless power rationing that is destabilising the entire social fabric. Is the powercut formula based on a mathematically calculated area blocking based on grid configuration, sub-station peripherals or a power generation plant's distribution circuit network? Question is, does it all move absolutely on the whims of mid and lower level technical people without any deeper analysis and scrutiny at the higher level?

For public convenience, why don't they prepare and publish a broad chart showing locality-wise exact time and duration for each blackout spell? The current trend of abrupt and frequent power outages for unspecified duration speaks of a crude discretionary adventure depending on the operators' prerogative.
Finally, are the farmers for whom the townsfolk are making a huge sacrifice really reaping the full benefit of the diverted power flow to their end? We really do not know much about the situation in the field. In Chekhov's expression, we are obliged to remain disgracefully happy in the caveman's world bearing high hope of a far better future for the country; alas, nobody knows when the high hope is going to take a real shape.

(The writer is a columnist and former senior civil servant.)

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

BRITAIN'S NO-WIN ELECTION?

ROBERT SKIDELSKY

 

With Labour trailing the Conservatives slightly in opinion polls, the British election on May 6 could well produce a 'hung' parliament, in which neither major party obtains a majority and the Liberal Democrats hold the balance of power. Depending on which party wins more seats, either Labour's Gordon Brown or the Conservatives' David Cameron will become prime minister with the Liberal Democrats support.
The surprise is that the Conservatives are not polling far ahead of Labour. After 13 years in power, Labour started the election with a huge disadvantage: the legacy of Tony Blair. From being Labour's most potent asset in 1997, Blair turned into the party's greatest liability after the Iraq war, and had to be practically forced out in 2006.

His successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer (finance minister) Gordon Brown, was well described by Blair as clunking. A man of charm and humor in private life, he is relentlessly dour in public. In Britain's first ever presidential television debate the youthful Nick Clegg stole the show for the Liberal Democrats with his freshness and directness. David Cameron was polished but vague, and the jowly Brown came across as gun loaded with statistics. But the statistics were not as good as they should have been. Brown's reputation for fiscal prudence evaporated with the Great Recession.

Nevertheless, it is the Great Recession that keeps Labour in contention, particularly in the light of the Conservatives' pledge to start cutting public spending the moment they take power.

This makes people anxious for their jobs. Most people - bankers and many experts excepted - are instinctive Keynesians, even if they have never heard of John Maynard Keynes. At some level, they understand what Keynes called the paradox of thrift: if households and firms are forced to reduce their expenses, and the government simultaneously cuts spending, unemployment will rise, because one person's spending is another's income, and the outcome will be less spending and less income all around.

Moreover, now is not the time for a political party to be seen to be in cahoots with the bankers. Although there is no real British equivalent of the American revolving door between Washington and Wall Street, the Conservatives are widely considered to be friends of the City of London and soft on rich tax evaders like Lord Ashcroft and Zak Goldsmith. Although the MPs expenses scandal parliamentarians claiming reimbursement for dubious expenses hit both main parties, the most egregious cases involved wealthy Conservative MPs.
And even though inequality of wealth and income in Britain increased in the 13 years Labour has been in power, this is thought to be something that a left-wing party might seek to correct, whereas there is no similar expectation for a party of the right. In short, when the power of money is under attack, a party that represents money will have a harder time.

Labour has an obvious interest in fighting the election on their handling of the economic crisis. The Conservatives would have done better to support them on this, while focusing their attack on the government's economic record as a whole especially Labour's addiction to centralisation and over-regulation. But this is going to be difficult to do because their naive Shadow Chancellor, George Osborne, seems determined to put 'cutting the deficit' at the heart of the Conservative programme.

Spending cuts, he argues, would restore credibility to Britain's public finances, thereby quelling the anxieties of businesses, investors, and consumers about future tax increases and inflation. A more certain future would restore confidence, boosting private investment and ensuring a robust recovery.
Public spending cuts come more naturally to Conservatives, and they have - despite their lack of candor - attempted to make a virtue out of this necessity. The Conservative manifesto "An Invitation to Join the Government of Britain" is merely a grandiloquent way of saying that under a Conservative government the people will have to look after themselves.

Labour, by contrast, argues that immediate spending cuts would wreck the recovery that the hole in the economy, not the government budget deficit, is the problem needing most attention.
In practice, both parties are afraid of their convictions. The Conservatives' pledge to start cutting the deficit immediately amounts to only a 1 per cent reduction in the coming year. Any promise of deeper cuts would, they feel, be electoral suicide, even though their model of the economy tells them that the government should be smaller, and that the deficit is unnecessary and even damaging.

Labour's model of the economy implies maintaining the deficit for as long as needed, and even increasing government spending if the recovery appears to be flagging. But Labour is too afraid of the markets to say so openly. So, like St. Augustine, they promise virtue, but not until next year.

In other words, neither major party can afford to blurt out the awkward truth: how much deficit reduction any government can achieve will depend on what happens to the economy over the next five years, and no one can
say anything for certain about that.

So the main parties vie with each other in their promises not to cut public services. Labour will not cut spending on unspecified front-line services. The Conservatives will not cut spending on health, international aid, and defense, similarly leaving unclear just where the cuts will be made. Only the Liberal Democrats are committed to a big cut: scrapping Britain's nuclear submarines.

Finally, all the parties promise big constitutional changes. The Conservatives want to reduce the size of the House of Commons by 10 per cent. Labour wants to reduce the House of Lords membership by half and hold referenda on making it wholly elected and on changing the voting system. The Liberal Democrats want MPs to be elected by proportional representation.

In a hung parliament, Britain's ancient constitution would become a pawn among the parties as they haggle for a share of power. In that case, voters would get both more and less than they bargained for.

 

(Robert Skidelsky, a member of the British House of Lords, is Professor emeritus of political economy at Warwick University.)

 

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 20100

 

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

FIRST STEPS ON THE LONG ROAD TO HOSPITAL REFORM

BUT THE HARD YARDS TO BYPASS THE STATES ARE YET TO COME

KEVIN Rudd's hospital reforms are not bad as far as they go, but they fall far short of what he suggested they would accomplish before this week's meeting with state leaders. And health experts are alarmed that, in his attempt to please the premiers, instead of bypassing the centralised state bureaucracies to fund self-managing hospitals direct, Mr Rudd may make the problem worse. The states will stay in the game, administering hospitals, participating in planning and involved in the allocation of money. Certainly the additional funds Mr Rudd promised are welcome. Western Australia's Premier, Colin Barnett, the only holdout against the agreement for the states to surrender a third of their GST income, which will go direct into a hospital funding pool, is positive about aspects of the agreement. And there is not an especially strong case for Tony Abbott opposing the plan in the Senate. But while the Prime Minister was game to have a go at hospital reform, there is no denying he over-promised on the policy and under-delivered on the politics. Mr Rudd underestimated both the determination of the premiers to stay in the policy game and their dependence on the state public health unions, who like things the way they are. And he overestimated his ability to push through major changes. This does not mean federal reform is impossible. Education Minister Julia Gillard has state support for her fight with the powerful public education unions, which are refusing to supervise national literacy and numeracy tests. Public school teachers are as important to Labor premiers as hospital staff, yet Ms Gillard has convinced the premiers to follow her lead in this fight, without even mentioning more money.

In contrast, it took $21 billion in additional funding over 10 years for the states to sign on to Mr Rudd's new hospital plan. The promise of more money now and a commitment from Canberra to fund the growth in demand for hospital services makes this a big win for the states, if not necessarily for the people who will use their systems, even with Tuesday's promises of improved services. Although the premiers have surrendered a third of their GST income, they keep the political power that comes from running their own systems.

Not all the ideas underpinning the new arrangement are abysmal. Far from it. The states have squandered the GST by using it to fund public service pay rises and the new system will at least ensure money intended for hospitals is deposited direct into a dedicated funding pool. This sets a precedent that future prime ministers will thank Mr Rudd for. While his original idea of direct commonwealth funding for regional hospital authorities has gone, at least centralised state bureaucracies, especially in NSW, will not run hospitals by remote control, ignoring what doctors and nurses on the wards know they need. Instead, a national agency will decide the efficient cost of hospital procedures and money will be allocated direct to hospitals. This is smart thinking, based on Victoria's case-mix system. Paying hospitals a set price for each operation and allowing them to keep the surplus if they can cut the cost is an improvement on budgets based on previous expenditure, plus whatever extra the health minister can extract from the state Treasury.

But what works in a single well-administered state system may not work across the continent. Ever since the apology to the Stolen Generations, the Rudd government has tried and failed to extract data from the Northern Territory on how federal funding is improving indigenous education, health and housing. If Canberra cannot compel bureaucrats in Darwin to deliver the metrics it will struggle against the armies of officials, who will be represented on the funding pool panels, in the large states. Even with increased central oversight, hospitals will still answer to more than one master, with all the blame-shifting this inevitably involves. While Mr Rudd obviously intends to make health an election issue, these incremental improvements provide Mr Abbott with a political opportunity to act on his ideas about decentralising hospital management. He should commit to finishing what Mr Rudd has started us towards, a system where Canberra pays 100 per cent of hospital costs and leaves the states on the sidelines.

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

NO MORE EXCUSES IN VICTORIA

THE STATE NEEDS A PERMANENT ANTI-CORRUPTION COMMISSION

IF any good is to come from the murder of gangland boss Carl Williams in a maximum-security jail on Monday, it will be the establishment of a permanent crime and corruption royal commission in Victoria. Premier John Brumby yesterday ruled out the possibility, but after years of dodging and weaving by his government, his predecessor Steve Bracks and others, including former police commissioner Christine Nixon, there are no more excuses. The straw to break the camel's back should be the revelation that one of two men in the room with Williams when he was bludgeoned has links to a former police officer.

Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland concedes that "potential corruption in the state" was one of numerous "plausible explanations" for the slaying of Williams, a drug baron and multiple murderer. But Victorians have heard it all before. Mr Overland's predecessor, Ms Nixon, acknowledged the links between police and organised crime but opposed a royal commission on the grounds it would damage police morale. After 28 gangland killings, police being hauled before the courts on serious drugs charges and for misusing the police database and the Office of Police Integrity's failure to restore public confidence in the police, the case for a body similar to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption is compelling. The Australian first called for such a commission in Victoria in March 2004, after the 21st gangland killing. At that time, 500 police had been charged with 1000 offences in five years.

Six years later, the situation has degenerated into chaos. Despite spending almost $100 million since 2004-05, the OPI has failed to successfully prosecute such high-profile cases as those against former assistant police commissioner Noel Ashby, former Police Association chief Paul Mullett and former detective Denis Linehan.

As Mark Le Grand, former deputy director of the Commonwealth Department of Public Prosecutions pointed out, the OPI is compromised by its close links to Victoria Police. And it is hamstrung in the Williams matter by having no jurisdiction over the Office of Corrections investigation, despite commissioner Bob Hastings conceding possible corruption within Barwon Prison.

With an election in November, Mr Brumby must restore faith in law and order or face the consequences.

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

FORGOTTEN BATTLE REMEMBERED

RECOGNITION FOR THE HEROES OF KAPYONG IS RICHLY DESERVED

NOW in their late 70s and 80s, the Anzacs who stalled Chinese forces vastly outnumbering them in one of the most important battles of the Korean War are at last receiving some of the acknowledgement they deserve. Most Australians have a passing knowledge of Gallipoli, Tobruk and Long Tan. But too few understand the importance of Kapyong, the battle being commemorated in Korea today, that began on April 22, 1951, and continued until Anzac Day.

At the cost of 32 Australian soldiers killed, 59 wounded and three taken prisoner, the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment and other Commonwealth forces blunted and then reversed a 10,000-strong Chinese assault aimed at capturing Seoul, 60km away. More than 500 Chinese soldiers were killed by 3RAR, which was awarded a US Presidential Citation, and a further 300 were killed by the Canadians.

As they again stand in Kapyong's rugged terrain, surrounded by vivid, 59-year-old memories and pay their respects to fallen comrades, our Korean veterans can feel satisfied that their heroic sacrifices are being recognised by younger generations of Australia. As the Australian ambassador to Korea, Sam Gerovich, said at one of the ceremonies, their legacy is the "stable and prosperous Korea of today."

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

MORE MONEY BUT NOT BIGGEST CHANGE SINCE MEDICARE

"HEALTH reform, the biggest reform since Medicare": the Prime Minister's rhetoric is full of such catchphrases. It is certainly a seismic shift in commonwealth-state relationships that happens to involve health, but what kind of health reforms might follow?

Not much, really, because the program is almost entirely about process; a rash promise made in 2007; political outcomes; perceptions; the control of money and power. Until the past few days, the commonwealth rhetoric faithfully followed every popular prejudice and perception about our public hospitals and public health care.

Something is obviously wrong. That must be someone's fault. It is not our fault, of course. The states run the hospitals and community health services and they are obviously incompetent. Give us the money and the power and we will fix it. That message pervaded the so-called "final offer" the commonwealth took to the Council of Australian Governments. No extra funding for years but lots of promises about more services that the states would have to satisfy.

Fortunately, reality prevailed and the final agreements are much better and more in touch with reality than the commonwealth's first offer. The media routinely portrays the premiers as something akin to shysters, but it took a day of education to show the commonwealth what the cost would be of meeting its promises, particularly those on elective surgery and emergency waiting times.

On emergency funding, the commonwealth's first offer was ludicrous, a 1.7 per cent increase over four years. For elective surgery, which is more dependent on facilities and specialists than money, it was not much better.

The truth is nobody knows what meaningful improvement will cost. One thing is certain, though. It will not happen quickly, especially in eye surgery, where attracting specialists from the private sector has proved difficult.

Overall, the agreements will produce some extra money, though not a great deal more in relative terms, and bring forward the spending of some money.

However, the public health system still will be stretched. The original healthcare agreements worked on for a 50-50 commonwealth-state split, a formula designed to emphasise collaboration and prevent either party from dominating. That worked well until the Howard government deliberately reduced its funding to 41 per cent in 2003-08 agreements because of the assumed shift of patients after its private health insurance changes - which, predictably, never eventuated - and because the new GST funds were seen to give the states more ability to pay.

The gap is more than $2 billion now and that has affected the system's sustainability. It is extraordinary, though, to see the federal government proposing key structural changes to solve a state funding problem that the commonwealth's policies have created.

The other reforms are about process: the national application of case payment, based on an efficient price for each hospital admission, and by an unknown method for out-patient and emergency cases. A new authority will fix the prices, although nobody knows what an efficient price means and the average will probably suffice. Casemix payment is the new health economics religion. Hospitals that push the most patients through will be rewarded, those that do less will be penalised. Financial incentives rule. However, throughput is at best only a partial measure of what hospitals do, and no system in the world pays exclusively on throughput. It does not work at all for small hospitals and those in remote areas, something that the commonwealth has admitted.

It is a useful tool, though, and there has been no real objection to its use, Every state uses it in various ways and a recent Productivity Commission inquiry into public and private hospital costs showed the two were almost identical. Not much chance of big savings there.

The other big reform is the creation of Local Hospital Networks, which would be statutory authorities with which state health departments would contract for services. The original proposals were for networks that would be ill-defined, very small and reflect a 19th-century view of rural, GP-staffed cottage hospitals rather than a 21st-century world of highly specialised, hi-tech medicine with complex but established referral patterns. Its first proposals also envisaged both commonwealth and state government payments going directly to the networks, a system that inevitably would benefit the more affluent areas in which doctors and nurses would most like to live. That has been softened considerably, but the networks remain a key commonwealth policy.

And it is likely to be a popular one, particularly in rural areas and with those doctors in NSW (and perhaps Queensland) who feel most alienated. And there is a good case for more decentralised and inclusive administration, though in a sensible way.

One reason Victoria can legitimately claim a better health system is not because it is more efficient or produces the best outcomes; there are almost no interstate differences on those scores. It works better because it has handled its professional relationships well.

The final agreements are a vast improvement on the original proposals. They recognise two realities. The first is the public hospital problems are not primarily about inefficiency or mismanagement but funding, which the commonwealth has the power to address. The second is that it needs state and territory help to deliver on its promises and that they have expertise that the commonwealth lacks. It is all about funding reform, not healthcare reform - nothing will basically change - but, given all the constraints, the final plan is constructive and as good as we are likely to get.

John Deeble was the principal adviser to the Whitlam and Hawke governments on the introduction of Medibank and Medicare .

 

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

RUDD STILL HASN'T SET COURSE FOR REFORM

THE PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE MUST BE TEARING OUT ITS EXPLETIVE-DELETED HAIR.

This year was meant to be a triumphant rollout of good news before a mighty election win. Instead, it is scraping off more barnacles from the good ship Rudd.

The government has not even been able to nail Spartacus. He was cornered in the great health debate but jumped on his bike and escaped to regional Australia. His good reception there is consistent with the published national polls.

The boatpeople issue has set off alarm bells in middle Australia and is diluting the government's health message.

The recent decision on indefinite detention has only heightened voters' concerns.

The same applies to the government's announcement of a $14 million independent review of Building the Education Revolution to pre-empt the Auditor-General's forthcoming report.

This is political inoculation on a grand scale but schools join the insulation mess in the pantheon of hastily implemented stimulus measures.

As Captain Rudd said to First Mate Arbib, full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes.

The public service must be laughing up its sleeve. No doubt exhausted by the 24/7 routine in Canberra, many of them would be enjoying the sight of a government not in control of events. Evidence-based policy-making has been replaced by poll-driven policy on the run. Are these the ingredients of a long-term successful government?

Too many reviews, too many hostages to fortune too close to the election. The opposition can pick the eyes out of half-pregnant reform of health, the Henry tax review and the absence of a population policy.

As in the 1980s, it will be left to the public service to do most of the government's thinking for it. The Treasury's agenda in the 80s of deregulation and globalisation, vilified as economic rationalism, was largely implemented with bipartisan support.

There was no alternative if Australia was to raise its economic growth rate and living standards in a sustainable way. The flexible economy saw us through the Asian financial crisis and now the global financial crisis.

In retrospect, we should all have had more faith in the resilience of the Australian economy. When the GFC hit, the economy was still growing strongly and interest rates had plenty of room to fall.

We should be thanking the Howard government for allegedly overheating the economy going into 2008. Ditto our zero net debt thanks to measures opposed by Labor in opposition. The flexible labour market also limited the unemployment shake-out.

The good regulatory system for banks helped, buttressed by timely guarantees on banks' wholesale funding and deposits. Glenn Stevens is right to describe the GFC as a North Atlantic crisis.

The wholesale guarantee was needed because banks had become more exposed to overseas funding as domestic savings were increasingly diverted into superannuation and housing. Rebalancing incentives to save will be welcome if that is where Henry is headed.

Tax policies are as much statements of social vision as of economic policy.

The New Tax System created by the previous government broadened the indirect tax base to reduce other growth-inhibiting taxes and to finance income tax cuts to spur productivity. The cuts in capital gains tax and corporate tax had a similar intent. Family taxation recognised the costs of rearing children.

Labor's tax policy in the 2007 election was a "me too" response to the Howard-Costello tax cuts with some tweaking.

The Henry review came about almost by accident in response to the 2020 Summit. It was hobbled from day one because changing the GST was ruled out. There was to be no revenue-neutral but productivity-increasing switch to remove other indirect taxes or cut income taxes.

On releasing its response, the government is expected to rule out whatever could be too hot politically or delay it until next year.

The nice bits - easier tax forms, a tax cut for bank deposits - are being drip-fed to the media.

A new onshore resource rent tax is still being canvassed, presumably because the money has to come from somewhere. This proposal is meant to capitalise on the commodities boom. It is based on the theory that resources generate super profits that are easier to tax than mobile capital or labour.

Through the years the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development has argued that the most effective and efficient taxes are property taxes, then consumption taxes and, finally, income taxes. The government is relying on commodities because the politics of more property taxes, including on the family home, are fraught. But when account is taken of the likelihood that higher taxes here relative to overseas will encourage more resource developments offshore, the economics of taxing resources are no longer so attractive.

The budget is the next test after Henry. The times will suit the Treasurer. The economy is growing strongly . Unemployment is heading back under 5 per cent. The budget balance will whir back towards surplus. The government will be able to crow on budget night that the growth in net debt will be significantly below what was projected last year. The much-trumpeted commitment to constrain spending growth to 2 per cent in real terms will come into play. Other areas of spending will have to be cut to accommodate the heavy increases in health spending.

Global uncertainties about sovereign debt exposures mean it would be prudent to replenish the depleted capital funds and/or pick up the idea of a sovereign wealth fund to complement the Future Fund. Happy days are here again, with only the spectre of higher interest rates to spoil the party. The Government will trumpet its productivity agenda but that is more spending with no structural reform.

The opposition should welcome any savings measures and propose more. There is no harm in accelerating the return to surplus and taking pressure off interest rates. It should set out its own structural reform agenda to strengthen competition and choice, raise productivity and reduce the costs of doing business. It should promise more cuts in taxes on saving and investment paid for by spending cuts. The entrenchment of a savings culture in the household sector is imperative. Structural reform and prudent budgets have served Australia well. So full steam ahead with reform and damn the nay-sayers.

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

HARSH BUT EFFECTIVE POLICY

NO issue in our national life produces more cant, hypocrisy, posturing and downright disregard for facts and history than that of illegal immigrants coming to Australia's northern shores by boat.

Two important recent developments are Tony Abbott's announcement that no one who comes here illegally by boat will get permanent residency and the Rudd government's suspension of the assessment of asylum applications by Sri Lankans for three months, and Afghans for six months. The government also said the situation in both countries was improving and therefore more of those asylum-seekers could in due course probably be sent home.

The Rudd government is moving crab-wise towards a Howard government position (effectively restoring indefinite mandatory detention), that they will be generous to refugees but the Australian government will choose which refugees come here.

This has virtually always been the Australian way.

John Howard's insight was to understand that it would be impossible to sustain support for a big immigration program if substantial numbers of illegal boats were coming.

No one is really qualified to express a view in this debate who has not read Christopher Caldwell's Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, which demonstrates categorically that asylum-seekers in Europe were not primarily refugees but extremely determined illegal immigrants.

That doesn't make them bad people, but it means the highly emotional response is misplaced.

Australia will always take refugees, but it is up to the government, representing the people, to determine how many and which ones. We might take all sorts of criteria into account, such as the degree of need, but also the prospects of such people settling well, whether they have relatives or other support here and so on.

Both sides of politics agree that we will take about 13,500 refugees a year, so any boatperson who is allowed in takes away the place of someone elsewhere in the program. No politician has argued that boatpeople be added to the total intake. There are really only two effective positions.

One is to deny the people smugglers the ability to deliver Australian permanent residency to their clients. They will then stop running the boats.

The other is to accept that whoever manages to physically get here gets to stay permanently.

Life in Australia is a glittering and magnificent prize. A few months at a camp is unlikely to deter people who have that prize in sight.

Sending them back home at the end of the detention period, as the government is foreshadowing, may well do so, though it would be better to do that quickly rather than slowly.

The Rudd government has lost control of the boats, with nearly 5000 people arriving since it came to office. Rudd should understand this plainly. That rate of arrivals will destroy support for the immigration program.

Previous governments have been much harsher than the Howard government was, but much less effective.

The most anti-immigration modern prime minister was surely Gough Whitlam.

It is the fashion these days to be nice to Whitlam, because he is indeed a very nice old chap. But this should not obscure the central reality of his government, that it was a catastrophic failure in economic management and countless bad consequences flowed from that.

In 1975, under Whitlam, barely 50,000 immigrants came to Australia, and more Australians left permanently than immigrants came into the country, a stupendously shocking result.

Whitlam was extraordinarily cruel to Vietnamese who had worked for or associated closely with the Australian embassy and army in South Vietnam.

By the fall of Saigon, two planeloads of orphans - 280 kids in all - and only 78 other Vietnamese had come to Australia. Hundreds associated with Australia were left to the tender mercies of the communists.

Malcolm Fraser presents himself as a great saint on refugees, but no one participates in this debate more dishonestly than Fraser. In fact in opposition in 1975 Fraser had called for only a small number of Vietnamese to be brought to Australia.

He was slow to allow any refugees to come to Australia after he became prime minister. In his seven years in office only 2000 Vietnamese came to Australia by boat.

I remember as a student campaigning hard to get Fraser to allow Vietnamese to come to Australia as refugees and this only happened towards the end of the 1970s and in the overwhelming context of a push led by the US for international resettlement. In that context it would have been inconceivable for an Australian government to do much less.

Fraser loves to laud his humanitarianism, but there is much less to it than meets the eye. The vast majority of Vietnamese who came here under Fraser did so either after being selected by Australian officials in UNHCR camps, just exactly as happens today with the majority of our quota of 13,500 refugees, or as a normal part of the family reunion migration program after other family members had been settled here. Fraser's record on eventually accepting substantial numbers of Vietnamese is good.

The Vietnamese have been a wonderful success in Australia. But exactly like Howard, Fraser was determined to stop people coming here directly by boat. Australians have a long history of being generous to refugees and to migrants generally provided they come to Australia in an orderly process supervised by the Australian government.

Many Afghans who come to Australia go through Pakistan, catch a flight to Malaysia, get another flight or boat to Indonesia, then join a boat to Australia and on the journey get rid of their documents. It is perfectly understandable that they want to live in Australia. It is not, however, a refugee situation.

Other nationalities who come on tourist visas and then claim refugee status have entered legally, they have documentation and they can be sent home if their claims are unsuccessful, which gives assessors more of an incentive to turn them down.

The assessment process on Christmas Island, in the absence of documents, is extremely subjective. The Rudd government's latest moves are not likely to stop the flow of boats. Nonetheless they are a move in the right direction.

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

MORE PILLARS NEEDED IN FINANCE

GRAEME SAMUEL, the chairman of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, is keen to play down the suggestion that he is out to rein in the market power of the big four banks. What caused the commission's unexpected decision to block a big takeover by the National Australia Bank was the prospect of a sharp narrowing of competition in the area of funds management, a worry as the 9 per cent employers' superannuation contribution creates a massive pool of funds vulnerable to fee-gouging.

The takeover target, AXA Asia-Pacific, was the main operator beside the big four and the Macquarie group of what are known as investment platforms or wrap accounts - essentially brokerages that manage an outsider's investment portfolio, such as a ''self-managed'' superannuation fund set up by a wealthy individual, for a fee.

By winning AXA, NAB would have been able to add its innovative platform to its two existing systems, building a market share slightly ahead of the existing leader in this business, Westpac, and putting these two banks in a dominating position. By bringing the losing bidder - the battered but reviving AMP, which currently has to use the platforms of other firms - back into the running for AXA, the ACCC is opening up the possibility of a powerful new force emerging in the financial sector. Not exactly a fifth ''pillar'' to the banking system (though AMP has an under-used banking licence), it could still rival the banks on the investment side.

For this reason, Samuel probably has public and governmental support for a decision normally seen as arcane, and conversely, NAB little sympathy, for all the effort it has put in to show itself the good guy among the big four by promising to limit home loan rate increases to the Reserve Bank rises. This is a factor it is no doubt weighing in deciding whether to challenge the ACCC decision in court.

Concern about diminishing competition has been rising since the global financial crisis excused the gobbling up of small banks and mortgage lenders by the big four, with government guarantees helping. With the banks showing cartel-like symptoms in interest rate setting and transaction fees, it is small wonder that interest has grown in small community banks and the possibility of the 4400-branch network of Australia Post being turned into a new quasi-government savings bank or gyro, instead of acting as agencies of the big four. As much as he disavows the role, Samuel risks becoming a popular hero.

EDUCATION'S LEVEL PLAYING FIELDS

EVER since Mark Latham's so-called ''hit list'' of private schools in 2004, the Labor Party has known that it must tread lightly in any reform of federal funding for schools. Regardless of public opinion, any debate on school funding carries a risk of falling into the politics of class warfare.

In a speech to the Sydney Institute last week, Julia Gillard tiptoed towards a review of education funding for the 2013-16 quadrennium. While her speech rang the predictable alarm bells in the independent schools sector, it was more notable for the care she took in not frightening educationists back into their entrenched positions.

The criticism of the current arrangement, she said, is that it allocates funding to non-government schools as a percentage of funding to government schools. ''The most persistent and deeply felt criticism,'' she said, ''[is] its perceived injustice to government schools. In particular, public education advocates believe that because the system uses the average costs of public education as its base, every win for public education flows to non-government schools and public education can never make up ground.''

What Gillard proposed, in essence, was a magic pudding by which private schools will not receive less funding per student yet public schools may receive more. Politically, it is an attempt to use the implementation of a national curriculum, the transparency of the My School website, the investment in school building and other initiatives as a foundation to assure people that the government is operating on the basis of practicality rather than ideology, as none of those reforms can realistically be seen as favouring public or private schools.

According to the latest Productivity Commission figures, the Commonwealth spends $28.8 billion on public schools and $7.6 billion on non-government schools. For many, that latter figure is an outrage. Private schools have long maintained that they need government funding to keep private education affordable for middle-class families, yet their fees have outstripped inflation for two decades. They argue that these rises are to keep up with teacher salaries, but, as businesses, private schools' fees are driven primarily by the logic of supply and demand. The key determinant of rising fees has been increasing demand from parents taking their children out of the public system. Labor wants to fund public schools to a degree that fewer parents will feel compelled to flee them - a competitive approach which, if it is allowed to develop unencumbered by yesteryear's fear campaigns, could conceivably deliver a rising tide that raises all boats.

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

PROBLEM GAMBLERS AT BREAKING POINT

AN ALFRED hospital nurse, curious about what tipped patients into suicidal crisis, prompted a screening program in the hospital's emergency department. The program's findings are depressingly stark: problem gamblers made up almost one in five of the 898 suicidal patients seen by The Alfred over six months last year. While the treatment outcomes in this group appear promising, the figures lend urgency to calls for a policy shift that ends the state government's reliance on gaming revenue.

The figures show problem gamblers are over-represented in the crisis group - appearing at about 20 times the rate of problem gambling in the community. In one sense, this is not entirely surprising given the typically devastating consequences of problem gambling - individuals lose jobs and loved ones along with their money. State Gaming Minister Tony Robinson, who has promised to deliver $665,000 over two years to expand the program around the state, said the initiative was a response to increased understanding that ''one of the underlying drivers of problem gambling is a pre-existing mental health condition''. There is also a chicken-and-egg dimension to this, experts say; mental health problems could also be a consequence of problem gambling in some cases.

But whatever the trajectory of individuals on edge, the state's role in this chain of misery is patently clear. In 2008-09, Victorian tax revenue from poker machines topped $1 billion. The number of Victorians playing the pokies has dropped in recent years, but evidence suggests problem gamblers are spiralling further out of control. In other words, a growing proportion of the state's poker machine revenue - a large body of research puts the figure at roughly half - comes from the serious gambling addiction of between 1 and 3 per cent of the population. And the government is poised to cash in further on gaming through the auction of licences for Victoria's 27,500 poker machines. As The Age said this week, problem gamblers face more challenges still as deregulation of the sports betting industry risks fuelling addiction by encouraging reckless and impulsive punting.

And yet, even the pro-market Productivity Commission contends the economics do not stack up once the social and financial costs of problem gambling are accounted for. Victoria is moving on some practical measures to limit the damage for problem gamblers. But this remains a mug's game for both problem gamblers and the community.

Source: The Age

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

SAFE CITY ABOUT MORE THAN POLICE NUMBERS

PERCEPTIONS MATTER, SO SCARE TACTICS CAN REDUCE PUBLIC SAFETY.

TWO young men are attacked in two of Melbourne's more public places in one morning. One is dead, the other is fighting for his life. The dead man was stabbed about 8am on Tuesday at a busy commuter hub, Clayton railway station, as peak-hour commuters went to work. The other man is in a coma after being robbed on the corner of Collins and Swanston streets in the early hours. These are two more human tragedies to add fuel to the law-and-order debate that has flared between the government and opposition seven months out from the state election.

The fatal stabbing prompted Police Chief Commissioner Simon Overland to say that for it ''to happen in daylight in a very public place is obviously concerning to us and to the community''. Such attacks are likely to bolster the appeal of the Coalition's promises of an extra 1600 front-line police over four years, as well as 940 ''protective services officers'' to patrol all rail stations in Melbourne and regional centres. Public safety is a hot-button issue, as Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu knows.

Public safety and the public sense of safety are, however, two different things. As Premier John Brumby insists, this is generally a safe state. He has accused Mr Baillieu of trashing Victoria's reputation and cites police statistics showing clear declines in the overall crime rate last year and over Labor's time in office. Yet that does little to alter public perceptions. Compared to dry and debatable statistics, coverage of violence is compelling. And it is easy then to appeal to basic instincts of self-protection by exploiting people's fears.

The government is also not on entirely firm ground in its reliance on statistics to counter the opposition attacks. Since 2000-01, when the rate peaked, overall crime per 100,000 people has fallen by 25.5 per cent, and the number of recorded offences by 16.2 per cent over a decade in which the population has grown by 15 per cent. In 2008-09, the crime rate fell 5.7 per cent from the year before.

Yet that is not the whole story. Even allowing for changes in data collection and reporting of offences, the opposition can point to rises in types of crime that most threaten public safety. The number of crimes of violence against the person rose 40 per cent over the decade and assaults by 70 per cent, including 7.4 per cent last year. The trend is worst in the police region covering Melbourne and the inner suburbs, where the number of assaults rose 10.8 per cent in 2008-09. Increases have been recorded for the past few years in public places - public transport, open spaces and streets, lanes and footpaths. Only very recently have targeted police operations brought down assault rates on public transport and city streets (the latter by 9 per cent in the final quarter of 2009), but the damage to public perceptions has been done. Government research shows, for instance, that about two-thirds of people fear attacks on trains at night.

It would help reassure the public to have more visible front-line police officers close by on Melbourne's streets and public transport. The government is set to promise more police, on top of the 800, 600 and more than 500 added in its three respective terms of office. Its challenge, though, is to tackle public perceptions.

When people in authority declare that the streets are no longer safe, there is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy to this. Well-frequented places provide safety in numbers, so when people abandon public areas, these spaces become more prone to crime. More police and transport security staff may be necessary, if only because their reassuring presence promotes increased use of public places, which is the most enduring way to reclaim the streets and trains from criminals and thugs. It is one thing to promote tough-on-crime policies, but another to engage in fearmongering that, by causing people to desert certain places, actually makes them less safe. This is a much tougher problem to solve, but it is no less important than debates about police numbers.

Source: The Age

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THE GUARDIAN

EDITORIAL

LABOUR: ALL QUIET ON THE PROGRESSIVE FRONT

LABOUR DOES HAVE A DISTINCTIVE ARGUMENT ABOUT SOCIAL JUSTICE THAT COULD PERSUADE OTHERS, IF ONLY IT WOULD SPELL IT OUT

Ahead of tonight's rerun, the effect of last week's leaders' debate has been fully felt, and the Lib Dem surge has sapped the reds even more than the blues. At such a moment, Labour must make a positive case for itself. Instead, while Peter Mandelson guards the right flank by carping at Nick Clegg's immigrant amnesty plan, there is virtual silence on the progressive front.

This diminishes the wider public debate as well as Labour's prospects. There are values, notably solidarity and regard for the poorest, which are as distinctive to the labour tradition as freedom is to the liberal one. What is more, the government could lay a decent claim to these on the basis of both its record and its manifesto. Where the Lib Dems had originally wanted a variable minimum wage which was lower in poorer regions, Labour introduced a national rate which it now pledges to peg to average earnings. Over rights at work and in its understanding of the proper role of trade unions, Labour has made the running. And whereas the Liberal Democrats are proposing a super-size cut to income tax, a levy not paid by the poorest, Labour's fiscal stimulus last year came through VAT, so the benefit trickled right the way down to the bottom of the heap.

Mr Clegg, like his Conservative counterpart, may hint that Britain's social democratic experiment has failed, yet there are still voters keen to see the frontiers of the welfare state advanced. Some, if not all, of what the right decried as New Labour meddling has worked – targeted efforts to cut road deaths in poor areas being a good example. In a reasonably spirited weekend interview, Gordon Brown attacked Lib Dem plans to trim tax credits for those on decent incomes, and to axe the universal child trust fund completely. But when everybody knows money is tight, what was needed was a principled case for continuing to spend on these particular things. Mr Brown could have defended the sweeping reach of Labour's family policies by proclaiming the advantages of binding all of society into one system, or he could have explained how services for the poor end up being poor services. His failure to do so left the impression that his arguments had more to do with electoral expediency than noble values.

All the Sure Start centres and tax credits in the world will not, in many eyes, be enough to atone for Iraq or the casual disregarding of liberties. But Labour does have a distinctive argument about social justice that could persuade others, if only it would spell it out. With a view to possible hung-parliament deals, Mr Brown has returned to his refrain about a "progressive consensus". If Labour really wants to be part of one, then it had better start rehearsing some progressive tunes over the next two weeks.

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THE GUARDIAN

EDITORIAL

BANKS: THE TAXMAN COMETH

IMF MOVE IS NOT THE END OF THE DEBATE OVER REFORMING THE BANKS, BUT IT MARKS A SIGNIFICANT TURNING POINT

Crises often mean taxes. In Britain, it took the Napoleonic wars to justify the introduction of income tax. In America's case, it was the civil war. And one of the legacies of the great banking crisis of 2008-9 is likely to be new duties on the finance industry. Not the one-off levy on individual bonuses brought in last year by Labour, but one or two permanent taxes on the institutions themselves. From HSBC to even the sleekest and sharpest-fanged hedge fund – every financier working in a big economy is going to catch this bullet.

That at least is the implication of a new report from the International Monetary Fund, which suggests ways for financiers to make a "fair and substantial" contribution to the governments that bailed them out. The IMF propose two new levies on financial institutions. The first is a kind of insurance policy that all banks and financial companies will have to take out, by paying governments an annual fee (a flat fee at first but ultimately to be set according to the riskiness of each institution and their trading activities). The second is a financial activities tax – which wonks immediately nicknamed a Fat tax, and which everyone else will doubtless call a Fatcat tax – based on their size and how much they pay staff. That's the thing about campaigning for financial reform – you wait ages for a bank tax, and then two come along at once.

We can come to the details of these proposals in a moment, but it is worth making some bigger points. First, this report will now frame the debate over taxing banks. It is the longest and most detailed set of proposals that have yet been produced, and it was commissioned by Gordon Brown, Barack Obama and the other leaders of the G20 group of major economies who will discuss it at their next summit in Toronto in June. There may be a few protesting countries, such as Canada and Japan, but their counterparts will point to the outsize bonuses and profits financiers have been raking in ever since governments stepped in to support the markets. It says a lot about the short-termism of the finance industry that all those traders at Barclays and Goldman filling their boots over the past couple of years have only hastened the introduction of more punitive taxes.

As we report today, Alistair Darling believes that international agreement on a bank tax could be reached by the end of this year – which for a technical and global reform surely counts as remarkable progress. That is, if the bankers, their lobbyists and their friends in the media do not manage to derail the process. Which brings us to the second big point, these are far more radical proposals than anyone thought likely from that Washington outpost of orthodox economics, the IMF. The surprise from the banks has been palpable, and it will soon turn to bloodcurdling threats of the dire effects of such taxes (while the same lobby groups will simultaneously point out that consumers will anyway end up footing the bill in higher charges). But what the spreadsheet wizards of Washington have agreed is that governments should worry about banks being too big to fail and too risky to be in business. Implicit in these proposals is that there is such a thing as financiers being too risky (especially through borrowing) and paying themselves too much.This is not the end of the debate over reforming the banks, but it marks a significant turning point. At the very least, this is the week in which some kind of international levy on banks became an odds-on bet. In Britain, all three major parties are signed up to some kind of tax (with the Lib Dems' Vince Cable being boldest) and this IMF paper may mark the point of no return. True, the debates over making banks more useful and less casino-esque have a long way to go, but a few battles may be won. After all, for the IMF to propose one new tax on banks may be thought perfectly reasonable; to come up with two is pleasingly bold.

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THE GUARDIAN

EDITORIAL

IN PRAISE OF … ROBINSON THE GREAT

IT SHOULD BE COMPULSORY READING FOR BRITAIN'S ELECTIONEERING POLITICIANS – AND VOTERS

It is a shame when any book is unavailable on inter-library loan or from the wide world of the internet, and especially so when that book is Robinson the Great. It should be compulsory reading for Britain's electioneering politicians – and voters.

Published in 1929, it describes an election ending in a hung parliament in which neither Labour nor Tories can form a majority. Behind them in seats, but not so very far, are the Liberals. Step forward their leader: Robinson the Great. An ideal of what Nick Clegg could become in his finest dreams, Robinson forms a minority government, accepting defeat on day-to-day business but promising to resign only on a vote of no confidence. His bigger rivals dislike one another so cordially that they can never agree to combine and bring him down. Meanwhile, the Commons gradually loses its yah-boo adversarial nature because of the triangular nature of its debates. Measures are increasingly discussed on their merits, rather than point-scoring.

It was not thus in real life for Robinson's author, Ramsay Muir, a typical Liberal of the period. He tried to get into parliament himself eight times, succeeding only briefly in 1923 when he represented Rochdale for less than a year. Someone must have a copy to lend to Mr Clegg, and if things go well for the Lib Dems on 6 May, the book gives an added incentive to make three-party politics work until at least the end of next year. That's when Robinson the Great comes out of copyright – and we can all print copies of our own.

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DAILY EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

 

IMMIGRATION POLICY SHOWS CLEGG IN HIS TRUE COLOURS

DESPITE THE BEST EFFORTS OF THE MAIN POLITICAL PARTIES NOT TO TALK ABOUT IT, THERE CAN BE NO DENYING THAT UNCONTROLLED IMMIGRATION IS ONE OF THE MOST SERIOUS PROBLEMS FACING BRITAIN TODAY.

 

With unemployment hitting 2.5million and expectant mothers being turned away from maternity units, at least in part due to the soaring birth rate among newcomers to Britain, its negative impact is being felt across many aspects of life.

So Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg thoroughly deserved the ear bashing he got on the subject yesterday from the overwhelmingly young listeners of Radio 1. 

Mr Clegg's party wishes to grant an amnesty and citizenship for up to a million illegal immigrants living in this country. That would give them full access to the jobs market and to our benefits system. He also wishes to let asylum seekers take jobs, which they are currently forbidden from doing.

That would only encourage new waves of economic migrants to abuse the asylum system. These crackpot policies are a betrayal of the 929,000 Britons aged 16-24 who are out of work. They show that Clegg and his party believe in the highfalutin concept of "global citizenship" rather than in the primary duty of the British state to look after its own people.

Anyone who votes for this man should do so in the knowledge that the more votes he gets, the less intact will Britain be as an independent nation in five years' time.

 

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DAILY EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

 

A TALE OF ASHES AND ASSES

LORD ADONIS, THE TRANSPORT SECRETARY, YESTERDAY ADMITTED THAT THE AUTHORITIES WERE "TOO CAUTIOUS" IN THEIR REACTION TO THE CLOUD OF VOLCANIC ASH.

 

The response of most Britons to that will be: tell us something we don't already know. 

In effect Adonis was acknowledging that his department, its agencies and international counterparts have unnecessarily caused billions of pounds of damage to the British economy and put tens of thousands of people through horribly distressing experiences.

In this health and safety obsessed era you would think someone would have made a rule against putting the fate of the nation in the hands of a bunch of clueless idiots.

 

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DAILY EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

IMMIGRATION POLICY SHOWS CLEGG IN HIS TRUE COLOURS

DESPITE THE BEST EFFORTS OF THE MAIN POLITICAL PARTIES NOT TO TALK ABOUT IT, THERE CAN BE NO DENYING THAT UNCONTROLLED IMMIGRATION IS ONE OF THE MOST SERIOUS PROBLEMS FACING BRITAIN TODAY.

 

With unemployment hitting 2.5million and expectant mothers being turned away from maternity units, at least in part due to the soaring birth rate among newcomers to Britain, its negative impact is being felt across many aspects of life.

So Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg thoroughly deserved the ear bashing he got on the subject yesterday from the overwhelmingly young listeners of Radio 1. 

Mr Clegg's party wishes to grant an amnesty and citizenship for up to a million illegal immigrants living in this country. That would give them full access to the jobs market and to our benefits system. He also wishes to let asylum seekers take jobs, which they are currently forbidden from doing.

That would only encourage new waves of economic migrants to abuse the asylum system. These crackpot policies are a betrayal of the 929,000 Britons aged 16-24 who are out of work. They show that Clegg and his party believe in the highfalutin concept of "global citizenship" rather than in the primary duty of the British state to look after its own people.

Anyone who votes for this man should do so in the knowledge that the more votes he gets, the less intact will Britain be as an independent nation in five years' time.

  

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DAILY EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

AT LAST THE TORIES GRASP THE NETTLE OF WELFARE REFORM

BY LEO MCKINSTRY

 

THE Government's financial deficit hangs over our economy like a massive, brooding cloud of volcanic ash. Public finances are in crisis, record borrowing is driving up inflation and politicians from all parties warn that state services face swingeing cuts.

Yet for all this doom-laden talk there is one way to make a significant reduction in government expenditure while at the same time boosting economic growth, employment and tax revenues. To achieve these goals what is required is the fundamental reform of the bloated welfare state.

GENERAL ELECTION 2010: GET THE LATEST NEWS AND ANALYSIS HERE...

Devoid of any moral purpose the benefits system now provides perverse incentives to mass idleness and family breakdown. It not only represents an intolerable burden on the taxpayer but also undermines personal responsibility.

Neither Labour nor the Liberal Democrats are promising any real change in the way social security operates. They will continue providing the handouts while our debts soar. Only the Conservatives are pledged to tackle a system that punishes the hardworking and rewards the feckless.

Nothing better illustrates the Tories' warnings about "Broken Britain" than the sprawling ghettos of subsidised jobless and fatherless households that predominate in parts of our urban landscape.

Now the Tories' latest election poster proclaims: "Let's cut benefits for those who refuse to work." It is their most powerful message so far, expressing the fury that ordinary, decent Britons feel at having to under-write the lifestyles of the work-shy. Our economy cannot afford a system that is so destructive in its influence and costs the public £190billion a year.

Top of Form

When first established after the Second World War the welfare state was only meant to provide support for the disabled and for those who had temporarily fallen on hard times through no fault of their own. It was never seen as a permanent alternative to the world of work.

 

Sir William Beveridge, the civil servant who was the driving force behind the  system, said in 1944 that his plan was not intended to give "something for nothing". Instead the scheme was one "to secure income for subsistence on condition of service and contribution". But those laudable aims have been lost as benefits rackets have remorselessly expanded.

In 2010 those who receive the most from the State, such as drug addicts or feckless parents, are often those who have contributed the least to our society. In the fractured Britain created by Labour, scrounging is a more lucrative occupation than many forms of paid work. We now have a new breed of welfare aristocrats who think that they are entitled to live at someone else's expense.

All too typical is the case highlighted this month of the Davey family from North Wales, who receive £42,000 a year in benefits and have a Mercedes and satellite TV despite not having worked in nine years. It is no wonder unemployment keeps rising. Only yesterday the official level of joblessness reached a 16-year high of 2.5million, up 43,000 in the first quarter of this year.

Long-term unemployment also rose by 89,000 to 726,000, the highest total since Labour came to power. Some of these increases are of course due to the deep recession but the corrupting inducements of welfare have also played their part. After all, there are estimated to be no fewer than 475,000 vacancies in the economy yet an army of spongers would not dream of filling them because they prefer the easy life of exploiting the taxpayer.

Taking account of the 2.7million claimants of incapacity benefit – most of whom, according to the Government's own findings, are perfectly capable of work – there are more than five million people of working age who live on handouts. That is an affront to a civilised society, a symbol of moral collapse. With unemployment at such levels it is an outrage that employers are compelled to import labour from overseas because they cannot fill vacancies.

In fact the refusal of the Government to introduce any kind of welfare reform is one reason immigration has been so out of control in the last decade. It was all meant to be so different. Labour came to power in 1997 promising to "think the unthinkable" on  welfare. As it has turned out the only thing unthinkable has been the cost to the public purse. With Gordon Brown, the ultimate statist, in charge of the economy the scope of social security provision has massively widened so that even a couple with an income of £66,000 is entitled to meanstested child tax credits.

Only yesterday David Freud, ex-government adviser on welfare policy, revealed Brown acted as an ideological block against reform. Freud's attempt to persuade him of the need for change led, he said, to a series of "bruising" encounters. Exasperated, he switched to the Tories, who were more receptive to his ideas about removing financial barriers to work.

Labour has been feeble partly because it wants to retain the votes of its large, welfare-dependent clientele and partly because of the sentimental myth that the withdrawal of benefits is somehow "cruel." But there is nothing compassionate about dumping people on the economic scrapheap. It is soul-destroying for them and disastrous for Britain. "No more free rides, no more life on benefits," pledges David Cameron.

That is exactly the approach that Britain so desperately needs.

 

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THE GAZETTE

CAN QUEBEC SHOW SOME IMAGINATION ON SCHOOL LANGUAGE?

"Fair play for the children of rich parents who weren't educated in English in Canada!" As a rallying cry, it's not exactly "We shall fight on the beaches ..." is it? But the Bill 104 debate is becoming more important for the anglophone and allophone community than the Quebec government seems to recognize.

Jean Charest and his caucus appear to be preparing a new restriction on language choice in schooling. But the Liberals should think twice before they offer this knee-jerk kick to communities that have supported them strongly.

At issue is Quebec's response to October's Supreme Court ruling striking down the 2002 law Bill 104, which closed a so-called "loophole" in Bill 101's restrictions on access to English schooling. Before Bill 104, a family otherwise barred from English schools could become eligible by sending the oldest child (usually) to a fully-private English school for one year. Receiving no government funding, those schools are expensive but exempt from Bill 101's rules. Bill 104 bricked up that loophole, until the Supreme Court deemed 104 unreasonable. The case, involving allophone, francophone, and anglophone families, was fought and won by the tenacious and resourceful lawyer Brent Tyler.

Charest, evidently determined never to be outflanked on language, instantly vowed to undo the Court's work. Ministers brandishing the notwithstanding clause emitted billowing choking clouds of rhetoric about "defending French."

One particularly unreasonable claim they're using is that before Bill 104, rich people could "buy the right" to English school. What circular illogic: If English schooling is a right, why does government restrict it? If it's not a right, why shouldn't rich people buy it, like a big-screen TV? And if "buying rights" is so wrong, why do we tolerate private clinics where you can "buy the right" to avoid a long wait for a medicare-paid blood test?

Nor does anyone in government seem to understand that today's "English" schools, public and private, teach more and better French than ever before - and have lower dropout rates. Success is no defence.

The Supreme Court gave Quebec a year to fix Bill 104. A bill will likely be introduced in the National Assembly next month, and passed before the summer recess. This tight timetable will minimize resistance - provided all parties back the bill. That tells us what the bill will be like.

It's all so cheerlessly predictable. Francophone Quebec is in no mood for accommodations right now, even reasonable ones.

But anglophones, too, feel like they are up against a wall these days, and with good reason. The new anglo angst is personified by Marcus Tabachnick, longtime chairman of the Lester B. Pearson School Board, always adept at working "within the system," rather than making a fuss. When he chooses to go public, you know there's a real problem.

Naturally enough, his concern begins with schools. Montreal's two English boards now have about 46,000 students, down by 8,000 in just five years. Government figures project a decline to under 38,000 by 2017. His board and the English Montreal School Board are trying to mobilize anglophone opinion over Bill 104, not on the narrow basis that rich parents should have choice, but on the basis that the whole English community needs "oxygen."

But the real problem, Tabachnick told The Gazette's editorial board Tuesday, is "more than just schools." As the English education system dwindles, what happens to the whole anglophone community? "There comes a point when you feel you have to say something."

What we heard was a genuine expression of concern, right from the heart of a sophisticated and experienced observer. "They've got to treat (anglophones) like citizens," Tabachnick said. But instead "they tolerate us. I don't like to be tolerated."

As usual, the anglophone community's fate in this matter is in the hands of the Liberals. Is it inevitable that access will be tightened? Probably. But how much? The group that speaks for private schools wants the "one year in fully-private school" trigger for access raised to two years. Others suggest four, or even six.

But what if the government summoned the imagination to show, at the same time, some concern for Quebec's historic anglophone community, too? What if the same bill offered a breath of "oxygen" to English schools? Tabachnick suggests, for example, opening access to English schools for immigrants from the United States, Britain, and Australia. Every week, he said, his officials must tell would-be immigrants from those countries that their children would not be eligible for English schools. This alone, he said, has choked off immigration to Quebec from those countries.

If they choose to, the Liberal government can now avoid dealing another body blow to anglophones and allophones. Anglophones understand all too well that francophone narrowness of spirit threatens to choke our community, slowly but inexorably. There's a payoff in the polls for "defending French" but the truly right thing to do would be to defend the broader interest of all Quebecers.

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THE KOREA TIMES

EDITORIAL

MINI-FINANCIAL CRISIS AGAIN?

BY LEE CHANG-SUP

If history is any guide, Korea needs to study the U.S. financial crisis in the late 1980s and 1990s.

The potential trigger is the so-called Korean small-sized 105 savings banks, formerly community-based mutual savings and finance companies. Many of them are in trouble for their relentless lending to builders, project financiers and home buyers in a high-risk and high-return manner.

The latest collapse of the Jeonju-based Jeonil Savings Bank is a harbinger for trouble ahead. Until its losses became known as serious, people were in the dark. The problem is more ``Jeonils'' are lurking.

These savings banks are roughly equal to 25 percent of KB Bank in assets out of which 15 percent went sour but some estimate their troubled loans reach 30 percent.

Why are they struggling? The depressed property market is the main culprit as more than half of their loans are tied to that sector.

Once they are in serious trouble, the risk will spread to big commercial banks.

US S&L Crisis

U.S. policymakers have painful memories of the trouble the savings and loan companies faced, often called the S&L crisis, in the late 1980s and 1990s. American taxpayers used $124 billion in clearing 747 bankrupt S&Ls. Their fiasco contributed to the U.S. recession and the widening of its budget deficits in the early 1990s. Responsible for their failure are moral hazards, imprudent real estate lending and misguided tax reform.

In scale, the S&L crisis was about 50 percent of the Wall Street meltdown in 2008. But in the late 1980s when the Internet was not widely used, the S&L crisis was little known to Korea.

The same U.S. S&L crisis could be repeated in Korea more than two decades later. Korean household debts, much of which are tied to mortgages, are at a record level.

During the Roh Moo-hyun administration, home and property prices rose at a rapid pace. Breadwinners borrowed heavily to buy homes out of their herd-mentality belief that property is the most attractive investment tool. Builders and project financiers also borrowed heavily for property investment.

New mortgage lending rules at banks were belatedly tightened, including the debt-to-income ceiling and loan-to-value ratios. Unable to raise bank loans, potential home buyers and constructors rushed to savings banks for loans at double the rate available at banks.

Later, the government also extended the rules to them. The Financial Supervisory Commission eventually toughened the lending rules for savings banks this year.

They could not extend more than 25 percent of their credit to a specific industry, down 5 percentage points. By 2013, the ratio will be downed to 20 percent.

Savings banks are barred from extending more than half their credit to properties. Guidelines for their financial soundness will be strengthened and eligibility of major shareholders will be screened yearly.

But the belated tightening is not a fundamental solution. It may worsen the current plight.

The rescue fund available is $2 billion but the Korea Deposit Insurance Corp. needed $20 billion to help them bail out. A significant raise in deposit insurance premiums is not enough to fill the gap. Ultimately, taxpayer money may be necessary.

Preemptive Steps

The worst scenario is the continuing slide of home prices by 20 to 30 percent in some cases, and the rise of the interest rate at a rapid pace, which would mean the bubble bursting and a mini-financial crisis.

Optimists are skeptical over the possibility of revisiting the financial crisis. They say defining their trouble as a crisis is too radical but they agree that at least a downturn of consumption, the bailout of a few savings banks and the ensuing further nosedive of the property market will depress the economy.

The Lee Myung-bak administration has been commended for curbing property prices, one of the serious social ills. But solving one problem creates another.

The depressed property market will push home buyers and builders to the edge of bankruptcy.

As Korea painfully experienced in the 1997 financial crisis, misfortunes come en masse. Collapse of savings banks will jolt the financial market, pushing market rates higher, scaring away foreign portfolio investors and lowering the won's value.

It is deadly to allow property prices to rise rapidly but the government must at least take steps to keep the property market from falling by a double-digit rate, so that borrowers pay back debts and interest on time.

It is better to preclude another mini-crisis rather than to stifle the property market. Until the credit card crisis took place in 2002, few knew of the trouble in advance. Policymakers should be wise enough not to repeat past mistakes. A time bomb is again ticking in the property market. A few savings banks may soon need intensive care.

 

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THE KOREA TIMES

EDITORIAL

 

WALL STREET FLAP COLORS CALIFORNIA RACE.

BY DAN WALTERS

SACRAMENTO BEE

When California Attorney General Jerry Brown issued a broadside Monday against Moody's Investors Service, accusing the Wall Street rating firm of refusing to give him information on the global banking meltdown, it fit neatly into Brown's emerging strategy to win the governorship.

 

Democrat Brown, seemingly taking his cue from the Obama White House's high-profile battle with the banking industry over new financial regulations, is beginning to paint his leading Republican rival, Meg Whitman, as the product of a morally bankrupt banking system.

Whitman, best known as the former boss at eBay, once served on the board of Goldman Sachs, which has become the poster child for marketing poor-quality, mortgage-backed securities to global investors. She also received shares in new stock offerings managed by the firm, a practice called ``spinning" that has since been banned.

Brown spent much of a weekend Democratic convention framing the battle over the governorship in populist terms, with himself as the champion of ordinary people against super-rich financial manipulators ― implicitly including Whitman.

Back to work Monday, he asked the courts to back his demands that Moody's, which he says gave high ratings to ``risky and toxic" mortgage securities, give him information on its role in the financial meltdown.

Brown has called it ``the biggest bank robbery in history." While he hasn't yet personally made the three-cushion political shot of Moody's-Goldman Sachs-Whitman, surrogates are doing it for him.

Last week, Level the Playing Field, a group that's attempting to raise money for pro-Brown ``independent expenditures," declared that Whitman's connection to Goldman Sachs placed her ``at the scene of the crime when the middle class got turned upside down."

Meanwhile, Brown spokesman Sterling Clifford told the Wall Street Journal, ``Over the course of this campaign, I think the voters are going to be fully aware of Meg Whitman's financial dealings at Goldman Sachs, and they hold her accountable for them."

Whitman, a billionaire who has said she's ready to spend $150 million on her campaign, is running neck-and-neck with Brown, a former two-term governor, and there's a sense of unease among Democrats about the potential impact of that spending.

Brown clearly hopes to turn her financial advantage on its head, portraying her as a corporate fat cat who's attempting to buy the governorship, implicitly with tainted money she received from rapacious Wall Street bankers, including campaign contributions from Goldman Sachs executives.

It's a potentially potent strategy, but Brown will have to tread lightly on demonizing Goldman Sachs. His sister, former state Treasurer Kathleen Brown, is a high-ranking Goldman Sachs executive, overseeing the firm's heavy involvement in state and local bond issues in California.

Dan Walters can be reached at dwalters@sacbee.com. For back columns, visit www.sacbee.com/walters. The above article was distributed by Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com).

 

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THE KOREA TIMES

EDITORIAL

IT'S WHAT THEY DIDN'T SAY!

BY ANTHONY HEGARTY

Sometimes it isn't what a person or organization says but what they do not say that is the interesting part of the story. In reference to an April 15 Korea Times article, ``Foreign Sex Criminals Face Permanent Entry Ban,'' I would like to point out what it didn't say.

The part that caught my eye was the reference made to the individual who had worked as a counselor for the Washington State Health Authority who ``had been found guilty of sexual molestation of a child.''

In fact, this individual had not been found guilty of anything and had never been through the U.S. criminal justice system; and he certainly does not have a criminal record, and was thus perfectly capable of producing the required letter stating so; something 90 percent of child sex offenders can do, which is a pre-requisite for an E2 visa to teach English in Korea.

The individual actually pleaded guilty at an internal disciplinary session for the Washington State Health Authority for having an inappropriate relationship with his client, a minor.

And we can assume that the relationship did not involve intercourse as that would have been statutory rape, which would have had to have been heard in a law court. In any event, it is right he should be banned from this country.

But what was not said in the article was that the individual was exposed by a British teacher in Seoul, which motivated the said offender to flee.

Shockingly though, and despite the strong rhetoric we hear, the offender was allowed to return to Korea earlier this year to take legal action against that teacher who had exposed him; accusing him of libel, despite the fact that it was all true.

Prior to his return the Immigration Bureau was warned over and over again about the Washington State disciplinary hearing but refused to accept it as it was not a criminal conviction, thus he was allowed to re-enter Korea to pursue his case.

Yet, now we read of the Immigration Bureau patting themselves on the back for identifying this offender and banishing him forever. Well done men!

 

Rather than constantly negatively branding the English teaching community, would it not be more appropriate for the Immigration Bureau to provide full details of this case and thank the individual involved, as his concerns are certainly shared by the overwhelming number of foreign teachers in this country?

Anthony Hegarty is a risk analyst developing solutions for future problems. He is a founder of Safe Schools (Korea) (www.safeschools.co.kr). He is also a graduate of U.K. Portsmouth University Faculty of Criminal Justice Studies. He now lives in Daegu, South Korea. He can be reached at safeschools@discreet-services.com.

 

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

 

FTA WITH CHINA.

 

It goes without saying both South Korea and China, with their complementary economies, will benefit greatly if they engage in bilateral free trade. But little progress has been made in the proposal to negotiate a free trade agreement since they concluded a one-year joint study on the issue in June 2008. Held accountable is Korea, which has not been as enthusiastic as China.

The Korean government has seemingly had good reason not to push for an early accord. It has feared that, once negotiations start, farmers will stage violent protests against the prospects of an upsurge in agricultural imports from China. Moreover, farmers are given disproportionate political representation in Korea as in many other countries.

Another plausible reason is the fear of being drawn too deeply into China's dizzyingly fast-growing sphere of economic influence. Korea's trade with China is already larger than its combined trade with the United States and Japan. It stood at $141 billion and accounted for 20.5 percent of Korea's total external trade last year.

Korea has long been seeking a counterbalance in the United States that has yet to materialize.

President Lee Myung-bak was so candid about this problem as to be deemed undiplomatic when he explained it in a recent interview with the Washington Post. He said he was concerned about China's growing influence in the region because it is anything but good for Korea, and any other economy for that matter, to be "so dependent on one economic partner (as on China)."

But Lee did the right thing when he took the plunge and ordered relevant government agencies on Monday to favorably consider an early free trade agreement with China. He may not have to be too concerned about China's economic influence on Korea. A counterbalance can be found even before the Korean-U.S. free trade agreement is ratified by the U.S. Congress.

First of all, Korea's free trade agreement with India, the "comprehensive economic partnership agreement," went into force on Jan. 1. True, Korean-Indian trade falls far behind Korean-Chinese trade, but it has a potential for fast growth.

During the first two months of this year, Korean-Indian trade doubled from a year ago to $2.58 billion. That surge in growth may not be as impressive as it looks, given a plunge in bilateral trade last year as a consequence of the global financial crisis. Still, the volume of trade is more than encouraging, given that it represents a whopping 20 percent increase over the first two months of 2008.

A greater impetus will certainly come from a free trade agreement with the European Union. It may take effect within this year if the EU procedure proceeds without an insurmountable hitch.

Korea cannot wait indefinitely for the U.S. ratification of the free trade agreement before starting negotiations with China. Korea's market share in China, which is expected to decline in the absence of a bilateral free trade agreement, must be weighed against the U.S. provision of a buffer to China's growing economic influence on Korea. In this regard, fierce competition is coming from Taiwan, which has set its sights on concluding an "economic cooperation framework agreement" for free trade with China by June.

Now that Korea has decided to promote an early free trade accord with China, it should not take too much time before the two sides start formal negotiations. All they have to do is develop strategies after brushing up on their joint study, for which representatives from their respective governments, industries and research institutes had five sessions from March 2007 to June 2008.

On a separate track, Korea will have to continue to push for an early U.S. ratification. As Lee noted, the accord has more than trade implications for Korea, whose sole military ally is the United States.　

 

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

TRULY SHAMEFUL

 

The prosecutor general said his office should be ashamed if a businessman's allegation that he entertained prosecutors with booze and sex, and gave them cash gifts on repeated occasions since 1984 proves to be true. But the entire law-enforcement agency should be ashamed of the mere allegation.

Appearing in a recent MBC-TV program, the businessman made a shocking claim that he gave "cash envelopes" to about 100 prosecutors, who were once assigned to the prosecutorial offices in Busan and South Gyeongsang Province, and entertained them by arranging parties with booze and sometimes sex. The program also featured testimony by women serving in "room salons" and the businessman's associates, and interviews with some of the prosecutors involved in the scandal.

Of course, the interviewed prosecutors denied any wrongdoing. But remarks by the businessman and others were too specific to convince the audience that the allegations were nothing but fiction. The businessman made a convincing case, backing his assertion with the serial numbers of the checks he used. He also presented his notes of whom he entertained, when, where and at what price.

Moreover, there are rumors that many prosecutors have deep-pocketed businessmen as "sponsors," who pay for entertainment at their beck and call. Indicative of such embedded corruption is a remark by a senior prosecutor, who told the program that a businessman might offer to pay when he had an occasion to entertain 10 junior prosecutors and others in his office. He added he would take the blame if that was wrong.

If any of the prosecutors involved in the scandal breached the law they were meant to enforce, they will do well to resign immediately and undergo investigation by a fact-finding commission. What the commission needs to do is to recommend institutional improvements and changes to the agency's culture as well as to establish the facts.

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

 

JUSTICE MINISTER BLIND TO ETHICAL DILEMMAS

 

From the very start, it was clear that what would be blind was not the administration of justice but the justice secretary, and that he would be blind to the ethical dilemmas his background would present in an election year. Having been President Macapagal-Arroyo's and her ruling coalition's election lawyer, Alberto Agra brings to the position of justice secretary a particular kind of expertise more useful in a partisan sense, and with that expertise comes the dilemma of his past services and their impact on his present decisions.

Certainly there's the question of the role a transitional secretary of justice should play in the last days of an administration. Should he relentlessly pursue the agenda of that administration in a partisan manner, or put in place a smooth and uncontroversial stewardship of the department? To be sure, as an appointee of the President, he was chosen because he is willing and able to pursue the President's agenda of utilizing her powers as she sees fit, regardless of propriety or public opinion, for as long as she can.

But even then, all officials are duty-bound to uphold the law regardless of the intentions of their superiors and to contradict and resist patently wrong policies or actions. This is what the Department of Justice's prosecutors have done. From the chief state prosecutor on down, they have essentially gone on strike, a potentially career-killing move, in protest over the justice secretary's decision to dismiss murder charges against Zaldy and Akmad Ampatuan.

The grounds given by Agra for dismissing the charges are less relevant than what his decision required. For example, among the reasons he gave was the alibi of Gov. Zaldy Ampatuan that he was in Davao City when the Maguindanao massacre took place. This ignores the relative ease with which the ARMM governor could have made the journey to Davao (at most, a three-hour drive) on the same day, precisely to establish an alibi. What Agra's decision required was, first, to ignore the conflict of interest his past services as an election lawyer represented in cases involving the Ampatuans. Second, it required not only indifference, but active hostility, to the widespread public demand for justice for the massacre victims -- a demand the Arroyo administration has consistently tried to resist, and which Agra portrays as a question of whether or not he retains the President's confidence or not.

Which brings us precisely to the heart of this controversy: the manner in which the administration cultivated and coddled the Ampatuans, and engaged in novel legal and constitutional schemes -- including breaking the last post-Marcos taboo, martial law -- merely to clamp down on public scrutiny and treat public outrage as a mere public relations problem and not a deeper call for justice.

No one can doubt that this was coming: from the contorted reasoning of administration officials to justify martial law to their case being proven false by the dismissal of rebellion charges against the Ampatuans; from the administration practically having to be dragged, kicking and muttering apologies to the Ampatuans into filing murder charges to two of the most prominent -- and politically useful -- accused being let off the hook.

The prosecutors are absolutely correct in walking out. We salute them. To have pleaded, as the administration likes to do, that they must grin and bear it out of a presumption of regularity would have made them accomplices to one of the biggest whitewash since Fabian Ver was let off the hook by Ferdinand Marcos. In contrast, the prosecutors have proven themselves fundamentally loyal to country and people in the manner of the Comelec computer operators who walked out in 1986 -- and for similar reasons.

What does it profit a prosecutor if he or she is denied the opportunity to do his or her job, for reasons that demean the administration of law and the legal profession? The stakes may be high for the administration, but they aren't what the prosecutors and the victims seek.

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

CHINA MUST PROTECT INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

 

In response to a rising chorus of accusatory voices from Hong Kong and Japan, organizers of the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai apparently had no choice but to suspend the use of the event's promotional theme song, which critics have said is plagiarized.

The expo's secretariat took the step after it was pointed out that the official song for the event, which opens May 1, has a melody extremely similar to that of a song by Japanese singer-songwriter Mayo Okamoto, titled "Sono Mama no Kimi de Ite" (Stay the way you are).

After soliciting works from the public to choose a promotional song for the exposition, the secretariat reportedly selected a piece submitted by a popular Chinese composer after screenings by experts.

After its release in China at the end of March, the song helped popularize and boost awareness of the exposition, partly because of a number of celebrities singing the song.

Some time later, however, messages began to be posted on the Internet, alleging that the piece was plagiarized.

Apparently in a flurry, the exposition secretariat secretly contacted Okamoto's office in the middle of this month, asking for permission to use her work as an official PR song for the event.

In response, Okamoto expressed her intention to accept the proposal. As a result, the organizers may once again use the PR song, but this time as Okamoto's work.

Details about how the song will be used reportedly will be finalized later. But the exposition secretariat must take procedures in line with international rules on creative works while taking into consideration Okamoto's intentions.

In China, production of goods bearing counterfeit brands as well as pirated music, films and game software is flourishing as a full-blown industry.

Given this situation, Japan, the United States and European countries have been asking China to take effective measures to protect their intellectual property rights, such as through copyrights and patent rights. Following such requests, relevant legislation has been established to a certain degree, but as a matter of fact, it has proved barely effective.

 

Even if one demands compensation for copyright infringement in a trial in China, one will be able to win only a minimum amount of money, a pattern that apparently fails to deter infringement of intellectual property.

In addition, because creators in China, such as lyricists and composers, do not receive sufficient reward for their own works, they are believed to have little sense of guilt in copying other people's works.

In the latest plagiarism dispute, however, the Chinese side in effect admitted it was at fault, an extremely rare step taken by the country.

We assume the authorities in China finally found it impossible to ignore the rising public voices against the alleged plagiarism because the exposition is an international event.

The Shanghai Expo will be held under the theme of "Better city, better life." Through the event, China is trying to publicize its economic development and boost its image.

If that is the case, the country also needs to more seriously tackle the protection of intellectual property rights and bring its system into conformity with common practices in the rest of the world.

 

The Daily Yomiuri, April 22

 

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

IRANIAN THREAT COULD BE EXAGGERATED

 

PARIS -- It is a dismaying reflection that the facilitators of major violence thus far in the 21st century have been lies told by democratic governments. The lies are continuing to be told, about the supposed "existential" menace posed by Iran to Israel, America and (if you believe some European leaders) Western Europe.

One can say there is nothing new about lies. I would argue that the influence of mendacious official propaganda in the Western democracies is probably greater today than in the last century.

There was a certain utopian innocence in the first half of the last century. The secular utopian promises were truly believed. People were made happy by believing in the romantic futures they were told would follow the seizures of power by Bolsheviks or the Italian Fascists. In Germany, Hitler offered vengeance and vindication to his people, and a future of supremacy. Those were serious matters, but romantic notions, too, used to justify the fulfillment of criminal fantasies. At the end of the century, Slobodan Milosevic promised Serbs fulfillment of the dream of a greater Serbia ruling its lesser neighbors.

One might have thought there had been a lesson in the brutal and senseless murder of millions in the world wars to deter such ambitions. But again the wars of Yugoslav succession were inspired by lies -- deliberately perpetuated, reawakened lies about the past, fictions about the malevolent ambitions of intimately related fellow-peoples of the former Yugoslavia, to produce the murder of still more of them.

One might also have thought, at the end of that century, that Mikhail (and Raisa) Gorbachev's inspired visitation by reason and wisdom would provide a decisive lesson about ending the lies. Gorbachev's first liberating proposal was Glasnost -- telling the truth. One might have believed that we would, in the 21st century, still be breathing the oxygen of Glasnost.

It was not so. Injustice and lies in the Middle East were responsible for unnecessary new wars in the new century, in which the United States took the lead. This time the lies were ideologically motivated and expedient lies -- first, that Saddam Hussein bore responsibility for the September 2001 attacks on United States. He did not.

Next was the fiction that Hussein's government, during the period of U.N. sanctions before 2003, was able to secretly construct nuclear weapons, despite the efforts of Western intelligence to detect them or deter him, and the presence of U.N. inspectors. There were no such weapons.

Another fiction was that if Saddam's Iraq did somehow obtain weapons of mass destruction, he could and would use them to attack Israel or the United States, despite the massive retaliatory power possessed by both of those countries, and their evident willingness to use it to avenge any attack.

When people insist that this danger from Iraq was not the product of Western propaganda but a reality, or at least a plausibility, it became necessary to ask, as one does in the strategic studies business: How? Give me the scenario. Tell me how this attack could come about. Without an answer, it was necessary to conclude that Iraq was attacked for reasons having nothing to do with weapons of mass destruction.

According to the post-invasion testimony of Saddam's associates, prior to the Gulf War he was interested in weapons of mass destruction -- in order to deter an attack by Iran! He feared revenge for his own invasion of Iran in 1980, and the eight-year war that followed, in which Iraq did use poison gas, and also enjoyed support from the United States.

The Iraqi dictator, following the Gulf War, decided that obtaining mass-destruction weapons was no longer feasible, but he deliberately cultivated an air of mystery about his intentions as a factor of deterrence of Iran.

The American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was motivated by the neoconservative illusion that the Iraqi people would welcome invasion and become a force for democracy, and friends to Israel. Instead, the death of Saddam Hussein and destruction of his government, the wrecking of Iraqi urban society and the country's infrastructure and industry, which will take years to reconstruct, ignited anarchic insurrection and sectarian conflict, delivering the country into the power and influence of a much larger and more important enemy of both the United States and Israel -- Iran. Another lesson about lies, one might have thought.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates reportedly sent a secret letter to President Barack Obama in January reviewing the military options available if diplomacy and the new American attempt to intensify international sanctions on Iran fail to produce the desired halt in Iran's effort, if that is what it is, to build a nuclear deterrent.

If Iran does pursue a nuclear capability, once again it is to deter attack. Precisely the same objection exists to theories of Iranian aggression as to those lies put forward in 2002-03 about Iraq posing a nuclear menace to the world.

Once more, the threat is a polemical invention, intended to frighten American, Israeli (and European) voters and to prompt a preemptive attack on Iran. The reason Gates expressed his uncertainties to the president is that he, too, recognizes that the conflict with Iran is constructed from fictions -- which, as with the lies about Iraq, may turn into another war, whose consequences are sure to be worse for all concerned than the fiasco and tragedy of America's invasion of Iraq.

Visit William Pfaff's website at www.williampfaff.com. -- Ed.

By William Pfaff  (Tribune Media Services) 

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

GREEK MATH ADDS UP TO DELUSION, DEFAULT

 

Call out the lifeboats and admit that you are sunk without a $60 billion rescue package. Or, try to fund yourself in the capital markets, and risk coming home empty-handed. Who would want to be Greece?

Many of the nation's problems are all too obvious. Here, though, are some of the issues lurking just beneath the surface, waiting to trash returns for investors who might be tempted to buy Greek debt at record yield premiums to German bunds.

As soon as that first euro arrives in Greece's coffers from either the European Commission or the International Monetary Fund, those existing Greek bonds you own probably slip back one place in the line of who gets paid first by the nation. The more they lend, the longer you might have to wait to be reimbursed.

And the market is pushing Greece over the cliff into the safety net. At a bill auction this week, investors demanded 3.65 percent to lend to Greece for just three months, double what they accepted at the previous sale in January. The cost of 10-year money rose to 8 percent, up from 5.75 percent at the start of the year. So three-year loans from the EC at 5 percent start to look irresistible.

In technical terms, once Greece signs up for help your debt gets subordinated to the rescue package; the EC and the IMF are likely to demand what's called seniority for their loans, and there's not a darned thing you can do about it. Do you really want two gangs of bureaucrats standing between you and your money when push comes to shove?

Greece's potential rescuers say they might hold its feet even closer to the economic fire in return for aid. Europe might "link the payout of the tranches to the implementation of economic-policy goals," German Deputy Finance Minister Joerg Asmussen said this week. "There is a need now to be more specific in relation to fiscal-adjustment measures for 2011 and 2012," EC spokesman Amadeu Altafaj said.

Maybe Greece is tired of standing in the naughty corner being jeered and pointed at by its euro classmates. It might restructure its debt instead, which is a polite way of saying it could tell bondholders they're not going to be paid as much as they expected, nor will those repayments arrive on time.

Default doesn't carry much of a stigma, if it ever did. Russia, which reneged on its obligations in 1998, pitched five- and 10-year dollar bonds at its lowest-ever premium to Treasuries this week. Even Argentina is holding a $20 billion debt swap that will slash its borrowing costs, nine years after defaulting on $95 billion of loans.

A few years in the market wilderness might do Greece some good, instead of being held to ransom by international bond vigilantes every time it needs to refinance maturing debt. Do haircuts and rescheduling figure in that horizon analysis you're running on whether to buy Greek bonds?

How much will Greece end up needing once it concedes defeat and triggers the aid package? Bundesbank President Axel Weber told German lawmakers this week it will probably be more than the 30 billion euros ($40 billion) pledged by the European Union, according to two people present at his briefing. (Does anyone notice a hint of German disapproval running through the remarks made by officials from Europe's biggest economy?)

Greece owes bondholders about 25 billion euros this year, according to Bloomberg data. That rises to an additional 31 billion euros next year and 32 billion euros in 2012. If it takes the three-year money on offer under the rescue package as currently designed, it just pushes its refinancing risk out until 2013.

Suppose the markets remain closed to Greece this year, next year and the year after. Do you think those Greek bonds you own will (a) surge in value as their rarity increases (b) drop like stones as your fixed-income peers realize how hard it will be to unhook Greece from the life-support machine of bailout funding?

Still comfy owning those Greek bonds, even though the cost of buying protection against nonpayment in the credit-default swap market leaped to its most expensive ever this week? How about if we spice things up a little by stirring some foreign-currency worries into the mix?

Greece plans a roadshow to court investors in the U.S., with the hope of finding enough demand to help fund its deficit by selling dollar bonds. Anyone who bought Greece's euro-denominated 10-year bonds when they went on sale in March, though, now owns something worth about 88 percent of face value. U.S. fund managers might prove less than enthusiastic about the combination of Hellenic credit worries and the risk of a euro collapse making it even harder for the nation to pay its debts.

What do you think happens to the value of those euro-denominated bonds you own if Petros Christodoulou, director-general of Greece's Public Debt Management Agency, flies back from New York with an empty briefcase?

Mark Gilbert is the London bureau chief and a columnist for Bloomberg News. The opinions expressed are his own. -- Ed.

By Mark Gilbert

Bloomberg News

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

TOYOTA SHOWCASES JAPAN, INC.'S COMMUNICATION GAP

 

TOKYO –- Whatever happens to Toyota following the forced recall of millions of its autos, its story will remain legendary. Toyota's rise from humble origins as the "offspring" of a family textile machinery company in a remote area of central Japan to become the dominant global automobile maker and a synonym for quality is astonishing. Along with a small number of other Japanese corporate icons -– for example, Sony, Honda, and Canon -– Toyota was the bright star of the Japanese economic miracle and global challenge.

It remains to be seen whether Toyota's current problems are temporary or irreversible. Its current humiliation notwithstanding, it retains tremendous advantages -– and in any case, the competition is not that much greater. But, to ensure their global position, Toyota -– and most other Japanese multinational corporations –- needs a cultural transformation.

As was vividly illustrated by the obfuscating delays by its chairman and CEO (and grandson of the founder), Akio Toyoda, in responding to calls to appear before the U.S. Congress, Toyota has a serious global communication problem. That problem is a reflection of a broader Japanese weakness in foreign languages, especially English. But as a dominant global player and the world's biggest automobile company, that excuse is just not good enough.

I have had a close acquaintance with Toyota for three decades. In the 1980s, as Western corporations in diverse sectors faced the onslaught of what was seen as the daunting Japanese challenge, I accompanied Western managers to Japan to learn about the country and its management and production techniques. This invariably included visits to Toyota factories. It was well worth it –- and almost certainly still is –- as the Toyota Production System deserves admiration and emulation.

In the course of the decade, however, I noticed a subtle change. By the latter part of the decade, Western management delegations continued to be politely received, but more often than not professional guides were appointed to show them around, and there was no dialogue with the Toyota managers, who previously had been keen to teach and learn. On the contrary, there was an undisguised sense of condescension toward the visiting foreign executives.

As Toyota proceeded to globalize, in the late 1990s it established a greater European manufacturing presence and a European headquarters. My institute, IMD, was contracted to undertake a series of executive development programs for Toyota Europe.

The "normal" pattern is that when we do a program for, say, the global management team of Nokia, a proportion of the participants will be Finns from Helsinki's head office. To be successful globally, one must have the capacity both to receive and transmit information; the foreign executives must learn about Nokia, and Nokia must understand the dynamics of the markets in which it operates. To that end, virtually all global companies (including Sony, the one Japanese exception!) have adopted English as their working language.

Toyota, however, had different plans. The IMD program would be for the Europeans, and no Japanese from the head office would attend. The message was clear: it was up to the Europeans to learn the Toyota "way," and it was not necessary for Toyota to learn about the business and cultural dynamics of the European societies in which they are operating.

Eventually, Toyota chose to leave the IMD learning network, because, as one executive bluntly told us, "We do not feel we have anything to learn from the other network corporate members (which include global companies like Nokia, Nestlé, Unilever, and Daimler)."

That conclusion seems highly questionable. Toyota's European executives were, to be sure, proud to be part of the company and full of admiration for its products and production methods. But I found that there were also problems of trust and communication. While a number of Europeans nominally held senior positions in Toyota Europe, Toyota Japan invariably appointed Japanese nationals as "shadows" to oversee them. This led at least one of the most senior European executives to leave the company.

Indeed, although Toyota claims to be "global," its board of directors is exclusively Japanese.

Toyota Europe's executives felt that making English the working language would contribute to improving trust, communications, and efficiency, and also to retaining high-quality staff. But Toyota's Japanese management rejected that proposal out of hand.

If Toyota and other Japanese companies want to become truly global, their managers must learn to communicate effectively with all their foreign stakeholders. In this global age, the language of business is English. In a recent international test of English proficiency, Japan ranked 136th, well behind South Korea, at 89th, and even North Korea, at 111th. While journalists in South Korea used this survey to demand reforms to improve English instruction in their country's schools, the same survey hardly received any coverage in Japan.

The language issue goes beyond competition with English-language countries –- and even beyond business. English is, for example, the official language of ASEAN –- which numbers 600 million people in Japan's neighbourhood.

Toyota's top managers will find that English is useful not only to explain, and apologize for, the company's recall of 8 million cars, but also for listening and learning as they try to reverse the erosion of trust among customers. If Toyota's communication problem can be resolved, there is no reason why Toyota's fortunes cannot be revived. The same is true of Japan's economy.

Jean-Pierre Lehmann is a professor of international political economy and founding director of the Evian Group at IMD Business School. -- Ed.

(Project Syndicate)

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THE KOREA HERALD

EDITORIAL

CHALLENGES TO MULTIPOLAR GLOBAL ECONOMY

 

If 1989 saw the end of the "Second World" with Communism's demise, then 2009 saw the end of what was known as the "Third World": We are now in a new, fast-evolving multipolar world economy -- where North and South, East and West, are now points on a compass, not economic destinies.

Poverty remains and must be addressed. Failed states remain and must be addressed. Global challenges are intensifying and must be addressed. But the manner in which we must address these issues is shifting. The outdated categorizations of First and Third Worlds, donor and supplicant, leader and led, no longer fit.

Today, we already see the strains in multilateralism. The Doha World Trade Organization round and the climate change talks in Copenhagen revealed how hard it will be to share mutual benefits and responsibilities between developed and developing countries.

And this will be the case for a host of other looming challenges: water; diseases; migration; demographics; and fragile and post-conflict states.

It is no longer possible to solve big international issues without developing country buy-in. But in discovering a new forum in the G20, we can't impose a new, inflexible hierarchy.

Nor can we address this changing world through the prism of the old G7; developed country interests, even if well-intentioned, cannot represent the perspective of the emerging economies.

But modernizing multilateralism isn't all about developed countries learning to adapt to the needs of rising powers. With power comes responsibility. Developing countries need to recognize that they are now part of the global architecture and have an interest in healthy multilateralism.

We cannot afford geo-politics as usual. A "New Geopolitics of Multipolar Economy" needs to share responsibility while recognizing different perspectives and circumstances, so as to build mutual interests. Take financial reform: Of course we need better financial regulation. But beware of unintended consequences like financial protectionism.

Regulations agreed in Brussels, London, Paris or Washington might work for big banks but could choke off economic opportunity and growth in developing countries.

Wall Street has exposed the dangers of financial recklessness, and we need to take heed and serious actions.

But financial innovation, when used and supervised prudently, has brought efficiency gains and protected against risk, including for development. A G7 populist prism can undercut opportunities for billions.

Take climate change: It can be linked to development and win support from developing countries for low carbon growth -- but not if it is imposed as a straitjacket. Developing countries need support and finance to invest in cleaner growth paths. Some 1.6 billion people lack access to electricity.

While we must take care of the environment, we cannot consign African children to homework by candlelight or deny African workers manufacturing jobs.

The challenge is to support transitions to cleaner energy without sacrificing access, productivity, and growth that can pull hundreds of millions out of poverty.

 

Take crisis response: In a world in transition, the danger is that developed countries focus on summits for financial systems, or concentrate on the mismanagement of developed countries such as Greece. Developing countries need summits for the poor. Hearing the developing country perspective is no longer just a matter of charity or solidarity: It is self-interest.

These developing countries are now sources of growth and importers of capital goods and developed countries' services. Developing countries do not just want to discuss high debt in developed countries; they want to focus on productive investments in infrastructure and early childhood development. They want to have free markets to create jobs, higher productivity and growth.

This new world requires multilateral institutions that are fast, flexible, and accountable, that can give voice to the voiceless with resources at the ready.

The World Bank Group must reform to help play this role. And it must do so continually at an ever quicker pace.

This is why we have launched the most comprehensive reforms in the institution's history, including boosting developing country voting rights and representation.

Yet problems need resources to fix them. The World Bank needs more resources to support renewed growth and to make a modernized multilateralism work in this new multipolar world economy.

Should the recovery falter, we would have to stand on the sidelines. This is why the World Bank is seeking its first capital increase in more than 20 years.

In the new multipolar global economy, most governmental authority will still reside with nation-states. But many decisions and sources of influence flow around, through, and beyond governments.

Modern multilateralism must bring in new players, build cooperation among actors old and new, and harness global and regional institutions to help address threats and seize opportunities that surpass the capacities of individual states.

Modern multilateralism will not be a hierarchical system but look more like the global sprawl of the Internet, interconnecting more and more countries, companies, individuals, and NGOs through a flexible network.

Legitimate and effective multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank Group, can form an interconnecting tissue, reaching across the skeletal architecture of this dynamic, multipolar system. We must support the rise of multiple poles of growth that can benefit all.

Modern multilateralism must bring in new players, build cooperation among actors old and new, and harness global and regional institutions.

The writer is World Bank President. -- Ed.(Asia News Network)

By Robert Zoellick (The Jakarta Post)

 

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THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

THE FIELD OF PARTIES THICKENS

 

On Sunday, Nippon Soshinto (the "Japan Innovation Party") was launched by a group of politicians with experience rooted in local government. Headed by Tokyo Suginami Ward Mayor Hiroshi Yamada, the party accuses both the Democratic Party of Japan and the Liberal Democratic Party of pursuing baramaki ("rose strewing") politics involving heavy, indiscriminate spending on public works projects and social welfare programs. Nippon Soshinto, which has no incumbent Diet members, is marketing itself as a party untainted by Nagata-cho politics.

 

On Monday, Osaka Prefecture Gov. Toru Hashimoto and prefectural and city assembly members established Osaka Ishin no Kai ("Osaka renewal association"), a local party with the goal of restructuring the prefecture in the manner of Tokyo. The envisioned entity would be composed of an Osaka metropolitan government and 20 wards, each with a population of about 300,000. Like Nippon Soshinto, Mr. Hashimoto's party aims to promote local autonomy and revitalization of local government.

 

Nippon Soshinto hopes to win five to 10 seats in the coming Upper House election. Its basic platform is that "the central government, local governments and people should each stand on their own" for the creation of a free and strong Japan. The party is very critical of the large public debt, with Mr. Yamada accusing the Hatoyama administration of lacking cost consciousness.

 

Nippon Soshinto's stress on revitalizating local governments may attract some voters, but currently its prospects are not particularly strong. It may be viewed as a single-issue party. Its main policy principles are somewhat abstract: financial reconstruction through economic growth and reform, stabilizing people's lives and bringing about freedom from anxiety, and advocating realistic foreign and defense policies.

 

At the launch of the party, Mr. Yamada could not name any candidates for the Upper House election. The party's secretary general, Mr. Hiroshi Nakada, suddenly resigned from his post as Yokohama mayor last summer with eight months remaining in his second term and never offered the public a convincing explanation for his decision. The impression that he simply walked away from his job could hurt the new party.

 

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THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

HELPING POST-CONFLICT COUNTRIES

 

On April 16, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada chaired a United Nations Security Council debate on peace building in post-conflict countries. The council adopted a presidential statement calling for long-term and comprehensive support for such countries.

 

Japan this month holds the rotating presidency of the UNSC, and it was Mr. Okada who volunteered to chair the one-day session. Participants included representatives of 47 countries, including the 15 UNSC member states, and three international bodies. Mr. Okada deserves praise for his active role. He is the first Japanese foreign minister to chair a UNSC meeting.

 

The experiences of war-torn countries such as Sudan, Somalia, East Timor and Afghanistan show that inadequate security and weak governance make it extremely difficult to ensure lasting peace. Efforts must be made over an extended period of time to prevent post-conflict countries from sinking back into strife.

 

The presidential statement "recognizes that sustainable peace building requires an integrated approach, which strengthens coherence between political, security, development, human rights and rule-of-law activities." The UNSC members agreed that a "high-level of youth employment can be a major challenge to sustainable peace-building" and called for enhanced coordination among bilateral and multilateral donors "to ensure predictable and timely financial support for post-conflict peace building."

 

As Mr. Okada stated, Japan should be more actively involved in peace building in post-conflict countries. Toward this end, the government should train personnel to help facilitate reconciliation efforts, provide support for democratic elections, improve the public-security capabilities of the police and armed forces, and provide vocational training for former soldiers. Then it must send these people where they are needed most.

 

Before the Haiti earthquake in January, only 39 Japanese were taking part in U.N. peacekeeping operations. Japan should identify PKO activities in which it can make greater contributions under the spirit of its war-renouncing Constitution.

 

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THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

A PIG'S BREAKFAST IN EUROPE

BY HOWARD DAVIES

 

LONDON — The Greek debt problem has been poorly handled by Europe's decision-makers. European Union heads of government, and the European Central Bank, initially rejected the idea of involving the International Monetary Fund, but without a fall-back plan. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that part of the motivation for this was French President Nicolas Sarkozy's reluctance to see Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the IMF's managing director, ride in from Washington to the rescue of the euro zone. Strauss-Kahn is, of course, likely to be Sarkozy's Socialist rival in the next French presidential election.

 

Is Greece the "canary in the coal mine" — the warning that tells us that Europe's monetary union is on the verge of dissolution, with the other three of the famous PIGS (Portugal, Italy and Spain) lining up like dominoes to fall? George Soros fears this might be the case, and gives the euro zone only a 50 percent chance of survival in its present form.

 

Certainly, the episode highlighted flaws in the way the euro's governance — flaws that are no surprise to some of those involved in creating the common currency. Former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, one of the euro's principal parents, said in 1991 that "the idea of sustaining an economic and monetary union over time without political union is a fallacy."

 

Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, from the opposite camp, said in her memoirs: "I believe the European single currency is bound to fail, economically, politically and indeed socially, although the timing, occasion and consequences are all still unclear." There may now be a market for a Greek translation of her book.

 

Although they might not agree with either of these two apocalyptic predictions, many of Europe's leaders are coming round to the view that there is a need for change, and that the Greek case has revealed a flaw at the center of the project. President Nicolas Sarkozy, for example, has revived a long-standing French argument for some form of economic government in Europe as a counterweight to the ECB.

 

The French usually advance this proposal to get some purchase on the ECB's monetary decisions, which they

sometimes consider hostile to growth and employment, or in order to prevent other countries from maintaining unfair tax policies ("unfair" usually being defined as a tax rate lower than the relevant French one).

 

In the past, the Germans brushed these arguments aside, but now they are a little more receptive. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble, however, focuses on the issue of distressed members, and has advanced a proposal for a European Monetary Fund to provide assistance to countries in Greek-style difficulties, roughly on the IMF model.

 

This idea has logic behind it. The drawback is that it would require a change in the European treaties, which in turn requires a unanimous decision by 27 countries, and positive votes in referendums in some of them, including the United Kingdom if David Cameron's Conservatives win the upcoming general election there.

 

In the aftermath of the negative referendum votes in France, the Netherlands and Ireland on European constitutional reform, it is close to inconceivable that EU heads of government would agree to set off down that path again. Certainly nothing could be achieved on a timetable that would offer any comfort to the other PIGS. They would all be bacon and sausages before any agreement was reached.

 

So, in the short run, the IMF will have to be used, if that kind of support is needed, and Sarkozy will have to swallow his pride. But is an EMF really what is required in the long run? I think not. Nor do I think that a European economic government is strictly necessary. What is needed, though, is a collective agreement on fiscal discipline, and a revival of the Stability and Growth Pact, which was unwisely abandoned — ironically when the French and Germans found its rules too constraining.

 

Europe's leaders should refer to a paper by Otmar Issing, "The Euro — A Currency Without a State," published in December 2008, before the debt crisis erupted. Issing, the ECB's chief economist in its formative years, knows more about how a monetary union operates in practice than any man alive. He maintains that "the Stability and Growth Pact contains all the rules that are necessary for Monetary Union to function. There is no need for coordination of macroeconomic policies to go any further than this."

 

Europe does not need the French plan for coordination of tax policies, or another IMF, but there does need to be

fiscal discipline to prevent other countries from free riding, as the Greeks seem to have done. They apparently assumed that the rest of Europe would overlook continuing high deficits, and that, as euro zone members, the market would consider their debt to be just like German bunds, though issued by friendly and welcoming people in an agreeable climate, and with a glass of ouzo on the side.

 

The original pact envisaged a 3-percent-of-GDP cap on fiscal deficits, save in exceptional circumstances. Investors well understand that we are in such circumstances now, so it will take some time to get back to that level. But that should be the clear aim, with IMF assistance along the way to provide interim funding where necessary and political cover for governments obliged to take tough decisions on public spending and taxation.

 

Fiscal discipline does not sound as visionary as "economic government." But the EU has suffered from a surfeit of "vision" and a deficit of practical budgetary measures. It is time to redress that balance, or Soros's gloomy prognosis may become reality.

 

Howard Davies, a former Bank of England deputy governor, is director of the London School of Economics. © 2010 Project Syndicate

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

INCENTIVES FOR THE EARTH

 

Today is exactly 40 years after the first Earth Day was celebrated in the US, but the earth is not improving, some would say it is even getting worse. However today, at least public awareness about the importance of saving our blue planet is much better than 40 years ago, including here in Indonesia. The challenge, meanwhile, remains huge.

 

Awareness is much better now as evident from various events organized to promote green technology, green development and even the green economy. Next week, for example, we will see a global geothermal conference and a green CEO summit, both in Bali. The government of Indonesia is also aware of this issue.

 

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has even set a national target to reduce green- house gas emissions by 26 percent by 2020.

 

But awareness does not necessarily create a greener lifestyle and public policy, at least not yet. Just look around us. We still see many factories dumping toxic waste in our rivers already polluted by household waste.

 

Mining companies leave their open pits unattended; illegal loggers freely plunder our tropical forests; public buses pollute our skies with their black fumes; and many of us who live in urban areas still use and consume products that are not environmentally friendly.

 

Our fellow countrymen who live in the countryside may be better in treating the environment, at least until recently. But now, with improved income and widespread consumerism, as promoted by our media – especially television – even people living in remote areas now imitate the lifestyle of people in the city.

 

That's the real challenge we face. Every time we celebrate Earth Day, this problem will remain. It could even become worse unless the government and legislature – the only parties with the power of legislation – create an incentive system that can encourage greener lifestyles.

 

We cannot just call the public and businesspeople to respect the environment without incentives. People and businesses behave rationally and will not buy greener gasoline if normal gasoline is subsidized and thus cheaper. Similarly, state-owned electricity company PT PLN will continue to be reluctant to buy electricity from geothermal power plants if their prices are more expensive than the electricity generated by coal-fired plants.

 

Now Yudhoyono has gone public with Indonesia's commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent, his government must come up with the right incentive system to encourage the people and businesses to adopt greener ways of living and doing business.

 

We are also waiting for more concrete steps to achieve what Yudhoyono terms the "green economy". True, a number of ministries have made policies to encourage green development, but their implementation is another question. The Finance Ministry, for example, has announced it will provide fiscal incentives to companies investing in green energy, including geothermal power plants. But thus far, the incentives are not yet ready.

 

They are still being discussed in a working group.

 

Earth Day 2010 should provide a platform for the government to advance its climate policy by providing the

right incentives for the economy.

 

It should also encourage the Indonesian government to take on a stronger leading role in the next global climate conference in Cancun, Mexico. Indonesia should join forces with developing countries, instead of acting as a bridge between developed and developing countries, to press developed countries to commit to binding carbon reduction targets. Otherwise, our earth will continue to suffer from global warming.

 

Earth Day 2010 should also serve as a reminder for us – especially corporations and individuals – about the importance of saving our earth. We need to work together and in our own way to create a green economy.

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

 

NO IRONY OF WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION: A DISCOURSE

INDRASWARI, BANDUNG

 

On April 10, 2010, The Jakarta Post published an article titled "Irony of an excessive women's emancipation" written by Dyna Rochmyaningsih.

 

The article discusses women's biological contribution on the process of making new humans, which is larger than that of men's. In that process men's sperm provides genetic materials while women's egg cell (ovum) provides not only genetic materials but also cytoplasm and mitochondria, which function as the energy source for the new being.

 

The writer adds that a woman makes another significant contribution to the offspring by providing it with a place to develop (in the uterus) and shares her nutrients with it. After birth, she also gives the child important immunity through her breast milk.

 

The discussion on biology moves to that of the modern phenomena of which the writer questions the achievement and positioning women as equal to men that has not only had positive impacts on the freedom of women but also negative impacts on their biological contribution to the species.

 

I agree with the writer on the discussion on biology and the reproduction of human beings. Nonetheless I have a different opinion on the issue of women's emancipation and its negative impact to the survival of human species.

 

In my view a woman's decision to have or not to have children and the number and spacing of children for those decide to have children does not always connect to women's emancipation.

 

Instead it more relates to various social, economic, cultural and political factors including government's policy on population and demography.

 

Elizabeth Uy Eviota (1992) in her book The Political Economy of Gender, Women and the Sexual Division of Labor in the Philippines divides work into two types "that which is productive, or work for exchange, and that which is reproductive, or work for use and the satisfaction of immediate needs".

 

Eviota further explains that "productive and reproductive works are both part of the process of survival and renewal; productive work satisfies such basic human needs as food, shelter and clothing; reproductive work is the production of people, not only the bearing of children but also the caring — the daily physical and ideological maintenance of human beings — which enables individuals to fit into the social structure of society".

 

The combined capitalist-patriarchal system determines that productive work which takes place outside the home is men's domain while reproductive work is at home and is women's responsibility.

 

Generally such a system does not account a situation when for various reasons a woman has to work to earn a living.

 

In the work place, the capitalist-patriarchal logic is often unfriendly to women and children. Strict-long working hours and lack of child care support create difficulties for families with young children to combine both productive and reproductive tasks.

 

Employment policy is another problem. In Indonesia maternal leave is for three months only which proves to be a barrier for working mothers to exclusively breastfeed their babies for six months as recommended by health practitioners.

 

There is no paternal leave for male employees whose wives give birth to babies, leaving women left alone to look after their newborn babies while they themselves are actually needed to be taken care of as they are not yet recovered from childbirth.

 

Clearly such a situation discourages working women — especially those living in urban-industrial cities — to have (many) children.

 

However, in Indonesia, a declining birth rate is not yet an issue. Regardless of women's working statuses, many of them have children although fewer than the past generations. Culturally, society places importance on marriage and having children, which is applicable for both men and women.

 

Unlike urban-industrial societies, which leave child care to nuclear families (if not women alone), traditional society have more flexible arrangement on what is public and what is private.

 

Home is often a place to conduct both productive and reproductive tasks. There are no strict working hours and the extended family's support is available to help parents take care of young children and to earn income.

 

There is sexual division of labor in this society but is generally more flexible with regard to men's and women's jobs.

So although it is women who are unfortunately "blamed" for their emancipation, the problem actually lies in other issues. It is about creating a social, economic, political and cultural environment which is family friendly.

 

More importantly, biological and social reproduction of human beings is not only a woman's responsibility. It is a joint responsibility of both men and women.

The writer is a lecturer at Parahyangan Catholic University's School of Social and Political Sciences in Bandung.

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

WHAT OUR ACFTA CRITICS USUALLY OVERLOOK

AKHMAD RIZAL SHIDIQ

 

Many commentaries from Indonesian pundits and members of the press corps suggest that the ASEAN-China Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) will do more harm than good to Indonesia's economy – or industry, or national integrity, or political influence, or fate (...insert whatever you want, here...).

 

Alas, most of them are based on misunderstood data and incomplete interpretations. Like most economic narrative, free trade has, at least, two sides of the same story.

 

Let me show you the other side of story many of our ACFTA critics fail to notice.

 

First, critics love to cite the Indonesian trade deficit against the Chinese as the reason to reject ACFTA.

 

True, we have bought more goods from the Chinese more than we sold to them. Data from UN-Comtrade shows that we have had US$820 million trade surplus with China in 2005, but $2.5 billion deficit in 2009. Bad news? Not necessarily.

 

Let's take a modified illustration from Steven Landsburg of University of Rochester (2007) and consider this indisputable fact: My household has run a trade deficit against Warung Padang (Padang restaurant) near my home in Depok since, uhm, forever.

 

All these years, I have spent my money buying my rendang (meat simmered with spices and coconut milk) from them; and I have never received a penny by selling something to them. If somehow they reduce their price, my trade deficit would grow, considering that we really like their rendang.

 

Do I have to lose my sleep? No. Why? Because my household have trade surplus against other parties – School of Economics at the University of Indonesia, where I work for, and School of Anthropology, Padjadjaran University, where my wife used to work. Or, if we were a goods producer, anyone to whom we sell our products.

 

This is exactly what has been going on in Indonesia. In 2005 and 2009, Indonesia registered $27.96 billion and $19.68 billion trade surpluses against the rest of the world – much higher than the deficit against the Chinese.

 

Now back to my household example: suppose the money we earn from teaching is less than we pay to Warung Padang and all of other places we purchase our needs and wants from.

 

We ran trade deficit against everyone. What to do? We can still use our credit card or dig out our money reserve — technically speaking, we make a financial transaction or change in our reserve.

 

Our record tells us that money in always equals money out plus the change of our money reserve – a balance coming from our trade transactions, financial and capital flow, as well as the change of our reserve. For an economy, this record is called the Balance of Payment (BOP).

 

The point is that you cannot just look at the bilateral trade deficit – say, between Indonesia and China – or even the BOP, to assess the welfare impact of free trade agreement on the economy.

 

Second, many pundits also tell us that ACFTA is bad because it harms the domestic industry. What they (almost) always forget to mention is that consumers benefit from cheaper and/or better products.

 

There must be a reason for Chinese goods to flood in Indonesian market – many of us, Indonesians, find those goods desirable and we buy them.

 

Now, let us assume that Chinese products are cheap because they are low quality (for the record, I do not share this view). Then the Indonesians who bought Chinese products must be the ones who cannot afford more expensive high quality products.

 

It shall be a good news that they now too have opportunity to buy one or two more pairs of decent shirts, ride a motorcycle, or enjoy sinetron (soap opera) from their made-in-China TV set. Who are they, by the way? The lower-middle and low income groups.

 

These people may be not as sophisticated as you, The Jakarta Post readers, who like to sneer at Chinese products and prefer Prada, Lexus or a high-end home theater systems to enjoy, alas, the same crappy sinetron.

 

But you can't just simply overlook such increasing consumer's welfare story.

 

Third, critics also argue that we need to protect domestic industries from Chinese competitors. Our industries are not ready for it because they still have lower productivity than their foreign competitors – even in our own domestic market.

 

Well, protectionism to nurture domestic industry productivity does not work in Indonesia.  Look at all those so-called strategic industries protection schemes during Soeharto era, they failed miserably.

 

Moreover, little that those critics probably realize, trade liberalization can induce productivity through import competition as well as learning effect.

 

Mary Amiti and Josef Koenig (2007) show that for the period of 1991 to 2001, 10 percentage point reductions to tariffs on inports increases a firm's productivity by 12 percent. The same reduction for final goods raises firm's productivity by around 6 percent.

 

Better yet, we can attain even higher productivity if we could manage to fix our own supply side problems that has nothing to do with the Chinese – that is, corruption, lack of infrastructure, and an inflexible labor market.

 

My point: free trade can enhance domestic firms' productivity.

 

Fourth, critics like to mention that China is cheating by artificially keeping the yuan undervalued to keep their products cheap.

 

Indeed, recently, there has been a debate between economists such as Paul Krugman on one side, who accused China of manipulating their currency and harming the world's economic recovery; and, on the other side, scores of respectable economists who point out that either it was neither the case or nor very relevant to the current crisis and recovery.

 

But suppose that is what the Chinese did. The same logic goes that while producers might be harmed by competitor's artificially low price, the consumers gain.

 

To put it in another way, the Chinese keep their currency undervalued for Indonesian consumers to afford their goods.

 

In fact, keeping yuan low has its own price – while their export quantity goes up, Chinese producers do not enjoy the price effect of exchange rate appreciation. This policy also might not be sustainable for the Chinese for the following reason.

 

According to Gregory Mankiw of Harvard University (The New York Times op-ed, Feb 7, 2009), to keep the exchange rate low, the Chinese needs to supply yuan and absorb the excess of dollar in their economy. These dollars is in turn invested abroad, mainly in the US.

 

But along with the crisis, return on investing those excess dollar in the US market is now very low. In other words, it becomes more costly for the Chinese to maintain this policy.

 

To conclude, I just hope that our critics in their noble effort to inform the general public are more willing to spend some time and look at the other side of ACFTA story because in every downside of ACFTA they claim, usually there is an overlooked upside.

There must be a reason for Chinese goods to flood the Indonesian market – many of us find the goods desirable and we buy them.

The writer is PhD student in Economics, George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

USERS AND DISAPPEARING WATER

AMREETA REGMI

 

Indonesia has pledged to provide access to safe drinking water for 150 million citizens by 2015. Yet, the country is not experiencing mass rallies and demonstrations, where agitated consumers beat water pots and containers, demanding a clean and safe supply of piped drinking water. The water scarcity reality has not quite hit the country.

 

There is a vast segment of the population – shadow water consumers – that increasingly depends on alternative water sources. These consumers come in two categories: One constituency abstracts water from underground sources, while the other, poorer, group cannot afford to extract water and continues paying more for vendor water.

 

It is a sad truth that this segment is not included within accountable constitutional frameworks and public discourses. Corroboratively, people's health and the environment are continually compromised with ensuing and unregulated water withdrawals.

 

For an aspiring low-middle income nation, Indonesia's water data  is nothing to be proud of. Statistics of access to piped-water supply fall behind that of Cambodia and Vietnam, indicating that only 18.4 percent of the population had access to piped-water in 2007.

 

This figure dropped to around 16.1 percent in 2008. Bringing the shadow water users within the mainstream political discourse, for access to safe water, is an economic and ecological imperative for the country.

 

The voices of the shadow water users are silent in public policy-making debates and civil society discourse.

 

Legal frameworks bypass these users.

 

As shadow users, a first category of free riders, continue to exploit groundwater for short-term gain, as water gradually continues to disappear – posing economic, ecological and social losses.

 

These externalities are bound to bring much long-term pain to the country. A second category  succumb rationing their income, in-between limited tough choices of paying more for water or for other basic essential needs, endangering their health and safety.

 

There are three main reasons for the emergence of shadow users and the disappearance of water from the water table.

 

First, on face value, unlike countries that face water scarcity, Indonesia has abundant and easily accessible water resources.

 

Second, a small handful of non-state actors and activist organizations are not pluralistic by definition. These actors are politically driven, weak and sparse. Promoting a consensus based pluralistic dialogue and discourse is not their main agenda.

 

Third, both at the national and local levels, there are gaps in linking public policy-making with regulatory frameworks.

 

For the first reason, Indonesia is not a high-risk water deficit country, but ecologically a very high risk one. Landmass of Java, Nusa Tenggara and Bali islands were already facing water scarcity three decades ago.

 

Groundwater is disappearing fast, causing economic and ecological losses of vast proportions, which impact water regime and balance.

 

In the absence of safe piped-water services, consumers resort to accessing water from below the surface.
With the mere installation of a simple water extracting device, water is pumped directly to a house, a hotel or a business.

 

The cost of doing so for a consumer includes technology installation and minimal monthly electricity charges of pumping water. In aggregate terms, predictable damages are inevitable. Over 60 percent of the population depends on water sourced from below the ground for domestic and private consumption.

 

The cost for the country translates into vast withdrawal of volumes of untapped, non-revenue and unaccounted for water.

 

Indonesia cannot afford to ignore the piped-water supply needs of shadow users.

 

On top of this, the constituency that lobbies for safe piped-water services is polarized.

 

Discussions have not helped expand discourses toward a reconciliatory realm of promoting a plural public policy debate. Likewise, a realistic grasp of the water sector reform is not reflecting.

 

Whereas, water supply governance is now transferred to regional owned water supply companies or Perusahaan Daerah Air Minum (PDAM), activist institutions continue playing their one string harp.

 

These agencies are not contributing to constructive advocacy, but channel their energy in the redundant debate of anti-privatization by focusing on two specific Jakarta concessions. There are over 324 PDAMs in Indonesia that provide piped-water services to the citizens.

 

Lastly, there are gaps between national and local level reform processes.

 

However centralized the efforts have been, over the past year, the Government of Indonesia has introduced a series of regulations to reform the water sector.

 

Yet the linkages of these regulations with the umbrella 2004 Water Resources Law are unclear.

 

While the accountability onus of water governance is increasingly being assumed by the national government, linkages of these initiatives with the local frameworks and public utility services remain weak.

 

Equally ambiguous are the linkages between the 2004 law, groundwater regulations and drinking water supply.

 

In reversing the process of water extraction, discourses must maintain a focus of sustaining national level accountability, and in promoting local level accountability to regulate withdrawal amounts within the purview of piped-water systems.

 

This is where the activist institutions can contribute to effective and inclusive public policy-making debate and reform.

 

Indonesia must revisit the water resource law. In doing so, the shadow water users must be brought back to a level playing field of political discourse.

 

Depolarization of public debates must begin. Only then can a mutually enforcing and reinforcing water accountability framework be developed.

 

This framework must protect citizens' right to access safe drinking water on the mainstream reform of the water sector. Developing a notion of accountability in sync with the national and local frameworks must be a shared value for the state, non-state institutions and water users.

 

Clearly, accountability then crosses various political boundaries and institutions. Indonesia must regulate groundwater withdrawals.

 

Indonesia must revisit the water resource law, with shadow water users being brought back to a level playing field of political discourse.

 

The writer holds a PhD in Environmental Sciences from Wageningen University,
the Netherlands, and a MBA from Brenau University, US.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

DONATIONS THAT COUNT

 

An evening charity show on April 20 by State broadcaster CCTV raised 2.175 billion yuan ($319 million) for the victims of the April 14 earthquake in Yushu county, Qinghai province.

 

The amount was more than the 1.514 billion yuan collected at a similar event for victims of the quake that hit Wenchuan county in Sichuan province about two years ago.

 

The remarks made by representatives of the donors in the latest event were different, but the message they conveyed was the same - all will stand firmly behind the people of Yushu to help them rebuild their homes.

 

"In the face of merciless natural disasters, love is boundless." Media outlets have been widely using this sentence. It suggests that more people have come to realize that only when love is extended to others, will humans be able to make it through the tough times and expect a brighter future for all.

 

The rising sense of charity among the general public is the largest asset that this country has gained from the fight against two deadly earthquakes in less than two years.

 

It is a spiritual asset that needs to be treasured and nurtured. One of the best ways to do so is to ensure that all the funds donated are used exactly where they are needed. It is important that the money is spent in a transparent way to aid the needy.

 

Auditors have been doing a good job in supervising the use of donations in the reconstruction of Wenchuan. Without their efforts, millions of yuan would have possibly been wasted or misappropriated.

 

With the reconstruction of both Wenchuan and Yushu still under way, all relevant government departments and auditors will hopefully do an even better job to ensure that the love from donors will be extended smoothly to those in need.

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

EXPORTING FOR THE WORLD

 

China's rise to the position of world's largest exporter in 2009 has once again fueled foreign criticism that the country has followed a mercantilist policy to keep its trade surplus "artificially high".

 

But a list of China's top 200 exporters shows that the accusation is obviously untrue.

 

Instead, the country's trade sector is far more open than those of most other countries.

 

Of the top 200 exporters in China, 153 were overseas-funded in 2009 compared with 141 in the previous year, the China Customs magazine reported.

 

The figures speak volumes about the openness of the Chinese economy and the contributions foreign companies have made toward China's export growth as it integrates with the global economy.

 

The benefit of foreign investment for China is also obvious. With their funds, technology and access to overseas markets, these overseas companies have played a very important role in China's rapid rise as a global trade power in recent years.

 

However, while increasing "Made-in-China" exports have significantly improved the lives of consumers around the world, a number of critics in the West have tried to label the country as a mercantilist exporter and blame it for their economic woes at home.

 

The latest list of China's top 200 exporters shows that the country has definitely not followed any mercantilist policy to tilt the playing field in favor of homegrown exporters.

 

On the contrary, as a crucial manufacturing powerhouse for the global supply chain, China's robust export sector is more than just a growth engine for itself. By ranking among China's top exporters, these overseas-funded companies have very likely served as a source of growth for their own countries.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

UNDERSTAND CHINA BETTER

 

Chinese people are generally seen as being sensitive about their reputation, or "face".

So it is understandable that many Chinese people feel happy when a poll sponsored by British media agency BBC finds China's international image improving.

 

The positive result of the poll, which was revealed on Monday, can serve as a barometer to the rising role China is playing in the international arena. It is heartening to see more people recognizing China as a responsible player in world affairs and an important force for world peace and development.

 

Still, the poll is by no means a comprehensive and fair judgment on the country's overall achievements at home and abroad.

 

In a world where Western media still play a dominant role in shaping public opinion, the international community has long been exposed to assorted views and attitudes toward China. These are unsuitably seasoned with misunderstanding, misinterpretation or even bias and enmity.

 

The fact that many Americans and Europeans polled still hold negative views toward China is a case in point. No matter what China has done to shore up the world economy last year, a number of Westerners still felt unimpressed.

 

Some may have mixed feelings toward China's rising economic clout. That is why we have heard many more unfriendly remarks about the country - even a revival of the "China threat" theory - from abroad recently.

 

As mutual understanding deepens, public opinion will change with the times. What will not change is China's determination to continue pressing ahead for the benefit of its people and the world at large.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

HIGH LEVEL OF RESCUE GOES BEYOND ALTITUDE

BY XIONG LEI (CHINA DAILY)

 

Watching from afar, I am struck by the high level of the rescue work at Yushu, the Tibetan autonomous prefecture in Qinghai province, western China, which was devastated by a 7.1 magnitude quake on April 14.

 

With the death toll climbing to 2,064 by Tuesday, the disaster came as a complete surprise to the local people, destroying their homes in moments. To them, the catastrophe is unprecedented.

 

Also unprecedented is the level of the rescue work, which started almost as soon as the first shock wave was over. It is unprecedented to carry out rescue work at such a high altitude. While the seat of the prefecture, Gyegu, is at an elevation of 3,700 meters, the average altitude of Yushu is 4,000 meters above sea level. In the hinterland of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the "roof of the world," Yushu is known as "Asia's Water Tower" as three of the continent's major rivers start there, namely the Yangtze, the Yellow and the Lancang or Mekong rivers.

 

Having been to Yushu several times in its best season, I know how challenging the physical conditions must be for the rescue workers, most of whom have never been that high before. People from lower altitudes run out of breath easily when they go there, even when they are idle. If they move, they must do so slowly. The rescuers, of course, do not have the luxury of acclimating slowly. Also, they must deal with the aftershocks, the striking temperature differences between day and night, the changeable weather, and many other difficulties.

 

Rescue work is physically exhausting. Already one rescuer has died of altitude sickness. Yet those who rushed to Yushu have braved all these challenges and raced against time to save lives. So far they have rescued more than 10,000 survivors, and transferred more than 1,000 seriously injured to other cities for better medical treatment.

 

Within two days, my Tibetan friends at Yushu, whose houses collapsed in the quake, moved into tents provided by the government and got electricity. Thanks to the efficient rescue, they told me by phone, they and their neighbors got over their initial panic quickly and have calmed down. My friends are all occupied with relief work; Deyang, one friend's teenage daughter, has been working as a volunteer. At first, her mother told me, the girl was so frightened that she cried for almost the whole day. But obviously she is frightened no more and as she is helping rescuers who do not understand the local dialect to communicate with local people who need help.

 

Batang Yushu airport, which opened only last September and is one of the highest airports in China, has performed well and has become a crucial channel for rescuers. Although the airport itself suffered damage in the quakes, it was quickly restored to service and is now handling many more flights than it was designed to accommodate.

 

Still, most supplies have to be transported over land, so the 800-km road from Yushu to Xining, the provincial capital of Qinghai, has become a lifeline to the quake-stricken area. Half of the road is 4,000 meters above sea level, and I was moved to tears while watching workers trying to keep the road passable day and night, despite the cold and high altitude.

 

The high level of rescue work is also reflected in the importance attached to it by China's top leadership. The head of state and the head of the Cabinet both went to Yushu in person, in defiance of the aftershocks and other physical challenges, while the top leadership of the province rushed to Yushu the very day the quake hit. That kind of concern is really touching to see at a time like this.

 

The high level of rescue work has brought physically remote Yushu closer to us all, and it has brought us closer together as a nation.

 

The author is a council member of the China Society for Human Rights Studies.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

CURBING PROPERTY SPECULATION

BY YI XIANRONG (CHINA DAILY)

 

The State Council, the country's Cabinet, rolled out a series of harsh measures over the weekend in the latest bid to curb soaring home prices.

 

In the past year, a string of policies and measures by the central government had failed to keep a lid on property speculation and an increasing number of ordinary homebuyers have become dissatisfied with the situation.

 

The latest move shows that the central government will fundamentally correct the long-standing stereotype of the real estate sector as a pillar industry of the national economy, and as an effective tool to stimulate and regulate the country's economic development.

 

A new approach has emerged among decision makers - that the housing problem is not only a major economic issue, but one that is closely related to people's livelihood and is likely to cause social instability if not handled effectively.

 

The authorities are seriously concerned about the negative impact of high housing prices on the basic living conditions of the majority of ordinary people and the huge risks these pose to the country's financial institutions.

 

The flow of excessive wealth into the real estate sector is also detrimental to the coordinated development of the national economy. The unprecedented importance attached by the central government to the risks of high home prices highlights top authorities' determination to cool widespread speculation in the sector.

 

Expansive credit policy has proven to fuel property bubbles, at home and abroad.

 

Statistics show that the volume of China's private loans from banks hit 2.46 trillion yuan last year, four times the amount of the previous year's 600 billion yuan. In the first quarter of this year, an additional 902 billion yuan of private lending was approved, more than twice the 422.3 billion yuan in the same period of last year.

 

A large portion of the combined 3.4 trillion yuan of personal loans in the past 15 months have reportedly been pumped into the country's real estate market, directly fueling the rapid rise of property prices. The excessively loose credit environment since the latter half of 2008 has converted the country's real estate sector into a speculator's heaven, much like the stock market.

 

In the latest regulatory framework, credit policies are being used as an important leverage to stem speculative activity. In the document, banks are required to raise the minimum down payment for second home purchases to 50 percent and the interest rate should be no lower than 1.1 times of their base rate. Even first-time homebuyers have to pay a minimum 30 percent down payment if their homes are bigger than 90 square meters. Commercial banks are also entitled to refuse loans to borrowers who cannot prove they have lived and paid taxes for at least one year in the city where they intend to buy their property, a move aimed at limiting mortgage-based home purchases by non-local residents.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

PSYCHOLOGIST MINISTERS TO STUDENTS

BY KU MA (CHINA DAILY)

 

At Peking University, Xu Kaiwen, PhD, is the supervisor of the university's Counseling and Psychotherapy Center and helps students for free. Off campus, he is a psychiatrist at different hospitals and psychological centers that may charge 500 to 1,000 yuan ($73 to $146) per one-hour treatment.

 

Xu is one of the only 33 psychological trauma therapist in China and he is concerned about the psychological crisis that is besetting many of China's universities.

 

Sitting in his small clinic on campus, Xu said new measures are needed to prevent high-risk students from committing suicide.

 

Suicide is reportedly the Number 1 killer of Chinese university students. On April 5, a junior at the University of Science and Technology in Beijing jumped to her death out of a dormitory window, a week after a student at Nanjing Forest University hanged herself.

 

Even after the Peking University psychotherapy clinic was set up in 2005, at least one or two students a year ended their lives, Xu said.

 

"It's a great pity that none of those students turned to us before they died," he said. Part of the problem is that the small staff at the clinic has to serve a top university with more than 30,000 students.

 

"We have to admit there is still something lacking in our efforts to find students with the most serious mental problems," Xu said

 

In the past five years, Xu and his five colleagues have counseled some 10,000 students. Each student at the university has access to one hour of counseling for six times a semester. The psychologists counsel 12 students a day.

 

When a new semester begins, freshmen are required to fill out a psychological questionnaire which includes such questions as: "Do you feel depressed?" "Have you ever wanted to commit suicide?"

 

Xu's team will then evaluate the questionnaires and ask the students with psychological troubles to come to the clinic.

 

In the surveys, Xu finds that the number of graduate students who have mental problems is on the rise. Academic pressures and gloomy job expectations constitute great challenges to students' mental health, he said.

 

A Higher Education publication survey of 28 universities showed that 59 percent of students polled had communication problems; 26.1 percent suffered from depression; 22.5 percent suffered anxiety, and 20.7 percent had low self-esteem. According to the survey, 57.4 percent of the interviewees said they felt pressured because of job expectations, while 53.4 percent considered their academic load a heavy burden.

 

A survey conducted by the Social Survey Institute of China indicates that 26.5 percent of college students polled have thought of suicide.

 

According to Xu, the cause of the majority of the 80 suicide attempts he has intervened in was an unhappy family situation. These include an early divorce by parents, being raised by someone other than parents, and domestic abuse or violence.

 

Neither poverty, job disappointments or failed love affairs lead to student suicides, he said.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

TIME FOR A NEW BRETTON WOODS

BY ADLAI E. STEVENSON (CHINA DAILY)

 

In the monetary system organized with US leadership at the end of World War II, currencies were linked to the US dollar, which was linked to gold. The US accounted for over half the world's output of goods and services. By the mid 1950s, all East Asia accounted for only about 4 percent of global output. China's economic reforms began only 30 years ago. By then, the US dollar had begun its decline. Its official convertibility to gold at $35 was suspended in 1971. Today gold is priced in the market at over $1,100, and China's foreign exchange reserves exceed $2.4 trillion.

 

As the dollar declined over time, US trade deficits increased, challenging economic orthodoxy. Today US debt levels, fiscal deficits and entitlements have climbed to unsustainable levels, leaving the US increasingly dependent on China for credit.

 

China is under pressure to reduce its trade surplus by revaluing the renminbi - but China is understandably concerned about protecting its investments from a further decline of the dollar. It will appreciate the renminbi in its own good time, as it diversifies its investments and internationalizes its currency. A stronger renminbi would help contain inflation. It would foster domestic consumption and reduce the cost of imports.

 

But many of China's imports are commodities and components which fuel its exports. A stronger renminbi would facilitate China's foreign direct investments and enhance its economic competitiveness, again challenging western orthodoxy. The US ran trade surpluses with a strong dollar. Floating the renminbi while liberalizing capital controls is no quick fix for the world's monetary instability.

 

Meanwhile Europe is struggling to contain fallout from Greece's fiscal profligacy, while the US struggles to regulate the bailed-out banking industry which triggered the financial crisis, as debt continues to mount.

The US dollar no longer meets the tests of a reserve currency. It is ubiquitous but not a reliable store of value. In brief, the world has outstretched its capacity for financial governance and monetary stability though the IMF has become more realistic since inflicting its conditions on East Asians during the financial crisis of 1997

 

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DAILY MIRROR

EDITORIAL

-

 

 

SMALL COUNTRY, BIG HEART

 

4 : 28 AM !! And I just heard the morning birds chirping and calling outside my window. Its been a most fulfilling trip to a small island with a large heart. Large hearted enough to envelope all affection

Amitabh Bachchan blog, April 20

 

The big hearted Sri Lanka got its much deserved accolade on Tuesday in the form of a stunning tribute paid by Bollywood legend and the brand ambassador for the International Indian Film Academy (IIFA), Amitabh Bachchan.

 

"A size of a country is measured by the size of the heart and Sri Lanka has a big heart, the kind of reception I have got here is by far the best I have got anywhere else" the veteran actor told journalists in Colombo.

 

Come June Sri Lanka will host the much hyped IIFA 2010 attended by a galaxy of stars and the event is slated to be viewed by some 600 million fans in 110 countries.

 

It was informed the World premiere of half a dozen upcoming Bollywood movies are scheduled to be held in Colombo to coincide with the ceremony which will also be preceded by a celebrity cricket match, fashion show and a business forum.

 

With Akon controversy right behind this is indeed good news for Sri Lanka which is especially banking on Asian tourists to promote it as a hot event venue and a tourist destination.

 

With several more high profile events lined up for this year, prospects for Sri Lanka look extremely sanguine for the time being.

 

And one only hopes that the new minister of tourism would pay adequate attention to a few areas that were neglected by the post-war tourism ministers.

 

One was planning.

 

The ad hoc arrangements which came as part of poor co-ordination saw some of the events co-sponsored by the ministry ending  up being disasters.

 

Complaints have also been made about the music played at key events. There had been a tendency to go for loud fusions when Sri Lanka could have done well with the local music or soft blends.

 

It all depends on the advisers. The next minister to be (who is known as a pragmatist) should go ahead and get himself a good set of advisers who know how to blend the East with the West without killing the local identity.

 

Ours is a culture which is known for its refine, subtle expressions and its appeal is universal.

 

Opportunity has come on a platter.

 

It's all about how we work with the tools.

 

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DAILY MIRROR

EDITORIAL

VICTORY IS A CURSE WITH MANY DIMENSIONS

 

Mahinda Rajapaksa scored three significant victories within a period of a single year.  In May 2009, under his stewardship, the world's most ruthless terrorist outfit was comprehensively defeated.  In January 2010, Mahinda Rajapaksa fought off what the media and sections of the international community mis-dubbed a 'challenge' by General (Rtd) Sarath Fonseka and was re-elected for a second six-year term by a handsome margin.  On April 8, in a decision that further strengthened the executive arm, the voter re-elected the United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA), taking that party within sniffing distance of a two-thirds majority in Parliament. 

 

All this constitutes reason to celebrate of course.  Who, after all, wants to end up on the losing side of any of the three 'fights' mentioned above?   Still, these victories are qualitatively different from previous ones and even the defeat of the LTTE, welcome as it is, has certain political negatives, for example, the loss of excuse for non-accomplishment of goal, non-implementation of mandate or, to put it bluntly, the 'setback' of a beggar who has his/her wound healed.

 

The 2004 election gave the UPFA a tenuous hold on power further compromised subsequently when the JVP withdrew support.  The 2010 result gives the President political stability and a comfortable number-cushion in the legislature.  The period 2005-2010 was a presidential honeymoon because it was Rajapaksa's first term.  A lot is forgiven and the possibility of a second term (almost assured given this constitution) was 'insurance'; things could be postponed and the promise made, 'I will do this once re-elected'.  The down side of re-election is that this is the last term, barring constitutional amendment that can either give the President a subsequent term or extend his political life by other means, for example, by reverting to a system where executive authority is conferred on Prime Minister and cabinet. 

 

The three victories have robbed Mahinda Rajapaksa of one thing: excuses. 

 

For the last thirty two years we've known that a lot of our vexed issues pertaining to governance can be traced to a poorly and hurriedly written constitution.  For a long time 'constitutional reform' was about placating Eelamists in one guise or another.  Given the objection to the executive presidency at different time and in different intensities, abolishing it was tagged to the matter of resolving the so-called 'ethnic conflict'.  Later it became obvious that the system of Proportional Representation (PR) had all kinds of flaws and there developed a school of thought that proposed a return to the first-past-the-post system with some provision being made for electing MPs in terms of the proportion of votes polled by the relevant parties. 

 

With time came the issue of the 1978 constitution making good governance impossible.  However, by the time realization struck, we were well into the PR system and Governments that were a fair distance away from the two-thirds necessary to set the amendment ball rolling.  It took a peculiar set of circumstances in 2001 for the 17th Amendment to be passed.  This is the first constitutional amendment since 1988 and the only one in the past 21 years.  That says a lot about how rigid this constitution is. 

 

Mahinda Rajapaksa's excuse-less situation is a curse. For him. Not necessarily for the people, though. Today, he can't say 'we are fighting a war'. Today he can't say 'I don't have the numbers' (he is within 6 of the magic '150' and for a man who managed to win over 30 plus MPs getting to this number should be child's play). He can't say 'I will do it in my next term' because he is already there, i.e. in the 'next term'.  He can say 'I am not going to do what Western powers or I/NGOs tell me', but he must understand that constitutional reform is something that his constituency needs, wants and has demanded. 

 

There was another excuse that he used: 'I am waiting for the APRC to submit its proposals' (and of course other versions of this excuse).  He has said that he's waiting for D.E.W. Gunasekera to submit the final report on the 17th Amendment, its flaws and recommendations to circumvent these. 

 

There was a time when the excuses readily trotted out had some truth value.  We could think, 'yes, he has a point' and then choose to wait.  He's run out of excuses and therefore cannot be indulged on account of these circumstances that could early be described as 'extenuating'.  

 

D.E.W. Gunasekara has provided the President with an excuse for non-action regarding the 17th Amendment: 'The independent commissions are not responsible to the Executive, Judiciary or the Legislature and their rulings cannot be challenged in any of these forums; this is a major setback in activating the Constitutional Council and establishing the Independent Police, Public Service, Judicial Service and Elections Commissions'. 

 

I am of the opinion that the 17th Amendment is not without flaws.  I am of the opinion that it should be

amended. I still argue for its full and immediate implementation not because I believe it is a decent document, but the constitution should not be tinkered with in the manner it is, i.e. 'I shall implement that which I like and ignore that which I find uncomfortable'.  The same goes for the 13th Amendment.  Non-implementation makes for political anarchy. 

 

If, as D.E.W. Gunasekera points out, there are flaws, then correct them! That's the logical thing to do. Non-implementation and manifest lethargy in formulating an alternative or at least amending indicates to me that the President is not interested in the stated objectives of the 17th Amendment. 

 

He doesn't have to wait for this or that report to implement the clauses of the law of the land.  He must first comply and can complain later.  He doesn't have to whine; he can bring his own amendment and get it passed.  He has an 'out' though: Emergency!  There is no LTTE now.  There are no bombs going off.  We have to give credit where credit is due:

 

'THANK YOU MR. PRESIDENT!  You have given leadership to a long and arduous process that has eliminated two things. You have removed the terrorist threat. THANK YOU MR. PRESIDENT.  You have removed the need for Emergency Regulations. THANK YOU MR. PRESIDENT.  You've removed the need, now remove the regulation!'

 

He won't.  The bottom line is political will. Is Mahinda Rajapaksa interested in Good Governance outside the realm of lip-servicing, i.e. to the extent that he acknowledges there are institutional flaws and wants to correct these?  I doubt it.

 

Can you, Mr. President do something else, something that will not threaten your hold on power?  Could you, please, take note of the fact that out of the over 100,000 students who qualify to enter university, only 20,000 actually get the opportunity?  Could you take note of the fact that the system cannot accommodate the 80,000 'extras'?  Could you take note of the fact that the other 80,000 are not morons?  Could you devise a system to make sure that all those who have shown that they have what it takes to complete a degree, obtain various skills and become useful citizens are not left behind? 

 

We are direly in need of an occupation classification and a census of how many are needed for particular categories of employment.  We have to take steps to ensure that the mismatch between educational qualification and labour market requirement is bridged. Such things make no sense if we don't have the graduates in the numbers we need and the mechanisms that will give us these numbers. 

 

There is no doubt that the State should play the lead role in delivering university education to students with requisite qualifications.  However, we have to recognise that there is a problem of capacity as well as one of funding.  The current system can be expanded and so too the Open University system, but only to a point. These cannot cater to the entire 100,000 ready to enter institutions of higher learning.  Some will go abroad, taking with them a lot of money.  The rest will stay and lose their way in the labour market and add to inefficiencies that flow from the inevitable mismatches. That's a waste of all the money the State pumps into the education system from Grade 1 to Grade 12.

 

Today, whether we like it or not, the private sector has crept in.  There are quack institutes offering quack degrees.  There is a need to streamline. There is a need to bring 'system' into the process of awarding degrees so that quality is not suffered and so that children and parents are not taken for a ride.  There is a need for a liberalization of education in one form or another.  And all this has to be done without compromising the state-run university system in any way. 

 

The President does not require a two-thirds majority in Parliament to do this. He can do this with or without Emergency Regulations.

 

I am not going to hold my breath regarding 'Good Governance'.  That's the kind of faith I have in politicians. 

But education is one thing where no one can be left behind.   Mr. President, thousands are being left behind.  They are the children of the nation, the jathiye daru deriyo you like to refer to frequently.  What are you going to tell them?  

 

Victory can be a curse to the victor. That's small consolation for the citizen.  Mahinda Rajapaksa should understand this.

Malinda Seneviratne is a

 

freelance writer who can be reached at malinsene@gmail.com This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

 

 

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DAILY MIRROR

EDITORIAL

 

 

A GAME CHANGER: NEW POLITICS

 

The turn-out was very low (56%), but high by standards of Western countries (in the US around the same figure). In the process, the UNPs once rock solid minimum of at least 30% of the total vote has been dissolved – primarily one should add by Ranil's policies. Although Ranil declared satisfaction with the counting of the election (no jilmat), he claimed that with the low turn-out, the government did not have a clear mandate. This was echoed by JVP's Anura Dissasnayake saying that the majority rejected the government. Blaming others like Ranil, there was also no hint by Anura that it was their own wrong decisions that had led them to the disastrous reduction from the JVP's 40 seats at the previous election.

 

The most credible explanation for the low turn out: UPFA supporters kept away thinking their victory a foregone conclusion, opposition supporters kept away thinking their defeat a foregone conclusion.

 

There was misuse of state assets, especially the state media with no semblance of equal reporting. But it was far removed from the kala gedi anti democratic farces of the early 1980s that Ranil's mentor and uncle JR forced on the country. JR's 1978 Constitution with its proportional-representation was considered an insurance that no constitutional changes could be brought in after him. The huge UPFA giving almost a 2/3rds win was thus an improbable slap on JR's face. Rajapakses personally fared very well. Brother Basil got 425,100 preferential votes the highest in the country while son Namal got 147,568, percentage-wise the largest majority in a district.

 

Biggest Loser

 

JVP was the biggest loser getting only 4 seats after discounting DNAs two non-JVPers, Sarath Fonseka and Arjuna Ranatunga. This was just 10% of their once 40 seats, a reflection of a series of disastrous political decisions beginning with their refusal to join the last UPFA government which mainly they had put into power.

 

The improbable coalition of the UNP (pro-Western, right wing and signatory to the traitorous CFA) and JVP (nationalist and left wing) hurriedly brought together to field war hero Fonseka for the presidency had dissolved before this election. The JVP was now carrying the heavily wounded and imprisoned SF as their almost sole banner. War hero SF's campaign manager, it was reported by the Sunday Times was a convict and wanted by Interpol in Belgium, hardly the knight in shining armour that thousands of JVPers who had died for idealism would have wished.

 

The nationalist vote that had been fought for and harvested by the JVP in the previous general election now went to others.  Most members of both the present JVP and JHU had come out of the late 1980s pro JVP nationalist opposition to the Indian incursion. In the previous general election, the UPFA ideology came partially out of these groups and the ideology continues still. Although this time the JVP lost heavily, some of the present winners getting large preferential votes were those from the 1980s nationalist movement. Champika and Weerawansa were two such. Dinesh, one of the older nationalists scored equally heavily.

 

The election also saw the extension of national level parties into the separatist heartland, the North and East. Coming second in the north, the UPFA made major inroads. Yet the turn out in these seats was low.

 

In Jaffna district, only 23% voted while in Vavuniya, it was 40%. There was also a very low voter turn-out among IDPs. This lack of enthusiasm for politics among Tamils was not surprising. The LTTE/TNA type politics of over 30 years had only brought destruction of life and property. And the wounds of war were still raw to reach out to national parties. Sick of politics, a period of apolitical economic development would probably be their wish now.

 

Unfairness

 

The racist TNA (now ITAK) was thus down from their earlier 22 seats to 14 (with the 2 national list seats) obtained with only 2.68% of the national total. This showed up the unfairness of the current system. The DNA with a 5.54% percentage of the national vote had in contrast won only 5 seats. It appeared that a TNA voter carried four times the clout of a DNA voter.

 

An anti nationalist website and newspaper recorded that there were no Muslim MPs for Colombo district on the UNP ticket  mentioning also that unlike in previous elections, no Tamil MPs were elected for Badulla  Adding to these, a leading Hindu activist mentioned to me that there were no Hindu  MPs in the Wanni district, while a Bhikkhu in Puttalam  worried over the overwhelming over representation of Catholics in Puttalam district because he said, of instructions from "God's local representative". There were parallel factors at work elsewhere. Ferial Ashraff did not get a place.  The informed opinion is that Buddhists campaigned against her for giving out ancient Buddhist land of Deegavapi to new Muslim settlers (later annulled by the Supreme Court) who began building houses over ancient ruins.

 

What should it be  used for?

 

The political game had indeed changed.  The UPFA would get around 144 seats, the 150 required for a 2/3rds majority is an easy fishing expedition to change the Constitution. What should it be used for? What is my wish list for democracy, equality and peace?

 

It should be used to undo the anti democratic systems over the last 35 years brought without a proper mandate from the people. It should, however, not bring in new personalized, anti democratic changes in the manner JR cynically did.

 

First would be to scrap the PR system which removed the electorate from contact with the MP. Scrap the 13th Amendment imposed by Indian gun boats. The historically untenable Tamil traditional homeland concept must be annulled from the constitution and instead declare Sri Lanka as the traditional homeland of all its peoples – Sinhalese, Tamils and Muslims. The LTTE destroyed many archaeological sites; the remaining should be rapidly excavated and brought into the public domain. Bring an iron wall of defence by three measures. First, dissolve the geographical ethnic separation brought about by Wilpattu and Yala parks by having sea hugging roads on their borders. Second, as in other countries, prevent entry to foreigners, include those of Sri Lankan origin who have supported separatism. Third, ban inflow of foreign funds into NGOs that deal with matters sovereign. (Let them make money doing social welfare NGOs). One could add others.

 

A 35 year period of misery could then be over. And a new game begun.

 

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DAILY MIRROR

EDITORIAL

 

THE SHIP OF STATE MEANS STATESMANSHIP

MY DEAR MAHINDA AIYA,

 

Ayubowan, vanakkam, assalamu alaikkum and best wishes as the second government of the Rajapaksa era takes office, with the executive president facing the choice of rising to the realms of a statesman or ending up in the fires of party politics as have many other leaders. Signs of the times during the past two weeks after the general elections have not been too inspiring with little indication of statesmanship above and beyond party politics and the insatiable greed for personal gain or glory.

 

Democratic National Alliance (DNA) spokesman Anura Kumara Dissanayake at a news conference sarcastically referred to the early signs of Sri Lanka becoming one of the wonders of Asia. He gave an eyewitness account of how the ruling United People's Freedom Alliance (UPFA) candidates had behaved at the main Colombo counting centre in the battle for preference votes. He alleged that some of the UPFA aspirants for parliamentary seats or Cabinet portfolios had kicked ballot boxes and played havoc while at least three groups were involved in physical clashes. Mr. Dissanayake said some of these UPFA front-liners had alleged there was rigging or computer manipulation in the count of the preference votes and he saw this as evidence for the opposition charge of such sophisticated manipulation at the January 26 presidential election.

 

Another dangerous sign of lawlessness or freedom of the wild asses was what happened in Kelaniya over the weekend.  This electoral division's chief organizer and parliamentarian Mervin Silva gave orders that all liquor bars and other liquor outlets including such sections in supermarkets be shut down with immediate effect. Reporters who visited the area said they saw supporters or thugs of the controversial politician playing police outside these outlets to ensure that this illegal and highhanded ban was enforced. Excise Commissioner Wasantha Hapuarachchi who normally enforces such closures on a directive from the government said he was unaware of any such liquor ban and would take it up with the government.More interesting if not disturbing than all these bootlegger antics was the message in the bottle or the bottle ban. Political observers say some months ago there was a major problem in Kelaniya's hallowed Raja Maha Vihara when some thugs tried to attack the then presidential candidate General Sarath Fonseka when he visited the temple for a religious ceremony. The chief incumbent of the temple was disturbed by the behaviour of the thugs and reports say a fervent apology was made to him from the top but the Kelaniya strongman is known to be heavily influenced by too much power in his head and he is known to have said that he would someday become the head of the temple's dayaka sabha or the influential advisory council. Observers are wondering whether his arbitrary liquor ban and his plan to have Kelaniya declared a sacred city are part of the strategy to get some control of this ancient temple.

 

Meanwhile the main stories during the past two weeks after the general election have centred on the continuing battle for parliamentary seats from the national list of the main parties and the backstage deals for Cabinet portfolios. Both main parties – the UPFA and the United National Front (UNF) led by the United National Party (UNP) -- are known to be embroiled in controversy over these national list slots with the UPFA entitled to around 18 seats and the UNF eight.

 

While statesmanship which focuses on the next generation instead of the next election still exists or is still only a hopeful dream, recent events in the world show an urgent need to address issues that might have a shattering if not devastating effect on the future generations. One such environmental issue was Iceland's unprecedented volcanic eruption which caused the worst air traffic disruption since the Second World War. Over the weekend European authorities reported that as many as 18,000 flights were disrupted daily and there was little sign of the situation getting better.

 

Such environmental issues and vital factors in areas such as health, education and the economy need to be the focus of a statesman and we hope that the right choice would be made.

 

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DAILY MIRROR

EDITORIAL

DAYS OF THE ASH ARE OVER

FLIGHTS RESUME AFTER A WEEK'S DELAY

BY DILINI ALGAMA

 

With droughts and rain causing most of Sri Lanka's natural disasters the disruption to aero travel with the activity of the volcano Eyjafjoell in Iceland has been unprecedented for the most part.

 

Sri Lanka has experienced more than its fair share of transport disruptions with the tsunami in 2004 and the terrorist attack at the airport in 2005, but flight delays and cancellations due to volcanic activity is rather unusual. Also, although the impact it has had so far on airlines and the tourist industry has still not been calculated, it is sure to be notable. For example, the Sri Lanka Customs Export Division reported on Wednesday that 75% of Sri Lanka's exports to Europe have been held back due to airspace and airport closures.

 

As a media source at SriLankan Airlines pointed out, Sri Lanka is neither at the centre of the crisis nor is it responsible for the situation, but by Tuesday the airline had not flown to three major destinations in Europe – London, Frankfurt and Rome since Thursday.

 

Flights to Rome, according to the source were also cancelled, but the airline was able to fly out once, however, the volcanic ash cloud, which keeps changing position is now back over Rome and according to a source at Sri Lankan airlines, there are still concerns over flying to Milan and Rome.

 

For members of the Sri Lanka Booksellers Association the natural disaster related cancellations have come at a crucial time. It is now time for the annually held London Book Fair and according to Ranjit Samaranayaka, Managing Director of Expograhpic (Pvt) LTD the book fair in London is a very important event. "This is when we meet with publishers, new authors and we learn about new trends in the publishing industry," said Samaranayaka going on to say that the Sri Lanka stall at the fair has already been paid for and the London Book Fair 2010 would have been a wonderful opportunity for meeting publishers not only from Europe, but all over the world. "We had also collected books to display at the stall by Sri Lanka and we have to wait for another year for this major event," said Samaranayaka.

 

On the other hand, according to Nadeesha Epasinghe, spokesperson for the British High Commission there are approximately 800 British nationals registered with tour operators who have had to prolong their stay due to flight delays and cancellations. "They are currently staying in mostly hotels in Colombo and Negombo," she said going on to say that the High Commission has been providing the British nationals with general information in areas such as accommodation, emergency medical needs and travel insurance till they are able to leave the country. Also, the British High Commission in Sri Lanka is also looking in to the situation with British national currently in Maldives.

 

A situation where flights across continents are delayed can affect a number of sectors. For example, airlines can be severely affected with delayed flights.

 

Furthermore airlines are also responsible for passengers in these cases and will have to offer accommodation until a flight operates. For example, according to the media source at Sri Lankan airlines by April 19 there were 170 passengers the airline provided accommodation for. While by Tuesday nearly 100 had managed to leave the country the rest were able to take emergency steps themselves. "It is a very unfortunate situation, it is a situation beyond our control. An Act of God rather," said the source at SriLankan Airlines. While there has surely been a loss recorded with Sri Lankan exports the past week, the Chief Export Officer at the Sri Lanka Customs noted that it is yet to be calculated.

 

Again, with SriLankan Airlines the loss with flight delays and cancellations has not yet been recorded and as Director Consular of the Foreign Ministry noted, data and numbers are yet to be released.

 

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THE MOSCOW TIMES

EDITORIAL

COALITION OF THE WILLING MODERNIZERS

BY KONSTANTIN SONIN

 

It is always nice and easy to talk about modernization when it remains in the abstract. But the moment this conversation turns more concrete, the subject becomes very unpleasant. The reason is that major power struggles lie behind any modernization plan.

 

In practice, a struggle for power means building a coalition. Any society consists of individual citizens and all have their own particular interests. For a politician to push through change of any type, he must find a way to unite these interests toward a common goal, persuade them to accept compromises and shake thousands of hands along the way.

 

In democracies, that process is clearly visible. U.S. President Barack Obama's health care reforms are a good example. It took two years to form a coalition to finally pass the legislation. It doesn't matter if the planned reforms are good or bad. Any change to the status quo requires building a degree of cooperation between all parties interested in seeing a change.

 

Strangely enough, the same mechanism applies to authoritarian regimes. Look at Vladimir Lenin, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler or Fidel Castro in situations where they had to make changes to the status quo. Even in order to carry out his purges, Stalin had to constantly make sure that the coalition supporting him was more powerful than the one that wanted to preserve the status quo. To that end, Stalin had to meet daily with secret police leader Nikolai Yezhov and establish relations with new officials who had received their promotions after their bosses were executed.

 

"Modernization" is a common unifying theme for building coalitions. If it is in great demand, somebody will use that demand as a means of gaining power. But modernization is impossible without a physical change of those in power. It would be logical, for example, for President Dmitry Medvedev to operate under the slogan of modernization in order to grab power from Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. If Medvedev desires greater power, he needs a coalition, and a coalition can only be rallied around a theme.

 

But it is rare that leaders are able to build coalitions from the top. Politicians must be able to understand what ordinary citizens and the ruling elite desire. The type of coalition is determined by public demand. The degree to which a politician is successful in exploiting the existing demand depends on his personal qualities and a certain degree of luck.

 

Medvedev has yet to form such a coalition. But why should it be easy for him when it is difficult for opposition leaders Boris Nemtsov or Vladimir Milov? On a personal level, they are no less capable than Medvedev as politicians, but they have so far been unable to find the words and themes that could help unite the people and bring them to power.

 

It would seem that there is no public demand for modernization — or to be more precise, the demand is small at best. But there is some good news. First, there does not seem to be any demand for anything bad and, second, the demand for improvements has a tendency to build over time as difficulties and problems mount.

 

Konstantin Sonin is a professor at the New Economic School in Moscow and a columnist for Vedomosti.

 

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THE MOSCOW TIMES

EDITORIAL

NATO'S COMMON EUROPEAN ROOF

BY ANDERS FOGH RASMUSSEN

 

The New START, signed two weeks ago by Presidents Dmitry Medvedev and Barack Obama, is a historic achievement and an inspiration for further progress in global arms control. But at the same time, we must also prepare to defend against another, less encouraging trend.

 

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery is a threat to both the NATO allies and Russia. A look at current trends shows that more than 30 countries have or are developing missile capabilities. In many cases, these missiles could eventually threaten Europe's populations and territories.

 

Iran is a case in point. It has signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and is developing a nuclear program that it claims is for civilian purposes only. But Iran has gone far beyond what is necessary for a purely civilian program. It has concealed several nuclear facilities from the International Atomic Energy Agency, played hide-and-seek with the international community and rejected all offers of cooperation from the United States, the European Union and others. Most recently, Iran's government announced plans to enrich its uranium to levels that appear incompatible with civilian use and that defy several UN Security Council resolutions.

 

Iran also has an extensive missile development program. Iranian officials declare that the range of their modified Shahab-3 missiles is 2,000 kilometers, putting allied countries such as Turkey, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria within reach.

 

In February, Iran introduced the SAFIR 2 space-launch vehicle. This is a key stage in the development of intermediate- and intercontinental-range missiles. If Iran completes this development, the whole of Europe — as well as all of Russia — would be within its range.

 

Proliferators must know that the NATO allies are unwavering in their commitment to collective defense, including nuclear deterrence. Confronted with the spread of missile technology and unpredictable regimes and leaders, we owe it to our populations to complement our deterrence capabilities with effective missile-defense capabilities.

 

We are not starting from scratch. NATO allies have been looking at various missile-defense options for some time. NATO itself is developing protections for our deployed troops. But with the new U.S. approach to missile defense, there are now much better opportunities for an effective NATO-wide system that would enhance the territorial defense of our populations and nations.

 

A true joint Euro-Atlantic missile defense would demonstrate NATO's collective will, not only to defend against the new threats of today and tomorrow, but also to send a clear message that there is nothing to be gained from missile proliferation. It can also provide an opportunity for Europeans to demonstrate again to the United States their willingness to invest in self-defense capabilities and to play an active role in a process that, until now, has been conducted largely over their heads by the United States and Russia.

 

But there is another reason for developing missile defense: to create a new dynamic in European and Euro-Atlantic security. There is much talk these days about the Euro-Atlantic security architecture. Russia, in particular, has focused on treaties, conferences and political arrangements.

 

Clearly, these things can be useful and important. We should talk. We should look for common political approaches, many of which we have already agreed to and could easily endorse again. But a joint security architecture must move beyond blueprints. It needs to be built. And missile defense is a concrete way to do that.

 

In this respect, the news that the United States and Russia have agreed on the New START, which will substantially cut both countries' nuclear arsenals, provides a good backdrop. This new agreement makes the world safer, and it will give impetus to cooperation with Russia in other fields, particularly NATO-Russia relations.

 

Since taking office last summer, I have invested considerable time and effort in revitalizing the relationship between NATO and Russia, with progress made in several areas, including a joint review of common threats and challenges. But it is time to look at missile defense as another opportunity to bring us together.

 

We need a missile defense system that includes not just all NATO countries, but Russia, too. The more that missile defense is seen as a shared security roof — built, supported and operated together — that protects us all, the more people from Vancouver to Vladivostok will know that they are part of one community. Such a security roof would be a strong political symbol that Russia is fully part of the Euro-Atlantic family, sharing the costs and benefits.

 

Of course, there are practical challenges. We would have to make our systems interoperable, share intelligence assessments and link sensitive technologies. But such cooperation is a concrete way to build mutual trust and confidence.

 

For these reasons, the time has come to move forward on missile defense. We need a decision by NATO's next summit in November that missile defense is an Alliance mission and that we will explore every opportunity to cooperate with Russia.

 

But Russia also must decide to view missile defense as an opportunity, rather than a threat. If that happens, we can move forward to create a missile defense system that not only defends the Euro-Atlantic community, but that also brings it together.

 

The end of the Cold War has given us an enormous opportunity to achieve our goal of a Europe whole, free and at peace. We are not quite there, but we are getting there. Missile defense can be part of that positive trend.

 

Anders Fogh Rasmussen is secretary-general of NATO. © Project Syndicate

 

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THE HIMALAYAN

EDITORIAL

MISSING MATURITY

 

Despite not being able to live up to expectations of ending the political stalemate that has affected the constitution drafting task which by all means has to meet the deadline in only 36 days, every time a meeting of the High Level Political mechanism is scheduled there is some amount of hope that the top leaders of the Big 3 parties will come up with some welcome news. After late Girija Prasad Koirala, who had spearheaded the concept of the HLPM, passed away the mechanism seems to have lost any sense of direction. The major coalition partners Nepali Congress (NC) and CPN (UML, and the main opposition UCPN (M) have their own views regarding meeting the deadline. The three options that have presented themselves for discussion are: extension of the Constituent Assembly tenure, holding fresh polls or gathering together all the political parties to consensus on the vital issues that have plagued the drafting of the statute time and again. For the first proposal the UCPN (M) has its own reservation, that is, it wants the Madhav Kumar Nepal-led government out of the way before it will talk business. This only reflects its stubbornness when it should be acting meaningfully for the completion of the statute drafting task. And it fully is cognizant of the fact that its dilly dallying is trying to prove that it is a force to reckon with. But, at this juncture, the clash of egos can only put the country in a trap if no way out for the completion of the constitution takes place by the deadline, that is May 28. And, many leaders have come out saying that the deadline cannot be met, while there are some who claim that the all important statute can be readied in a week or two only! Now, holding fresh elections will not only be a time consuming game, but the nearly empty national coffers will further be drained of the last dregs, while all the huge billions spent on holding the CA election, maintaining the allowances and perks of the CA members and their allied works, will go on the debit side.

An important party like the main opposition trying to while away time through the clamour for a change of guards cannot be appreciated. As a responsible political party it should have focused on how the constitution could be promulgated within the date, and two years have been wasted on mudslinging and the blame game. At the moment, who leads the government is not as important as when the statute comes into being. Herein, all have to remember that the provisions of the statute must be in the interest of the sovereign people and the country and not be one or the other party's election manifesto.

There is a long way to go for competitive politics and not now, and the framing of the constitution hits roadblocks created by the political parties all too often. The political parties may be living politics to their heart's desire, but the people's hope of the democratic all-inclusive statute is all but dashed at the moment because of haughty political interests. The people can look upon themselves and the successful April revolution that raised them on an enviable pedestal only to be betrayed by the same politicians who they had voted for in the CA election.

 

IT to the rescue

Bullying is a problem faced by many young people. According to a news report as many as 30 per cent aged between 10 to 15 had been bullied in UK's schools in 2007. However, most of the bullying go unreported as the victims often have no one to turn to as they do not want to talk with even their parents. To deal with this form of abuse CyberMentors a website staffed by a group of young people talk to other young people on problems they face from bullying. This is an online service and those partaking of it can remain anonymous. Since many of the bullying take place at night, the service is open till early morning. The bullied victims can talk to others through this service to people who have been trained as mentors. If the bullying is of a serious nature then professional counselors are ready to step in to serve those needing help.

The beauty of the scheme is that the young people seeking help for being bullied can talk to others from their own age. Mentors are monitoring the chat rooms and when needed they offer their private chats to help the troubled to solve their problems with advice. This is an instance of technology being put to innovative use.

 

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THE HIMALAYAN

EDITORIAL

EARTH DAY: A DAY OF CELEBRATION

SCOTT H. DELISI

The first Earth Day, organized in 1970 in the United States, launched the modern environmental movement. Some 20 million Americans took to the streets, parks, and auditoriums to decry trends toward increased pollution and deterioration, and to demonstrate for a healthy, sustainable environment. Rising environmental awareness during that period led the U.S. government to establish the Environmental Protection Agency in late 1970, and to enact ground-breaking legislation, the Clean Air Act of 1970 and Clean Water Act of 1972.

Under President Obama, the U.S. has done more to reduce greenhouse gas emissions than ever before, setting domestic policies that advance clean energy and climate security and vigorously engaging in climate change negotiations. Last December in Copenhagen, world leaders including those from Nepal, agreed on the Copenhagen Accord, which requires actions by all major economies to mitigate climate change; transparency to see that those actions are taken; and financing and technology support for the poorest and most vulnerable nations. The U.S. will join a global effort to mobilize by financing to help countries adapt to climate change, including preventing deforestation in regions with tropical forests, such as in Central and South America, Central Africa and Southeast Asia.

Similarly, the U.S. is dedicated to improving access to clean water. In 2005, our Congress passed the Paul Simon Water for the Poor Act, which makes access to safe water and sanitation for developing countries a specific policy objective of our foreign assistance programs. As Secretary Clinton stated on World Water Day, "It's not every day you find an issue where effective diplomacy and development will allow you to save millions of lives, feed the hungry, empower women, advance our national security interests, protect the environment, and demonstrate to billions of people that the United States cares, cares about you and your welfare. Water is that issue." To advance this goal, the United States will strengthen developing country capacity, engage diplomatically, invest in infrastructure, increase the role of science and technology, and leverage partnerships.

This year the world is commemorating the International Year of Biodiversity. The US is no stranger to the risk of biodiversity loss. In the 1960s, our national symbol — the American bald eagle — was on the brink of extinction. In 2007, it was taken off the endangered species list as a result of conservation efforts mandated and efforts to restrict harmful pesticides. More than 27 % of the land area in the US is afforded some form of federal protection, through a variety of programs. The Lacey Act, originally passed in 1900, stands as the oldest conservation law in the US and is testimony to our success in conserving wildlife resources including illegally harvested plants and trees.

The US government has provided significant support to Nepal in the arena of environmental conservation throughout the past decades. As early as 1960's, when the rhinoceros and the tiger were on the brink of extinction, American scientists from the Smithsonian Institution and the World Wildlife Fund worked closely with wildlife professionals and scientists in Nepal to protect these species. This successful joint effort is legendary in the conservation community worldwide. Currently, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service continues to support the conservation of these magnificent animals, including the Asiatic elephant.

The US government, primarily through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has supported biodiversity conservation initiatives in Nepal including the Strengthened Actions for Governance in Utilization of Natural Resources (SAGUN) Program. SAGUN, which ended in 2009, achieved four key objectives: strengthened governance; improved livelihoods; biodiversity conservation; and policy advocacy. SAGUN supported over 1,400 Community Forest Users Groups to bring over 60,000 hectares of forested area under improved management, positively impacting over 225,000 direct beneficiaries including women, traditionally marginalized and ethnic minority groups.

Another example is a program implemented jointly by the Department of National Parks and Wildlife Conservation, Ministry of Forest and Soil Conservation, and the World Wildlife Fund that supported biodiversity conservation in the Terai region — a vast and complex geographical area linking eleven protected areas in Nepal and India, as well as large non-protected areas between them. Currently, the US, under the Sustainable Conservation Approaches in Priority Ecosystems (SCAPES) initiative, supports the Sacred Himalayan Landscape program which aims to reduce threats to biodiversity in the Himalayan region. The US has also provided extensive support to community forestry sector development here.

The U.S. also currently supports the Eastern Himalayas Forest and Climate Change Program. This initiative provides technical assistance to Nepal, India, and Bhutan to monitor carbon sequestration of local forests; develop systems related to payments for environmental services; and promote understanding of U.S. efforts to address climate change through sustainable forest management.

Recently the U.S. government also supported regional initiatives to harmonize national laws that promote greater access and equitable benefit sharing of genetic resources and regional cooperation to combat invasive species such as Mikania micrantha that threatens biodiversity.

The emerging threat of climate change to biodiversity and to the livelihood of thousands of local communities throughout Nepal is a serious issue. The US government works closely with the government of Nepal to address both climate change and threats to biodiversity through the Global Climate Change Initiative launched by President Barack Obama.

Fully aware that regional cooperation is required to address trans-boundary threats to biodiversity and wildlife conservation, the U.S. government has also supported efforts to advance greater cooperation in the South Asian region. This effort has successfully established the South Asia Wildlife Enforcement Network (SAWEN), which involves all eight countries in the region.

Today, our planet needs international dedication and commitment to preserve and protect the earth's resources-be it air, water, plant, or animal. While we take time to recognize our achievements, we should not lose sight of the challenges that remain, and continue to build upon the legacy of the modern environmental movement
started forty years ago.

Scott H. DeLisi is the U.S. Ambassador to Nepal

 

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THE HIMALAYAN

EDITORIAL

TOPICS: MOTHERS IN DISTRESS

DURGA INNANI

Be it a 'mother', the 'motherland' or the 'Mother Nature', all mothers are in a state of anguish going through extreme torment.

At present, in Nepal, the life of every individual overtly or covertly is adversely affected by the ongoing crisis. However, to a larger extent the adversities can be seen or felt in the life of a mother. The lack of security in the country and the increased cases of child abduction leaves her in a state of constant fear and worry. In addition to this, the price hike of essential food items and goods, the inadequate supply of water and that too at odd hours, the acute shortage of cooking gas cylinders etc. leaves her anxious concerning the sustenance and nourishment of her children.

Down through the years, our Motherland Nepal has been going through constant ups and downs. The period of insurgency, the times of conflicts, political strife, bloodshed etc. has left our motherland terribly wounded. On one hand she is flooded with the blood of her own children, whereas on the other she is desolated as a reason of brain drain.

Besides this, the beautiful landscape is disfigured. It is due to improper use of resources as a result of which forests are disappearing, rivers are drying up, wildlife is becoming extinct, the climate is ruined and the land is growing poorer and uglier each day.

The greed for excesses in life and our failure to understand our mothers' pain have led to the increased violence. Every time an individual is hurt or killed, it is always a mother's child who is affected. It is always a mother who is left in grief: in tears for the loss of her child.

Proper rearing of her child is the main aim of all mothers. But today it is due to our carelessness that our mothers have become exhausted. Despite being worn out, they have remained indefatigable. However, their single effort alone does not guarantee sustainability of life on earth. So, it is very important that we live in harmony with Nature. Every action against Mother Nature and the motherland in turn harms our mother.

All mothers are in distress and it is our prime responsibility to ease their pain by being genuinely concerned. The reasons for this are manifold, but we can play our respective role in order to avoid further crisis for the betterment of our tomorrow.

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THE HIMALAYAN

EDITORIAL

BLOG SURF: BREATHING

TWEAKFIT.COM

Many people use Yoga or meditation to connect with themselves and find a rhythm with their breathing. To get started with your breathing routine, sit up straight. Try not to arch your back. In this first exercise, exhale completely through your mouth. Place your hands on your stomach, just above your waist. Breathe in slowly through your nose, pushing your hands out with your stomach. This ensures that you are breathing deeply. Imagine that you are filling your body with air from the bottom up.

Hold your breath to a count of two to five, or whatever you can handle. It is easier to hold your breath if you continue to hold out your stomach. Slowly and steadily breathe out through your mouth, feeling your hands move back in as you slowly contract your stomach, until most of the air is out. Exhalation is a little longer than inhalation.

After some practice you don't need to use your hands to check your breathing. You can also do the above breathing exercise lying on your back.

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THE HIMALAYAN

EDITORIAL

CREDOS: I AND YOU—X

MARTIN BUBER

Feelings are within, where life is lived and I recovers from IT. Here, we indulge our pleasures, we are home in relaxation, stretched out, at ease. Institutions are the market place. Feelings are a den of changing interests. Political parties and 'movements' creep along the ground, always separated from a harmonious solution to the real alienation people suffer from. Neither is part of real life. Neither is lived in the Present.

There is no community of free beings who wish to live with one another. This is where we are, the starting point from which our distress and our despair is born. The mechanistic State is powerless to meet our needs. Systems and institutions are void of community.

Feelings do not establish a personal life. Feelings flow from I while institutions account for everything as It-experiencing. Feelings and institutions are necessary for I but put together they do not nourish us. Life is made real by YOU, by YOU living in the present. Only when I takes a stand in Relation to YOU can I and YOU live in mutual relation. Only then can community be expressed, when YOU is the Living Center.

When IT rules over us we are robbed of our reality and we become ghosts inside ourselves whispering confessions to each other that we are not saved or living healthy lives.

In these so-called modern times all reality is premised on economics and the state... Politicians and economists do not see YOU. They do not see us as embodiments of YOU. To them we are merely the collected IT. They are the masters of destroying that which is over there (against them). They smile but there is death in their hearts. Now there is only the semblance of control. The machine races madly along. I, unable to control IT, lives in isolation.

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SAMARTH

a trust – of the people by the people for the people

An Organisation for Rastriya Abhyudaya

(Registered under Registration Act 1908 in Gorakhpur, Regis No – 142- 07/12/2007)

Central Office: Basement, H-136, Shiv Durga Vihar, Lakkarpur, Faridabad – 121009

Cell: - 0091-93131-03060

Email – samarth@samarth.co.in, central.office@samarth.co.in

Registered Office: Rajendra Nagar (East), Near Bhagwati Chowk, Lachchipur

Gorakhnath Road, Gorakhpur – 273 015

 

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