EDITORIAL 28.04.10

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Editorial

month april 28, edition 000493, collected & managed by durgesh kumar mishra, published by – manish manjul

 

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THE PIONEER

1. A PYRRHIC VICTORY
2. BENEVOLENT APPROACH
3. ONUS IS ON PAKISTAN - ASHOK K MEHTA
4. BEAUTIES HAVE BRAINS TOO - TRINA JOSHI
5. ROADS HAVE A STRATEGIC PURPOSE - PRASHANT KUMAR SINGH
6. MOLE IN OUR MISSION - B RAMAN

MAIL TODAY

1. THE OPPOSITION SEEMS TO BE CUTTING ITSELF TO PIECES
2. CENTRE- STATE COOPERATION
3. NURTURE BRAND IPL
4. IN SPYING ON POLITICIANS WE'RE AS BAD AS THE ISI - BY MANOJ JOSHI
5. MUMBAI MATTERS - DEEPAK LOKHANDE

THE TIMES OF INDIA

1. HEARING AID          
2. BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID
3. OPEN AND SHUT - JUG SURAIYA
4. IT'S COMMON WEALTH - BORIA MAJUMDAR
5. 'DOMESTIC WORK IS NOT SEEN AS A REAL OCCUPATION' - MEENAKSHI SINHA

HINDUSTAN TIMES

1. TAKING A BOW-WOW
2. FEW FACTS OF THE MATTER
3. TASTE OF THINGS TO COME - SUJATA KELKAR SHETTY
4. CRACK THE DRESS CODE - NAYANJOT LAHIRI
5. DON'T GET SOFT ON ALIENS -  LEO HICKMAN

THE INDIAN EXPRESS

1. ETERNAL HAVENS
2. ON DIFFERENT PAGES
3. ETERNAL HAVENS
4. TREATING WASTE WATER FOR REUSE - RANESH NAIR
5. THE ONLY TABOO
6. VIEW FROM THE LEFT - MANOJ C G
7. THINKING OUTSIDE THE (FINANCIAL) BOX

FINANCIAL EXPRESS

1. RATIONALISE GAS PRICES
2. PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION
3. WILL IPL INVESTIGATIONS SUCCEED? - SUBHOMOY BHATTACHARJEE
4. IT IS STILL A STRUGGLE IN CHINA
5. DARLINGTON JOSE HECTOR
6. THE NEED TO DIFFERENTIATE - MARTIN A KOSCHAT

THE HINDU

1. AN UNPLEASANT ODOUR
2. SAARC AT TWENTY-FIVE
3. FROM THIRD WORLD TO NEW SOUTH - JORGE HEINE
4. PUBLIC-PRIVATE-PANCHAYAT PARTNERSHIP FOR INCLUSIVE GROWTH - HARSH SINGH
5. THE FIRST AID MYTHS THAT COST LIVES - PHIL DAOUST
6. FRED HALLIDAY, SCHOLAR OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, DEAD - SAMI ZUBAIDA

THE ASIAN AGE

1. SAARC, AT 25, MIGHT SEE A ROSIER FUTURE
2. POWER OF PARIKRAMA
3. LHC: THE LARGE HYPE CREATOR
4. A DARK MONEY MAZE

DNA

1. AFGHAN DILEMMA
2. CHANGE IN THE AIR
3. THE TECHNOLOGY DIMENSION - PR CHARI
4. A MAHATMA AND A MAO IN YOUR POCKET

THE TRIBUNE

1. PAKISTAN'S CRAZY IDEA
2. THE SATLUJ STINKS
3. BIOMETRIC PASSPORTS
4. FRAGILE RECOVERY - BY JAYSHREE SENGUPTA
5. "MOM" AND "DAD" TO EACH OTHER - BY RASHMI TALWAR
6. POVERTY OF MIND AND MEDIA - BY ARUTI NAYAR
7. HARYANA: ECONOMICALLY UP, SOCIALLY DOWN - BY MAHABIR JAGLAN
8. CHENNAI DIARY - N. RAVIKUMAR

MUMBAI MERROR

1. COOK LIKE YOUR AAJI

BUSINESS STANDARD

1. WINNER'S CURSE
2. ON RECOVERY ROAD
3. THE G-20, POWER, AND IDEAS - ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN
4. LEARNING TO LIVE WITH HAWKERS - SUBIR ROY
5. JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS - M J ANTONY
6. IS A SPORTS REGULATOR NEEDED?

THE ECONOMIC TIMES

1. ONLY THE RUPEE'S THE HURDLE
2. OPPOSITION'S SELF-GOAL
3. HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
4. A MYSTICAL STATE COMES OF AGE - ARVIND PANAGARIYA
5. YOU ARE BORN TO BE LOVED - VITHALC NADKARNI
6. INVESTORS TOO WILL HAVE MORE COMFORT
7. YES, FOR BETTER REGULATORY CONTROL
8. REVAMP FINANCIAL REGULATION - JAIDEEP MISHRA
9. WE PLAN TO EXPAND CLINICAL RESEARCH IN INDIA: NOVO NORDISK PRESIDENT AND CEO - SARAH JACOB
10. RECKITT BENCKISER OPERATING UNDER COST PRESSURES: CMD - RATNA BHUSHAN
11. M&A STREET'S GETTING CROWDED AGAIN'- RAKHI MAZUMDAR

DECCAN CHRONICAL

1. SAARC, AT 25, MIGHT SEE A ROSIER FUTURE
2. A DARK MONEY MAZE - BY INDER MALHOTRA
3. DUMB BUT DECENT MEETS SMART AND SLEAZY - BY DAVID BROOKS
4. THE LARGE HYPE CREATOR - BY JAYANT V. NARLIKAR
5. POWER OF PARIKRAMA - BY V. BALAKRISHNAN

THE STATESMAN

1. URBAN VARIANT
2. STERLING SIGNAL
3. AFGHAN DILEMMA
4. WOES OF NARENDRA MODI - BY AMULYA GANGULI
5. SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER
6. VOICES AGAINST TERRORISM
7. 100 YEARS AGO TODAY

 THE TELEGRAPH

1. JOINT EFFORT
2. WITHOUT CREDIT
3. THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE - K.P. NAYAR
4. HACKS AND THEIR SPELLING - STEPHEN HUGH-JONES

DECCAN HERALD

1. FALL FROM GRACE
2. TAMIL LEAD
3. A POLITICAL MISFIT - BY SAEED NAQVI
4. THE FIGHT AGAINST PATENT MONOPOLIES - BY GOPAL DABADE
5. CLACKETY-CLACK - BY SUNIL GUPTA

THE JERUSALEM POST

1. LION'S DEN: UNDERSTANDING EUROPE - BY DANIEL PIPES
2. FROM HUNGARY AND AUSTRIA, COME TO ISRAEL!
3. REJECTING THE BURKA
4. HYPOCRISY ALL AROUND - BY YOSSI ALPHER
5. LION'S DEN: UNDERSTANDING EUROPE - BY DANIEL PIPES
6. YALLA PEACE: STOP SAYING TOLERANCE - BY RAY HANANIA

HAARETZ

1. SHAME AT SAHARONIM
2. PUSHING FOR A PROVISIONAL PALESTINIAN STATE - BY ALUF BENN
3. ISRAEL MUST PREPARE FOR NUCLEAR TERROR THREAT - BY CHUCK FREILICH
4. ARE THEY ALL REALLY ANTI-SEMITES? - BY GABRIEL SHEFFER
5. ANOTHER KIND OF CAPITAL - BY MERAV MICHAELI

THE NEW YORK TIMES

1. WALL STREET CASINO
2. WHAT'S MORE COMPROMISING THAN MONEY?
3. NEW YORK CITY'S INSPECTION SCANDAL
4. GETTING OUT - BY VERLYN KLINKENBORG
5. OLIVE OIL AND SNAKE OIL - BY MAUREEN DOWD
6. FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION - BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN
7. POWER FROM TRASH ... -
8. BY NORMAN STEISEL AND BENJAMIN MILLER
9. ... AND SEWAGE, TOO  - BY ROSE GEORGE

USA TODAY

1.              Our view on border control: Arizona's ugly immigration law reflects price of inaction

2.      Even now, world fails Rwanda - By Andrew Wallis

3.      Don't dismiss early education as just cute; it's critical - By Lisa Guernsey

4.      Opposing view: We're protecting our citizens - By John Kavanagh

 

TIMES FREE PRESS

1. IN DISTRICT 4: WARREN MACKEY
2. IF WE SPENT TOO MUCH ...
3. CHATTANOOGA MAGLEV CHOO-CHOO?
4. 'SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS'
5. COULD WE STOP AN IRANIAN NUKE?

TEHRAN TIMES

1. NO MORE PEACE CHARADES, MR. PRESIDENT - BY LINDA S. HEARD

HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

1. FROM THE BOSPHORUS: STRAIGHT - WHAT'S GOING ON IN TURKEY?
2. A SENSITIVE APPOINTMENT TO THE TOP OF THE MİT - SEDAT ERGİN
3. SHOAH IS ALL RIGHT; HOLOCAUST ISN'T - BURAK BEKDİL
4. WHY ARE OUR AZERBAIJANI FRIENDS SO CRANKY? - MEHMET ALİ BİRAND
5. COLLECTIVE SHAME - YUSUF KANLI
6. 'BLACK SWAN' VOLCANO OFFERS US LESSONS - MATTHEW LYNN
7. END OF CONSCRIPTION IN SIGHT - JOOST LAGENDİJK
8. A REQUIEM FOR ARMENIANS—A SEQUEL - MUSTAFA AKYOL

I.THE NEWS

1. MUSHARRAF IN THE DOCK?
2. DODGING THE CENSOR
3. FINDING FAZLULLAH
4. LITTLE TO CELEBRATE - PART III ASIF EZDI
5. SUCH IS DEMOCRACY - SYED UMAIR JAVED
6. NO MIRACLES IN BHUTAN - SHAMSHAD AHMAD
7. HARNESS THIS TALENT - MUHAMMAD YASIR KHAN
8. WHO IS BEHIND THE HAZARA UNREST? - PART IMOSHARRAF ZAIDI
9. LET THEM KNOW - TAYYAB SIDDIQUI

PAKISTAN OBSERVER

1. FLEECING SCHOOL FEE SYSTEM
2. THANK YOU CIA!
3. MAKE PEOPLE AWARE OF VAT'S IMPLICATIONS
4. WAR ON TERROR, SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT
5. FRIENDLY FIRE - KHALID SALEEM
6. ELECTRICITY: FROM DEFICIENCY TO SURPLUS - RIZWAN GHANI
7. NO ROADMAP TO ARREST VIOLENCE - ASIF HAROON RAJA
8. INDIA, UNITED NATIONS & KASHMIR - DR GHULAM NABI FAI
9. PAKISTAN HAS TO WORK, DESPITE ITS FAILINGS - MUSTAFA QADRI

THE INDEPENDENT

1. LEAD-LADEN VEGETABLES
2. SAARC ENVIRONMENT
3. SORRY SIR, NO ENTRY..!
4. A CASE FOR SAARCOSAI - ASIF ALI
5. REVISE HIGHER EDUCATION FOR PRAGMATIC DEGREES - SAYEED AHMED
6. DEADLINE APRIL 20 - HARADHAN GANGULY
7. THE DESIGNER BABIES - SYLVIA MORTOZA
8. DECLINE AND FALL OF POLITICAL EUROPE - MICHEL ROCARD
9. IBBL'S RURAL DEVELOPMENT SCHEME: AN EVALUATION - PROF M SADEQ

THE AUSTRALIAN

1. DEVOID OF COMMON SENSE
2. SO THAT'S WHAT HE MEANT BY A GREAT MORAL CHALLENGE
3. THE PUBLIC INTEREST SOLD SHORT
4. RUDD'S DANGEROUS CLIMATE RETREAT
5. PROPORTIONAL VOTE A DISASTER
6. PERENNIAL GUILT TRIP DISTORTS EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE
7. ONE DAY OF THE YEAR ALSO IMPORTANT TO NON-ANGLO IMMIGRANTS

THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

1. THE TRUTH AND THE TREASURER
2. NEMESIS FOR THE EURO
3. RUDD HAS QUIT THE BATTLE ON CLIMATE CHANGE
4. STATE IN A SPIN OVER TRANSPORT CRITICS

THE GUARDIAN

1. IN PRAISE OF … POLITICAL ACTIVISTS
2. DEATH OF BLAIR PEACH: THE TRUTH AT LAST
3. FIXING PUBLIC FINANCES: CALL OFF THE PHONEY WAR

DAILY EXPRESS

1. WE HUMANS DON'T HAVE A MONOPOLY ON EMOTION - BY JAN ETHERINGTON
2. INSULTING THE POPE IS AN UTTER DISGRACE - BY ANN WIDDECOMBE
3. NHS SHOULD SPEND MONEY ON PATIENTS NOT DRUG ADDICTS - BY ROSS CLARK

THE GAZETTE

1. ILL-CONSIDERED, PETTY ATTACK ON MCGILL
2. GO, HABS, GO!

THE KOREA TIMES

1. LANDMARK SEAWALL
2. POST-CRISIS PATH
3. ELITE COLLEGES SOFTEN ON ROTC BANS - BY DALE MCFEATTERS
4. SPACE: AMERICA CONCEDES THE LEAD           - BY GWYNNE DYER
5. MAVERICK RIDES INTO VALLEY OF NATIONAL DEBT - BY MARTIN SCHRAM
6. ARIZONA GOES AFTER ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS - BY DALE MCFEATTERS
7. DOWN MEMORY LANE - BY SEEMA SENGUPTA

THE JAPAN TIMES

1. GREECE'S CRISIS, EUROPE'S TEST
2. U.K. OVERDOSES ON CHANGE - BY DAVID HOWELL
3. WHY CHINA HAS GOT IT RIGHT ON THE RENMINBI - BY BARRY EICHENGREEN
4. ETHICS OF CITIZENSHIP TESTS - BY JAN-WERNER MUELLER

THE JAKARTA POST

1. OFF THE RAILS
2. ACFTA AND THE THREAT OF INTERNAL TRADE BARRIERS - PALMIRA PERMATA BACHTIAR
3. LOOKING AT BOTH SIDES OF THE NATIONAL CINEMA - NOVA CHAIRI
4. DEMOCRACY, COMPASSION FOR INDONESIA - JENNIE S. BEV

CHINA DAILY

1. TARGET HOUSING BUBBLES
2. THE VIRTUE OF HONEST LABOR
3. RARE VISITORS FROM EUROPE
4. DEATH TO THE DEATH SENTENCE - BY LIN WEI (CHINA DAILY)
5. GIVE NGOS A CHANCE TO REBUILD QINGHAI - BY BRANDON B. BLACKBURN-DWYER (CHINA DAILY)
6. CAN ASIANS THINK? THEY'VE STARTED TO - BY ANDREW SHENG (CHINA DAILY)

DAILY MIRROR

1. EGOS OF MINISTERS EGOS OF MINISTERS
2. WHY IS INDIA SCARED OF PRABHAKARAN'S MOTHER ?     
3. REHABILITATION OF PRISONERS - BY Mr. A.K. de Silva
4. THE EMERGING WORLD: INNOVATION IN MARKETS – BY ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE

THE MOSCOW TIMES

1. BUREAUCRATS ARE MORE HARMFUL THAN VOLCANOES - BY YULIA LATYNINA
2. A NEW CHANCE TO BUILD KYRGYZ DEMOCRACY - BY ANDERS ASLUND
3. A CLOUD OVER AIRPLANE SAFETY - BY PETER SINGER

THE HIMALAYAN

1. LOSING NERVES
2. LOGICAL CONCLUSION OF PEACE PROCESS IS POWER OR PEACE THE ULTIMATE END?  - PROF. BIRENDRA P. MISHRA
3. FAILING AND FALLING - RISAV KARNA 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

A PYRRHIC VICTORY

CONGRESS CUTS DEAL TO DEFEAT CUT MOTION

With the BSP deciding to back the Congress-led UPA in the Lok Sabha and the RJD and SP abstaining from voting, the fate of the cut motion against certain provisions in the General Budget was a foregone conclusion. The Government has survived its first major legislative test since being re-elected in May 2009 (although it's a Pyrrhic victory secured by adopting cynical means) and the Opposition — particularly the BJP-led NDA and the Left — will have the satisfaction of having forced the Congress to shop for ad hoc friends, and having highlighted the grave price situation in the country. Indeed, more than the success or failure of the cut motion, it is crucial that Parliament takes stock of galloping inflation, particularly food inflation. Thus far, complacent about the political landscape, the UPA has been downright cavalier in its treatment of price concerns. For all the Prime Minister's well-meaning words — on revitalising agriculture, for instance, to boost food production and rectify the inflationary pressure on food prices — there has been very little concrete action. Any responsible Opposition needs to focus on these shortcomings and thus seek to influence the policy debate. If the larger discussion on the cut motion, in Parliament and beyond, succeeds in achieving that, it will serve the country well.

The broader political environment around the cut motion also needs to be considered. It is a fair argument that the cut motion would not have been moved, or even thought of, if the drama over the Women's Reservation Bill had not taken place. The one lasting legacy of the Budget session of Parliament is the stripping away of the UPA's cushion and the reduction of its everyday majority to barely five seats. The RJD and SP have broken away from it on the women's reservation issue and while they did not vote to bring down the Government immediately are clearly seeking alternatives. The NCP has been bruised by the Congress in recent weeks and will be waiting for opportunities to embarrass Big Brother. The Trinamool Congress is a testy ally and the DMK a law unto itself. How their equations with the Congress will be after the West Bengal and Tamil Nadu Assembly elections a year from now is impossible to predict. In sum, the UPA Government has entered the proverbial corridor of uncertainty less than 12 months after it secured power for a second term. The measure of hypocrisy and expediency it will now have to settle for is apparent in its shotgun wedding with the BSP. It has agreed to go slow on corruption cases against Ms Mayawati in exchange for the BSP leader's backing. Yet, in Uttar Pradesh the Congress and BSP are at each other's throats and gearing up for a direct contest in the 2012 Assembly election. In Lucknow, the Congress accuses the BSP of corruption; in New Delhi, the Manmohan Singh Government uses the CBI to get Ms Mayawati off the hook and close cases against her!

Looking beyond the cut motion, it is apparent that such short-term deal-making is unsustainable and cannot possibly take the Government all the way to May 2014. A mid-term election appears inevitable and it is likely the Congress will call it sooner rather than later, given its belief that the Opposition is still electorally weak. Indeed, the feeling is inescapable that India could witness a mid-term general election in 2011 or at best early-2012.

 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

BENEVOLENT APPROACH

BUT BEIJING NEEDS TO BE WARY OF JIHADIS

In what can be described as a new approach by Beijing to deal with the restive situation in China's Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region that has witnessed severe ethnic tension since July last year, the powerful Communist Party chief of the province has been replaced. It will be recalled that the region had seen ethnic riots break out between Muslim Uighurs and Han Chinese that left 197 dead. Although the riots were a direct consequence of what had happened in a factory in south China wherein two Uighur workers had been allegedly killed by their Han Chinese co-workers, it cannot be denied that they were also a manifestation of the underlying tension between the two communities. Xinjiang has witnessed significant migration of Han Chinese to its enclaves, especially as workers to its vast oil and mineral fields. Nonetheless, benefits from initiatives undertaken in the resource-rich region have largely left the local Uighurs untouched. And it is this fact that is at the heart of the strife between the two communities. Also, the fact that Xinjiang has had an autocratic provincial Communist Party secretary since 1994 in the form of Wang Lequan has not helped matters. Mr Wang was responsible for implementing some tough measures such as switching over to Chinese as the medium of instruction in primary schools, a ban on public servants keeping beards and wearing headscarves and observing Ramadan, etc. He was also responsible for a massive crackdown on Uighur separatists seeking independence for the region in 1997. But after last year's riots, Mr Wang's public standing plummeted with both Uighurs and Han Chinese complaining about his utter mismanagement of the situation. Hence, it would appear that the party bosses in Beijing have decided to replace Mr Wang with someone with a softer touch to administer Xinjiang — Mr Zhang Chunxian, the former party secretary of Hunan province, will be taking over the reins next month.

Though Beijing's new flexibility in addressing the root causes of the ethnic strife in Xinjiang is welcome, it must be borne in mind that the region is also susceptible to Islamist extremism. Muslim Uighur separatists have been linked to Al Qaeda and it affiliates more than once and, thus, it would best for the Chinese Government to ensure that the region does not become a safe haven for jihadis from Pakistan and Afghanistan next door. It would be disastrous if Islamists start exploiting Beijing's benevolent approach to make inroads into the volatile province. This apart, the Chinese Government would do well to bring about equal distribution of wealth and resources among Uighurs and Han Chinese in Xinjiang. Unless this is achieved, tensions will continue. Perhaps there is a lesson here for Beijing in terms of dealing with its minority communities.

 

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

ONUS IS ON PAKISTAN

ASHOK K MEHTA

Nobel Peace Prize winner US President Barack 'No-Bomb' Obama has taken several initiatives in nuclear diplomacy. Earlier this month, he hosted the first ever Nuclear Security Summit — which some call nuclear theatrics — to ensure that no nuclear device or nuclear material falls into terrorist hands and that all fissile material is secured within four years. Without naming Pakistan, during his presentation at the summit, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh highlighted the threat of terrorist groups accessing weapons of mass destruction. It is around this incubator of nuclear terrorism that intentions and resources of non-state and state actors intersect.

While Mr Obama considers Pakistan's nuclear arsenal as secure and sees "no nuclear crisis anywhere in South Asia", US experts are not so sure. Presidential adviser Bruce Reidel cites the nightmare scenario of the Lashkar-e-Tayyeba acquiring a nuclear device —no guesses who the No 1 target is. Mr Bob Graham, head of US Commission on WMD, Proliferation and Terrorism, testifying before a congressional hearing last week, said that Pakistan may slip over nuclear weapons to the Taliban for use against India in the event of escalated tension between the two countries. British counter-terrorism expert Shaun Gregory has said that Pakistan's nuclear complex has been attacked thrice between 2008 and 2009.

The US has spent $ 100 million in augmenting the security of Pakistan's nuclear capability and, despite denials, has contingency plans for responding to 15 crisis scenarios by its Northern Command, including the employment of the Conventional Prompt Global Strike Weapon capable of pinpointing its target within 60 minutes. Located next door to the terrorist launch site, one hopes that India, the most likely victim of a nuclear attack, has suitable contingency plans in its Strategic Nuclear Command. To start with, how does New Delhi deter a terrorist group, ostensibly a non-state actor, from doing what it has vowed to do — annihilate India using the ultimate terrorist weapon? Fundamentally, a non-state actor is existentially non-deterable.

After 26/11 and other cross-border misadventures, Pakistan has lost the fig-leaf of deniability vis-à-vis state linkages with terrorist groups it calls strategic assets. India and other potential victim states of nuclear terrorism must hold the state responsible for the actions of its non-state groups. Obtaining a UN convention or resolution on culpability of states harbouring terrorist groups will be as difficult as securing an acceptable definition of terrorism. Saner and responsible states must keep trying to find links between terrorist groups and the host state, and create conditions of traditional deterrence.

Since 26/11, Union Home Minister P Chidambaram has been periodically stating that another major terrorist attack will invite a swift and decisive response (provided it is categorically established that it was launched from Pakistan is unstated). Another Kasab may not fall into the bag. Ultimately, it is Pakistan that has to be deterred through a clear declaratory policy outlining the consequences of actions by a non-state actor.

The Nuclear Security Summit was another opportunity for India to prove its bona fides as a responsible state with nuclear weapons outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty but yet following the rules of the non-proliferation regime. While Mr Singh announced the establishment of a global centre for nuclear energy partnership in New Delhi, Chinese President Hu Jintao said that his country would set up a centre for nuclear security. Not to be left behind, Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani offered to host an international fuel cycle service facility in Pakistan. A Pentagon study is examining the universalisation of 'No First Use' and a world without nuclear weapons.

In one of the 'Global Zero' models, delegitimisation of nuclear weapons and getting the US and Russia to reduce their weapon stocks to 1,000 each, and implementation of NFU are seen as pre-conditions for arriving at a start point aiming for 'Nuclear Zero'. At some stage, all states with nuclear weapons will be required to reduce their stocks to 100 bombs each. The alternative to numbers, the megatonnage of weapons, is also being considered, but numbers are likely to trump yields.

The 'Nuclear Zero' concept is not a bolt from the blue. Its illustrious pathfinders include Rajiv Gandhi who had put forward an ambitious action plan in 1988 for nuclear disarmament by 2010. Its more recent votaries are the 'Gang of Four': Former US Secretaries of State George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, former Defence Secretary William Perry and former Senator Sam Nunn, and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon with his five-point action plan. Just as chemical weapons were delegitimised, it is theoretically possible for nuclear weapons to be declared taboo.

The Australia-Japan sponsored International Commission on Disarmament has recommended that the US and Russia's stock of 23,000 nuclear weapons be scaled down to 2000 by 2025. It suggests that all nuclear weapon states declare NFU and reduce their weapon stocks proportionately when the US and Russia reach 1,000 each. As for the three elephants — India, Pakistan and Israel — outside the nuclear tent, it recommends that they be made to join the NPT but not as nuclear weapon states. As India will never get to enter the nuclear club as a nuclear weapon state, it must join the party bypassing the NPT but conforming to its non-proliferation regime.

India still has some time to review its position on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty till the US and China ratify it. Revisiting its nuclear policy of credible minimum deterrence in light of the threat of nuclear terrorism is urgently required. Iran held its own parallel summit with a catchy title: 'Nuclear Energy for All, Nuclear Weapons for None'. The next Nuclear Security Summit is to be held in South Korea in 2012. States are required to comply by an action plan that will make the world safer against a terrorist nuclear attack. Al Qaeda for a long time and Lashkar more recently are seeking nuclear weapons for use against the US, Israel and India. The threat of loose nukes or dirty bombs must be taken seriously by New Delhi, especially after Lashkar chief Hafiz Saeed's latest jihad over river waters.

Since the attack on Parliament House in 2001 and despite several pledges by Pakistani leaders that their soil will not be used for terrorist attacks on India, Mumbai happened. New Delhi has failed to get Islamabad to rein in the jihadis. The challenge for India is to thwart the ultimate preventable catastrophe by holding Pakistan responsible for any nuclear misadventure by so-called non-state actors.

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THE PIONEER

EDITORIAL

BEAUTIES HAVE BRAINS TOO

TRINA JOSHI

This refers to the article, "The towers of Ilium" by Sandhya Jain (April 27). The duel between former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi and Mr Shashi Tharoor that has exposed sleaze is rightly being associated with Ms Sunanda Pushkar, but mostly for all wrong reasons. And to project her as an argument in favour of not introducing the much-awaited Women's Reservation Bill takes the cake.

The point that seems to have fallen out of the writer's sight is that Ms Pushkar's fiancé — the former Minster of State for External Affairs — has not been dropped from the Government for knowing her, but for exceeding the bounds of probity. Mr Tharoor's personal life is no one's business. He may marry numerous times or with a person of any nationality. The reason Mr Tharoor is in the dock today is that he misused his public profile to favour Ms Pushkar.

The case in point is that a public figure's personal life does not become a matter of public interest unless he fails to maintain probity expected from a public servant. Mr Tharoor's relationship with a businesswoman is not objectionable. She may become his third wife by all means. But the fact that he used his influence that was intended to benefit his fiancée is prima facie a case of corruption. Had Ms Pushkar earned stakes in Rendezvous Sports World Consortium worth Rs 70 crore by the dint of her business skills despite being a Minister's friend, Mr Tharoor would have remained unscathed.

Further, to use Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav's argument against Women's Reservation Bill to pillory Mr Tharoor is absolutely meaningless. People against quota for women contend that their right to contest a particular seat is being violated. But it is no one's case that the Bill should not be passed as the women who enter Parliament through reservation may be those who get "whistled at". This argument only smacks of misogyny and lacks sensibility for two reasons: First, voters will not vote for somebody who is "locally rootless". Second, to say that women should not be given a chance because they get "whistled at" amounts to scoffing at the whole idea of women's liberation. Beauty and brain are not mutually exclusive.

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THE PIONEER

OPED

ROADS HAVE A STRATEGIC PURPOSE

THE FORMATION OF A NEW NATIONAL TRANSPORT DEVELOPMENT POLICY COMMITTEE WAS A LONG OVERDUE STEP. BUT UNFORTUNATELY IT IS LIMITED IN ITS STRATEGIC VISION AND LEAVES SECURITY AND GEO-SECURITY CONCERNS OUTSIDE ITS AMBIT. THE GOVERNMENT MUST GET RID OF THE PERCEPTION THAT TRANSPORT POLICY IS MERELY AN INSTRUMENT FOR FURTHERING ECONOMIC GROWTH AND NOT CRUCIAL FOR ENHANCING NATIONAL SECURITY CAPABILITIES, WRITES PRASHANT KUMAR SINGH

The recent announcement about the formation of a National Transport Development Policy Committee contains a curious paradox. While the shift towards a unified policy-making cutting across sectors — along with Planning Commission's metamorphosing role as a policy-making body — signify a gradual break from the shackled mindset of the past, the terms of reference and composition of the committee perpetuate a culture of policy-making devoid of strategic approach.

It is inexplicable that such a policy development committee, which will lay down a roadmap for guiding, shaping and managing policy-making in transportation sector for next two decades, can afford to leave the national security and geo-security concerns outside its ambit. This apathy is reflected in its omission of the Secretaries of Defence and Home Ministries or other internal security and defence experts. This lack of appreciation regarding strategic import of the national transport policy stems from Government's perception of transport policy only as an instrument for furthering economic growth and not for enhancing national security capabilities.

The lack of a strategic approach towards developing and maintaining an efficient, reliable and resilient transport network has cost us dear in the past and continues to do so even today. Consider the fact that the non-availability of proper roads in NEFA resulted in a logistical nightmare for Indian troops and contributed greatly to an ignominious defeat at the hands of Chinese in 1962; or more recently, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks demonstrated our inability to rapidly deploy an anti-terrorist force to major urban areas. Yet it's only 45 years after the Chinese debacle that we have started building roads and activating old airstrips in far flung regions. But we haven't seen any structural transportation solution for reducing response time in deployment of counter-terror forces across urban areas.

Likewise, a well-intentioned scheme like the Pradhan Mantri Grameen Sadak Yojana has created a fresh network of roads in the border areas of Rajasthan and Punjab without factoring in the strategic implications of these projects and unhinged the operational plans of the armed forces. In fact, throughout history, from laying of roads by the Roman Empire to digging of canals for trade and building of railway lines by the British to connect cantonments, there has been an acknowledgement of dual usage of transport network. Unfortunately, Indian policy-makers are yet to acknowledge the dual usage of transport infrastructure linked to the growing interdependency of national security capability and economic growth.

However, the formation of a new NTDPC —two decades after the last one — is an opportunity for guiding the policy development and subsequent implementation with a strategic approach. As a starting point, the composition of the committee needs to be broadened by including the representatives of all agencies involved in national security — external as well as internal — mainly the armed forces, the paramilitary and the State police.

The changing nature of modern warfare — asymmetric and urban centric — necessitates extensive usage of airports, waterways, roadways and railways by security agencies to practice drills and operate during actual emergencies. Even now, the implementation of the operational and logistical plans of military and paramilitary leads to tremendous surge in road and rail traffic and disrupts commercial and civilian traffic flow. Due to the huge deficit, existing transport infrastructure across the country is inadequate for exclusive military usage in the peripheral areas and for trade in the mainland area. Moreover, the usage requirement of any transportation network by security forces will grow in tandem with the increasing usage of that particular transport network for trade and commerce. Conversely, any transport network although primarily designed for meeting the operational requirement of security forces will increasingly be used by civilian population for trade, tourism and commerce, as seen in Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh and other border areas. These progressive requirements need to be factored in by the committee prior to framing policies for capacity augmentation of existing networks or planning alternative modes and routes.

A less understood and recognised concept by Indian policy-makers is the direct utility of roads in conferring an advantage to security forces vis-à-vis the insurgents in counter-insurgency operations, as observed by COIN experts all over the world. Counter-insurgency expert David Kilcullen has pointed out from his experience in Afghanistan that these advantages are manifold: Obvious secondary economic activities for the local populace; friendly forces can cover more ground on paved all weather roads, thereby, enabling fewer troops to cover a larger area, or to cover the same area more densely, so that a smaller force can secure a larger population base; denser road network allows convoys to move via multiple routes and thus makes them less predictable and harder to ambush, among others. The recent Dantewada incident has again highlighted the Naxal threat as the biggest challenge to the Indian internal security. Therefore it will be imperative for the transportation development policy-makers to take inputs from State police forces and paramilitary forces like the CRPF, which are actively engaged in fighting the Maoists, so that such a policy can be effective as a part of a broader coherent political-military strategy.

Finally, Indian ability to build and operate roads in Afghanistan has been an important diplomatic tool in increasing our strategic footprint and there is every reason for our national transportation development policy to think beyond our domestic concerns. For instance, by trying to scale up capacity for construction of roads beyond our borders, India can utilise this capacity for constructing roads in Myanmar instead of providing monetary assistance to the Myanmar Government for construction; a direct construction project under Indian management can accelerate road building efforts in Burmese territory to gain access to the ASEAN market, especially after signing of the free trade agreement in goods with ASEAN from January 1, by providing connectivity to the pan Asian highway.

At this stage in India's nationhood, the raison d'être of a national transport development policy committee should be to introduce changes which are bold in scale and scope as well as pragmatic, in order to enhance national well-being and power. The Government needs to exuviate timidity and hesitancy from its transportation policy development by acknowledging the primacy of its national interests. A self-imposed inhibited vision in policy development will forestall such a policy from realising its true strategic potential and, ultimately, defeat its very purpose.

 

 The writer is logistics and infrastructure specialist and comments on strategic affairs and development issues.

THE PIONEER

OPED

MOLE IN OUR MISSION

MADHURI GUPTA, ARRESTED FOR SPYING IN THE INDIAN MISSION IN ISLAMABAD, COULD HAVE PLANTED TRANSMITTING DEVICES AND TAPPED TELEPHONES, WRITES B RAMAN

Madhuri Gupta, Second Secretary in the Press and Information wing of the Indian High Commission in Islamabad, has been arrested on the charge of working for a foreign intelligence agency. She was called to New Delhi ostensibly on consultation duty in connection with the SAARC summit opening in Thimpu on April 29 and taken into custody after her arrival.

Apparently, she was not aware that she was under suspicion. If she was, she might not have come to New Delhi. Instead, she might have fled to some other country to escape arrest and interrogation as Major Rabinder Singh, an alleged mole of the Research & Analysis Wing, did in 2004.

 

It has been reported that Home Secretary GK Pillai, has confirmed her arrest. He has not given any other details. There are two possibilities — she was either working for Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence or for the intelligence agency of a Western country through its intelligence officer working under the cover of a diplomat in Pakistan. I would not rule out the second possibility. Western intelligence agencies, particularly the Central Intelligence Agency, had in the past tried to recruit Indian diplomats posted in Indian missions abroad through blackmail or offer of money or offer of resident status in their country. Gupta is reported to be an unmarried woman in her 40s.

The ISI normally uses money or blackmail for recruiting Indian diplomats posted in Pakistan. In the 1980s, when Rajiv Gandhi was the Prime Minister, the ISI had allegedly recruited a senior Indian armed forces attaché by trapping him with the help of an attractive woman in Karachi and then blackmailing him with her help. He was called back to India under some pretext and removed from the armed forces. He was not prosecuted.

If the allegations against her are correct, Gupta might have been recruited by the agency which was using her either as an information agent or as a service agent. An information agent consciously supplies intelligence to which he or she has access. A service agent facilitates an intelligence operation of the recruiting agency in various ways.

As a Second Secretary in the Press and Information wing, Gupta might not have had much access to sensitive intelligence. But, as she was working in the High Commission, she would have had access to various offices in the Indian High Commission for performing furtive tasks such as planting bugs in the offices of the High Commissioner and other diplomats, attaching transmitting devices for passing on the telephone conversations of the High Commissioner and others to the officer who recruited her, etc.

If she had been working as a service agent, she would have caused immeasurable damage by enabling the agency that recruited her to collect electronically a lot of sensitive intelligence. It would never be possible to quantify and assess the extent of damage caused by her. She herself would not know since she would be unaware what kind of intelligence had been going on to her controlling officer through the gadgets which she had planted in the Indian High Commission on his direction.

In the 1970s, a British woman was recruited by the Indian Embassy in Paris to work as a telephone operator. She had helped the MI-6, the British intelligence service, in clandestinely recording the telephone conversations of all Indian diplomats posted in Paris. She had caused considerable damage before she was detected and sacked.

The writer, a former senior official with R&AW, is a noted security expert.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

THE OPPOSITION SEEMS TO BE CUTTING ITSELF TO PIECES

 

THE pitfalls of having deals on the side, that take the sting out of a political challenge to the establishment on an issue of public importance, cannot be overstated. The Opposition's dare to the government, on bringing cut motions on fuel and fertiliser price hikes, has had an unfortunate outcome in that it has shown up the division in their ranks. The case of the Bahujan Samaj Party ( BSP) would perhaps rate as the most galling for some Opposition members.

 

Strictly speaking, the BSP cannot be regarded as an Opposition party as it supports the United Progressive Alliance from the outside.

 

But, the battle for political space in Uttar Pradesh gives that a lie. It's in this context that BSP supremo Mayawati's decision to back the government in the event of the Opposition- sponsored cut motions appears confusing.

 

To say that voting against the UPA would amount to backing communal forces is a specious argument. Ambiguous positions have also been adopted by the Samajwadi Party and the Rashtriya Janata Dal. It is difficult to see that these have any purpose other than bailing out the government.

 

Politicians should not use the platform that an election gives to parties to pursue personal agendas. It can be frustrating when individual considerations override the larger cause. In this case, a united opposition could have forcefully highlighted the price rise issue. That opportunity has been lost, again. It cannot be said loudly enough that a cynical disregard for ethical politics for the sake of survival at all cost — even though none of the Opposition parties had threatened to bring down the government over the cut motions— can only heighten the sense of disenchantment with the political class.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

CENTRE- STATE COOPERATION

 

THE Rammohan report on the Dantewada massacre of the Central Reserve Police Force personnel is said to have stated that the ' lack of coordination between the CRPF and the Chhatisgarh police' was the primary reason for the tragedy. Heads are bound to roll but the buck shouldn't stop there. Their failure is only reflective of the lack of coordination between the Central and the state governments, and an absence of strategic thinking on the part of both.

 

Paramilitary forces, according to the Home Minister, have been sent to assist the state in anti- naxal operations to regain control of the area. On that fateful day, 81 CRPF personnel were assisting one Chhatisgarh Police constable to clear the area. So much for centrestate coordination. Actually, the very deployment of the CRPF is a case in point.

 

Far from being a professional counter- insurgency insurgency force, CRPF is a crowd and riot- control force. Its personnel lack the training and mental preparation for countering the naxals.

 

The main reason for the deployment of the CRPF is that it doesn't disturb the delicate balance of centre- state relations.

 

The priorities therefore are political not strategic. If the naxals are to be tackled effectively, then both the Centre and the state government need to think strategically. Then they can, perhaps, learn to cooperate better on the ground.

 

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MAIL TODAY

COMMENT

NURTURE BRAND IPL

 

FOR all the problems that Indian cricket has been facing off the field in the last month or so, it is more than evident that the Indian Premier League has become one of the sport's success stories. Its estimated brand value is pegged at $ 4 billion and the final between Chennai Super Kings and Mumbai Indians was one of the most watched television events of the year. For sheer entertainment very few " shows" can beat the IPL. Admittedly, some of the best- run sporting leagues in the world – the NBA and NFL in the US, the English Premier League or the Serie A in Italy – have had their share of financial crises and personality- driven controversies.

 

Yet, they have sustained their respective leadership by the quality of the game they have managed to display to their audiences as well as to the rest of the world.

 

So, while the BCCI grapples with one of its worst crises ever, it must also realise that to sustain a positive image of the IPL itself is the administrators' biggest ever challenge.

 

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MAIL TODAY

     COLUMN

IN SPYING ON POLITICIANS WE'RE AS BAD AS THE ISI

BY MANOJ JOSHI

 

ON MONDAY, the National Technical Research Organisation celebrated its seventh birthday. I was not at the party, but I can guess that the atmosphere was not particularly celebratory. Suddenly an agency that should neither be seen nor heard, has become the centre of a scandal alleging that it had tapped the phones of four prominent politicians, including one from the ruling party.

 

There is something curious in the NTRO figuring in such a controversy. As is well known, the outfit is meant to gather strategic technical intelligence, so why was it involved in a tawdry wire- tap of politicians which is more up the Intelligence Bureau's alley? Or, in the way of spooks, are we being led down the wrong alley ? Though no one is saying it outright, fingers are pointing to M. K. Narayanan, the former National Security Adviser who was the supervisory authority over the NTRO and the IB in the period that the alleged malfeasance took place. Narayanan, a former IB officer has made great contributions to national security, but his real forte has been " political security", or gathering political intelligence for the party in power, in his case, the Congress.

 

Turf

Even so, it is worth asking why the NTRO and not the IB? The equipment in question and the taps were technologically trivial. Shohgi communications in NOIDA advertises its SCL- 5020 device capable of passive tapping of 16 two- way calls at a time. Such devices are now fairly routine with state police and central law enforcement bodies.

 

Is the NTRO being fingered to cut it down to size ? It is no secret that neither the IB, nor the R& AW really cottoned on to the idea of a dedicated high- tech agency from which they could task electronic intelligence. Indeed, in his years as NSA, Narayanan treated the agency as a step- child and it was only in the wake of the Mumbai attacks that its long- pending grants for high- tech equipment were cleared. What he did do was to place some top IB officers in the agency. One wonders whether these officers played a role in the impugned episode, if indeed the NTRO was actually involved.

 

The NTRO has been set up to deal with the larger challenge of technical intelligence which can range from what comes out of the internet to satellite imagery and missile tracking. While there is some overlap with what organisations like the IB, Aviation Research Center and the Defence Intelligence Agency do, the mandate was to set up an agency where expensive assets such as super- computers and high- end space- based sensors could be concentrated.

 

The average background of an NTRO staffer is technical and scientific and they are unfamiliar with the tactical world of intelligence which involves tapping individual phones. If someone has led them up the garden path, it is the duty of the government to find out what happened. It would be a travesty if the incident is used as a pretext to hobble the NTRO. The MHA has been planting all kinds of stories about how conversations could have been inadvertently recorded. This is not the way interception equipment works. In an area as large as two kilometers square at the heart of New Delhi, there are thousands of calls and SMSs floating around. A portable unit has a limited capacity to intercept conversations and its activities have to be focused on some pre- set telephone numbers.

 

The manner in which official agencies fight their turf battles can be ruthless and scary. There are three men in jail without trial for the last three years in the socalled socalled National Security Council Secretariat spying scandal. Some of the murky evidence suggests that they are there because they sought to create a computer network for sharing information on terrorism.

 

Afraid of losing its exclusive control on terrorism issues, the IB has railroaded the men.

 

Legacy

Telephone tapping in a democracy is always hazardous business, yet as we know it, it happens. Anyone, including the politicians whose phones were allegedly tapped believed that such things don't happen, is lying. At least three of the " victims" have held executive positions in the central and state governments and know that the police can and do tap phones.

 

This is especially true of Mr Advani the former Home Minister who, according to one former Intelligence chief, sought titbits of political information gleaned through taps every day.

 

Going by the legal position, only the Union Home Secretary and his counterparts in the states are authorised to order taps. The reality is somewhat different.

 

Taps take place all the time. Police officials simply lean on the telephone exchange personnel, and pay them off, to conduct what are technically illegal taps, intelligence officers simply do it without a byyour- leave, using equipment that leaves no traces in our digital age. So ubiquitous is the equipment, that a couple of private parties have also acquired it to dig dirt on their rivals.

 

There are three kinds of intercept activities.

 

The first is for fighting crime, espionage or terrorism. The second is linked to developing a picture of adversary military dispositions. The third, which is unique to India, is to keep the government of the day informed of the activities of the opposition and the key members of the government itself. You will recognise of course, the colonial legacy in this. In British times, the key function of the IB was to track the national movement. Telephone and telegraph taps and interception of letters formed an important part of their modus operandi.

 

Oversight

 

Unfortunately, 60 years or so after the British left, the IB hasn't quite gotten off this groove. For this, the current crop of political leaders is to blame. They are the people who should have shut down the political wing of the IB, but they have not because every government sees it as a crown jewel or talisman that enables it to ward off the Opposition or dissidents.

 

Sadly, on the matter of political use of the " agencies", there is only a difference of degrees between India and Pakistan; military leadership makes the ISI cruder than the IB or R& AW. Intelligence officers will vehemently deny any political intelligence gathering and insist that they work within legal red- lines and that phone intercepts are vital towards gathering evidence of terrorist crimes and warning of potential terrorist attacks. But other countries, too, face similar threats, yet they do not allow their intelligence services to impinge on the privacy of the ordinary individuals, leave alone politicians.

 

Tapping the phones of US nationals is prohibited in America. Permission only comes through a single judge Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. If he turns down the application, it goes before a review court. There are currently 11 such judges who are appointed by the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. Despite this, the Bush administration went ahead and tapped phones of US nationals after Nine- Eleven.

 

More than legal processes, countries like the US ensure that there is bipartisan political supervision of the dangerous powers that intelligence agencies have.

 

India is the only democracy in the world that has no such supervision.

 

Technical intelligence gathered through taps and other means is a valuable and vital means of protecting our democracy.

 

But its unchecked use can and will undermine our liberties.

 

Effective political control and direction of the intelligence services is vital for a healthy relationship between the dark world of intelligence and the society at large. It's high time such controls were instituted in India as well.

 

manoj.joshi@mailtoday.in

 

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MAIL TODAY

     COLUMN

MUMBAI MATTERS

DEEPAK LOKHANDE

 

SENA- MNS FIGHT OVER STATE'S 50TH ANNIVERSARY

AS the 50th anniversary of Maharashtra state approaches ( May 1), the Shiv Sena and Maharashtra Navnirmaan Sena are engaged in a duel. Fortunately for Mumbaikars, it's not a violent one. Shiv Sena for once decided to shed blood for a good cause. Over 25000 blood bags were collected on April 25, in an attempt to create a new world record for blood collection in a day.

 

The brainchild of Sena executive president Uddhav Thackeray, it truly tested the nerves of party activists. There were selfdoubts initially. All shakhas ( one each in Mumbai's 227 municipal wards) were assigned a specific target. They were to get willing donors, get them scrutinised before D- Day, and transport them to and from the blood collection venue. Sainiks, who are at ease with street politics, were a little uncomfortable with the thought of having to collect blood. A similar effort at the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation earlier last year had failed miserably as the party's own corporators did not and could not donate blood for various reasons.

 

This time, too, it looked as if the party would make a mockery of itself. Several shakha chiefs suddenly fell ill, wary of meeting the targets. But a determined top brass of Sena did not waver and, through its well- oiled Sthaniya Lokadhikar Samiti that has given jobs to many Marathi- speaking youth, achieved the target rather comfortably in the end. Some shakhas also lured donors with Rs 100 each to ensure that they got the numbers. But then, all is well that ends well.

 

A jubilant Sena then put up a poster in front of Sena Bhavan, its headquarters in Dadar, which is also close to its political archrival Maharashtra Navnirman Sena chief Raj Thackeray's residence. It mocked at Raj, without naming him. " Some broke their blood relations, some united with blood" it said in Marathi. Clearly, the target was Raj, who broke his family ties to create his own party that eventually hurt the Sena in the Lok Sabha and assembly polls.

 

The party has also planned a musical extravaganza on April 30 where Lata Mangeshkar, who was made a Rajya Sabha MP at the behest of Sena chief Bal Thackeray, will sing after a 10- year hiatus.

 

MNS, on its part, has begun its hunt for the best Marathi food maker. Being held at Andheri Sports Complex, the competition is aimed at bringing to the fore various food delicacies of Maharashtra ( no, vada- pav is not the staple food of Marathis, it's a fast food invented in the 60s). The food fest began on Sunday and will continue till Friday.

 

The Mumbai Congress, headed by Kripashankar Singh, has so far planned muted celebration of 50 years of Maharashtra.

 

There will be a musical event at Worli's Jambori Grounds. The Congress's lack of enthusiasm can be attributed to the party's reservations over the bifurcation of the bilingual state. It took years of struggle before the Congress- ruled Centre accepted the proposal to carve out Gujarat and Maharashtra in 1960. It is therefore not surprising that the Congress- led government in the state is not keen to celebrate the event either.

 

CM TURNS THE TABLES ON HIS FOES

BEFORE the state's budget legislature session began, Chief Minister Ashok Chavan was a beleaguered man. He was shaken by the Bachchan controversy and there were charges against him over the manner in which he gave away 102 acres of land in the heart of Pune when he was the Revenue Minister. The NCP ministers were enjoying themselves at his expense.

 

But by the end of the session, it was Chavan's turn to smile as senior NCP ministers were left to explain charges laid at their door.

 

BJP legislator Devendra Phadanvis produced a CD in the state assembly that showed horse trader Hasan Ali,

accused of stashing billions of dollars in Swiss accounts, being interrogated by the police.

 

Ali claimed in the CD that he had met Home Minister R R Patil, then CM Vilasrao Deshmukh and Sonia Gandhi's political advisor Ahmed Patel over the appointment of Hasan Gafoor as Mumbai's police commissioner. He also said that deputy CM Chhagan Bhujbal had enjoyed his hospitality at Madh Island in Mumbai's suburbs.

 

It was a curious coincidence that all those named in the CD, are Chavan's political adversaries ( except for Ahmed Patel).

 

Patil ordered a CID inquiry that gave him a clean chit and Bhujbal vehemently denied the charges.

 

Towards the end of the session, BJP rocked the house alleging a Rs 500 crore scam in the sale of a central- Mumbai plot for a paltry Rs 15 crore. Again, the target was an NCP minister, Sunil Tatkare.

 

The NCP is not amused at all.

 

Expect some fireworks against Chavan in the coming days.

 

GADKARI'S TONGUE TOO LETS HIM DOWN

BJP president Nitin Gadkari has found out soon how lonely it is at the top.

 

While in Mumbai, he was asked if the rising mercury will affect the BJP's protest rally in Delhi and a boastful Gadkari had remarked that it was the crowds and not the mercury that would break records. Unfortunately for Gadkari, the mercury took its toll on him and it was the BJP chief who almost broke the stage.

 

Oops! Journalists were also chuckling when he mentioned how he was saving about a thousand bucks by getting his vegetables directly from Nagpur. So, they asked BJP activists at the media conference if the new programme of the party involved transporting one's own vegetables.

 

His choice of words while criticising opponents has been peculiar, too. In Mumbai, during his discourse on the price rise before the national channels, Gadkari said UPA's promises of checking inflation were ' foknad', a slang in Gadkari's Vidarbha for bluffing, and the local BJP leaders were seen hiding their faces.

 

' GHATI' ON ITS WAY TO BECOMING A NO- NO

MURZBAN Shroff, writer of Breathless In Bombay must never have thought that the title of his collection of short stories, will return to haunt him, quite literally. With one case after another against his book, Shroff is running from court to court, leaving him terribly short of breath.

 

Shroff's book was published by St Martin's Press in the US in 2008 and has since earned rave reviews, besides being short- listed for the 2009 Commonwealth awards. It has also earned him a headache since a private complaint was filed by a local activist Vijay Mudras accusing Shroff of hurting his sentiments by the use of the word ' ghati' in the book.

 

Ghati literally means those from the Ghats.

 

While the word in itself is not derogatory ( Mudras claimed it is), it is the manner in which it is used that can be. For instance, migrants from Uttar Pradesh take offence if they are called bhaiyya , or those from Andhra get offended if they are called Madrasi ( those from Madras). Not all Maharashtrians are ghatis . But then, that's a different matter altogether.

 

Fortunately for Shroff, the police found no substance in the complaint and recommended the closure of the case. The local magistrate, however, ordered further investigations.

 

Shroff moved the high court which is now hearing the matter, and going by its observations so far in the case, there is hope for Shroff at the end of a dark tunnel.

 

There is also a case of obscenity, filed in Kodaikanal, over the same book and Shroff is convinced there is a pattern in the cases filed against him.

 

" Quite clearly, the motive is to harass me. The complainant has taken words out of context. There will be a hero and a villain in a film. Will you say that the villain represents the director or the writer?" asks an exasperated Shroff.

 

deepak. lokhande@ mailtoday. in

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

HEARING AID   

 

The government has flatly denied that telephone calls of politicians had been tapped, as alleged by a news magazine. Home minister P Chidambaram has said in Parliament that the government had not authorised any telephone tapping of political leaders. Both the prime minister and home minister have also brushed aside calls by opposition members to set up a joint parliamentary committee to probe the matter. The government's assurance does not however settle the issue, particularly on questions related to the privacy rights of citizens.

Intercepting electronic communication has been a staple of intelligence agencies since Word War I. In India, following the Kargil war, a government-appointed committee recommended a separate organisation specifically for signal intelligence. This led to the setting up of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), which is at the centre of the current controversy for having allegedly taped conversations of several prominent politicians. The NTRO has the capability of intercepting cellphone and landline conversations as well as all forms of electronic transmission, including SMSs and chats. Most importantly, it has systems that can track conversations within a range of 2-3 km without even approaching telecom companies.

Obviously, this is a very powerful tool. Such recording devices are at the forefront of preventing and investigating terror attacks. But if used indiscriminately it raises serious issues of invasion of privacy, both for individuals and groups. What's worrying is that there are no legal provisions to regulate such acts. The Telegraph Act and the Information Technology Act don't have guidelines for interception and monitoring that don't go through service providers.

Clearly this is an issue that's not going to go away. In an age of global terrorism, electronic surveillance is going to play a major role in preventing terror acts. At the same time, there is a need to keep in mind every citizen's right to privacy. Most democracies have evolved rules to balance surveillance needs with democratic principles. India must do the same. One possible solution is to have an oversight mechanism for intelligence agencies and guidelines on when they can be allowed to tap conversations. There must also be a clear chain of command as to who can authorise such acts, which must be adhered to. This might require new legislation or amendments to existing laws. In addition, major political parties must come to a consensus on when such snooping is permissible. Otherwise we could well see new technology being used to spy on rivals and to settle scores.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 COMMENT

BOTTOM OF THE PYRAMID

 

The UID project has a new name: Aadhaar, which means support. The chairman of the project said the name was chosen because it could effectively communicate the scheme's "transformational potential and its promise to residents".

The scope of the UID project is immense. It seeks to give each Indian citizen a 16-digit unique number beginning February next year, which should help people access state-sponsored welfare schemes more easily. As for the government, the UID project could help to streamline its delivery systems. The challenge is to make sure that Aadhaar delivers on the promise. Welfare schemes in India flounder for many reasons. A major reason is that delivery systems fail to reach the intended beneficiaries. Needy citizens face difficulties in convincing state agencies that they ought to be the real beneficiaries. Middlemen compound the problem. So, ration cards are forged and signatures manipulated leading to massive corruption in welfare programmes as varied as the public distribution system and the national employment guarantee scheme.

Hopefully, Aadhaar will change all this. A foolproof identification system would ideally help both the government as well as the citizen. Welfare policies like direct cash transfer to the poor could be implemented if a UID number could be connected to a bank account. Such schemes have helped countries like Brazil to reduce the number of poor people substantially and quickly. However, India's experience in issuing identification documents even to niche groups has been far from satisfactory. Care must be taken to ensure that Aadhaar cards, unlike say PAN cards for income tax assessees, are easy to obtain and foolproof.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

 EDITORIAL

OPEN AND SHUT

JUG SURAIYA

 

A reader from Meerut, a teacher, has written in expressing her dismay at the arbitrary step taken by the local authorities to shut all schools - both private as well as state-run - for an unspecified period of time because of the heat wave that the area is currently experiencing, as are many other parts of the country. As the Meerut citizen points out, we live in a tropicalcountry: it shouldn't come as a surprise that it's going to get hot in summer. But does that mean that every summer, normal, everyday life - of which education is, or ought to be, an integral part - should be indefinitely suspended? As it is most schools in India shut for almost two months in summer.

 

If you factor in further ad hoc closures because of the weather, the effect on our educational system - already burdened with a myriad systemic problems - will be disastrous, as the teacher from Meerut says.

 

Painful to accept as it is, Meerut officialdom's peremptory order to shut schools shouldn't cause surprise: it is typical - or symptomatic, if you like - of the functioning of the sarkar at almost every level of the Indian state.

 

Libertarians often say that good governments are those which govern least. What this really means is that the government's job - in a democracy, at least - is to be a facilitator, or regulator, and do everything in its power to help citizens get on with their lives and pursuits with the minimum of sarkari obstruction or interference. In other words, a truly democratic government is one that is an enabler: one that imparts a can-do attitude to the polity. A government which - to paraphrase Barack Obama - says 'Yes, you can' to its citizens. Tragically, more often than not, our sarkari policies reflect an attitude that is the exact opposite of this: a negative, or can't-do approach in almost all its dealings with the public, with us.

 

A can't-do attitude is much easier to enforce than a can-do one. It is much easier to shut a school - temporarily or otherwise - than to ensure that there are basic amenities like electricity, to keep it open. It is much easier to make smoking in public places a can't-do, than to make access to at least primary healthcare a can-do for all citizens.

 

The IPL exposes have, among other issues, raised the question about the legalising of gambling, which would earn the government much-needed revenue, which right now accrues to local mafias. Barring a few exceptions - such as horse racing in some centres, and 'offshore' casinos in Goa - the sarkar has banned gambling. Gambling is one of the many can't-dos that the sarkar foists on us. Why? Because gambling is supposedly an un-Indian activity and injurious to our ancient culture. Which means that the Mahabharat - in which gambling plays a pivotal role - was probably authored by a prototype of Pakistan's ISI.

 

As 26/11 and the many terrorist attacks before and after have shown, our intelligence and security agencies can't enable citizens to be free of threat. Instead of saying 'Yes, we can and shall protect you', what do the sarkar's representatives say? The Delhi police have already announced that on the opening and closing days of the Commonwealth Games all the major markets in the capital will be shut for security - or rather, insecurity - reasons. Not, 'Yes, you can go out because we'll protect you', but 'No, you can't go out, because we can't protect you'.

 

The sarkar's simple solution to all problems - from heat to terror - is to shut down things, from schools to markets. To follow the can't-do line of least resistance, rather than to at least try to find a can-do solution. The only thing the powers that be have demonstrated that they can do, is to perpetuate themselves. That is the single can-do exception of an otherwise resolutely can't-do sarkar.

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

IT'S COMMON WEALTH

BORIA MAJUMDAR

 

The countdown has started. With a little under six months left for the Delhi Commonwealth Games (CWG), India's fight with the clock is on. And because of its practical and political value, Delhi 2010 has become a highly sought-after commodity, the long term impact of which hinges not only on what happens during the Games, but more appropriately on the legacy it will leave behind.

India is almost ready to offer the world's athletes a first-rate Games village alongside first-rate facilities for most sporting competitions. Barring the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, construction of which has also picked up pace in recent months and the S P Mukherjee swimming complex, most venues are set to stage the test events leading up to the Games. The two venues mentioned are also likely to be ready before the country faces the world's cameras come August 2010 when the final countdown will start.

 

More than venues or the Games village, it is our urban infrastructure and the issue of community integration that appear to be of paramount importance in the time remaining. With Sheila Dikshit and Jaipal Reddy giving assurances on the issue of infrastructure, the government has been given the benefit of doubt. But, on the issue of community integration, the verdict is out: Delhi has a lot to catch up on.

One of the questions posed by the public is: whose Games are these? Do they belong to the organising committee or the government of India? Or do they belong to the Indian people at large? If it's the latter, as should be the case, little has been done to give citizens the feeling that it is their event and that it is being organised to benefit them in the long run. Unless the effort to promote community integration is undertaken with immediate effect, the legacy of Delhi 2010, it can be surmised, can be mixed at best.

Studies around Delhi and the National Capital Region help demonstrate that the ordinary taxpayer, whose money is being used to fund the Games, is still in the dark about most things pertaining to the mega event. For him, it is an exercise in opulence with little or no benefit in the longer term. Most believe that the sports facilities being created will never be within the reach of the common man and the problems facing them on a daily basis will far outnumber the gains promised.

While Delhi residents haven't yet raised the slogan "We want bread not circuses" of Toronto citizens in the 1990s and one which derailed that city's Olympic bid in 1996, they are smarting under the impact of the entire city being dug up. Hence they seem opposed to the biggest event in India's sporting history. Unless the organising committee is successful in winning people's confidence, the emotional connect so necessary in ensuring a successful Games legacy will be extremely difficult to achieve.

The other key element is how a mega event of this nature can finally create a sports culture in India. Can CWG 2010 create a rallying cry of 'sport for all' in all parts of India or will sport continue to be a haven for the rich? The notion of sport for all was certainly part of the Delhi 2010 vision which states, "More than all, the legacy of the XIX Commonwealth Games 2010 Delhi will be to boost...sports culture as a part of the daily life of every Indian, particularly the youth." However, the ground reality is somewhat different. With the stakeholders under incessant pressure to ready infrastructure on time, the vision of sport for all has receded into the background.

This inability to promote sport among the nation's youth becomes extremely pertinent in light of the observations of leading sports historian Bruce Kidd. He affirms that "despite the widespread 'intuitive' expectation that inspiring performances stimulate new participation, there is no evidence that they automatically lead others in the general population to do so, let alone in ways that address the most difficult challenges of development". Research demonstrates, he argues, that unless those inspired enjoy full access to sustainable programmes with safe, adequate facilities and conducted by competent, ethical leadership, the take-up - and the resulting benefits from mega events is short-lived and ineffective.

These observations are extremely relevant when applied to the legacy of the 1982 Asian Games in Delhi. There's little doubt that Delhi was fundamentally transformed as a result of that event. But it can definitively be asserted that the legacy of the Asian Games remains negative when viewed in terms of nurturing an all-pervasive sports culture in India. This is a drawback that helps explain why India has won one solitary individual Olympic gold medal in all these decades.

Knowing full well that the tremendous effort and cost of staging a major sporting event need to go along with the realisation of a sustainable legacy for sport, Delhi needs to step up and set an example. Only if this is done can Delhi serve as a perfect model of what the CWG could achieve if the facilities constructed for it are properly harnessed for the city's development.

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

 

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THE TIMES OF INDIA

'DOMESTIC WORK IS NOT SEEN AS A REAL OCCUPATION'

MEENAKSHI SINHA

 

Reiko Tsushima is senior specialist, gender equality and women workers' rights, International Labour Organisation, sub-regional for South Asia. She speaks to Meenakshi Sinha about the condition of domestic workers worldwide, especially India:

What is the current state of domestic workers (DWs) worldwide, especially India?

Domestic work absorbs a significant proportion of the total workforce that includes 4-10 per cent of the total employment in developing countries and 1-2.5 per cent in industrialised countries. Out of these, about 90 per cent of them are women. In India, there's growing prevalence of domestic work: it has grown by 222 per cent since 1999-2000. NSS Data (2004-05) states that there are 4.75 million DWs in India. Nearly 90 per cent of them are again, women. They account for more than 12 per cent of the women workers in urban India.

What are the main concerns of a domestic help today?

The greatest challenge is that domestic work is not seen as a 'real' occupation. DWs are not covered under any legislation. About 84 per cent workers in urban areas and 92 per cent in rural areas get wages much below the minimum wage. Only five states in India have notified minimum wages so far. DWs are unable to demand/negotiate decent wages, proper working conditions, weekly offs, time for rest, privacy etc.

The foremost task is to treat domestic work as 'real' work. Statistical details about them need to be compiled with greater accuracy. Society must be encouraged to recognise their importance and contribution to the economy. To this effect, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) is working closely with trade unions to establish their organisational strength and enhance their negotiation power. India's ministry of labour and employment, in collaboration with the Delhi government and ILO, has started a skill development initiative for DWs in Delhi. So far, 350 DWs have been trained in the level 1 training and around 5000 more would be trained soon.

What kind of collaboration does the ILO have with DWs?

ILO is partnering with large central trade unions to unionise DWs. A pilot project is underway and is showing good progress. In a recent national consultation organised by the ILO, participants from leading trade unions such as AITUC, INTUC, HMS, BMS and SEWA made draft recommendations, which will help formulate the final recommendations. These will be raised by the Indian delegation at the upcoming International Labour Conference in Geneva in June 2010.

How important it is to have a legislation for DWs?

A legislation that addresses the rights of DWs is indispensable today. A draft Bill has been proposed by the NCW to regulate the conditions of domestic work. It highlights the needs for definition, working conditions and employee benefits, regulation for placement agencies to prevent exploitation, violence and sexual harassment cases. There's also a suggestion to include DWs in the existing labour legislations, such as Minimum Wages Act, 1948, Maternity Benefit Act, 1961, Workmen's Compensation Act, 1926, Inter State Migrant Workers Act, 1976, Payment of Wages Act, 1936, Equal Remuneration Act, 1976, Employees State Insurance Act, Employees Provident Fund Act, Payment of Gratuity Act, 1972. Legislations have been formulated for DWs across the world in countries like South Africa, Hong Kong, China, Spain etc. Apart from addressing gaps in legislations, the mindset of society needs to be changed.

 

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

TAKING A BOW-WOW

 

The world of humans, as many mutts already know, mirrors the one inhabited by dogs. In a week that marked the ferocious nature of a man-eat-man world, it's heartening to know that in Tamil Nadu, Hot Dog, a Labrador, became India's first canine blood donor. An initiative by the Tamil Nadu Veterinary and Animal Sciences University, the country's first blood bank for dogs brings good news for both the animals and their best friends, their owners, who till now had to run from kennel to post to get a matching blood group in emergencies. Come to think of it, Dharmendra, that handsome old dog with a thirst for canine blood, will no longer have to go chasing poor ol' strays to make good on his promise. On the same day, there was good news from the north of the Vindhyas, when the Chandigarh administration apologised for calling the city's slum children "slum dogs". India's canine leadership is yet to make a statement but we can bet our lead collar that it'd be happy. The demand for Danny Boyle's Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire to be renamed according to the novel it was based on, Vikas Swarup's Q&A, however, is yet to be resolved.

Across the water bowl in America, like the bipeds, dogs have a different kind of dog's life too. While in India, kuttas are moving up the canine development index, in New York, the smart set is getting ready to poodle their nights away at the Fetch Club, a 3,000-foot indoor canine club that is scheduled to open in June. Apart from spa baths, mud masks and facials, the funky dogs in the city that never naps will also have a doggie disco to shake all four of their legs in.

For $35 an hour, human owners in New York and for a lot less, their counterparts in India, can now jolly well feel good that a dog's life is, well, getting more and more bearable. It seems that no longer are dogs barking up the wrong tree.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

FEW FACTS OF THE MATTER

 

The facts are still up in the air regarding both the phone-tapping case and the Indian Premier League imbroglio. But the Opposition has been more than vocal in demanding a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) to probe both issues. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has a point when he says that a JPC is 'serious business' and that it doesn't seem to be warranted in the present situation. There are no fixed criteria for constituting a JPC but, by and large, it has always been set up when public interest is affected or public functionaries are involved. The three significant JPCs that come to mind are those on Bofors, the 1992 stock market scam involving Harshad Mehta and the 2001 stock market scam involving Ketan Parekh. In the latter two instances, small and medium investors were badly hit, in the first taxpayers' money had to be accounted for. In all cases, including the JPC on contaminated groundwater usage by cola companies, the underlying issue was that of errors of governance.

The Opposition, in its haste to secure quick action — and get brownie points — is going about things all the wrong way. First, it is incumbent upon the Opposition to make out a convincing case for constituting a JPC. All we see is a total disruption of parliamentary proceedings. Second, the JPC involves an elaborate process both in setting it up and in going about its task. The results could take a few years by which time all these issues will be history and no one will really care about the outcome. The track record of previous JPCs has not been encouraging. In the Bofors case, nothing came of it. In both the stock scams, the governments of the day didn't seem interested in taking forward the findings or bringing the guilty to book. In many ways, the JPC is a brahmastra, to be unleashed when all other avenues of investigation fail. The manner in which it's being bandied about suggests that no sooner is it set up, we will have all the answers we're looking for.

To say that the IPL affects public interest is stretching things. People's love for the game and its undermining does not necessarily amount to shortchanging the public in any substantial or justiciable manner. The fact that ministers are under the scanner also raises the question of the impartiality of a JPC comprising elected representatives and ministers. The best way for the Opposition to go about building a case for a JPC would be for it to engage in debate in Parliament — instead of stalling proceedings — and painstakingly present the facts that will make it difficult for the government to prevaricate on the issue.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

TASTE OF THINGS TO COME

SUJATA KELKAR SHETTY

 

Food security is currently being much discussed in the context of the proposed National Food Security Bill. Food security is the consistent access to safe, sufficient and nutritious food so that the basic dietary needs are met to ensure an individual can lead a healthy life. Food activists justifiably argue that the proposed 25 kg rice per person per month is insufficient and that it be given only to families that fall below the poverty line (BPL) is inadequate.

Then there is the problem of legislation not being followed with efficient and cost-effective implementation. Our delivery systems need an overhaul. Each of these issues requires serious consideration. But there is a fundamental tenet of food security missing when it is defined simply in the context of availability of grain.

Adequate nutrition and adequate food are inextricably linked and considering food as a hunger-satiating agent doesn't make for an adequate definition. Food should be nutritious so that it promotes growth and development and maintains overall physical and mental health of people both young and old. In children, maximum development of cognitive, social, emotional and physical skills takes place during the first six years and a lack of sufficient nutrition can adversely affect the development of basic skills.

Insufficient nutrition is a combination of a macronutrient and a micronutrient deficit in the diet. Conceptually, the former refers to the total calories gleaned from carbohydrates, fats and proteins in the diet, while the latter refers to the essential vitamins and minerals such as vitamin A, zinc, iodine and iron. Deficiencies in both can permanently stunt overall development of the subject.

Currently, our rates of vitamin A deficiency in under-5 children  are the worst in the world. Fifty-seven per cent of our children are deficient in vitamin A and our statistics for iron deficiency are 69 per cent. Thirty-three per cent of our children suffer from iodine deficiency. The consequences of these numbers are profound with 330,000 children dying every year due to vitamin A deficiency. The growth of 42 per cent of children in India is stunted because of zinc deficiency. And more than 6 million children are born mentally impaired because of iodine deficiency.

The Micronutrient Initiative (MI) is an international non-profit organisation that has been working on cost-effective programmes to alleviate micronutrient deficiencies around the world. It has initiated projects of both supplementation and fortification in various states in India. Through such a programme in 2007, 70 million doses of vitamin A were administered to children in 12 states by a partnership between Unicef and MI. Vita Shakti TM, a supplemental powder containing folic acid, iron and vitamin A, is currently being used in school-feeding programmes in West Bengal.

The MI has also developed nutri-candy, a lozenge that contains 50 per cent of a child's daily requirement of vitamin A, vitamin C and iron. The candy has been tested in a pilot study in certain districts of Haryana and West Bengal and the results showed more than 15 per cent reduction in anaemia and vitamin A deficiency with a simultaneous and substantial increase in school attendance in both states.

India Mirconutrient National Investment Plan for 2007-2011 (IMNIP) was developed by MI at the behest of the government to understand the financial and programmatic requirements of tackling micronutrient malnutrition on a large scale. The plan was prepared as a joint endeavour with various stakeholders including the government and the private sector. The plan took into account the infrastructure and government programmes that are already operational.

According to Imnip, tackling micronutrition requires an additional investment of just Rs 5.40 per capita per year by the Centre. But if we take no initiative, the cost to our GDP from micronutrient deficiencies will shoot up by 50 times at
Rs 284 per capita. So the maths and the science make obvious what needs to be done. Whether the government will follow up is the question.

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

CRACK THE DRESS CODE

NAYANJOT LAHIRI

 

Just when you think that things will get serious, suddenly they become absurd. On April 1, the Right to Education Act was implemented, making school education a fundamental right for all children aged between 6 and 14. But rather than the finer points of that landmark act being debated, what hogged public attention were contestations about convocation robes.

The debate was sparked when Minister for Environment and Forests Jairam Ramesh chose to publicly discard the maroon and gold gown he was wearing at a convocation of the Indian Institute of Forest Management in Bhopal. Describing it as an impractical colonial relic, he asked: "Why can't we have a convocation ceremony in simple clothes?" The print and electronic media had a field day, carrying the views of vice-chancellors, students, politicians and people from all walks of life on whether the ceremonial gown should be abandoned or not. Discarding everything colonial, as many pointed out, would mean the end of parliamentary democracy, the postal system and the use of the English language itself.

Others highlighted less sensible elements of our colonial legacy, such as the code 'VT' — short for 'Viceroy's Territory' — which continues to be used as the registration code for aircraft in India. Among vice-chancellors, Laxman Chaturvedi of Guru Ghasidas University, the new central university in Chhattisgarh, declared that the state's traditional dress would be worn during its first convocation. This, incidentally, is what the Institute of Rural Management (Irma) in Gujarat does. Students and administrators wear handloom kurta pyjamas and angavastrams. Even the footwear is Kolhapuri and all of this serves to symbolise the institute's ethos and culture.

Irma, in this regard, has chosen to evoke the ethos that has been evident at the Visva-Bharati University in West Bengal for a much longer time. Visva-Bharati was founded in British India by Rabindranath Tagore. Tagore was not merely the first non-Westerner to be awarded a Nobel prize but he was also perhaps the first who used the proceeds from the Nobel prize money to found an institution of higher learning. At convocations at Visva-Bharati, neither the chancellor, who happens to be the Prime Minister of India, nor the vice-chancellor wears academic robes.

Will other universities discard this practice? It seems unlikely. And this is not because they haven't discarded colonial insignia. The first seal, for instance, of my employer, the University of Delhi, was marked by a splendid motto. 'Knowledge and Character' it said and, as an early university calendar explained, it intended to imply that: "No knowledge is worth the name which does not go to form character; the end of life is not knowledge but action."

However, the motto was written in Latin ('Scientia et Mores') and was marked by the Crown. So, after Independence, a proposal was mooted for a new university seal with another excellent motto. This time, it was transcribed in Sanskrit and the Devanagari script — 'Nishtha, Dhriti, Satyam', which translates as 'Loyalty, Courage, Truth'. This was mooted not by an Indian but by a Briton — Maurice Gwyer, vice-chancellor of Delhi University from 1938 to 1950.

But the reason why convocation robes are unlikely to be discarded has to do with the fact that, unlike the Latin lingo and the Crown insignia, they are not particularly alien to our practices. We Indians habitually 'dress up' for all manner of occasions, from festivals to weddings. I view with retrospective amusement my own wedding, which was a civil ceremony. While my husband wore a sober suit, the incongruity of decking up in an elaborate lehenga for a civil wedding did not bother me in the least.

Wearing academic robes at convocations, therefore, is simply another manifestation of this practice. It gels well with the norms that make 'fancy' dress so normal in India. In fact, if one goes by photographic testimony, we, at the University of Delhi, seem to enjoy our regalia much more than our predecessors in British India. All recent photographs show impeccably arranged mortarboards on the heads of the top rung of the university administration. In a 1930 photograph, however, both the vice-chancellor, Moti Sagar, and the pro-chancellor, Muhammad Habibullah, are wearing pagdis. Later too, Maurice Gwyer, as the traditional convocation photographs reveal, never covered his head with the stiff gold tasseled mortarboard. And, one suspects, in deference to him, nor did anyone else.

Academic clothes are also markers of university hierarchy. A hierarchy that reflects administrative power rather than academic merit and distinction. Faculty members who win academic prizes or become members of distinguished societies and academies do not form part of the convocation procession, but administrators do

And their clothes reflect their position.

So, at the University of Delhi, the deans of various faculties can easily be distinguished from the heads of department because their scarlet gowns are marked by gold lace. In much the same way, the chancellor's purple velvet gown features a four-inch gold lace, while the vice-chancellor must remain satisfied with a mere 'two inch' of gold lace on his gown!

Why should such markers of identity, of a caste system within academia, seem foreign to a people in whose lives so many other, and similar, markers of caste and difference can be observed?

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HINDUSTAN TIMES

DON'T GET SOFT ON ALIENS

 LEO HICKMAN

 

Has Stephen Hawking been rewatching his box set of the Alien movies? It would appear so, as his opinion of whether we should make contact with any alien life forms we discover in the future has suddenly hardened. According to a new documentary series he has made for the Discovery Channel: "If aliens visit us, the out- come would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

Hawking believes we would be well-advised to keep the volume down on our intergalactic chatter and do all we can to prevent any `nomadic' aliens moseying our way to take a look-see. Should they find us here tucked away in the inner reaches of the solar system, chances are they'd zap us all and pillage any resources they could get their hands on. Our own history, says Hawking, proves that first encounters very rarely begin: "Do take a seat. I'll pop the kettle on. Milk? Sugar?" "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, look- ing to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach," says the theoretical physicist in Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. "To my mathematical brain, the num- bers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

 

Any alien who manages to reach Earth is, by definition, going to be far more advanced than us. Contrary to the claims of our own alien abductees, Hawking thinks it unlikely aliens will come all this way just to prod and poke us, take some samples, and pop back home.

 

It's all well and good Hawking warning us now, but couldn't he have told us to be more careful a few decades ago? After all, we've been pumping out our musings for all to see and hear since the very first radio telecommunications were broadcast a century ago.

Any alien with their antennae pointed in our direction would already have quite a good sense of our intellectual capabilities. All they need do is take their pick from any of our cultural offerings being broadcast into the ether.

I'm with Stephen Hawking on this one. Even if we were to show to them we can calculate pi to a billion decimal places, aliens are bound to be trigger-happy when they meet us for the first time.

And given our past form, who would blame them?

Has Stephen Hawking been rewatching his box set of the Alien movies? It would appear so, as his opinion of whether we should make contact with any alien life forms we discover in the future has suddenly hardened. According to a new documentary series he has made for the Discovery Channel: "If aliens visit us, the out- come would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans."

Hawking believes we would be well-advised to keep the volume down on our intergalactic chatter and do all we can to prevent any `nomadic' aliens moseying our way to take a look-see. Should they find us here tucked away in the inner reaches of the solar system, chances are they'd zap us all and pillage any resources they could get their hands on. Our own history, says Hawking, proves that first encounters very rarely begin: "Do take a seat. I'll pop the kettle on. Milk? Sugar?" "Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, look- ing to conquer and colonise whatever planets they can reach," says the theoretical physicist in Into the Universe with Stephen Hawking. "To my mathematical brain, the num- bers alone make thinking about aliens perfectly rational. The real challenge is to work out what aliens might actually be like."

Any alien who manages to reach Earth is, by definition, going to be far more advanced than us. Contrary to the claims of our own alien abductees, Hawking thinks it unlikely aliens will come all this way just to prod and poke us, take some samples, and pop back home.

It's all well and good Hawking warning us now, but couldn't he have told us to be more careful a few decades ago? After all, we've been pumping out our musings for all to see and hear since the very first radio telecommunications were broadcast a century ago.
Any alien with their antennae pointed in our direction would already have quite a good sense of our intellectual capabilities. All they need do is take their pick from any of our cultural offerings being broadcast into the ether.

I'm with Stephen Hawking on this one. Even if we were to show to them we can calculate pi to a billion decimal places, aliens are bound to be trigger-happy when they meet us for the first time.

And given our past form, who would blame them?

 

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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

ETERNAL HAVENS

 

Last April, the leaders of the G-20 met and declared that "the era of banking secrecy is over." The G-20 meets again in a few weeks; what's happened in the interim? On paper, it looks like a lot of movement: of 42 jurisdictions originally listed as offenders, only 17 remain, and those are mostly small islands in the Caribbean or the Pacific. Certified as healthy (by the OECD): Monaco, Singapore, Switzerland, even Luxembourg — thanks to a series of agreements they signed with various countries on how to exchange tax information.

 

India, as a member of the G-20, is also supposed to move against tax havens. Indeed, our domestic politics made of it, in the interim, something of an issue. The importance of cleaning up shadowy corners of the international financial system and of broadening the scope of regulation are two of the most crucial lessons from the financial crisis of 2008. But any progress has stayed largely on paper. For example, to get off the OECD's name-and-shame list a country has to sign 12 bilateral Tax Information Exchange Agreements or TIEAs. Indian diplomacy should have ensured that for serious offenders, one of those 12 should have been with India; but that hasn't panned out.

 

The finance ministry is working on rectifying that now. A panel has been looking at how to shoehorn anti-tax haven measures into the proposed Direct Tax Code. Part of that process: identifying the countries that don't share information with India, and "analysing the reasons" for that lack of sharing. Here is one reason: we haven't signed treaties with them. It's easy for a Caribbean island to sign 12 TIEAs and get off the OECD list, for example, with other smaller countries — which don't have any significant deposits in their banking system. While a domestic effort to finally get on board with the system defined last year is worthwhile, the real lesson the finance ministry must draw is that the system the G-20 suggested last year is too weak. The TIEAs must compulsorily include some with the world's largest economies, particularly from the global South, which are most prone to capital flight. And, rather than requiring the provision of information on evasion "on request", India must make a real push, diplomatically, for "automatic" exchanges of information. Anything less, and we're still in the era of banking secrecy.

 

 

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INDIAN EXPRESS

 

ON DIFFERENT PAGES

 

Once the BSP had gone public with its intent to support the UPA on a cut motion in Lok Sabha, it was always expected to be smooth sailing for the government. Besides promising to stack the numbers comfortably for the UPA, the BSP's support also did enough to unsettle the SP and the RJD's politics, and thereby further diminish the possibility of seeing the government hanging tight on the slimmest of margins. And with the UPA emerging from this rarely used intervention with its majority intact, the opposition must consider whether the cut motion was worth the temptation to test the government's numbers in Lok Sabha. However, with the legislative business of the Budget Session of Parliament being bundled into its closing days, it is the government that must court bigger questions about its floor management.

 

Vast tracts of this session have been lost to serial adjournments, especially the last couple of weeks to shrill opposition demands for a joint parliamentary committee, first on cricket and then on allegations of phone-taps of politicians. How has it come to pass so early in the 15th Lok Sabha that the opposition is reaching for such extreme measures as a matter of habit? And how is it that having emerged from the 2009 general election with the confidence of having regained its political centre of gravity, the UPA is already struggling with a legislative backlog? These two questions underline merit in that old rule of the thumb: a smart government will have its way, will allow the opposition to have its say. It is, therefore, crucial for the democratic dividend of Parliament that the UPA invest in better floor management.

 

Floor management entails getting the opposition on board for smoother transaction of legislative business. That is the treasury benches' priority. And given the ways in which the opposition — even those numerically weak — can obstruct proceedings, this is won by keeping the conversation on across the aisles. This is why governments

 

depute their most networked ministers for the parliamentary affairs portfolio; consider Priya Ranjan Dasmunsi in UPA-I. Unfortunately, UPA-II has given the appearance of not even having the Congress party and allies on the same page in Parliament. Mamata Banerjee has gotten away with threatening parliamentary boycotts as shadow-boxing between her Trinamool Congress and the ruling Left Front in West Bengal. The DMK's M.K. Alagiri, a senior minister at the Centre, has been AWOL enough to earn intervention by the speaker. Any wonder then that there has been little effort to bring to Lok Sabha the opposition-government consensus shown during the Rajya Sabha vote on the women's reservation bill?

 

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

ETERNAL HAVENS

 

Last April, the leaders of the G-20 met and declared that "the era of banking secrecy is over." The G-20 meets again in a few weeks; what's happened in the interim? On paper, it looks like a lot of movement: of 42 jurisdictions originally listed as offenders, only 17 remain, and those are mostly small islands in the Caribbean or the Pacific. Certified as healthy (by the OECD): Monaco, Singapore, Switzerland, even Luxembourg — thanks to a series of agreements they signed with various countries on how to exchange tax information.

 

India, as a member of the G-20, is also supposed to move against tax havens. Indeed, our domestic politics made of it, in the interim, something of an issue. The importance of cleaning up shadowy corners of the international financial system and of broadening the scope of regulation are two of the most crucial lessons from the financial crisis of 2008. But any progress has stayed largely on paper. For example, to get off the OECD's name-and-shame list a country has to sign 12 bilateral Tax Information Exchange Agreements or TIEAs. Indian diplomacy should have ensured that for serious offenders, one of those 12 should have been with India; but that hasn't panned out.

 

The finance ministry is working on rectifying that now. A panel has been looking at how to shoehorn anti-tax haven measures into the proposed Direct Tax Code. Part of that process: identifying the countries that don't share information with India, and "analysing the reasons" for that lack of sharing. Here is one reason: we haven't signed treaties with them. It's easy for a Caribbean island to sign 12 TIEAs and get off the OECD list, for example, with other smaller countries — which don't have any significant deposits in their banking system. While a domestic effort to finally get on board with the system defined last year is worthwhile, the real lesson the finance ministry must draw is that the system the G-20 suggested last year is too weak. The TIEAs must compulsorily include some with the world's largest economies, particularly from the global South, which are most prone to capital flight. And, rather than requiring the provision of information on evasion "on request", India must make a real push, diplomatically, for "automatic" exchanges of information. Anything less, and we're still in the era of banking secrecy.

 

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

TREATING WASTE WATER FOR REUSE

RANESH NAIR

 

Water availability per capita in India is reaching critical levels, and with a much faster pace of urbanisation expected in the coming decades, treatment of waste water for returning to rivers and reuse in industry assumes great importance. Navi Mumbai has shown the way. Today the population of Navi Mumbai stands at 1.2 million, and is expected to double by 2031. As sewage in the city is projected to touch 425 million litres per day (mld), there is urgent need for planning to meet the challenge of treating growing waste water. In responding to the challenge, the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) holds out an excellent example for other cities in India.

 

Navi Mumbai was conceived as a "counter-magnet city" by the government of Maharashtra in the late 1960s. Land was converted from agricultural to non-agricultural use and developed by the City and Industrial Development Corporation (CIDCO) around the 39 villages which remained under the control of gram panchayats. In 1992, NMMC was established with an area of 108 sq km, including the five nodes developed by CIDCO and 29 out of the 39 villages.

 

The village lands which covered about 20 per cent of the area under the corporation were bereft of any civic amenities. Open defecation was the dominant practice. Sewerage lines were almost non-existent as the network covered only the nodal areas. There were only a few public toilets on village lands. Even in the developed nodes of Navi Mumbai, the old sewerage treatment plants were equipped only with pre-treatment facilities, as secondary treatment was not envisaged during the installation of these plants.

 

Partially treated as well as untreated sewage was typically released into Thane creek at a number of locations, mainly through storm water drains. This added to the enormous challenge posed by the industrial effluents, which also found their way into Thane creek, given the location of a large industrial belt in the area. As and when the sewage ended up in groundwater, it further contributed to the spread of diseases like gastroenteritis, hepatitis, asthma and allergy. All in all, it was a huge health hazard with bacteria, viruses, parasites and toxic chemicals playing havoc with the environment.

 

In the two-year period between 2006 and 2008, the NMMC completed three sewerage treatment plants (STPs) using the latest technology with biological treatment (sequencing batch reactor-based C-Tech technology) for treating waste water, using Rs 200 crore out of its own revenue surpluses. Two of the plants with a capacity of 100 mld each are located at Vashi and Nerul while the third is at Airoli (80 mld). The quality of the treated water from these STPs is better than the norms prescribed by the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board. The Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee conducted a performance evaluation of the STP at Nerul in 2008 and concluded that this plant is producing treated water which not only completely meets the Indian standards, but almost fulfils US EPA & California water recycling requirements for non-potable reuse standards.

 

The state-of-the-art technology used for sewage water treatment provides high treatment efficiency in a process that takes place in a single basin within which all biological treatment steps take place sequentially. It uses 50 per cent less land and consumes 50 per cent less power than conventional technologies. The use of complete computer controls and automation through SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) ensures that the sensors read precisely the level of impurities in the water and trigger the system to provide the right amount of oxygen for treatment, an additional advantage being that the system does not require constant operator attention.

 

The operation and maintenance of the three STPs has been outsourced to three different private companies for a period of three years, at a cost of around 1 per cent of the total project cost annually, and covered as part of the main contract. The operation and maintenance cost of Rs 1.5 per cubic metre is much lower than the amount that would be received by selling the treated sewage water. This provides an avenue for generating revenue for the NMMC, as more and more water is treated in the years to come.

 

Indeed, the corporation ventured forth on an integrated plan which will cover the entire municipal area with treatment plants using new technology, and will also put in place the network of pipes to achieve 100 per cent coverage. Since the developed nodes are already fully covered by a sewerage network of a 306 km long sewerage line connected to seven sewerage treatment plants, the city-wide sanitation strategy now calls for extending the network to the areas not so far developed. The integrated plan is being funded by JNNURM at a cost of Rs 353 crore and is expected to be completed by the end of 2011.

 

The increased spending on waste water treatment has gone hand in hand with an aggressive campaign on the part of the corporation to spread awareness of the importance of sanitation. From organising street plays on hygiene and sanitation to distribution of pamphlets with basic information and using electronic media to get the message across through local TV channels to the city dwellers, the corporation has been pro-active in preparing the citizens for demanding better amenities.

 

The NMMC has also built close to 350 low maintenance toilets. The cleaning, operation and maintenance of the public toilet blocks has been outsourced to eleven NGOs for a period of 30 years. All public toilets are sewered, and Navi Mumbai is a city free of open defecation. Vijay Nahata, municipal commissioner of NMMC, proudly pointed out that the corporation has been conferred with the "Best City Award For Improvement In Waste Water and Sanitation Services" by the government of India for 2009-10.

 

If Navi Mumbai can do it, so must our other cities.

 

Isher Judge Ahluwalia is the chair of ICRIER and chair of the high powered expert committee on urban infrastructure. Ranesh Nair is a consultant to the committee. Views are personal

 

postcardsofchange@expressindia.com

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

THE ONLY TABOO

 

Two months before 9/11, Comedy Central aired an episode of South Park entitled "Super Best Friends," in which the cartoon show's foul-mouthed urchins sought assistance from an unusual team of superheroes. These particular superfriends were all religious figures: Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Mormonism's Joseph Smith, Taoism's Lao-tse — and the Prophet Muhammad, depicted with a turban and a 5 o'clock shadow, and introduced as "the Muslim prophet with the powers of flame."

 

That was a more permissive time. You can't portray Muhammad on American television anymore, as South Park's creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, discovered in 2006, when they tried to parody the Danish cartoon controversy — in which unflattering caricatures of the prophet prompted worldwide riots — by scripting another animated appearance for Muhammad. The episode aired, but the cameo itself was blacked out, replaced by an announcement that Comedy Central had refused to show an image of the prophet.

 

For Parker and Stone, the obvious next step was to make fun of the fact that you can't broadcast an image of Muhammad. Two weeks ago, South Park brought back the "super best friends," but this time Muhammad never showed his face. He "appeared" from inside a U-Haul trailer, and then from inside a mascot's costume.

 

These gimmicks then prompted a writer for the New York-based Web site revolutionmuslim.com to predict that Parker and Stone would end up like Theo van Gogh, the Dutch filmmaker murdered in 2004 for his scathing critiques of Islam. The writer, an American convert to Islam named Abu Talhah Al-Amrikee, didn't technically threaten to kill them himself. His post, and the accompanying photo of van Gogh's corpse, was just "a warning ... of what will likely happen to them."

 

This passive-aggressive death threat provoked a swift response from Comedy Central. In last week's follow-up episode, the prophet's non-appearance appearances were censored, and every single reference to Muhammad was bleeped out. The historical record was quickly scrubbed as well: The original "Super Best Friends" episode is no longer available on the Internet.

 

In a way, the muzzling of South Park is no more disquieting than any other example of Western institutions' cowering before the threat of Islamist violence. It's no worse than the German opera house that temporarily suspended performances of Mozart's opera Idomeneo because it included a scene featuring Muhammad's severed head. Or Random House's decision to cancel the publication of a novel about the prophet's third wife. Or Yale University Press's refusal to publish the controversial Danish cartoons ... in a book about the Danish cartoon crisis. Or the fact that various Western journalists, intellectuals and politicians — the list includes Oriana Fallaci in Italy, Michel Houellebecq in France, Mark Steyn in Canada and Geert Wilders in the Netherlands — have been hauled before courts and "human rights" tribunals, in supposedly liberal societies, for daring to give offense to Islam.

 

But there's still a sense in which the "South Park" case is particularly illuminating. Not because it tells us

anything new about the lines that writers and entertainers suddenly aren't allowed to cross. But because it's a reminder that Islam is just about the only place where we draw any lines at all.

 

Across 14 on-air years, there's no icon South Park hasn't trampled, no vein of shock-comedy (sexual, scatalogical, blasphemous) it hasn't mined. In a less jaded era, its creators would have been the rightful heirs of Oscar Wilde or Lenny Bruce — taking frequent risks to fillet the culture's sacred cows.

 

In ours, though, even Parker's and Stone's wildest outrages often just blur into the scenery. In a country where the latest hit movie, Kick-Ass, features an 11-year-old girl spitting obscenities and gutting bad guys while dressed in pedophile-bait outfits, there isn't much room for real transgression. Our culture has few taboos that can't be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place.

 

Except where Islam is concerned. There, the standards are established under threat of violence, and accepted out of a mix of self-preservation and self-loathing.

 

This is what decadence looks like: a frantic coarseness that "bravely" trashes its own values and traditions, and then knuckles under swiftly to totalitarianism and brute force.

 

Happily, today's would-be totalitarians are probably too marginal to take full advantage. This isn't Weimar Germany, and Islam's radical fringe is still a fringe, rather than an existential enemy.

 

For that, we should be grateful. Because if a violent fringe is capable of inspiring so much cowardice and self-censorship, it suggests that there's enough rot in our institutions that a stronger foe might be able to bring them crashing down.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

VIEW FROM THE LEFT

MANOJ C G

 

IPL, the PM's fault

The Congress-BJP face off on the IPL mess — which has spawned demands for a JPC probe — has enthused the comrades. Sitting in the pavilion and enjoying the tug of war between the ruling party and the main opposition from the sidelines, the Left claims both the BJP and the Congress are equally involved in the scam.

 

The lead editorial in CPI mouthpiece New Age says the open fight between Shashi Tharoor and suspended IPL commissioner Lalit Modi broke out because of the latter's attempts to bribe and blackmail winners of the Kochi franchise on behalf of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. In fact the Tharoor camp had also propagated a similar version. So, in the CPI's words, the argument that only Tharoor was involved in the scam was not true: the Congress and the BJP are equally involved and so does some of the constituents of the UPA.

 

The CPI's real target was, however, the prime minister. It says though the latest exposures showed the ugly face of crony capitalism which the PM often denounces, he has not taken the IPL mess seriously. "We have already suffered a lot due to organised gambling at the stock markets, particularly due to FIIs. Manmohan Singh as finance minister in early 90s was responsbile for promoting this organised gambling. Now in his second term as PM, he will be remembered for promoting crony capitalism that he normally denounces just for the sake of it," the editorial concludes.

 

CPM's Salwa Judum

Interestingly, the CPM has accepted that the Communist version of Salwa Judum style anti-Maoist resistance groups propped up in Jangal Mahal area of West Bengal has managed to push the insurgents on to the backfoot. An article in the CPM's weekly organ People's Democracy titled "Maoists on the defensive in the Jangal Mahal" admits that there have been repeated confrontations between the "village resistance groups" and heavily armed Maoists of late and the insurgents are on the run.

 

The article lists out the results of the resistance. "The kangaroo courts are no longer in session; no killings trough these grisly affairs for the past three weeks. The indiscriminate general killing for purposes of spreading of terror is gone, at least for the moment. The targeted killing of CPM activists are becoming less frequent, but does continue. A bulk of the majority of the 'Maoists' leadership have fled the border 'terrain'. There are no longer comfy TV appearances, nor the 'thus spake Kishanji/Vikash'-kind of SMS messages to favoured journos. The village-level résistance grows every day, every night, every week, every month."

 

Gender and unions

A recent study by the International Labour Organistaion pointed out while there was a surge in the increase in women membership in trade unions, this was not adequately reflected in the leadership of either industry-level union or central trade union organisations. The CPI, it seems, has taken this finding very seriously. An article in New Age says it would be good if the trade union leaders at the central and state level become aware of this "problem" just as they had to realise the importance of attending to the problems of contract workers. "There need to be once in a year special sessions of, say, the national council of central trade unions which focus only on gender issues and its growing complexity. Possibly solutions will follow... Building women worker activists is a precondition for unions working on gender-sensitive issues as integral part of their thinking and action," the article says.

 

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THE INDIAN EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

THINKING OUTSIDE THE (FINANCIAL) BOX

 

Congress is consumed by the proposed legislation to overhaul the financial system, with lawmakers clashing over the best ways to regulate derivatives, protect consumers and end taxpayer-supported bailouts.

Here are a half-dozen bigger ideas; judge the merits for yourself.

 

End the Dollar's Supremacy

JOSEPH E. STIGLITZ

 

The housing bubble was inflated with vast sums borrowed from the rest of the world. Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz says the US should surrender some of its borrowing power by trying to end the use of the dollar as the primary international reserve currency.

 

The US basically borrows money by printing dollars and selling them, in the form of Treasury securities, to China and other governments that hold those dollars in their financial reserves. The US then uses the borrowed money to buy foreign goods, in effect, making it the world's largest recipient of foreign aid.

 

The inflow of foreign money also tends to create asset bubbles, such as the spike in housing prices, making the American economy much more vulnerable to disruption and crisis. If other nations no longer needed dollars, the United States would not be able to borrow money as easily. "Knowing that it would be more difficult to borrow might curb America's profligacy," Mr. Stiglitz writes.

 

Give Bankruptcy a Chance

THOMAS H. JACKSON

 

When Lehman Brothers went to bankruptcy court in September 2008 after the government refused to rescue it, credit markets froze. Lehman's disorderly collapse, conventional wisdom says, showed that bankruptcy courts could not handle huge financial failures, because they were too slow and were not designed to consider the intricate linkages that hold financial companies together.

 

The bills in Congress seek to design a federal "resolution authority" to arrange the orderly liquidation of giant financial companies. But Thomas H. Jackson, former president of the University of Rochester, says the panic was not caused by bankruptcy proceedings, but by letting Lehman fail in the first place. He calls for amending bankruptcy laws so that large, complex institutions could be fully dealt with in court. And regulators would be able to pull the trigger. "There's a lot to be said for a judicial process rather than a government agency process," says Mr. Jackson. The legal system is more predictable and transparent and better established.

 

Bonds Can Regulate Banks, Too

ROBERT C. POZEN

 

Many economists say that creditors, who determine how much banks can borrow and on what terms, are often better equipped than regulators to provide the market discipline that can keep banks from taking on too much risk. Unlike stockholders, bondholders have little to gain when banks take on risk in the hope of reward. What they want is a steady stream of income and the repayment of their loan; mutual funds, hedge funds and insurance companies have the time and resources to monitor their debtors.

 

Robert C. Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management, wants to require banks to issue an existing kind of bond known as long-term subordinated debt. "Subordinated debt is bought by very sophisticated investors who insist on conditions like capital requirements and covenants to make sure that banks don't take on too much risk," he says. Such creditors have interests closely aligned with those of government regulators.

 

Compound Interest 101

ANNAMARIA LUSARDI

 

A person borrows $100 at an annual interest rate of 20 per cent. How long does it take that debt to double? About four years. What share of American adults can figure that out? About one in three, says Annamaria Lusardi, an economist at Dartmouth College.

 

Ms. Lusardi wants to add financial literacy to high school curricula. A crisis sparked in part by the decisions of millions of Americans to take mortgage loans they could not afford has underscored her conviction that "lack of financial knowledge is alarmingly widespread."

 

"Just as reading and writing became skills that enabled people to succeed in modern economies, today it is impossible to succeed without being able to 'read and write' financially," writes Ms. Lusardi.

 

Take the Money Out of Banks

AURENCE J. KOTLIKOFF

Laurence J. Kotlikoff, an economist at Boston University, wants to dismantle the banking system. Instead of checking accounts, people would place money in all-cash mutual funds. Savings accounts would be replaced by short-term funds that make conservative investments. And people could also place money in more adventurous funds that made mortgage loans or played the market in derivatives.

 

It is a system designed to reduce risk taking by preventing banks from gambling with other people's money. Depositors now relinquish control when they place money in a bank. The institution decides how to use the money and it keeps the profits — or suffers any losses. Most banks also borrow large sums of money from investors to increase their lending and profits.

 

Under this model, called "limited purpose banking," banks would manage families of mutual funds. No more borrowing. No more gambling. Except for office space, computers and furniture, banks could not hold any assets. "Banks would simply function as middlemen," Mr. Kotlikoff writes.

 

Race to the Scene of a Disaster

ANDREW W. LO

 

When an airplane crashes, investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board race to the scene to determine what happened to avoid future disasters. There is no comparable federal agency to look into financial catastrophes. Andrew W. Lo, a finance professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wants the government to create a safety board for the financial industry. Unlike the current commission, this agency would be insulated from political pressure, staffed by professionals and able to criticise the government as well as businesses. "It is unrealistic to expect that market crashes, manias, panics, collapses and fraud will ever be completely eliminated from our capital markets," Mr. Lo said at a House hearing in October. "But we should avoid compounding our mistakes by failing to learn from them."

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

 RATIONALISE GAS PRICES

 

Government should let the market perform price discoveryThese columns have consistently argued for deregulation in the pricing of petroleum products, with fiscal and environmental considerations being the most persuasive factors. But consistency of the regulatory regime is integral to reaping advantage from such considerations. After all, so many variables in the petroleum mix have a volatility that's beyond Indian administrators' control. There is the global demand, equity prices, the dollar, the war factor and indeed the compliance of Opec itself—anything can spin positions off the predicted track. As far as bringing administered prices closer to market dynamics is concerned, we welcome petroleum minister Murli Deora's recommendation that the price of natural gas charged from power and fertiliser producers should be doubled immediately. But just three months ago, the minister was arguing that price increases should take place gradually over three years. An obvious explanation for the shift is that the finance ministry's advice has taken its toll. The finance ministry said that "it did not consider it necessary that it should take three years to increase the consumer price for power and fertiliser to the level of market price." Why should gas produced by ONGC and Oil India Ltd from fields given to them on nomination basis (called APM gas) not be sold at rates equivalent to those charged for gas produced from Reliance Industries' KG-D6 fields?

 

The finance ministry, let's remember, has also been pushing reforms in pricing petrol and diesel far more aggressively than the petroleum ministry. If the latest Deora statement reflects the fact that the two ministries are finally getting on the same page, this is a welcome development. The opposition is sure to bay for blood, given that it has already been pursuing cut motions against petrol and diesel price increases. Political considerations kept the UPA government from exploiting a golden opportunity for freeing fuel prices when they had dropped below $50 a barrel. Hopefully, fiscal conditions will keep it from acting with similar cravenness this time around. Signs suggest that the government is desirous of encouraging the integration of the highly fragmented domestic gas market, where different prices prevail for different producers and consumers. For example, the price of APM gas is $2.2 per million British thermal unit (mmbtu), gas from pre-Nelp blocks costs $5 per mmbtu, gas from Reliance Industries' KG-D6 Nelp block is priced at $4.2 per mmbtu and spot LNG at $6-7 per mmbtu. Going forward from more even pricing, the goal must be facilitating market price discovery and reducing government intervention in price determination.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

PROPORTIONAL REPRESENTATION

 

The realignment of voting power at the World Bank by increasing the voting rights of developing and transition countries and reducing the voting rights of advanced economies is a good beginning. Emerging economies, especially India and China, and also Brazil and South Africa, that have come out of the financial crisis looking relatively strong compared to some of the advanced economies, will have to play an increasingly important role in global financial institutions. Though a consensus on the need to increase the participation of the developing countries was agreed on in as early as 2002 at Monterrey in Mexico, it took the World Bank another six years to give the green signal to the proposal for a 4.59% increase in the voting rights in two phases, starting in 2008. While the first phase increased the share of the developing and transition countries from 42.6% to 44.06%, the second phase will now push up their share further to 47.19%. This new voting structure brings some semblance of equity, given that the developing and emerging countries account for around 46.1% of the global GDP. The advanced economies that account for 53.9% of the global GDP can now claim only around 52.81% of the voting rights.

 

This is in broad agreement with the basic idea behind the reforms, which sought to establish a unique shareholding pattern that reflects the economic weight of the nations as measured by GDP size, financial and development contributions. However, the voting share of some of the most important developing countries is far below their nominal weight in the global economy. For instance, while the voting share of China has been increased from 2.78% to 4.42% over two phases its voting share is far below its 12.5% share of the global output. Similar is the case of India. Although India's share in global output now stands at 5.1%, its voting share has gone up from 2.78% to a mere 2.91%. The scenario is the same for other important developing countries like Russia, Brazil and Mexico. This is in sharp contrast to the scenario in important developed countries like France, Italy, Japan, the UK and Canada that continue to punch much above their weight with their voting rights much larger than their share in global output. Only Germany has a voting share that is on par with its 4% share of the global economy. And although the US has brought down its share from 16.36% to 15.85%, which is far below its 20.5% share in the global GDP, it still has the largest voting share across the globe. It looks like further fine tuning and more equitable distribution of the voting rights will take longer. Some declining European powers will have to make way for the emerging powers.

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

WILL IPL INVESTIGATIONS SUCCEED?

SUBHOMOY BHATTACHARJEE

 

The big surprise IPL searches have thrown up is the possibility of black money coming into India instead of fleeing its shores. And the entire sum coming in is not round tripping.

 

As the economy moves into the fifth gear of GDP growth, this is to be expected. With that kind of expansion, opportunities to make money, like the IPL, will be thrown up regularly. At its core, the cricket league has turned out to be a hugely popular attraction for the expanding middle class. And to cash in on such opportunities, some promoters may often be in cahoots with dubious capital. Instead of stashing black money abroad, people have discovered they can launder it into white by investing in new ventures.

 

To trip those moves, it is necessary to run a vigorous and smart investigative agency that can track economic crimes and also has the authority to penalise offenders. It will not spoil the party but keep it running within the rules. This has been clearly lacking in the IPL case, as it did in the Satyam case. In the absence of such efforts it will be almost impossible to do a clear job of prosecuting adventure capital. The Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU) set up to prevent money laundering is the nearest we have come, but its mandate does not give it the authority to step into the action, guarded by a clutch of agencies, each keen to preserve their turf. It does not even have the powers to prosecute.

 

Last week, I was at one of the agencies that have been mandated to carry out raids on the IPL franchisees. Sometime in the afternoon, one of the officials of the organisation rang up his boss from Kolkata to clarify if the visit will constitute a search or a survey. There was reason enough for his confusion. The nationwide operations were called in a rush with little preparatory work. This is not to say that government agencies were not planning to track the IPL bazaar.

 

Over the last few months, they worked on the leads but those were yet to fructify.

 

It's been more than a year since the Satyam scandal broke but various agencies have failed to nail the erstwhile promoters. While the agencies concerned have filed a long list of assets of the family in the special courts, the trail runs cold very soon.

 

I am not for a moment suggesting the officials from the income tax, the enforcement directorate (ED) or the directorate of revenue intelligence et al lack the ability to take the cases to their logical conclusion. They do so regularly. But each was set up with a separate mandate.

 

The tax department's search or survey is limited to the process of establishing if any company or individual has paid up the taxes in full. When a party that is searched accepts its misdemeanour and pays up, the case is closed. The ED, of course, has broader powers but most of them relate to the use of foreign exchange to move funds abroad—quite the reverse of the current investigation. The IPL story is mostly about bringing in foreign exchange. The mandate of the department of revenue intelligence is to check smuggling, including narcotics as well as cases of under- and over-invoicing in foreign trade. Surely, we are not accusing the Modi cartel of any of these crimes.

 

Believe me, in these days of savvy consultants and tax advisors all over the place, no company, not even the local event management company, can be tripped up this way.

 

If the idea is to pool in resources, that is the last thing these investigative agencies do. For that to happen, they need a clear direction from the top, which is rare. So the method would quite remind you of a headless chicken running around. If you think I am exaggerating, just check out how many times the agencies have shared real information with an organisation called the Central Economic Intelligence Bureau. This is the nodal agency set up just to tackle such cases. It is instead reduced to holding tri-monthly meetings and zonal conferences and functions as the secretariat for the equally imposing Economic Intelligence Council. The Bureau's mandate is actually broader than the FIU's, set up exactly two decades later, in 2004. Using these agencies can create a television grab but precious little evidence.

 

As of now, the FIU remains the best bet to track economic crime through its charter to prevent money laundering, though it mostly depends on banking channels and money transfer companies to gather information. Its work scale would possibly get robust once its technology platform FinNet becomes operational.

 

There are, of course, other allegations flying around, but those are up the accountants' turf. The dust has not yet settled on the MCA vs ICAI vs the Big-4 accounting firms post-Satyam. The legislation to give Serious Fraud Investigation Office powers is not even heard in the din in the Parliament. Unless we sew up these things, India could soon acquire a reputation as a soft place to get away with economic offences.

 

subhomoy.bhattacharjee@expressindia.com

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

IT IS STILL A STRUGGLE IN CHINA

DARLINGTON JOSE HECTOR

 

For a large part of this decade, India's software behemoths have been struggling to have a good look into the Chinese code-writing kingdom. Local boutique software services, which sprung up in all the major cities of China, have been walking away with the majority of the deals, as Indian firms look in dismay. The Chinese firms, by their size and talent, are probably no match for the Indian IT majors. Back home on the domestic turf they would have eaten some of these smaller Chinese 'dragons' alive. But this is communist China. It's a different planet altogether, and one can be in it only for the long term.

 

Hanging on in China is easier said than done though. In fact, the Chinese are not worried about inviting you over. It is only after setting foot that many Indian firms find the going tough. Companies like Infosys, Wipro and TCS that are huge brands in India, suddenly feel like fish out of water. The Chinese do not attach much value to Indian IT brands and slick talk cannot help them get anywhere either.

 

So it boils down to pure public relations play. The Chinese communists are still not easily convinced about India's software capabilities, although the world had accepted it long ago. Indian companies have so far looked at China as a delivery centre for global clients wanting to outsource work and as a near-shore facility for Japanese customers. But they have had little resistance to offer the 12,000-odd boutique Chinese IT firms, which close deals at less than $10 an hour. These firms do not look at their profit numbers, as long as volumes are sound. Hence, Indian firms often find themselves outnumbered. The answer to this puzzle lies in adding more employees to take on the Chinese might. IT majors like Wipro and Infosys have started to add significant numbers to their headcount in the hope that they can face off with the Chinese.

 

Infosys China is planning to add 1,000 more techies over the next one year. TCS China is looking to take its headcount to 5,000 employees by 2014 from 1,100 at present. And Wipro plans to hire another 750 people in the next 15 months, taking its workforce beyond 1,000 in the country. Most of the hiring is being done locally to thwart the local language advantage enjoyed by the boutique competitors. Indian firms are now feeling much more comfortable in China with the new strategy and they hope they can now start to compete on an even keel.

 

Just the way they do it in India, the IT firms have realised they have to target some of the verticals where Chinese competition can be overwhelmed. For instance, Wipro is sharpening its raid into domestic system integration deals in the months ahead, targeting larger banks, utilities and energy companies. Infosys is sinking its teeth into financial services and manufacturing and TCS has already seen some traction in the banking segment of the country. But one cannot hope to take on the Chinese with just business acumen. Relationships and networking are an integral part of the deal as well. Getting on to the wrong side of the Chinese government is quite easy, but it is very tough to get out of that trough. So, Indian firms are learning fast to walk on the right side.

 

They are delegating a third of their workforce in China to negotiate with the government. Also, some staff is assigned with the task to network and get to know the officials culturally. Just the way India looks at Chinese companies with suspicion, the Chinese government, too, uses special glasses to view Indian firms. Trust is an important element here, but not something that is spoken about aloud. Although the Chinese are getting better at software services, they are still struggling to find good IT managers. The Chinese education system still has its emphasis on learning by rote. The culture of innovation is missing and that's where India has the edge, apart from being able to speak English comfortably.

 

But at the same time, India is getting expensive as an outsourcing destination. Indian IT compensation has been inching north and attrition is on the rise again. Wipro said attrition touched 18% last quarter, which is something China does not have to worry about. The Chinese engineers have immense loyalty to their place of work and can spend 15-20 years in the same place much like the Japanese do. They also come much cheaper.

 

But Indians are fast acquiring the reputation of being patient 'triers' in China. They have been around for a few seasons now and are slowly picking up the threads. What they now need is a pioneering growth story that can ignite the rest. One per cent inspiration, anyone?

 

dj.hector@expressindia.com

 

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THE FINANCIAL EXPRESS

COLUMN

 THE NEED TO DIFFERENTIATE

MARTIN A KOSCHAT

 

Observers of Asian markets have concluded that recession in Asia is all but over. But for consumer marketers with a focus on Europe and North America, the view is not quite as rosy. However, in the past 15 years, the American Customer Satisfaction Index has never seen consumers as satisfied as they are today! To shed light on what this trend means for brands, IMD conducted a project on "what is it that drives consumers' valuation of brands?" They asked respondents about their shopping habits and differentiated between habitual and experimental shoppers. The study produced some telling insights.

 

The first insight was not surprising—habitual shoppers value brands significantly more than experimental shoppers. This is good news for an established brand franchise. But can turn into bad news if consumers, due to economic circumstances, are forced to choose a less expensive brand. Once consumers are familiar with such a brand, it will be as effective in supporting habitual shopping as the original brand. Thus there is little incentive for habitual shoppers to switch back to the original brand once economic conditions improve.

 

The second finding was outright shocking. It is argued that strong brands signal quality. Yet we found that consumers, who place a high value on quality, valued their favourite brands no higher than consumers who are satisfied with 'good enough'. Hence brands in the FMCG realm do not serve as signals of quality. This insight underscores the importance of differentiation. Consumers who perceive there to be a difference between brands also value their favourite brands higher. This finding offers tangible guidance for brand managers and reinforces the mantra 'Differentiate! Differentiate! Differentiate!'

 

As we emerge from the current crisis, the hope that matters will return to where they were by themselves is misplaced. It is imperative to differentiate and be proactive in the pursuit of this task. Creating tangible points of differentiation requires innovation, which needs R&D budgets. But technological innovation is not enough. Firms need to muster the organisational stamina to bring this innovation to the market. As this is a demanding and costly undertaking, firms tend to shy away from it, something they can no longer afford to do.

 

The author teaches at IMD, Switzerland

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

AN UNPLEASANT ODOUR

 

The central government's response to the controversy over the alleged phone taps of four political leaders is feeble and lacks credibility. A careful parsing of Home Minister P. Chidambaram's cautiously worded statement suggests it withholds more than it reveals. In declaring that the United Progressive Alliance government has not authorised any eavesdropping on the mobile phones of political leaders, Mr. Chidambaram has come up with a highly qualified denial. If the cell phones of political leaders such as Sharad Pawar and Prakash Karat were tapped, it is obvious that this would have been done surreptitiously rather than by following the due legal procedure; this would include a written authorisation from the Union Home Secretary, which must specify the reasons for intercepting the conversations and is subject to review. The Home Minister's statement that "nothing has been found…to substantiate the allegation" in the records of the National Technical Research Organisation (NTRO), which carried out the taps according to a recent expose in Outlook magazine, is also an assertion of the obvious. A highly secretive intelligence gathering agency such as the NTRO is not the kind of organisation that maintains truthful and detailed written records of every activity it undertakes. Moreover, the allegation is that the NTRO used a new generation device that can tap into phone conversations within a certain radius off-the-air, bypassing the process of obtaining authorisation and without enlisting the cooperation of the service provider.

 

The controversy raises serious issues relating to the misuse of official agencies in the narrow interest of the ruling party. It also raises the question of how the right to privacy can be protected in the face of changing technologies. Do we need new laws that govern the use of off-the-air surveillance devices? What if such devices get into private hands? Rather than address such serious questions, the government's overall reaction — which includes a flat rejection of the demand to set up a Joint Parliamentary Committee to probe the allegations — has been unconstructive. Intercepting private communication is inherently obnoxious and statutes such as the Indian Telegraph Act 1885 and the Information Technology (Amendment) Act 2008 allow this as an exception — for checking criminal and espionage activity, for instance. In 1996, the Supreme Court laid down a number of guidelines to check arbitrariness in intercepting phone calls. But despite its illegality and highly unpleasant odour, the practice goes on merrily. This time, the government must not be allowed to get away with a predictable refusal to go after, or reveal, the truth.

 

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THE HINDU

EDITORIAL

SAARC AT TWENTY-FIVE

 

As the 16th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation gets under way in Thimpu, it would be easy to dismiss the event as yet another jamboree at which the leaders of the region will meet and talk a lot but achieve little of substance. A quarter-century after it came into existence, SAARC remains an under-performing regional association. The Thimpu summit is expected to yield an agreement on the region's strategy to deal with climate change, and another on trade in services. But many ambitious plans drawn up by SAARC for the betterment of an impoverished region, home to 1.6 billion people or more than one-sixth of humanity, have either remained on paper or moved towards implementation at glacial speeds. A fund for "least developed countries" within the region was once talked about and abandoned. The South Asia Development Fund for building infrastructure is expected to be operationalised at Thimpu a full 15 years after it was initiated. As an engine for the economic growth and development of the region, SAARC is yet to demonstrate any concrete achievements since 2006, when the much-delayed South Asia Free Trade Agreement became operational. It has pushed regional trade up to an estimated half a billion dollars but this is still way below potential. Subjects such as economic integration of the region and a common currency are no longer discussed with any earnestness.

 

Twenty-five seems a good age to fix the problem that ails the association. Its charter is clear that bilateral issues cannot be brought up in any forum of the association. Despite this, SAARC has permanently been overshadowed by the hostility between India and Pakistan. Both countries have used it as an alternative sparring ground, to the despair of the smaller member countries that see regional cooperation as an urgent necessity for their own progress. SAFTA is a victim, as is the SAARC convention on terrorism. The smaller nations must share some of the responsibility as some of them have used SAARC to tilt towards one or the other side of the India-Pakistan divide. Influential sections of the media in India and Pakistan tend to treat a SAARC event as a match between the two. This time is no different, going by the obsessive focus on a possible meeting between the Indian and Pakistani Prime Ministers on the sidelines of the summit. If these two countries, the biggest in the region, can commit themselves to keeping their rivalry out of SAARC, it would help the association focus on its agenda of regional cooperation. Eventually, this may even help India and Pakistan become good neighbours.

 

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THE HINDU

LEADER PAGE ARTICLES

FROM THIRD WORLD TO NEW SOUTH

WITH FAST-GROWING, LARGE ECONOMIES THAT SPEAK FROM STRENGTH RATHER THAN WEAKNESS, THE SOUTH DOES NOT ASK FOR AID, BUT DEMANDS TO BE ABLE TO TRADE.

JORGE HEINE

 

It is official now. Robert Zoellick, president of the World Bank, has pronounced the expression "Third World" as dead. This comes with some delay. In theory, use of the term should have ceased more than twenty years ago, in November 1989, after the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the "Second World", that of "actually existing socialism." Without a Second World, is it possible to have a Third World? There is a lag between events and linguistic use, but, twenty years?

 

Isn't this a bit much for the digital age, one marked by the 24/7 news cycle, the "CNN syndrome," Twitter, and one that coins new terms almost every hour?

 

There are at least two reasons why the term "Third World" had such a good run ever since Peter Worsley coined it in 1964 with his now classic book, The Third World: A Vital New Force in International Affairs. The expression captured well the condition of the post-colonial world in Africa, Asia and Latin America emerging at the time. Worsley, who held the first professorship in Sociology at the University of Manchester, spent part of World War Two in Africa and in India, and had first-hand knowledge of the changes taking place there. He didn't like the ideological straitjacket imposed by the ideological divisions between East and West. He felt energised by what was happening in the South, as the colonial empires crumbled, and the Castros, Nehrus, Nkruhmas and Nyereres disposed of the debris left behind and embarked on the arduous task of nation-building. He was one of the very first western social scientists to capture that what was happening there was giving new meaning to old movements like nationalism, populism and socialism.

 

The second reason is that no alternative term captured with the same precision and élan the true condition of the young nations. Other technocrats from the IFIs gave us, seriatim, a variety of terms — underdeveloped, developing, lower-income — each more anodyne than the other. Their blandness seemed to relegate the post-colonial nations to a mere footnote to the real History (with a capital H), being written in the First World.

 

The term "South" was perhaps the one that came closest to substitute "Third World." (I still remember an excellent monthly magazine — alas, no longer in existence — published out of London in the eighties and nineties, entitled South, which took as its brief serious reporting on what happened in that part of the world), but perhaps because of its rather neutral, mere geographical connotation, never took on the way it should have. As The Economist never ceased to point out, it had also the problem of leaving out, at least nominally, such heavyweights as China, India, Algeria and Egypt, that happen to be located in the Northern Hemisphere. That is why the term "Global South" took centre stage, and is in many ways the expression of choice these days, with its conceptual rather than strictly geographic umbrella. Its undisputed capital is New Delhi.

 

That said, the term "Global South" doesn't do justice to the enormous changes that have taken place in the global political economy over the past two decades. As the recent meeting of the BRICs group in Rio de Janeiro and the upcoming one of the G-20 in Toronto next June illustrate, it's a whole new world out there. Now that Mr. Zoellick has kindly given us the go-ahead, perhaps it is time to update our vocabularies, not just to reflect these new realities but to keep on changing them as well.

 

What is it these new entities like BRICs, IBSA and BRICSAM are all part of? What do they embody and where are they headed to? What should we make of them?

 

Truth is, the rise of China (since 1979) and of India (in theory since 1991, but in practice since the eighties) has led to the emergence of a very different setting from that described by Worsley in his classic book. This has radically altered the terms of reference in which nation states operate.

 

In the sixties and seventies, the new nations in Asia, Africa and the Caribbean, and to some extent the older ones in Latin America (seen by some as the "middle class of nations," though never really fitting that somewhat pretentious category), were economically weak, highly dependent on trade and investment links with the North and resentful about the legacy of colonialism. Believing there was strength in numbers, they gathered in a vast array of entities, led by the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), the Group of 77 at the United Nations, and UNCTAD, also at the U.N. Speaking from weakness, they still banged on the table and engaged in the "diplomacy of the cahier des doleances, with proposals like that of the New International Economic Order (NIEO), demanding massive transfers of resources from North to South. Though they sometimes found sympathetic ears up North (during the early years of Carter administration in the U.S., and in the drafters of documents like the Brandt Report), by and large they had little to back up their demands with (beyond their voting power in the United Nations General Assembly). They thus ended up empty-handed.

 

Over the past twenty years, and particularly over the past ten, this has changed. It is now a whole new ball game. With the rise of China and India, but also of Brazil, South Africa, Mexico and countries like Indonesia and Turkey, with fast-growing, large economies that speak from strength rather than weakness, the South does not ask for aid, but demands to be able to trade. It expects a greater voice at the IFIs, and a place at the high table of global economic governance. It wants access to Northern markets, and is able to hold out in terms of access to its own, if its demands are not met. In many ways, the lopsided relationship between China and the U.S., in which the latter, which has turned into the world's largest debtor nation, has become largely beholden to the former, the world's largest holder of U.S. Treasury bills, is emblematic of this cataclysmic change between North and South.

 

But there is more. The visit of Brazil's Planning Minister Miguel Jorge to Iran this April, joined by an 80-strong business delegation (to be followed by another visit by President Lula to Teheran in May), tells us something else. Southern countries are no longer beholden to trade and investment ties with the North. They can also do that among themselves. Growth rates in many Asian countries triple those of western nations, while their debt-to-GDP ratios are one fifth of those of G-8 members. Latin America emerged largely unscathed from the Great Recession of 2008-2009, one largely triggered by Wall Street, and whose most devastating repercussions were to be felt in Central and Eastern Europe.

 

There is, in other words, a New South that has emerged in this new century. It is already redrawing the boundaries and the patterns of behaviour of the current international system. Noted historian Ramachandra Guha recently gave a lecture in Ottawa with the provocative title, "Why India will not and must not become a superpower," presumably partly in reaction to that favourite phrase of the Indian press, "The Global Indian Takeover." In it, and in follow-up interviews, Guha takes on what he considers to be the somewhat unwarranted claims of some sectors of Indian public opinion to Indian "superstardom," pointing out that in India "there are lots of disparities, conflicts, tensions within Indian society, institutional breakdowns to address before we start claiming the world prematurely."

 

Point well taken. Both India's domestic challenges, and the rocky character of its immediate neighbourhood are a drag on India's global role. That said, no one has seriously posited that India will or can become a superpower in the foreseeable future. There is only one of those around right now (the United States), and though it may be in decline, it still produces between a fifth and one fourth of the world's product and is unlikely to be threatened in its pre-eminence by any other single power for at least a few decades.

 

What India is doing is to make the transition from a regional middle power, to an emerging power with global aspirations, which is very different. In so doing, and speaking from the strength of its high growth and savings rates, huge hard currency reserves, and its dynamic high-tech industry and IT-service sector ("Indovation," as the FT has dubbed it), it is joining forces with other such powers from the New South — the BRICSAMs of this world — to rewrite the rules on how the world is run. This does not make it into a superpower, but it can make for a fairer and less skewed world order. This is what the Third World of yesteryear tried to do, albeit unsuccessfully. It is my impression that the New South of today has a better crack at succeeding at it.

 

(Jorge Heine holds the Chair in Global Governance at the Balsillie School of International Affairs, is Professor of Political Science at Wilfrid Laurier University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Ontario. His latest book (with Ramesh Thakur), The Dark Side of Globalization , is forthcoming from United Nations University Press.)

 

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THE HINDU

PUBLIC-PRIVATE-PANCHAYAT PARTNERSHIP FOR INCLUSIVE GROWTH

RURAL TRANSFORMATION REQUIRES A ROBUST SERVICE ENTERPRISE FRAMEWORK WITH PUBLIC AND PRIVATE STAKEHOLDERS AT THE VERY CORE.

HARSH SINGH

 

India grapples with endemic backwardness in over 200 districts while some sectors and sections make global headlines. The Centre on Market Solutions to Poverty's report, Creating Vibrant Public-Private-Panchayat Partnerships for Inclusive Growth through Inclusive Governance explores this paradox by looking at the ground-level realities in local governance through the Panchayati Raj, the issues of agricultural productivity and value addition, and the role that the business sector could play in rural transformation.

 

A recent study in sixteen poorest districts shows that despite teething problems, Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) have come to occupy an important role in the lives of the poorest. In many districts, their importance was rated next only to the food public distribution system, but higher than institutions such as schools and hospitals. Yet in most states, panchayats remain weak and inadequate in delivering on the promise of inclusive growth through inclusive governance. The vertical framework confining delivery of public programmes through government agencies has tended to exclude local leadership and initiative as also the vast capacity that exists outside the governmental system. The weak and narrow mandate that PRIs have tended to adopt for themselves is also responsible for their unfulfilled role in the rural economy. Panchayat leaders often see their role as confined to resolving local disputes and implementing small works sanctioned by the governments and place the main responsibility (in fact, the opportunity!) for agriculture with other agencies such as cooperatives and government departments. This study concludes that PRIs must transform the narrow and lop-sided vision of their mandate and accept a direct leadership role in agriculture which is the mainstay of the rural economy.

 

Keeping pace with challenges

 

Public extension services in the agricultural sector have not kept pace with new challenges and opportunities. Overall, the reform measures initiated by the government are yet to penetrate agriculture and allied rural sectors. While many state governments have ushered in policy and legislative changes, lack of clarity on basic models, regulatory mechanisms and modalities for the involvement of non-state actors continues. Insofar as the delegation of power to local governance institutions is concerned, often the measures suggested are partial or incremental in nature. The attitude towards a role for the organised business sector is by and large negative despite the fact that a number of business enterprises have built impressive capacities and networks in input supply and extension services. The study concludes that rural transformation requires a robust framework for local development with these two important stakeholders at the very core. It recommends a PPPP-based rural service enterprise framework as a relevant starting point.

 

A CII action research study in Dungarpur district of Rajasthan outlines the key elements of such a model. The evidence emerging from the ground work over the last four years suggests that it is possible for the tribal families to achieve an income of over Rs.25,000 per annum per family on half hectare plots even in the context of a hostile eco-environment. The model offers an opportunity for further enhancement of incomes through investments in milch animals, horticulture and productivity gains. This model envisages public investments in augmenting water resources and creating suitable access for farmers while private investments create various support services in agriculture. Specifically, public investments are required for infrastructure creation aimed at water harvesting and recharge. Private investments could provide water delivery and irrigation services, farm mechanisation services, agri-inputs, insurance and risk management, credit access, and market linkages. A business organisation for parking private investments and groups of local semi literate youth for actually delivering the support services are important parts of this model. The institutional mechanism at the community level includes water user groups and community-based organisations for governance of water and other natural resources. This model envisages an important governance role for PRIs.

 

Such models are already operational in various mutations but on a micro-scale. The IMI study concludes that the time is ripe for an organised and broad-based effort in this direction. The rural service enterprise model that it recommends envisages pooling in a good portion of the existing public assets and funding relevant for agricultural extension and related services and channeling it to enable universal provision of a basic menu of extension services (for example, soil mapping, pre-harvesting advice, disease surveillance and guidance, local implications of weather forecasts, post harvesting guidance etc.) through a competent agency selected on competitive basis.

 

The above framework could be implemented through a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV). The SPV could be at the state level or at the district or at the block level depending on the feasible scale for extension services. To draw-in the best agencies for supply of services, the net needs to be cast wide and public agencies, private agencies, NGOs and cooperatives that qualify on certain eligibility criteria should be encouraged to bid. The contract should be for a period long enough to enable the selected agencies to make complimentary investments and recoup them through provision of the value-added services.

 

Protecting small farmers

 

There is a potential risk of the small farmers being excluded in the framework. But evidence that leads to contra conclusions exists. While individually, the small and marginal farmers are weak, as a group they have significant strength. Eighty-eight per cent of small farmers own almost 50 per cent of cultivated land and more than 50 per cent of irrigated land. They lease-in more than 30 per cent cultivated land (mostly irrigated). Thus it is not surprising that institutional innovations are taking place to cater to the needs of the small farmers. For example, Tata Chemicals Limited is organising a Producer Company for small vegetable growers in Punjab.

 

Panchyati Raj Institutions would have a dual role in this model. First is a two-way interaction with the extension agency in the context of local planning to promote convergence of development activities at the local level. Second is monitoring of services delivery by the extension agency. For the latter, suitable participatory mechanisms need to be created to minimise the chances of corruption in certification of compliance.

 

There is growing awareness in the business sector regarding the potential in the backward linkage chain. However, this potential has not been realised due to the high transaction costs of PPP in rural development activities. Such high costs arise not only because of weak physical infrastructure in large parts of rural India but also on account of unclear and at times restrictive rules governing partnerships. Overall, PPP/PPPP projects are likely to fail if they are handled like any other departmental programme. Thus public policy must focus on resolving the institutional bottlenecks and high transaction costs. Furthermore, currently a lot of reliance is being placed on the voluntary corporate social responsibility type approach. This needs to change to a more formal legal and institutional framework-based approach which carries both carrots and sticks.

The recommendations of the current study entail enhanced public responsibility for rural livelihoods. But the roles of various stakeholders would change with reforms that ease the monopoly of government institutions in implementation of public programmes, and in the use of public assets and financial resources. The report concludes that the rural service enterprise model will create the momentum for a broader systemic change that includes the social sectors. — Courtesy: U.N. Information Centre, New Delhi(Harsh Singh is the head of the Centre on Market Solutions to Poverty at the International Management Institute, New Delhi, and the author of the report referred to above.)

 

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THE HINDU

THE FIRST AID MYTHS THAT COST LIVES

THOUSANDS DIE EVERY YEAR WHEN FIRST AID COULD HAVE SAVED THEM, BUT WIDESPREAD MISCONCEPTIONS OFTEN STOP US FROM DOING WHAT WE CAN.

PHIL DAOUST

 

1. Rather than lying down, a half-sitting position with their knees bent and head and shoulders supported is best for heart attack victims
2. Putting any object in the mouth of someone having a seizure is not advisable as they might break the object and choke on the pieces

 

It must be great to know you have saved a life. A couple of years ago student Callum Brown was settling in at university when he came across a group on a night out. "I was going to walk past," he recalls, "when I heard someone say, 'Roll him on his back, then he will stop throwing up'." They had clearly never heard of Jimi Hendrix, who drowned in his own vomit.

 

"Having done a first aid course at work," Mr. Brown continues, "I knew this was absolutely not the right thing to do, and I went over and put the guy in the recovery position. His friends were all drunk and would not have been able to help. Shortly afterwards he threw up on to the road, but since he was in the recovery position this was simply messy. Without my interference he would probably have choked on his vomit." In an ideal world, everyone would have first aid training — and be sober enough to remember it. But according to St. John Ambulance, up to 150,000 people die needlessly in Britain every year; from the 29,000 killed by heart attacks to the 2,500 victims of asphyxiation. That is why the charity has launched The Difference — a campaign to remind us how to cope in common situations. While you get round to educating yourself about recovery positions, CPR and so on, here are 10 widespread misconceptions that often stop us doing what we can.

 

Myth 1: The ambulance will be here in a minute.

 

Not if you have only just called it, it will not. In England, for example, the target response-time for life threatening emergencies is eight minutes, and that is only for 75 per cent of all incidents — which is easily enough time for a casualty to become a corpse.

 

Stop the bleeding

 

Myth 2: It is better to do nothing than risk making things worse. "If someone is bleeding and you do nothing, they'll lose too much blood, go into shock and die," points out St John's Isobel Kearl. "If someone is unconscious and breathing, but not in the recovery position, they could choke on their tongue or vomit. Importantly, if someone is unconscious and not breathing and you do nothing, they will still be unconscious and not breathing."

 

Myth 3: If you have a nosebleed, you should tilt your head back.

 

It is news to 30 per cent of us, according to St. John, but this may cause blood to run into the throat and lead to nausea and vomiting. Instead, tilt your head forward, pinch your nostrils shut and breathe through your mouth. If you are still bleeding 30 minutes later, go to hospital.

 

Myth 4: Heart attack victims should lie down, rather than sit up.

 

One in 10 of us believes this is a good idea, but it can make it harder to breathe. A half-sitting position with their knees bent and head and shoulders supported is best.

 

Myth 5: If an arm or leg is bleeding heavily, you should tie a tight tourniquet above the injury.

 

Although 58 per cent assume we should do this, it could stop all blood flow and cause tissue damage. Instead put pressure on the wound with a dressing, and raise it.

 

Myth 6: You must never, ever move someone after a traffic accident, even if they are not breathing.

 

It is all very well to worry about spinal injuries (as 43 per cent of us would), but it is more important to make sure they are breathing. If they are unconscious check their airway is clear by tilting the head and lifting their chin.

 

Children in accidents

 

Myth 7: If a child drinks bleach, make them vomit.

 

This can cause more damage as the vomit leaves the body. Call the emergency number and let them sip cold milk or water if they have burnt lips from corrosive substances.

 

Myth 8: If someone is choking on a foreign object, they will appreciate a couple of fingers down the throat.

 

This could actually push the obstruction down further. Instead, smack them firmly between the shoulder blades. If that does not clear the blockage, you may have to try the Heimlich manoeuvre, also known as "abdominal thrusts". This can cause internal damage, however, and anyone who has been on the wrong end of it should be checked over afterwards. While we are at it, Joe Mulligan of the British Red Cross points out that it is not a good idea to suspend a choking child by their feet. "Not only can it be very traumatic," he says, "it could also result in head injury if the child is dropped."

 

Myth 9: If someone is having an epileptic seizure, put something in their mouth — a spoon, perhaps.

 

This is supposed to stop them biting their tongue — but, says Ms Kearl, "they're likely to break their teeth, or the object itself — and then choke on the pieces. And you could get bitten while you're doing it". The best thing is to cushion the area with something such as a coat or blanket, and remove bystanders and hazards such as hot drinks. When the convulsions stop, check their breathing and place them in the recovery position.

 

Myth 10: If someone feels faint, put their head between their legs.

 

They may simply fall forwards. Instead, lie them down and raise their legs to increase blood flow to the brain. Make sure they have plenty of fresh air. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

 

(For first aid advice, go to sja.org.uk)

 

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THE HINDU

FRED HALLIDAY, SCHOLAR OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, DEAD

AN EXPERT ON WEST ASIA WHO ADVOCATED JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOCIALIST DEMOCRATIC VALUES.

SAMI ZUBAIDA

 

Halliday, who has died of cancer aged 64, was an Irish academic whose main interest was West Asia and its place in international politics. His first major book, Arabia Without Sultans, was published in 1974. The culmination of adventurous field research in the region, including Oman, it was a study of Arabian regimes, their support from the West and Iran, and the revolutionary forces fighting against them. "The Arab Middle East is the one with the longest history of contact with the West; yet it is probably the one least understood," Fred believed. "Part of the misunderstanding is due to the romantic mythology that has long appeared to shroud the deserts of the peninsula. Where old myths have broken down, new ones have absorbed them or taken their place." A larger-than-life character, Mr. Halliday made an enormous impact in both academia and the media. He always spoke with a sure and lucid voice, backed by extensive knowledge, and knew many languages, of which he was justly proud: Arabic, Persian, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, Italian, French, German and Russian. He had more than 20 books to his name and was professor of international relations at the London School of Economics (LSE) for more than 20 years.

 

Mr. Halliday was born in Dublin to Arthur Halliday, a businessman, and his wife Rita ( nee Finigan). He was educated at the Marist school in Dundalk before going to Ampleforth College in Yorkshire. He graduated from Queen's College, Oxford, in 1967 with a degree in philosophy, politics and economics, then went to the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. From 1969 to 1983, he was a member of the editorial board of the New Left Review. The NLR represented the avant garde of the intellectual left, with strong European and cosmopolitan orientations, adopting and developing new strands of European Marxism and engaging with a wide range of issues and personalities in the developing nations. I got to know Mr. Halliday in the mid-70s, when he joined an informal London discussion group on West Asia, which included myself, Roger Owen and Talal Asad, directed to draft critiques of the existing inclinations in that field and working out an alternative, mainly Marxist approach. Mr. Halliday became a regular contributor to the West Asia study group, which continues to this day.

 

Wide connections

 

Mr. Halliday established wide connections with, among others, Arab and Iranian intellectuals and activists, and travelled widely in the region. From these encounters and researches came his book Iran: Dictatorship and Development, in 1978, which aroused great interest as it anticipated Iran's revolution the following year, though he did not foresee the Islamic bent of the revolution, which was not the result of a long established Islamic movement, but the outcome of particular events, including the rise of Khomeini.

 

Further travel and research took Mr. Halliday, with Maxine Molyneux, to Ethiopia and Yemen in 1977 and 1978, resulting in a jointly authored book, The Ethiopian Revolution (1981), tracing the conditions and causes of the 1974 revolution. He married Maxine in 1979. Mr. Halliday's interest in Soviet policy and the Cold War, and his critical stance on U.S. intervention in Afghanistan, were recurrent themes in his writing, evident in Cold War, Third World: Essays On Soviet-American Relations in the 1980s, published in 1989.

 

It was not until 1983 that Mr. Halliday formally entered academia with an appointment to a lectureship at LSE. He obtained his Ph.D. from LSE in 1985, with a thesis on the Democratic Republic of Yemen. At LSE, Mr. Halliday continued to write prolifically, now concentrating on international relations, with fresh and critical treatment of theories in that field. His interest in West Asia acquired a more immediate and topical aspect with the rise of Islamist politics, Afghanistan and 9/11, about which he wrote Two Hours That Shook the World (2001). His interest in Muslim communities in Britain and Europe had begun with his earlier study of the Yemeni community in Sheffield, Arabs in Exile: Yemeni Migrants in Urban Britain (1992). His contribution to the debates on Muslims in the West came in some of the essays in his highly influential Islam and the Myth of Confrontation (1996), with his characteristically incisive arguments against the prevalent ideas of a "clash of civilisations" and the "otherness" of Muslims and their politics.

 

Forthright critic

 

Mr. Halliday never shied away from controversy: he was forthright in his advocacy of justice, human rights and socialist democratic values, and against cultural relativism and apologetics for tyrannies in developing nations in the name of anti-imperialism.

 

This was part of his more general belief that imperialism and capitalism were often progressive forces in many parts of the world, notwithstanding their well-known oppressive and exploitative elements. In this vein, Mr. Halliday considered the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan favourable, on balance, and indeed the period of communist control as a progressive episode in the violence and oppression that preceded and followed it. Equally, Mr. Halliday favoured western interventions in the former Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Iraq — Saddam Hussein and his regime being by far the greater evil — but criticised what he considered the arrogance and incompetence of the U.S. and British administrations of these policies and their tragic consequences.

 

Mr. Halliday was elected to the British Academy in 2002. In 2008 he left the LSE to take up a position as research professor at the Barcelona Institute of International Studies. Mr. Halliday loved Barcelona, where he was part of a lively social and intellectual network. He was a great teacher and mentor, and numerous students and young colleagues acknowledge their debt to his supervision, mentoring and inspiration. His lectures, both academic and public, were always a great draw and never failed to inspire, stimulate and challenge. His book Caamano in London: The Exile of a Latin American Revolutionary, about the former Dominican President's spell in London in the 1960s, will be published later this year.

 

His brothers Jon and David, and Maxine and their son, Alex, survive him. — © Guardian Newspapers Limited, 2010

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

SAARC, AT 25, MIGHT SEE A ROSIER FUTURE

 

When the 16th summit of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation commences its two-day deliberations in Bhutan's capital, Thimphu, on Wednesday in the silver jubilee year of the organisation's founding, the gathered leaders will need to be mindful of the pace of progress in the regional grouping. They will be called upon to count and promote the positives and agree to strive to negate the negatives. None of this is likely to be easy. Funny histories act as a drag and the initial low base of development — common to all of South Asia — tends to inhibit a faster rate of climb than has hitherto been the case. And yet, it will be churlish to pretend that some of the earlier gloom on Saarc's prospects is not slowly dissipating. Indeed, it is time to note that South Asians are getting away — if ever so slowly — from their habit of uncorking hot air and merely extolling themselves and their ageless value system that promotes cooperation, and are getting down to business. They have entered a phase in Saarc where implementing projects that have been agreed upon is coming into focus. Needless to say, all agreed resolutions and proposals are not acted upon, or all countries — Pakistan included — would have cracked down hard on terrorism, truly the scourge of our region along with poverty and hunger. But there is no question that there is now a tendency to move forward on the development paradigm, and on building Saarc-wide institutions. The whole point about cooperation is being far better understood than was earlier the case.

When viewing Saarc's less than vibrant record, it has to be considered that it is a collection of countries in one of the poorest parts of the world. There is only that much they can trade and exchange, and even lower is their capacity to generate as capital flows and investible resources. Half of the member-states of the grouping are in the category of least developed countries, referred to with derision as "basket cases" by the more uncharitable. To make matters worse, when Saarc was formed in 1985, three of the original members were riven by bitterness, being fragments of undivided India. There was also a time in India when the very idea of Saarc was seen as a waste of time. It was viewed as a gang-up of military dictators and feudal heads of state that delighted in giving this country a hard time. It is a small miracle that the grouping was only partially jolted from time to time in pursuit of its development aims and agenda of broad regional cooperation from which all could benefit; it didn't in the end run into sand. The atmosphere of mistrust between India and Pakistan, the largest two of the group, was a special retarding factor for South Asia's regional body.

There is, however, a change now discernible. The suspicions between India and Pakistan are no less than they were before, and still the Saarc countries are not hesitating to put their best foot forward, unlike in the past. Perhaps an important reason for this is India's higher growth path in spite of the odds imposed by a couple of distinctly unfriendly neighbours. With its improved economic fortunes, this country appears ready to invest in Saarc, and all fellow-travellers are happy about this. They cannot match India's financial contributions, but this country is happy to embrace the principle of "assist, as able", something that can sometimes be seen in UN aid arrangements; it easily accepts non-reciprocity as a working principle. The India-Pakistan paradigm remains a limiting factor, but it no longer cripples the dynamics of cooperation.

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

POWER OF PARIKRAMA

 

Elders often remind children to go round the temple from left to right with folded hands, saying silent prayers. Is this just a jaded ritual or is circumambulation beneficial to devotees in any way other than evoking fulfilment of having accomplished a pious act?

In olden days, temples were large structures that were built on large plots of land. Walking around the temple barefoot provided the devotees good exercise. One visits temple in the morning and evenings and the rays of the rising sun and the setting sun both provide us health.

The reverential circumambulation, lying prostrate before the idol, kneeling before the deity are all, in a way, exercises for joints and muscles.

Going around an object from left to right is absolutely in harmony with the system of the brain. If one goes in the opposite direction, the system disapproves of it and the devotee does not feel comfortable. Science has proved this.

Theology states that circumambulation around a temple takes the devotee closer to the Lord. He is redeemed of his sins, even those that he had committed in his previous births. Such is the power of this observance.
"Prachtchinathi prakara: Agham

Dakaro vanjtchitha prada:

Kshikarath Ksheeyathe Karma —

nakaaro mukthidaayakam."

 

This is what is said about circumambulation in Skanda Purana: The practise of circumambulation rids one of all sins and fulfils his will; it weakens his karma, liability to karma, and grants salvation.

We usually go round the sanctum sanctorum within the premises of a temple. However, if you circumambulate along the pavement outside the main wall of the temple, it gives added benefits. The effect is still higher if you manage to go around the whole temple, along a path not belonging to the temple!

Imagine the heart as a lotus. Keep folded hands close to the chest as a lotus bud and walk around the temple slowly, chanting the hymns of the deity. As you complete the first circumambulation, all major sins get redeemed. The second one wins the devotee the due right to worship the deity. With the third round, one is granted blessings for material prospects.

The number of circumambulations prescribed for each deity are thus: For Lord Ganesha, one, for the Sun God two, for Devi and Lord Vishnu four, and for the holy Banyan tree, seven.

The circumambulation in the morning is meant for cure of diseases, that of the noon for fulfilment of desires, that of evening for mitigation of sins and that of in the night, for attainment of salvation. After completing the circumambulation, the devotee must come before the deity and worship with folded hands.

Our ancestors, who recommended different numbers of circumambulations for different deities have, however, strongly denied all this in Shiva temples.

This is because Lord Shiva is considered an absolute deity. And a circumambulation around his temple will go against this concept. His eternity cannot be undermined. Further, Goddess Ganga, whom the Lord bears in His head, is believed to be flowing out along the holy drain from the temple. Devotees are not supposed to cross this water. For this reason also, a complete circumambulation is prevented in Shiva temples.

— Dr Venganoor Balakrishnan is the author

of Thaliyola, a book on Hindu beliefs and rituals.

He has also written books on the Vedas

and Upanishads. The author can be reached

at drvenganoor@yahoo.co.in This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

V. Balakrishnan

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

LHC: THE LARGE HYPE CREATOR

 

Since last year, 2009, newspaper headlines and TV channels with their breaking news are telling us that we stand on the threshold of knowing how our universe began in a gigantic explosion called the Big Bang. Cosmologists who study questions related to the origin, evolution and the end of the universe have come up with a generally accepted belief that the universe started with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. The theory underlying this belief contains a lot of speculation that has not been independently verified. Let us see why such speculation is unavoidable once we put all our eggs in the Big Bang basket.

The observations of galaxies out to large distances build a fairly convincing picture that the universe is expanding. If we seek to describe the phenomenon within the framework of the best known theory of gravitation, namely Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, we are led to the conclusion that the universe had a point-like state sometime in the past. The relativity theory breaks down at this stage, and it is assumed that this singular state represents the origin of the universe in a big bang. The physicist starts the universal clock ticking at this instant. 

The astronomer, on the other hand, measures the "look-back time". If he observes a galaxy at a distance of a billion light years, he is seeing it as it was a billion years ago, for light has taken a billion years to travel from the galaxy to here. The expanding universe provides a convenient measure of this past epoch. We ask, by how much has the universe grown in linear size since the light left that galaxy. If the answer is, say, five, then it means that the universe has become six times (five plus one) its original size in that period. This growth fraction can be measured in the spectrum of light received from the galaxy and is known, for technical reasons, as redshift. So in the above example the redshift of the galaxy is five. Clearly, the larger the redshift of an astronomical source, the farther is it located from us and the smaller was the universe at the epoch when light left that source in order to travel to us.

By this reckoning, the Big Bang epoch has infinite redshift and it is tempting to visualise a super-telescope capable of seeing as far as that epoch. Unfortunately, this is not possible. The Big Bang theory itself provides the reason why. By the time we try to probe sources beyond a redshift of a thousand, we encounter an opaque universe. Estimates put the age of the universe at that epoch at around a lakh of years. So what lay beyond that epoch cannot be seen by the astronomer.  Necessarily, therefore, the astronomer is forced to rely on extrapolations of his theoretical model coupled with speculation to guess what the universe was like before that epoch. This is much like a spectator trying to guess what is going on behind the stage-curtain which has come down between two acts of a play.

To help his speculation the astronomer has turned to the physicist for guidance. As he tries to imagine what the universe was like closer to the big bang epoch, he finds that its constituents were moving with greater and greater speed as the Big Bang was approached. To figure out what happens to them the astronomer therefore needs information on how particles of matter behave at increasing energy. The physicist can provide help because he has built particle accelerators which make them collide at very high energies. Two major particle accelerator labs have been providing useful information on this topic: one CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, and the other, Fermilab, near Chicago, in the US.

It should be noted that these labs have been in existence for several decades and their main purpose is to study the behaviour of sub-atomic particles at higher and higher energies. The quantum theory which became established as the correct framework for studying particles on a small scale tells us that if we need to probe the structure of matter at very very small scales, we will correspondingly need particles of higher and higher energy.  Indeed these labs have contributed significantly to our understanding of how particles interact at energies as high as several hundred giga electron volts (an energy measuring unit often written as GeV). For example, the verification of the framework unifying the weak theory with the electromagnetic theory was carried out at CERN by generating collisions of particles of energies of the order of 100 GeV.

The next landmark in high energy particle physics aims very high: it is the energy required for unification of the above electroweak theory with the strong interaction, an achievement that will show that three of the four basic interactions of physics are part of a "grand unified theory", or GUT. Can one augment the capacity of the present accelerator to test the properties of GUT? It will also help the cosmologist in his quest for the state of the universe very close to the Big Bang for, many of the crucial issues of the present universe are related to how the universe operated in the GUT era and shortly thereafter. The recent much hyped Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is planned to reach energies of 7,000 GeV, about seven times the capacity of the previous top accelerators. To date it has reached half that target.

Unfortunately, that holy grail of particle physics is well beyond the present technology or even the technology of the foreseeable future. For the energy needed to be reached is some 1,400 billion times the aimed energy of the LHC!

So why is the LHC so hyped? Certainly if it fulfils its objectives of verifying some details of present theories of particle physics, it will have served its purpose. For example, if it provides evidence for the existence of a speculated particle, the Higgs boson, or gives support to some conjectures of the so-called super-symmetric theory, it will have made a significant advance in our understanding of high energy particle physics.  But it is still a long way to go for simulating the Big Bang, as so avidly claimed. Nor does it stand in any danger of accidentally producing world-gobbling black holes. 

I wish scientists could forward and correct the media-generated frenzy; otherwise the LHC may stand for a large hype creator.

 

 Jayant V. Narlikar is a professor emiritus at Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune University Campus, and a renowned astrophysicist

Jayant V. Narlikar

 

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THE ASIAN AGE

EDITORIAL

A DARK MONEY MAZE

 

QUICK ON the heels of the virtual explosion over the "money maze, dubious deals, and Mauritius and Dubai connection" of that shadowy combination of cricket, politics, big business and Bollywood, otherwise called the Indian Premier League (IPL), has come another depressing event that is no less alarming. It is the arrest of the president of the Medical Council of India (MCI), Ketan Desai, for allegedly demanding a bribe of Rs 2 crores from a Punjab medical college to give it a year's extension to run a 100-seat MBBS course. Two other men arrested at the same time are a professor of the college concerned, Dr Kanwaljit Singh, and Jitendra Pal Singh, described by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as "the middleman". The two Singhs were taken into custody when the professor from Punjab arrived at the Vasant Vihar house of the go-between with a sum of Rs 2 crores packed in cardboard containers. The CBI seized the money, too.

Of course, Dr Desai has denied the charge emphatically, and pointed out that he was "nowhere near the cash". Doubtless the "innocent-until-proved-guilty" doctrine must prevail. But the trouble is that thanks to unending judicial delays, such high-profile cases rarely, if ever, reach the stage of finality. The public and the peers of the arraigned can therefore shout themselves hoarse but to no avail.

There is a pressing reason to be particularly concerned about the functioning of the MCI, the institution that regulates and thus practically runs the country's medical education: widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of teaching in this vital area in the mushrooming private medical colleges that now number 160 out of a total of 290. Reportedly, it costs Rs 500 crores to set up a private medical college that usually sells seats for anything between Rs 25 lakhs and three times that amount.

Since the present case concerns a college in Punjab, it is relevant to record what important functionaries of the Punjab chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and other prominent members of the profession in that state are saying. All of them are already demanding a "re-inspection" of "all the private medical colleges of the country which were granted recognition during the tenure of Dr Desai". Chairman of the in-service wing of IMA Punjab has even said: "Dr Desai's arrest should have come long ago. A person like him should not be spared at any cost. He has jeopardised the future of a large number of students by giving accreditation to colleges that did not fulfil the requisite conditions". According to the chairman of the Punjab Medical Services Association, Dr Hardeep Singh, the "deteriorating standard of the medical colleges opened during (Dr) Desai's time was evident from their poor infrastructure and negligible attendance of the faculty".
Some eminent and highly respected members of the medical profession, speaking on condition of anonymity, have claimed that no individual could have lasted for so long and functioned with impunity without at lease the tacit support of the government that nominates a certain number of MCI members. Nothing should be pre-judged. But an impartial, transparent and speedy investigation into the MCI's working over the years is imperative. For, pollution of education in such sensitive spheres as medicine, engineering and science cannot but imperil the country's future.

Sadly, the current developments are of a piece with what has gone on so far. The powers that be are unwilling or unable to do anything about corruption that is not just rampant but sweeping the country like a tidal wave. Let me cite just a few very recent instances, never mind the plethora of those dating back many years and lost in the politico-administrative-judicial labyrinth. Has anyone heard a word about Madhu Koda and his Rs 4,000 crores allegedly accumulated in just two years when this lone Independent in the Jharkhand Assembly was the state's chief minister, courtesy the Indian National Congress? It is only fair to add that before changing his political allegiance, Mr Koda was minister for mining in the BJP-led Jharkhand government!
Since Mr Koda's arrest and those of his henchmen, what else have we witnessed? The Postmaster-General of Goa being arrested allegedly red-handed while accepting a huge bribe in Mumbai? In Bhopal two relatively junior IAS officers, husband and wife, were suspended after Rs 3 crores in cash were found in their home and the CBI had estimated that the known value of their properties was Rs 40 crores — assets disproportionate to their sources of income. This was by no means a stray example of what has come to be nicknamed "DA" (disproportionate assets) cases. A few months ago a mere inspector of Delhi Police went to jail because his assets were valued at Rs 12 crores. But since no chargesheet was filed against him during the stipulated 60 days, he must be out on bail.

Particularly scandalous is the record of the CBI itself and the government that controls it, especially where disproportionate assets cases against powerful politicians are concerned. On April 16, the premier investigating agency had reaffirmed to the Supreme Court it had enough evidence in the case against the Uttar Pradesh chief minister, Mayawati. Exactly a week later the agency informed the apex court that it was "examining" her representation for closing the case! And consider this: In May 2009, the Indian ambassador to the United States, Meera Shankar, had written to the Union government about a number of its civilian and military officers that had accepted bribes from American companies doing business with their departments. No further proof was needed because under US laws the companies concerned had reported these tainted transactions to relevant courts. Nothing happened until October when the media raised a hue and cry. On a TV talk show Admiral (Retd) Vishnu Bhagwat declared that the Chief of the Naval Staff needed just five days to name the naval officers that had received big dollops of dollars. The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) announced that it had ordered prompt action. It is for the PMO to explain why nothing has happened yet. The media should also feel ashamed. After shouting for a few days it has forgotten the sordid episode.

Inder Malhotra

 

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DNA

EDITORIAL

AFGHAN DILEMMA

 

Afghanistan president Hamid Karzai's discussions with prime minister Manmohan Singh on Monday in New Delhi underscores a certain helplessness on the part of the two leaders.

 

Karzai has promised full security to Indians working in his war-ravaged country, which is as yet unable to get out of the shadow of Taliban terror; but his assurance does not carry much credibility.

 

It is not because Karzai is insincere, but that he is not fully in control of the situation. It seems he has shared his perception of the situation with Singh.

 

India, on its part, cannot peremptorily pull out of Afghanistan because of threats from the Taliban or because Pakistan is not too happy with the Indian presence in the country.

 

The US, of course, has been tilting towards Islamabad and indirectly hinting to India that it should not play too great a role in Afghanistan. Karzai has no choice but to deal with the Taliban as well as Pakistan.

 

It is in this hostile situation that India and Afghanistan are forced to define their bilateral relations which are important for the two countries in their own right.

 

Afghanistan is in need of Indian aid and help in building roads, hospitals, schools, and training police and civilian officers.

 

Karzai is keenly aware of the importance of the Indian role in the reconstruction of his country, an area in which Pakistan does not have either the desire or the capacity to help its neighbour to become a stable democracy. Islamabad is only keen on regaining the military influence it had during the blighted Taliban years.

 

India will have to be sympathetic towards Karzai when he speaks of reintegrating those Taliban groups which are willing to work within the constitutional framework that came into existence in 2002.

 

There are, of course, issues of governance and allegations of corruption against the Karzai government.

 

New Delhi can only hope to advise and exhort the Afghan president on these issues in private. It would be to India's advantage if Karzai is not seen as a puppet of either the United States, Nato or of India.

 

New Delhi has to do all it can to strengthen the democratic and civil institutions in Afghanistan, but it would also need to remain a neutral outsider. That would help that country and Karzai.

 

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DNA

EDITORIAL

CHANGE IN THE AIR

 

Mumbai: The British general elections appear to be headed for a way familiar to the Indian electorate — a hung Parliament.

 

The mother of the parliamentary system — the Westminster system — finds that its largely two-party system is facing a strong challenge from a third contender.

 

The Whigs and Tories of old gave way to Labour and Conservatives in the 30s, but now the Liberal Democrats appear to be a serious threat to the big two.

 

This week, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Nick Clegg, indicated that he would be willing to support a Labour government, provided they dumped current prime minister Gordon Brown.

 

This gives an interesting twist to the election and with just under 10 days of campaigning left, no one can be sure what the final dispensation will be.

 

The election process in Britain has seen significant changes this year, especially the introduction of American-style television debates between the leaders of the parties, which shows how change must come even to very traditional systems of democracy.

 

Incorporating TV audiences into the election is perhaps vital in a society where voting numbers have been declining every election. Watching their politicians may just inspire couch potatoes to get out to polling booths.

 

The British have an unwritten constitution which works on precedent and this year gives its democracy a new fillip.

 

The apparent clamour for change harks back to unhappiness with Labour which has a direct bearing on former prime minister Tony Blair's decision to support the US and George W Bush in the Iraq war.

 

Although Blair did win an election after that, it was partially because people did not want a mid-war change — much like the way Bush won a second term. But there was anger about the dubious evidence with which he justified the war, especially weapons of mass destruction which weren't there.

 

Growing unhappiness meant Blair had to hand over charge to his chancellor of the exchequer, current prime minister Brown.

 

Since then the economic recession has not helped Labour's case. Nor have the revelations about corruption among MPs, who blatantly misused their privileges.

 

There have, of course, been discussions about coalition governments in Britain before, even in the recent past, but ultimately British voters have plumped for one or the other. Is this time going to be different?

 

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DNA

THE TECHNOLOGY DIMENSION

PR CHARI

 

US president Obama has fast-forwarded the global nuclear non-proliferation agenda by initiating several related events over the last few weeks.

 

They include the US Nuclear Posture Review, which envisions Obama's hopes of reducing the salience of nuclear weapons in American strategy; a new arms limitation agreement between the United States and Russia (new START) that would drastically reduce the long-range nuclear missiles in their arsenals; and, finally, the Nuclear Security Summit, which identifies the security and safety of nuclear materials as constituting an imminent threat to nuclear non-proliferation.

 

The Iranians held their own 'spoiler' summit, thereafter, to publicise the double standards of the West on these issues, protest its own innocence, and lay down the new battle lines in this debate.The United States could now move towards ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), but this is quite uncertain. All these events are, of course, a prelude to a major event next month — the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.

 

So, what is missing in these gatherings?Briefly, the implications of evolving nuclear technology have yet to be addressed. The Nuclear Security Summit approved the need to "encourage the conversion of reactors from highly enriched to low enriched uranium fuels and minimisation of the use of highly enriched uranium where technically and economically feasible. The work plan urges participating states to collaborate on research to develop new technologies that will not use highly enriched uranium fuel for reactor operations or the production of medical and other isotopes.

 

In truth, nuclear technology has both positive and negative aspects. What is germane here are the problems that nuclear technology raises for nuclear non-proliferation.

 

Two identifiables that are of immediate relevance: First, the issue of breeder technology, which has inspired several national atomic energy programmes, including that of India.

 

A report by the International Panel on Fissile Materials argues that, contrary to what has been assiduously

claimed, sodium-cooled fast-breeder reactors cannot become the solution to either the power generation or nuclear waste disposal problems.

 

Despite $50 billion having been spent on their development, we are nowhere near producing a breeder reactor that is economically competitive.

 

Besides, these reactors are plagued by high costs, long downtime for repairs and maintenance, unresolved proliferation, and safety and security risks. Whether the pursuit of the chimera of breeder technology is worthwhile needs serious consideration by the world community to, at least, save good money following bad.

Second, official interest has been evinced in small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) to generate electricity. They could serve the needs of isolated communities and function as dedicated power plants for industrial enterprises.

 

The SMR alternative has been approved by Steven Chu, secretary for energy in the Obama administration. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Chu has argued that SMRs, being less than one-third the size of current atomic power plants, can be manufactured in factories and transported to sites.

 

They can be cost-effective too. SMRs have little environmental impact, and could replace aging thermal power plants that are recognised environmental hazards.

 

So, what is the downside? SMRs require highly skilled engineers to be working in remote locations, adding to the present problem of getting qualified personnel in large enough numbers. Moreover, these reactors require cooling by a liquid metal like sodium to enable fast neutron fission, which is an inherently dangerous technology. There is the attendant problem of nuclear wastes for which a permanent repository is required.

 

The US has been unable to operate its Yucca Mountain storage site in Nevada due to unresolved technical issues compounded by strong local opposition. There are serious safety and security issues involved with guarding SMRS scattered around the country, and in transporting fuel supplies and nuclear wastes to and from them. Consequently, the generic problems for the non-proliferation regime are greatly complicated by SMRs.

 

The forthcoming NPT Review Conference forebodes increased tensions between its developed and developing signatories. The developed West will argue that nuclear truants North Korea and Iran be chastised. The developing countries will urge the need for the nuclear weapon states to meaningfully reduce their nuclear arsenals to reach the elusive 'global zero goal'. The imperative of technological advance interrogates both these positions and must enter the debate.

 

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DNA

A MAHATMA AND A MAO IN YOUR POCKET

 

Barely two weeks from now, perhaps the biggest, most significant, economic news story of this year will begin to unfold. In the way it plays out, it might appear mind-numbingly 'unsexy': compared to the adrenaline rush of the recent IPL series (or the crorepati wheeling-dealing), it will seem as exciting as watching grass grow in slow-mo.

 

But don't mistake placidity for ineffectualness: the upcoming mega-event has already triggered a global stampeding of moneybags, some of which could find their way to India. It opens up a range of challenges for policymakers, but also opportunities that savvy investors can profit from.

 

The 'event' is, of course, the breathlessly anticipated 'de-pegging' of the Chinese renminbi (yuan) from the US dollar. To understand its significance, a bit of historical perspective is useful. China, the world's third largest economy, has built up its export muscle over the years by keeping its currency artificially low.

 

And although it effectively de-pegged the yuan from the dollar in 2005, and allowed its currency to appreciate by about 20% over three years, it reverted to the dollar peg in 2008, when the global financial crisis caused its export economy to collapse.

 

That knee-jerk, survivalist response had a knock-on effect on other low-wage economies, including India. It rendered their exports less competitive; it also cramped the policymaking space for inflation-battling central bankers by forcing them to resort to a partial peg of their currencies — or see a sharper fall in exports and a flood of potentially ruinous 'hot money' inflows.

 

More critically, at a time when consumer spending in developed economies is down and out, China's dollar-peg drew criticism for accentuating global trade imbalances by sending out into the world even more finished goods. Additionally, its pegged currency smothered domestic Chinese consumption, by effectively 'transferring wealth' from Chinese households to exporters.

 

After much badgering — from the US — and some mild-mannered cajoling — by others, including India — the yuan is likely to be de-pegged, perhaps in the second week of May. Nobody expects a dramatic revaluation: the consensus among economists is that the yuan might appreciate by 4-5% this year. But even that, and the prospect of greater appreciation over time, could reverse some of the negative influences of a pegged yuan.

 

First, it could render Indian exports, particularly at the low-value end, marginally more competitive, which should help improve India's trade balance.

 

Second, it would give the RBI a bit of elbow room in its effort to combat inflation without rising growth-sapping interest rates again. A moderate rupee appreciation, combined with India's high-orbit economic growth, could be a magnet for higher portfolio inflows into Indian stock and real estate markets, although they come with the risk of feeding bubbles. Each of these possibilities offers opportunities for savvy investors.

 

A stronger yuan would also 'enrich' domestic Chinese consumers and companies, and make overseas acquisitions relatively cheap, so expect to see a rash of hysterical reports about how Chinese are "buying up the world". One downside is that given China's ravenous appetite, commodity prices could spike, with inflationary impact.

 

The yuan is, of course, not a freely convertible currency, and reports last year that it would rapidly emerge as a global reserve currency have proven to be greatly exaggerated. Nevertheless, the trend towards a gradual internationalisation of the yuan is unmistakable; starting mid-May, Indian travellers to China can purchase yuan-denominated travellers' cheques. It will still be a while before Mao Zedong nestles alongside Mahatma Gandhi in your wallets, but next month's 'big event' could be a milestone towards that.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

PAKISTAN'S CRAZY IDEA

SEEKING KASAB'S CUSTODY WON'T DO

 

Pakistan has given a new twist to India's demand that Islamabad should speed up the process of punishing the masterminds behind the Mumbai terrorist attack after having got three dossiers from New Delhi to prove their crime. Instead of taking any credible action to improve its record, Pakistan now wants India to hand over the lone terrorist captured alive by the police in Mumbai, Ajmal Kasab, contending that this will help the trial of Lashkar-e-Toiba operations commander Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi and six others arrested for their role in the Mumbai massacre. Seeking Kasab's custody from India, where he along with other terrorists committed the heinous crime, is a crazy idea. Yet the insidious demand has been made ostensibly to justify Pakistan's dithering about bringing to justice the perpetrators of 26/11. This may also be aimed at conveying the false message to the international community that Pakistan is ready to act against the 26/11 plotters, but can go ahead only when India cooperates by handing over Kasab to Islamabad.

 

Interestingly, Pakistan's pointless demand has been timed with the April 28-29 SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit in Bhutan in the belief that this may facilitate a meeting between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart, Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani, on the sidelines of the regional gathering. Islamabad hopes to underline the need for getting the stalled composite dialogue process restarted. Pakistan, it seems, is unable to understand that unless it takes credible action against the terrorist outfits working against India from Pakistani soil, it will not be easy for any government in New Delhi to go in for a full-fledged resumption of the peace process.

 

Of course, the cause of peace in South Asia demands that India and Pakistan should keep talking to each other to find solutions to the problems coming in the way of normalisation of their relations. With the emergence of Prime Minister Gilani as the most powerful political figure in Pakistan, India now knows who to deal with to put across its viewpoint to Pakistan. But Pakistan has to prove that it is really serious about taking the dialogue process to its logical conclusion once it is restarted. One way to do so is for Islamabad to renounce the use of terrorism to achieve its policy objectives.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

THE SATLUJ STINKS

POLITICAL LEADERSHIP MUST ACT

 

THE Punjab Pollution Control Board has rightly taken up the issue of pollution of the Satluj by industries in Himachal Pradesh with its counterpart in the hill state. As experience shows, this is not enough. The contamination of the Satluj is too serious a matter to be left to the pollution control boards, especially when their track record for action has been so uninspiring. Perhaps, they are hamstrung by a thriving industrialist-politician nexus.

 

The flow of municipal and industrial waste into the Satluj as well as other rivulets and wetlands in the two neighbouring states will remain unchecked unless the political leadership takes steps to end the menace. In the absence of political initiatives at the state level, the Central authorities should intervene and get the licences of all such industries that throw their toxic waste into water bodies cancelled. The Centre announced Rs 220 crore for Punjab in January to save the Satluj. It must now ensure that the money is used for the purpose it is meant for.

 

Money is not a problem in any project of public interest in Punjab. If Baba Seechewal could clear the holy rivulet, Kali Bein, with community effort, why can't state machinery clean up the rivers and other water resources with public cooperation? It is because of the lack of an enlightened and far-sighted political leadership in both states. How the efforts of such selfless and devoted conservationists as Seechewal are defeated by profit-driven industrialists in connivance with ruling politicians is clear from the failure on the Buddha Nullah front. Things will not move unless the owners of the polluting units are arrested and proceeded against as has been suggested by a committee of the Punjab Vidhan Sabha. The toxic Satluj waters pose a serious threat to human and animal health as well as the ecological balance.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

EDITORIAL

BIOMETRIC PASSPORTS

NEED FOR VIGILANCE AGAINST FORGERIES

 

Forged documents, especially those used in international travel, are a major security breach since monitoring people after they have disembarked is very difficult in any democratic nation. As such, it is a matter of concern that according to the Home Ministry, 865 such cases were detected at international airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Amritsar in 2008. While the number appears to be falling — it was 1,251 in 2007 and 1,492 in 2006— it is still alarming, given the heightened security threats that the nation faces.

 

The government's comfort bid regarding issuing of machine-readable passports, installation of passport-reading machines and immigration control system software to verify the details of passengers and to prevent impersonation notwithstanding, there is an urgent need to be more alert at our airports, which are effectively our borders for international travellers. Foreign nationals overstaying or entering the country illegally have to be tackled in a different manner. They need to be identified by strengthening the intelligence network, and ensuring more coordination between various security agencies and greater vigilance by local police forces in different states and cities.

 

A significant number of Indians go abroad on forged documents. Many of them are poor people who sell off their lands and more to try to find work abroad. Often they are duped by unscrupulous agents. Such fraud could be combated by using passports with biometric identifiers, fingerprints, iris scans, facial recognition data stored on a chip. The International Civil Aviation Organisation promotes the use of biometric passports and travel documents. Many nations, notably the US, the UK and other European countries follow the advice of this UN-level body for the standardisation of travel documents.

 

In India, till now, only diplomatic passports are biometric. We need to ensure that all passports are biometric and thus tamper free. The struggle to secure the nation should include both harnessing of the latest technologies and keen vigilance

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

FRAGILE RECOVERY

GLOBAL ECONOMIC UPTURN MAY HELP INDIA

BY JAYSHREE SENGUPTA

 

INDIA has a few serious economic problems that are surfacing clearly as we are coming out of the global financial crisis. Number one is inflation, which is almost double digit at 9.9. First only food articles were getting expensive, but now all other items in the basket for the wholesale price index are becoming dearer. The only way out for the government was to let the RBI raise the interest rates and the cash reserve ratio of banks to act as a brake on inflation. The RBI recently hiked the repo and reverse repo rates (overnight lending and borrowing rates) to 5.25 per cent and 3.25 per cent. These can be translated later to a hike in bank lending and deposit rates.

 

The cash reserve ratio or the portion of deposits that banks park with the RBI has been raised to 6 per cent. This may have the effect of sucking out liquidity from the market as less cash would be available for lending. People will be putting money in the banks instead of consuming more goods, and thus the demand push inflation will be controlled.

 

Second, many manufacturers are facing a cut-throat competition from China. The Indian rupee has been rising against the dollar, but no amount of pressure is working on China's determination not to revalue the yuan against the dollar. China has a $16 billion trade surplus against India.

 

Recently when External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna went to China he complained about the burgeoning trade surplus China has with India. Chinese exports have been growing at 17 per cent. China has to import more from India, the US and other countries. Recently it has declared that after six years it is experiencing a trade deficit of $7.2 billion. This probably goes to show that China is importing a lot of raw materials and other inputs needed for its manufacturing industries from the rest of the world. Its GDP growth has been impressive at 11 per cent in March.

 

Many economists are sounding alarm bells regarding the deteriorating current account situation (the summary of trade flows of goods and services, including remittances from Indian migrant workers abroad), and what it would mean in terms of depreciation of the rupee. But contrary to what such a situation demands, the rupee is strengthening. India, however, does not have much to fear because it has nearly $300 billion in reserves. Thus, there is little reason to expect a sovereign bankruptcy but individual pain is possible as companies go bust, especially when they cannot compete with a formidable foreign rival (China).

 

The third problem is that of capital inflows into Indian markets. The problem of high value of the rupee against the dollar originates from the huge inflow of foreign institutional investments (FIIs) into the Indian financial market. This has been happening over the last few months and the government has resisted taking a drastic policy measure to abate the flow. The recent inflow of FIIs has been due to the high interest rates in emerging markets like India.

 

All over the world, the interest rates have been kept low to encourage and sustain recovery. But in India the interest rates have been slowly hiked to contain inflation, which has also made this country an attractive destination for parking funds by foreign investors. Also the stock market has been on an upswing and crossed 17K and, therefore, the returns are relatively higher than in other markets. It is this uncontrolled inflow which is increasing the supply of dollars in the financial system and leading to the hardening of the rupee. If the RBI had intervened, it would have bought dollars from the financial markets. But this has not happened.

 

The hike in the interest rates may further exacerbate the dollar inflows and lead to the hardening of the rupee to less than Rs 44 which will hurt exporters more. If exports slow down from their recent recovery phase - it did so for 13 months --- industrial growth will also decline because 12 per cent of industrial production is exported.

 

India's industrial growth has been impressive at 16.5 per cent in February and manufacturing growth, which is the main component of the index of industrial production, has been growing at 15 per cent in March. The interest rate hike will hurt industry where many units have just started undertaking fresh investments. There is a fear that this initiative will be thwarted. Even the demand for goods can be impacted if food inflation continues.

 

To control food inflation, the supply of essential commodities like pulses, sugar and cereals have to be

enhanced. Otherwise the continued thrust and buoyancy of the consumer demand that even Tim Geithner, US Treasury Secretary, noticed about the Indian economy would peter out.

 

The fact remains that the recovery is still fragile, especially when exports are also dependent on the economic recovery of its global partners. Unless the global economy recovers, India cannot experience robust recovery and, as the Prime minister also hinted at, there is a growing fear of protectionism. The glitches common to all the emerging economies - inflation, exchange rate and capital account problems — will make it harder for the government to attain sustainable development, especially in backward areas. Already there is plenty of disturbing news about the rise of insurgency in these backward regions which is going to be a security threat to investment.

 

Lastly, a rise in the interest rates will increase the debt service payments of the government because of its huge borrowings from the market. Interest payments already comprise 19 per cent of the government's total expenditure. During the last two years since the global financial crisis began, the government has been generously doling out money to boost the consumer demand as a result of which this cost has escalated. With the interest rate hike, the government may find it difficult to increase social spending to counter the ill-effects of inflation on the poor, who have not only suffered from job losses due to the recession of the last two years, but have also fought malnutrition. As is well known, India has the highest number of malnourished children in the world.

 

How to govern the country better with fewer resources and also have inclusive development programmes may

be one of the key challenges before India. Like India, the problem of rising internal debt and its servicing is also plaguing some of the countries of Europe and they are facing a double-dip recession. According to the IMF, India's governmental debt is at 82 per cent of the GDP, up by 3 per cent from what it was two years ago. But India's growth prospects are higher and the country may be saved from the double-dip recession scenario.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

COLUMN

"MOM" AND "DAD" TO EACH OTHER

BY RASHMI TALWAR

 

Nothing transcends geographical borders like the mom, dad, beta, baby syndrome that catches on with a long innings of a couple. I wondered who an elderly woman was addressing as "Abba" a man her own age, in Lahore till he answered "Ammi jaan…waqt par hun".

 

It felt just like home merely 60 km away in Amritsar, where dad used to address mom as "Mummy" and mom vice-versa to dad as "Papa". Now we too were doing that even before our silver wedding anniversary. It is not Lahore and Amritsar's shared culture to be blamed for turning couples into each other's mom-dad but a worldwide trend in marriages nearing a sterling silver.

 

I remember my most beautiful paternal aunt got married to a Merchant Navy guy. Exposed to countries other than "Mera Bharat Mahan" she addressed her husband "darling" and "sweetheart" as grandmother glared and we teenagers giggled. Tickled endlessly by the endearment, from Mills and Boons reading spree, we could not see the "darling" as the TDH (Tall-Dark-Handsome) but the not so familiar "sweet nothing" in Indian domestic circles surely stirred youthful longings.

 

A number of gifts from foreign lands kept granny mum but when a new daughter-in-law started the "darling" routine, granny mumbled her choicest expletives: "Hindustan vich reh ke, pati nu 'darling darling' kardi hai". Our giggles were never ending . That was in 70s when we heard mothers call their husbands "Oh ji, Ay ji or Suno ji" and approving nods by grandmothers, till it became a hearty joke in films. Actually, schooling had changed all.

 

Often peer or parental nicknames either spread warmth of familiarity or turn one glacial in later life. My sister when addressed as Nane Shah felt prickly. 'Petha', 'kaddu', 'nali cho-cho', 'tiddi', 'chiku' ,'drum', 'elachi' and 'ghori' were names of our tennis buddies. I felt that more often childhood names re-bonded the shared pranks but most don't share my enthusiasm. Some even take offence over shortened names as familiarity no more fits them. So when I called my classmate, now a principal, by her short name, she boomed: "Call me Mrs Sandhu".

 

However, my 'darling' aunt had a unique penchant for name-calling and so musical that none felt berated. A stay at her place was indeed enlightening. Early in the morning she exclaimed "Dhoop aa gayi" for the morning maid and "Raat aa gaya" for the evening servant. A vegetable and fruit vendor outside her house in the morning smiled widely when she asked him "Chor, itne din kio nahi aya?" while her grandchildren danced a merry-go-round with "chor aa gaya..chor aa gaya". Why she called him "chor" is a long story.

 

However, some instances can hardly be forgiven. My husband called me by my pet Pomerian's name: "My Guccu". "Am I your dog now", I retorted. "Oh my 'Beta', he said teasingly. Another time when I called my friend on mobile and called out "Dain" and somebody asked Seema who is "dain', she replied: "Rashmi Honi hai…

 

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

POVERTY OF MIND AND MEDIA

IPL DOES NOT REPRESENT EMERGING INDIA

BY ARUTI NAYAR

 

NOW that it is curtains down on IPL for the time being, we can get on with the business of focussing on real issues. Not only the media space but also precious Parliament time went on to debate the games our politicians play in the garb of sport. Just when we were devouring every sound bite and taking salacious delight in the masala that the IPL controversy had become, there was a tiny news report on how India now has 100 million more people living below the poverty line than in 2004, according to official estimates released last week. The estimates will remain "official", this reality never becomes "personal", thanks to the increasingly insular lives we lead.

 

There is no media space for such news because with the increasing focus on either celebrities or sports icons or politicians and their shenanigans, hard news has been edged out in this race to grab eyeballs. Newspapers compete not only with each other but also with the electronic media. The latter has an edge with its rapid-splice images suited for strapped-for-time individuals.

 

Dismal social indicators should be a cause for concern but they do not make a dent into our consciousness because our preoccupations remain limited to our cocooned interests. Small wonder that this bystander apathy translates into social apathy and the youngsters, who are our resource for the future, too imbibe attitudes that make them self-centred. Such statistics rarely shock them into an awareness of how a vast majority of the populace lives, rather subsists.

 

There were surprised looks when at a get-together, a woman settled in the US for more than 40 years had said that she had specially sent her daughter to India to be aware of how there are people who barely get to eat, "to sensitise her to the plight of the people who do not have privileges which she takes so much for granted. It will help her grow up in the real sense."

 

In the party that post-liberalised India has become, the poor have not only been edged out of the agenda but also out of news space and our mind space as well. The content and form of infotainment is fit for "the pastries" we have got used to (as an acerbic ex-boss would point to the lifestyle-related focus of the newspapers). He would compare this focus on trivia to junk and say the media needs to dish out real food. The dumbing down of content, focus on irrelevant, though seemingly "happening" (oh that buzz word that gives you an illusion of action even though you may be running to stay in the same place) ensure that the marginalised remain on the margins of our consciousness.

 

So comfortable is the middle class in its cocoon that it does not even feel the need to sensitise its children to the world down there, so diametrically opposed to the sheltered and cosy existence that we pull out all stops to provide to our kids. So it is a celebration of life with disposable incomes without ever feeling the presence of a vast economic divide.

 

Not that one can regiment the growth of children but an awareness of the yawning gap would not only generate an awareness of the schism but also ensure that the working professionals who emerge out of this pool are socially aware and at least know about the living conditions of a vast multitude, that a few may choose to act will be a bonus. In the absence of a social conscience and confusion of values, one has to consciously bring up a generation that is not narcissistic and connects to the society it lives in.

There are no absolutes but it is certainly not too much to expect that an effort should be made to inculcate some of this consciousness-raising in the formative years. How does one do it? Obviously through the two primary agents: the family and educational institutions, that is through child-rearing practices and moulding the educational syllabi. The latter are caught in a time warp and the process of sensitisation would go a long way if the policy-makers focus on "emerging India".

 

Showing often works better than telling to the very young. There is no harm in aquainting our children with the filth, squalor and abysmal living conditions. Just as it would do no harm and perhaps a lot of good if we give a break to unbridled consumerism (which has contributed to this disconnect between society and individual) and tell our future citizens that there are so many like them who get no food, medicines or shelter.

 

Unlike the assumption that IPL represents "emerging India", one would like to think and believe that emerging India has much more to offer us than shady deals and wheeling-dealing. It is up to us to channel the vast reservoirs of untapped energy and enthusiasm if we are to ensure they do "social networking" with a difference.

 

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

HARYANA: ECONOMICALLY UP, SOCIALLY DOWN

BY MAHABIR JAGLAN

 

Despite taking a great leap forward in the economic sphere, Haryana continues to be socially underdeveloped. It lags behind a large number of states in the country in terms of access to education, healthcare, nutrition and sanitation. Social backwardness is also reflected in the discrimination against women in the social, economic and political spheres. In terms of the ratio of female/male child mortality (often taken as an index of gender equity), Haryana is bracketed with the worst-performing areas in the world.

 

Access to education, without doubt, is the most crucial indicator of social development. Women's education in particular plays a vital role in the development process and overall social development. There are a number of studies revealing that it has a direct bearing on the quality of life of a family. It also ensures exceptionally high social returns in terms of lowering the rates of fertility and infant and child mortality. Moreover, the rise in the level of women education is also found to have a positive impact on child nutrition and education.

 

Haryana is among the five states – the other being Jammu and Kashmir, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh — which exhibit extreme gender discrimination in the attainment of education. Rural women in the state are in the most disadvantageous position with regard to access to education. It is not a surprise as studies in the demographic and social history divulge that Haryana happens to be the part of the north-western territory of the country that has treated women insensitively. The position of rural women in the region has not improved substantially in the wake of growing prosperity in the rural economy in the last four decades or so. Rather the traditional cultural bias against females has persisted and remained entrenched.

 

The level of literacy may be taken as a broad indicator of social and cultural development in the rural society. The figures of literacy obtained from the 2001 Census reveal that in terms of female literacy 17 states are doing better than Haryana. The literacy level in Haryana is lower than that of Kerala, Mizoram, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttaranchal, Himachal Pradesh and Goa. Incidentally, all these states are far behind Haryana in economic development. The large gap in the literacy level of males and females (23 percentage points) and the urban and rural females (22 percentage points) in the state indicates the extent of social deprivation of rural women.

 

The north-eastern region of the state comprising the districts of Ambala, Yamunanagar and Panchkula lies beyond the influence zone of khap panchayats. It is not incidental that this region has the highest total literacy rate (73.56 per cent) and rural literacy rate (67.37 per cent) in the state. This region also records the highest female literacy rate (57.45 per cent) and the least gender disparity in rural area. On the other hand, the rural female literacy in the western and southern regions of the state is as low as 45 per cent.

 

When the level of educational attainment is seen in relation to different social groups, it presents interesting revelations. As expected the Scheduled Castes are placed at the bottom as their overall educational attainment rate is 37.89 per cent. But the socially and economically backward castes (artisan communities) are performing better than the socially and economically dominant intermediary (peasant) castes (Jats, Ahirs, Gujjar etc.) in the educational sphere.

 

It goes without saying that in Haryana khap panchayats wield considerable influence on the land-owning communities, particularly the Jats. Claiming to be the representative of the socially and economically dominant communities, these medieval institutions at the collective level carry the bandwagon of patriarchal value system which perpetuates discrimination against women in all spheres of life, including education.

 

Hence, it is no surprise that these communities have failed to maintain the desired pace in the educational sphere. It does not require further elaboration to conclude that the socio-spatial domain of the khap panchayats in Haryana is discernible by social backwardness and utmost gender bias. It does not require satellite imagery to interpret as what lies underneath the canopy of khap panchayats.

 

The writer is an Associate Professor of Geography in Kurukshetra University

 

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THE TRIBUNE

OPED

 

CHENNAI DIARY

DHONI'S TAMIL NEW YEAR

N. RAVIKUMAR

 

WHEN Chennai Super Kings captain MS Dhoni wished a happy Tamil New year last week, there was wild applause from the audience, accompanied by laughter. Dhoni too was pleased. But he was unaware of the reasons for the noisy cheers. Two years have passed since the Tamil Nadu government officially changed the Tamil calendar and fixed January 14 as the Tamil New Year Day instead of April 14.

 

The crowd knew that somebody had played a joke on Dhoni and the captain greeted the people with good intentions. Even though, Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and his cabinet colleagues were present in the stadium, none pointed out Dhoni's mistake as the CSK captain is the blue-eyed boy of Chennai fans.

 

"While I went through the busy streets in my motor cycle last year, many people talked to me in Tamil. Though, I did not understand their language, I felt their love and affection for me", he said, while greeting the people.

 

After Haryana's hurricane, Kapil Dev, the present Indian captain is the most loved cricketer in Tamil Nadu. So the fans did not want to embarrass their hero by pointing out his mistake. "When Dhoni wishes, it is really the Tamil New Year for us", quipped one of the fans.

 

Pyramid for the living

 

When Tamil Nadu Finance Minister K Anbazhagan compared the newly constructed state assembly to an Egyptian pyramid, there was an embarrassing silence in the treasury benches. The fact that pyramids are tombs for the dead could have weighed heavily on their minds.

 

Actually, the veteran leader was countering criticism by AIADMK members, who had compared the assembly building to a "circus tent", a remark which annoyed the ruling party members.

 

He went on to compare it with Egyptian pyramids. Immediately realising that his remarks could be misconstrued, he added that the Egyptian pyramids were constructed for the dead, but this assembly building was for the welfare of the living people.

 

However, the opposition members were really amused. One of the AIADMK MLAs, who spoke to reporters outside, said: "Tamil Nadu is the only state which has built a pyramid for the living".

 

Bride airlifted

 

After a long wait of several months, a male crocodile, belonging to the Tomistoma breed at the Madras Crocodile Bank has hopes of finding a mate. Since it is a rare breed, the reptile bank's authorities were finding it tough to get a mate for the Tomistoma male.

 

Finally, it was decided to bring a female from the Ahmedabad zoo.. It was a tough journey for the female croc, which was packed in a wooden crate and airlifted.

 

After a tiresome four-hour journey, the eight-feet long female, landed at Chennai. The bride was not in a good mood as it was not accustomed to the new circumstances. So it has been kept in a separate enclosure, near the male Tomistoma. Now the groom can only watch and wait. Officials say the female will be ready in a few weeks.

 

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MUMBAI MERROR

EDITORIAL

COOK LIKE YOUR AAJI

FORGET DINING OUT AT RESTAURANTS, THIS MAY 1 ENJOY AUTHENTIC MAHARASHTRIAN USING RECIPES IN KAUMUDI MARATHE'S THE ESSENTIAL MARATHI COOKBOOK

Food is the heart of any culture," begins Kaumudi Marathe's introduction to The Essential Marathi Cookbook. Her recipes are authentic. Her family and friends make them that way. In the list she provides of people who have contributed to the book, Konkanastha brahmins predominate. But also present are Deshasthas, Saraswats, CKPs, East Indians and Malvani Muslims. That represents the whole gamut of Marathi cuisine, not exhaustively by any means, but at least as a selection of significant pointers.

The recipes come with delightful memories of what they meant to the writer as she grew up. That life is no longer available to young people because, as she says, "we live farther and farther away from older relatives, obvious and natural teachers of arts such as cooking". In the circumstances, "recording food history is not only critical, it is essential."

 

She can say that again. Not only do we live far away from our "natural teachers", we are well on our way to rejecting their role in our lives altogether. In recent times I have heard a nauseously bubbly voice informing television viewers that a certain manufacturer's packets of readymade gravies will bring the aromas of the restaurant into their homes. But wasn't there a time when manufacturers laboured to convince consumers that their packaged foodstuffs were as good as "grandmother's cooking"? What happened in between to reverse the claim?

Eating out happened. More and more families took more and more children out to dinner. You don't go to a restaurant to eat what you eat at home. It has to be special. So the soft homemade dosa turned into a long roll of paper thin crispness. Vegetables and meat were submerged in thick gravies full of cashew-nut powder and cream. Taste buds were quickly converted from the simple and nutritious to the rich and seductive. Adults and children alike wondered why home-cooked food did not taste like restaurant food. Along comes this manufacturer to assure them that, with a little help from him, it very well could. Grandmothers? Who are they?
This kind of entrepreneurship is where Marathi food takes a knock. To be Marathi is to lack enterprise. To be Marathi is also to oscillate perpetually between thinking you are superior because you have Shivaji, and inferior because you have little money. Your food is actually the best in the world, but will others think so?
 

I was in Nashik at a three-star type hotel. Among its restaurants was one that served thalis. What goes into your thalis, I asked. The usual, said the Marathi man at the desk – Gujarati, Rajasthani. What about Marathi, I asked. The man smiled sheepishly. Are we waiting for the State Government to make Marathi food compulsory in all restaurants?

Many of Marathe's recipes are part of my family's repertoire. And yet I read her book from cover to cover (I did too!), because of the delicious memories it evoked. Marathe speaks in the introduction about collective papad making. On my tongue tingles the taste of dangar (the dough) dunked in oil. The semolina cake recipe (page 321) takes me back to summer holidays in Dahanu when my grandmother would pile the semolina-sugar-dahi-and-milk mix in a deep pan and bake it on a wood-fired chulah with burning coals on the lid. I will leave the resultant aroma to your olfactory imagination.

 The recipe for "Amboli" (page 116) recalls delicious Sunday afternoons when this dosa-type pancake came straight off the cast-iron griddle on to our plates accompanied by a hot coriander chutney. Then comes that heavenly brew, "Haldi-kunku coffee" (page 377). Made with ground coffee, lots of milk and sugar and generous dashes of nutmeg and cardamom powders, it raises a horrified laugh amongst hardcore coffee drinkers but was our ultimate reward for good behaviour.

 On Maharashtra's 50th birth anniversary three days from now, here's wishing everybody happy aamras-puri, vangi bhaat and khamang kakadi!

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EDITORIAL

WINNER'S CURSE

THE HIGH 3G BIDS COULD CAUSE LARGE EARNINGS RE-RATINGS

The government could end up with Rs 45,000-50,000 crore as revenue from the 3G/BWA (third generation/broadband wireless access) auctions for spectrum; this compares with the Budget estimate of Rs 35,000 crore. Day 14 of the auction for 3G spectrum saw bids reach Rs 33,500 crore, while the BWA auction is scheduled to start two days after the 3G bidding is over.

Most telecom service providers have 7 MHz of spectrum. Getting another 5 MHz from the 3G auction could reduce their operational expenses by as much as 30-40 per cent, as economies of spectrum-scale kick in. With the average revenue per user (or Arpu) falling steadily, firms desperately need new revenue streams. Most of these have to do with higher-speed internet access and other applications that require greater bandwidth. While the incremental Arpu is down to as low as Rs 100 per month for new users of voice telephony, the 3G-like wireless internet dongles sold by Tata Teleservices and RCom fetch monthly revenues that are upwards of Rs 650. The number of internet users is, of course, tiny when compared to the total mobile-customer population, so the key question is whether these higher-paying customers, 90-100 million in another five years, according to estimates, are enough to justify bids that total Rs 45,000-50,000 crore.

 An estimate by Kotak Institutional Equities Research, which projected bids of Rs 51,300 crore ($10.3 billion for 3G and $1.1 billion for BWA) more than a month ago, puts this number in perspective — while firms stand to gain $6.1 billion through the new/better services they can offer on 3G spectrum, they can lose $6.3 billion if they don't have 3G as their best customers will leave them. Going by this logic, if firms bid, say, $9 billion for 3G, that's far in excess of the $6.1 billion they can earn through 3G services. In other words, it's safe to assume a series of earning re-ratings from analysts once the auctions are over.

The equally vital part of the auction is what it says about the damage that Communications Minister A Raja caused to the exchequer by giving away 2G licences for a pittance in 2008. Assuming the 3G auction settles at Rs 40,000 crore for four all-India licences with 5 MHz each, that's a price of Rs 2,000 crore per MHz, whereas Mr Raja gave away the licences at Rs 375 crore per MHz. It is true that 3G spectrum allows firms to service more customers per MHz than 2G spectrum does, but on the other hand the demand for 3G services is constrained by the high cost of handsets. Most estimates look at just 10-15 per cent of the market moving to 3G services. Even if 2G spectrum were to be fairly priced at only half that for 3G (i.e. Rs 1,000 crore per MHz), Mr Raja gifted to a handful of favoured companies government money to the tune of Rs 15,000 crore — the largest such gift in Indian history. The question is, why is Mr Raja still a minister in the government?

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

ON RECOVERY ROAD

IT PUTS ITS WORST YEAR BEHIND IT

India's export-oriented software industry has put behind it the toughest year in its history, with its business model intact. The recovery now under way is likely to be broad-based, stretching across geographies, businesses and verticals, according to Wipro Chairman Azim Premji, who is the industry doyen. This is why the stock market's response to the fourth quarter results has been guided more by the forecasts issued, as in the case of Infosys, than by the performance in the last quarter. The expected recovery is likely to walk on two legs. One is the recovery of the global financial majors who are critical to Indian software for being among its largest customers. The other is the incipient overall recovery in the mature economies which is expected to enable firms to again start spending for greater efficiencies. The anticipation of good times ahead is indicated by projections of higher hiring and announcement of pay hikes.

Among the industry leaders, by far the best performance this past year has been by Tata Consultancy Services, which has achieved 17 per cent volume growth in a year of recession. But the even more remarkable feat has been the improvement in its margins. From being behind margin leader Infosys by 10 percentage points in the beginning of the year, it has closed the fourth quarter just 1 percentage point behind. That is why CEO N Chandrasekaran has described 2009-10 as an exceptional year in which the company has been able to build a solid platform for growth. His optimism is based partly on the prospect of getting large orders, the first in the line being a likely $100 million deal with Deutsche Bank to install core banking solutions for its operations in 52 countries. Against this, while Infosys' top line performance has been subdued, Wipro's, with its non-IT businesses, has fluctuated sharply between positive and negative territory. In the last quarter, margins for both Infosys and Wipro had shrunk slightly.

 The key question is whether the industry will go back to exceptional growth as global recovery takes root over the next two to three years, or settle down to a sedate pace in comparison to its own chequered past. Nasscom, the industry lobby group, has projected a compounded annual growth rate for the new decade of no more than 13-14 per cent, or no faster than the expected growth in nominal GDP. This would seem to be unduly modest, and overly influenced by the challenges of the past couple of years. Industry leaders talk privately of aiming for sustained growth of 20 per cent. The good news is that even domestic IT expenditure is going up rapidly, propelled by rising government spending. This is likely to give a top line boost to the industry, though domestic margins are lower than in mature markets. Meanwhile, the rupee's rising exchange value has already dampened performance. However, since further rupee appreciation is likely to be limited, the potential downside on this count is small

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN: THE G-20, POWER, AND IDEAS

THE DISPERSION OF GLOBAL ECONOMIC POWER AUGURS WELL FOR THE ROLE OF IDEAS IN POLICY-MAKING

ARVIND SUBRAMANIAN

The wobbly West and the rising rest. That is now the context to all gatherings of the world's economic policy-makers. The monopoly on power and influence wielded by the hegemon (the United States) and by the other advanced economies is being broken for real and for good. Key decisions will emanate less from conversations amongst a few and more from a wider group. It is difficult to predict whether the theatre of real action will be the G-20 or some other collectivity. But we can be increasingly sure that the "halcyon" days of the G-1 or the G-7 are behind us.

This makes for both bad news and good news. The dispersion of power will probably make international cooperation more difficult to secure, except perhaps in times of crises as we recently witnessed. More countries having a say means more countries having the right to say no. As more vetoes are exercised, efficient and expeditious decision-making at the global level could prove elusive.

 But the unambiguously good news is the impact of the de-monopolisation or de-cartelisation of power and influence on the role of ideas. In the international economic sphere, especially in relations between the West and the rest, power and ideas have interacted in two ways in the past.

In some cases, monopoly power or rather the power monopoly has simply overridden ideas. The best example relates to the intellectual property (IP) negotiations in the Uruguay Round of trade negotiations (TRIPs). Then, developing countries, especially the poorest amongst them, had the compelling intellectual case that stronger rules on IP were not in their interest: up to first order, TRIPs was a rent-transfer mechanism from consumers in poor countries to pharmaceutical companies in the rich world. But the combined commercial might of the United States, Europe, Japan and Switzerland overwhelmed the developing country case.

That economic power can affect policy and rules is far from new. The really troubling aspect to the TRIPs saga was the intellectual complicity of the World Bank, especially the deafening silence of its research department. At a time when AIDS was ravaging Africa, and TRIPs was threatening to impede access to HIV-related drugs, the World Bank remained a silent spectator, failing to make a clear and unequivocal case about TRIPs' adverse impact.

We will never know whether the intellectual leaders at the World Bank during the TRIPs saga (circa 1990-2003) attempted to speak up but were muzzled by the Bank's political masters (the power monopolists) or did not even attempt to speak up, imposing self-censorship, in anticipation of the likely political response (We can rule out the third possibility that they did not see the underlying merits of the developing country argument as that would have been incompetence). Regardless, this intellectual blight on the World Bank's record illustrates the ability of power to muzzle good ideas.

A second type of relationship between power and ideas is more subtle. Those who have power work to promote a belief system that will ensure the perpetuation of power. Power influences ideas and absolute power ensures that self-serving ideas stamp out all others. One example of this, of course, relates to the finance fetish, domestic and foreign. The links between Wall Street and academia rocket scientists tempted by the lure of astronomical compensation and the funding by Wall Street of universities in general and finance programmes in business schools in particular, helped play a role in ensuring that there was enough supply of intellectuals who promoted the veneration of domestic and foreign finance. Intellectuals too have a price, and for Wall Street this cost has been chump change.

Thus, Simon Johnson's energetic call for breaking up the large financial houses in his engaging and feisty book 13 Bankers is as much aimed at attenuating the link from economic power to political power as from economic power to idea power (or, in the case of those doing God's work, from economic power to spiritual power).

In short, as power gets dispersed, the hold of power over ideas gets weakened. Good ideas have a better chance of getting a hearing and bad ones face a greater threat of being flushed out. Can these propositions be validated or falsified in the near future? The fate of two bad ideas (there are several others) could serve as a testing ground for the proposition that the G-20 might be better for the marketplace of ideas than the G-7.

Idea 1. The leadership of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank must be a monopoly of the wobbly West. If and when Dominique Strauss-Kahn returns to seek political office in France, there will be a vacancy to fill at the IMF. A class of moderate opinion is lobbying for selection of the IMF's managing director position based on merit without regard to nationality. We must be clear. The selection of a meritorious European simply will not do. There will be no way of distinguishing whether this choice reflected new merit-based procedures or cynical perpetuation of the old. To avoid all doubt, to be more chaste than Caesar's wife, the process must deliver a non-European this time around. Over time, as the process is placed beyond reproach, the focus can be on the process rather than on the outcome.

Idea 2. Completing the Doha Round is indispensable to the credibility of the WTO and the health of the world economy. It is clear to most that the pursuit of Doha recalls the Mallory motive for scaling the Everest: because it has been around (and for a long time). Yet, there is collective public denial on this. The most pressing issues in the trading system are not within the scope of the Doha Round as Aaditya Mattoo of the World Bank and I argued last year in a piece in Foreign Affairs. Addressing these issues expeditiously must be the goal. The immediate and public debate to be had is on whether getting there quickly requires finishing the Doha Round and harvesting the modest gains it offers, burying it with the appropriate diplomatic rites, or creatively re-packaging it.

So, as the road show that is the G-20 moves on, it is time not just to celebrate the economic rise of emerging markets but also to be hopeful about ideas being unshackled from power and hence gaining their rightful role.

The author is senior fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics and Center for Global Development

 

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

LEARNING TO LIVE WITH HAWKERS

THE EMBATTLED LEFT FRONT HAS DONE ONE MORE VOLTE FACE BY DECIDING TO REGULARISE HAWKERS IN KOLKATA'S BUSIEST STREETS

SUBIR ROY

In the run-up to the municipal polls in Kolkata next month (state assembly elections are due next year), the embattled Left Front government of West Bengal has done one more volte face (it had earlier reintroduced English language teaching in government primary schools) by deciding to regularise street vendors or hawkers whose takeover of large stretches of pavements along the busiest streets has become a defining aspect of the city. The decision has predictably been assailed by the media, particularly the English language papers which have recalled Operation Sunshine — the move by the same government a decade ago to rid the pavements of the same hawkers to much middle class applause. I myself had written a laudatory piece then celebrating regaining of the street-looks of my childhood.

 The issue is of national interest not just because the state government has claimed that it is implementing the national policy on urban street vendors. Kolkata — with its poverty, lack of jobs, congestion and an electorate more interested in its rights than duties — is an extreme case of urban realities across the nation. Make a dent on the hawker problem there and you will have developed a model for application elsewhere.

Several realities need to be grasped at the outset. India is not China and you cannot get rid of hawkers in busy parts of Kolkata by doing a mini Tiananmen Square. (The hawkers have been earlier successfully removed without serious violence because they knew they would be able to get back.) The latest move recognises this, even though the motive, with an eye on elections, is insincere. There is no point in playing around with words like "sunshine" and "sunset" in headlines because Operation Sunshine-I has not and Operation Sunshine-II will not work. It is not an available option. Conversely, regularising hawkers is no real solution to the unemployment problem or poverty. Left unchecked and carried to its logical conclusion, hawkers will cover not just pavements but entire carriageways.

But hawkers (325,000 in Kolkata at the last count) mean livelihood for families at the bottom of the pyramid, made possible by young men with an entrepreneurial spirit which needs celebrating. The middle class cannot want to own cars and simultaneously say it is wrong for hawkers to usurp pavements. Private cars are the biggest usurpers of public (road) space. They gain legitimacy because the public transport system is inadequate, though it is better in Kolkata than in most other Indian cities. But hawkers themselves will go away if people cannot access them via usable roads and pavements. The aim, therefore, must be to find a compromise that is practical, civilised and does not imply the abdication of the state.

One solution not tried so far is use of technology. The hawkers' stalls are both sprawling and ugly. Modern carts on wheels with storage space below the service top and colourful awnings along the sides can do much to give the city a better look while keeping a control on how much space a single hawker can occupy. These carts can be stored for the night in common state-arranged pounds so that pavements can get cleaned between night and morning. As hawkers sell clothes, utensils, toys, food, soft drinks, what have you, there can be a national design competition for a modular cart and variations of it for different uses. Such carts can actually make the derelict city look colourful and can become a plus point. Next, hawker presence has to be intensively coordinated with civil clean-up work so that hawkers, particularly those selling food, do not create an unhygienic mess. If these carts work, then they can be replicated all over the country.

The biggest hurdle is to acceptably ration pavement space between the hawker and the walker. The earlier official directive that hawkers can take up only a third of the pavement space is fair. Well-designed carts can actually generate a few inches of pavement space without hurting the hawker. Municipal corporation staff have to go down pavements with measuring tape and chalk in hand to draw lines which no one can transgress. Under these conditions, it will be possible to accommodate most of the current hawkers while making pavements usable again for pedestrians. The system will work and boundaries will be respected only if the system evolves out of intensive consultation with all stakeholders. What has to be initiated is a culture of consultation before doing anything. Civic staff and hawkers' representatives have to learn to bang heads together and honour commitments. Barcelona, a city that has reinvented itself, holds intensive discussions with the public on even things like where and how to locate a bus shelter.

The new system promises identity cards for hawkers. This is fine, but the hawkers' union demand that the card should also say where and how much space is allotted will not do. The card should entitle a holder to ply his trade, where he will do so will depend on what he has been doing and by seeking new territory. The cardinal duty of the police and the civil staff must be not to allow the hawkers' sprawl to expand further on busy streets. Such a system or its variation identified through discussion can work and be better than what is there on the ground right now.

subirkroy@gmail.com

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

JUMPING TO CONCLUSIONS

IF JUDGMENTS DO NOT GIVE REASONS FOR THEIR RULINGS, THEY WOULD BE SUSPECT

M J ANTONY

A judge who silently listens without making any comments is a challenge to the skill and patience of the arguing counsel. He drops no clue as to what goes on in his mind. A worse scenario is when he writes a terse order without discussing the strenuous arguments made before him.

This happens more often than we would like to believe. In four judgments in as many weeks, the Supreme Court criticised the high courts for not following the norms for writing judgments.

 Absence of reasons in a judgment baffles not only the litigants who want to file an appeal but also the Supreme Court judges who are called upon to examine the high court ruling. Moreover, if a judgment does not contain reasons, it would lead to suspicion in public mind that the judges who wrote it did not understand the issues, were careless, whimsical or were swayed by other considerations. Natural justice is a basic principle of law, which enjoins upon the court to hear both sides diligently and give a reasoned order.

Owing to the recurrence of such "non-speaking" orders, as they are called, the Supreme Court last week devoted some 20 pages of its judgment in the Assistant Commissioner vs Shukla & Brothers case, to emphasise the importance of reasons. In this case, the Rajasthan High Court had dismissed the revision petition of the revenue department by a one-line order. It appealed to the Supreme Court alleging that the high court had not recorded reasons for such summary dismissal of its petition without answering the questions of law formulated for its consideration.

The Supreme Court found substance in the argument and remitted the matter to the high court for reconsideration, followed by a speaking order. It acknowledged that the increasing institution of cases in all courts in the country is casting a heavy burden on them. "Despite that, it would be neither permissible nor possible to state as a principle of law that while experiencing the power of judicial review, particularly by the high courts, providing of reasons can be dispensed with."

There are at least three arguments for following the principle of natural justice scrupulously. The rule applies not only to courts but also to all administrative authorities. The judgment said that firstly, a person against whom an order is required to be passed or whose rights are likely to be affected must be granted an opportunity of being heard. He has a legitimate expectation to know the reasons for rejection of his contentions and evaluate the grounds for turning down his prayers. Secondly, the authority concerned should provide a fair and transparent procedure. Finally, the authority concerned must apply its mind which should be reflected in a reasoned order. "Reason," the judgment reiterated, "is the soul of orders."

In another judgment last week, Asst Commercial Tax Officer vs Kansai Nerolac Paints, the court remitted the case to the high court as its judgment had not given reasons for its conclusion. In yet another ruling, Secretary & Curator vs Howrah Nagrik Samity, the court commented: "Reason is the heartbeat of every conclusion. It introduces clarity in an order and without the same, it becomes lifeless. Reasons substitute subjectivity by objectivity. Absence of reasons renders the order indefensible/unsustainable, particularly when the order is subject to further challenge before a higher forum." The court ordered a review of the Calcutta High Court judgment in this case.

A senior citizen recently wrote to an individual judge of the Rajasthan High Court complaining that certain conditions imposed by Air India (AI) for getting concessional fares were arbitrary. The court turned the letter into a public interest litigation (Union of India vs Shankar Lal) and issued notice to AI, Jet Airways and the Railways. Then it quashed the conditions. The government appealed to the Supreme Court which found that the high court judgment had not given the reasons for its order and "appeared to proceed on the basis of its subjective satisfaction".

Procedural laws elaborately explain how to write a judgment. Order 20 Rule 4 of the Civil Procedure Code says that judgments shall contain a concise statement of the case, points for determination, the decision thereon and the reasons for such decision. The Criminal Procedure Code devotes the whole Chapter 27 to the procedure and contents of delivering judgments. High court judges can follow them, but need not go to the other extreme either, and write judgments running to a hundred printed pages, as some Supreme Court judges are tempted to do.

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BUSINESS STANDARD

EDITORIAL

IS A SPORTS REGULATOR NEEDED?

Given the mess in Indian cricket, this will introduce transparency and grievance-redressal for everyone - but since regulators often tend to toe the government line, there are risks involved.

 A sports regulator for governance norms and a dispute-resolution process is vital — this was proposed in 2007 but never implemented

Given the nature of the current allegations surrounding improprieties in cricket administration, Indian sport now faces its biggest financial and political crisis thus far. However, Indian sports federations, across the board, are no strangers to the various issues of transparency, integrity and due process that have been raised in the present instance. As unfortunate as this state of being might be, I feel that some good could still emerge.

Taking a step back, most of our country's sports governing bodies are private membership organisations. They claim monopolistic rights over the administration of their respective sports with the very same vigour with which they assert their autonomy. This is the perfect recipe for fiefdoms where power can be exercised without responsibility. In the lack of basic governance protocols and public accountability, possibly lies the cause of the pitiable state of Indian sport which, in most cases, shows little progress and in a handful of others, has perhaps seen unaccountable growth. With the integrity of sport having been brought to the forefront of national importance, we have now been presented with a prime opportunity to reorient Indian sports administration so that it can focus on its two most important stakeholders — the sportsperson and the sports fan.

Ours is a nation that is not lacking in talent. From my limited experience in the field of sports talent representation, this certainly extends to sports talent. Unfortunately, talent is only a necessary but not a sufficient condition for sporting success. Although many of our most talented sportspersons have brought themselves to the doorstep of success by dint of single-minded pursuit, however hard they try, some doors have remained shut to them. Being an Indian sports fan has, for the most part, been an equally frustrating pursuit.

The role of a sports federation ought to be that of finding the right talent, grooming it over the years, supporting it when support is needed the most and creating the right platforms for it to succeed. This enables talent to deliver, engage with the public imagination and thereby contribute to the development of the sport's ecosystem. Unfortunately, our sports bodies have largely failed to prioritise this core administrative function of connecting sporting talent to sports fans.

A significant change of perspective can sometimes come from introspection but, after a point, is probably best externally enforced. Given the public interest function of sports federations, and the common issues of concern across the whole set of our federations, I believe it is now opportune for the government to step in meaningfully and responsibly. Just as Sebi regulates public markets and public companies, the time is ripe for a public regulator for Indian sports bodies. Whether or not the federations are publicly-funded, they hold public trust and must be accountable and subject to basic checks and balances. In fact, a body of this sort (the "Sports Regulatory Authority of India") was proposed by the sports ministry in the Draft Comprehensive National Sports Policy 2007. At the time, it was summarily rejected for want of political will. Perhaps we have been given a cause to be a little more willing now?

A supervisory body of this sort, even if somewhat unprecedented, can be carefully structured to play a facilitative role rather than one of a micro-manager. It will also need its own internal checks and balances. This sports watchdog can focus on drafting and implementing good governance guidelines for sporting federations, disclosure and reporting standards, disciplinary standards and dispute-resolution procedures. This would include setting and enforcing standards for elections, maximum terms and independence criteria for administrators, professional qualification criteria, institutional transparency and accountability for financial and sporting decisions, controlling corruption in sports, protecting the integrity of results, stadium security and similar matters that contribute to the ultimate objective of delivering value to the sportsperson and the sports fan. This re-prioritisation is a matter of the greatest importance to Indian sport. As things stand, while myopic interests will limit the ability of federations to set their own houses in order, I believe a government regulator can effectively put in place a process that will achieve this goal.

We have reached the tipping point and it is now time we turn the corner. Even though the finish line may not yet be in sight and the course may be full of obstacles known and unknown, this is a race worth running.

GoSports is a sports management firm

Look at the mess in hockey or other games where the government has a role, and decide if you want cricket to suffer the same fate

Indian cricket is reeling from a ferocious onslaught from politicians and media ever since that wonderful brand IPL got itself entangled in the auction mess. From corruption to match-fixing, every conceivable allegation has been made. Some politicians have even demanded that cricket itself be banned. The more magnanimous only want to "nationalise" the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) or appoint a regulatory body. Nothing can be more counter-productive than the suggestion of government intervention.

For, it may make things worse for Indian cricket by making it an outcast in the world scenario. The International Cricket Council (ICC) grants affiliation to national cricket boards and not government institutions just as the Olympic Charter forbids government interference in national sports administration. The Kuwait Olympic Committee was suspended by the International Olympic Committee for suspected government interference in the elections of its national sports bodies. And have we forgotten that South Africa was kept out of the cricket fold because the government insisted that Blacks had no place in the game?

All those who are arguing in favour of government intervention or a regulatory authority need to be reminded that our government has many other priorities to attend to. It has the small matters of running the nation, keeping prices down, dealing with the Maoists in the hinterland and the like.

But you cannot condone corruption. If there are violations of laws of the land, then the government needs to act. Law-enforcement agencies like the Registrar of Societies, the Income Tax department and the Company Affairs Board etcetera can check and prevent financial misdemeanours.

It is strange that at a time when successive governments have emphasised the need to disinvest in the public sector, there should be a campaign for nationalisation of BCCI. Of course, cricket is a national passion but that does not mean the government must take over the running of the cricket Board. Cricket — and more specifically Indian cricket — has always found ways to tackle crises. The best example of this is the match-fixing scandal that broke out in the year 2000. Though there are no laws to deal with sports corruption in India, and though the Central Bureau of Investigation only produced an interim report after its investigation, BCCI went ahead and slapped bans on five individuals. Isn't that strong evidence of its ability to deal with crises?

BCCI has not done a bad job at all. For a nation that had just five "permanent" Test centres, there are at least a dozen-and-a-half venues capable of staging Test matches and One-Day Internationals. In the last few years alone, new cricket stadiums have come up in Delhi, Indore, Dharamshala, Nagpur, Visakhapatnam and Hyderabad. By the end of the year, the cities of Mumbai, Rajkot and Jamshedpur would have brand new stadiums while Chennai, Kolkata and Bengaluru are refurbishing the existing ones. Many more are on the way. During the same time, the national team has also risen from the ranks.

Today, the Golden Mace for the No 1 Test team sits in the BCCI headquarters in Mumbai. Our one-day side is in the top clutch and India is also the winner of the inaugural T20 World Cup. In recent years, we have also seen the emergence of stars not just from the metros but also from smaller towns like Ranchi, Baroda, Ghaziabad, Allahabad and Rae Bareilly. It is the only sport which has a welfare and pension scheme not just for its international cricketers but also for those who have played first-class cricket. A first-class cricketer who recently retired from Indian Railways informed me that his BCCI pension is more than his last drawn salary! All of this would not have happened with an administration that was either callous or lacked foresight, would it?

Contrast this with other sports that have survived on government dole.

Look at the mess in which Hockey India find itself in, not in the least because the government sought to have a say in how its elections must be held. Look at how our weightlifters have been suspended for dope violations that happen in the camps run by the Sports Authority of India, a government body. And all these sports come closest to being regulated by government since they get their funding from the government. And can anybody explain the mess in the Commonwealth Games?

Indian cricket will be better off wrestling with its problems and finding a solution itself rather than face any form of government intervention in running the sport that binds people better than any religion can.

TCM is a sports management firm

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

ONLY THE RUPEE'S THE HURDLE

 

It can now be said with conviction that the world economy has emerged from the depths of the crisis it had experienced through 2008-09 — that is what India's information technology majors' results show.

Third quarter financial results of the four major IT companies had signalled a recovery, and now the fourth quarter results of these companies confirm the good news.

Infosys reported a 3.5% rise in revenues in Q4, from a quarter ago, TCS 1.2%, Wipro 1.8% and HCL 1.5%.

Profit growth numbers looked more encouraging, despite the strengthening rupee playing a spoilsport. Thus, TCS reported a 9.7% rise in net profits, from a quarter ago. Corresponding growth number for Infosys was 2.6% and HCL 16.2%. Wipro does not provide separate numbers for IT services.

While the latest numbers are definitely not as heady as those reported pre-crisis, what is clear is that global corporations have once again started spending on technology, although cautiously. Client additions have improved and large deals are back on the table.

All four companies reported addition of 27-47 new clients during the quarter, and sectors such as financial services and manufacturing that account for a large chunk of business of Indian companies have started bouncing back. This makes the future look more optimistic. That apart, there are many transformational and integration deals emerging, with many banks and other financial services companies needing logistic support for the organisational restructuring they need to effect. All this means good news for the employment situation in the country. Companies are planning not only to continue hiring, but also to pay their experienced hands better — important to keep consumer confidence high and support growth in the domestic economy.

The sharp appreciation of the rupee will not disappear any time soon. Companies should further accelerate their efforts to move up the value chain, boosting revenue per employee, as also tap the growing domestic market for information technology services.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

OPPOSITION'S SELF-GOAL

 

In an abject display of political mismanagement by the Opposition, its united façade crumbled when it came to the cut motions on the Demands for Grants. The government sailed through easily, dividing the Opposition by hook and by CBI crook.

For the ruling coalition, the message is clear: there are no legislative hindrances to good governance. If it fails to press ahead with the positive agenda the President had outlined in her inaugural address to the newly elected ok Sabha, it has only itself to blame.

The government's job is to press ahead with governance, not be held in thrall by any prospect of Opposition unity. Specifically on petroleum prices, restoration of duties on which had triggered the Opposition's protest inside and outside Parliament, this imperative to govern now translates into decontrol without delay. The global price of crude has, in dollar terms, moved into the mideighties, and if the government continues to keep domestic fuel prices administered and repressed, the result would be to bloat the fiscal deficit and ruin the health of public sector oil companies.

This is the right time to convert price changes of fuels from political actions to automatic, decentralised, commercial ones, determined by costs and moderated by competition. If the government fails to bite the bullet now, it would find it even tougher to act when global crude prices move up higher, as they promise to, on the back of global recovery.

For the Opposition, the message is equally clear. Its divisions are far too deep to be papered over even by a seemingly non-sectarian issue like inflation. For the Left, the spectre of the Third Front now haunts its other parliamentary illusions, with predictably ghoulish results. Some sort of exorcism is clearly in order.

For the BJP, clearly, it has to choose better issues than globally-determined energy prices for taking on the government. May we suggest, for starters, failure to protect forest dwellers' rights, to move ahead on the presidential promise to escalate the right to information to a 'duty to publish', to create a contemporary replacement for the antiquated land acquisition Act?

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF

 

When the Indian Premier League (IPL) started on March 12, the TV news channels had dedicated prime-time slots and cricket experts just for analysing the 'big game' of the day. By the time IPL ended on April 25, cricket experts were analysing not the game but the allegations of slush funds, rigged bidding, betting and even match-fixing!

Sometimes, even when nothing really broke, some TV news channels still carried a Breaking News tag for repeating not-so-new headlines like Franchisees back Modi. The cricket itself had taken a back seat on April 25, even if Mumbai Indians and Chennai Super Kings were playing the most important game of the tournament to clinch the title.

Instead of discussing why Sachin had delayed sending in the big-hitting Pollard or Dhoni's strategy of relying on three spinners to prevent the opposition from forcing the pace, even the TV news channels' cricket experts were analysing Modi's move to control the IPL governing council's meeting and the BCCI's counter-move of suspending the commissioner.

One news channel even used cricketing terms to describe these off-field shenanigans by stating that Modi's doosra had been no-balled by the BCCI! Wasn't it Viscount Northcliffe who described journalism as "a profession whose business it is to explain to others what it personally does not understand"!

With the cricket over and with an enquiry committee taking its time to conduct a thorough probe into all IPL-related allegations, the politicians can now expect their fun and games to get due recognition on prime-time TV news. The finance Bill faces a cut motion in Parliament and railway trains running through forested parts of the country are periodically hijacked by Maoists.

Even if a replay of Mayawati versus Mulayam or Jayalalithaa versus Karunanidhi seems old hat, we could be treated to more recent developments like Digvijay versus Chidambaram. And there's always Amar Singh ready to come up with the odd sound bite. There will be no shortage of Breaking News even if this summer's IPL cricket is well and truly over.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

A MYSTICAL STATE COMES OF AGE

ARVIND PANAGARIYA

 

Economically-prosperous states such as Gujarat, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu are 'happening' places and, therefore, enjoy near-continuous coverage in print and electronic media. At the other extreme, when an exceptionally-poor state such as Bihar begins to register growth rates of 8-9%, it catches the eye of not just the national but also international press.

But the achievements of states that are neither at the top nor at the bottom go largely unnoticed. One such state is my own: Rajasthan. Going by the available per-capita income data, Rajasthan was the second poorest state in financial year 1980-81, ranking barely above Bihar. For years, it was pejoratively referred to as a Bimaru state alongside Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

But quietly, the state's economy has been pulling ahead, catching up with one state after another. Today, it ranks ninth from below, with the large states of Assam, Orissa, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar ranking below it in per-capita income terms. At 4.1% per annum, the state grew slower than the national average during 1981-82 to 1987-88. But once liberalisation began to take root and the country's growth made a clear break from its slow rate in the first four decades, Rajasthan took off as well. It grew a solid 6.7% per annum from 1988-89 to 2002-03 and then a phenomenal 9.4% per annum during 2003-04 to 2008-09. Among the states for which complete data up to 2008-09 is readily available, only Haryana at 10% and Orissa at 9.4% grew at higher or equal rates during 2003-04 to 2008-09.

Perhaps because a vast territory of the state is desert, weather is extremely hot and dry and its past reputation as a Bimaru state dominates, the images of poverty persist in the minds of many. The reality, however, is that the proportion of those living below the official poverty line in the state is remarkably low when judged against its per-capita income. Whereas the state's per-capita income has been well below the national average throughout the post-Independence era, the poverty ratio at 22.1% in 2004-05 was well below the national average of 27.5%. The poverty ratio in 2004-05 was also below those in far richer states of Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

Rajasthan has done a particularly remarkable job of combating rural poverty, which stood at only 18.7% in 2004-05. Among large states, only Punjab, Haryana, Kerala and Andhra Pradesh exhibited lower poverty ratios than Rajasthan in 2004-05. Farmer suicide rate, an important indicator of distress among farmers, is among the lowest in Rajasthan and well behind those in Kerala, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Karnataka.

According to most studies, Rajasthan has been among the states with the most effective implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme launched in February 2006. This suggests that an additional significant decline in rural poverty is almost sure to be observed in the state when the results of the next large consumer expenditure survey — conducted by the National Sample Survey and currently under way — are published.

A key distinguishing feature of the economy of Rajasthan has been relatively high and only gradually declining share of agriculture in the net state domestic product (NSDP). This share averaged a little above 30% during 1999-2000 to 2001-02 and about 27.5% during 2005-06 to 2008-09.

INDUSTRY has performed generally poorly in the country and, going by the available data, even worse in Rajasthan . Its share in NSDP of the state fell from about 15% in the early 2000s to 13.2% in 2008-09. These changes have been reflected in about 5-percentagepoint shift in GDP in favour of services between early 2000s and 2008-09. Within services, the fastest-growing sectors during the last six years ended March 31, 2009, have been construction; transport, storage and communication; and trade, hotels and restaurants.

Transformation from a primarily rural and agrarian structure to a largely modern and urban one is an India-wide problem. Despite its impressive growth and rural-poverty alleviation record, Rajasthan remains well behind the average of India in achieving this transformation. If Rajasthan is to modernise and generate well-paid jobs for its young on a sustained basis, it must industrialise faster.

Given the legendry performance of its Marwari, Jain, Maheshwari and other communities as entrepreneurs in the country and around the world, the availability of vast land and a large young and educated workforce, the limited degree of industrialisation in the state is surprising. The state is also well positioned to take advantage of its common border with the rich industrial states of Haryana along the northeastern border and Gujarat along the southwestern border.

One thing the state government could do is to take a more aggressive and proactive role in wooing industrialists. Today, states have come to greatly appreciate the importance of industry in economic transformation and vigorously compete against one another for investment. Recall that when Mr Ratan Tata decided to relocate Nano plant, a contest among several states followed. But it was a contest from which Rajasthan was absent. Given its relatively small organised sector, Rajasthan may also find it easier to create a more flexible labour market, a critical element in creating large-scale labour-intensive manufacturing.

With an endless list of tourist spots — Jaipur, Udaipur, Jodhpur, Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Delwara Temple in Mount Abu, Ranakpur temple in Pali, Kumbhalgarh and Chittorgarh forts near Udaipur, Abhaneri in Dausa, Keoladeo Ghana National Park, Ranthambhor National Park, the list goes on — Rajasthan remains a grossly under-exploited tourist destination. As incomes in the rest of the country rise and infrastructure improves, the state can expect to reap large revenues from this sector. The government could get a headstart in this area by massively building infrastructure serving the tourist attractions and aggressively promoting a Mystical, Magical Rajasthan at home and abroad.

(The author is a professor at Columbia University and non-resident senior fellow at Brookings Institution.)

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

YOU ARE BORN TO BE LOVED

VITHALC NADKARNI

 

A 25-year-old woman goes to a psychoanalyst seeking treatment for her intense anxiety attacks. The therapist finds the patient highly intelligent, but she also notices that she has these displays of unusually infantile emotional life. After six months of psychotherapy, the patient tells the doctor that nothing that she's being told is having an effect.

"For six months I have been sitting there," she complains, "hoping that you would take me to your heart. Instead, you've been utterly blind to my needs." Unruffled, the therapist concludes that the patient "feels like a child" and notes her obsession with just one idea: "to be mothered and smothered in atender, loving manner".

The therapist, whose name was Anna Terruwe, set out to map the effects of lack of tenderness in people's lives with her colleague Conrad Baars. The duo wanted to check if this made the subjects resistant to therapy. The research led them to the diagnosis of Emotional Deprivation Disorder.

Among the cluster symptoms they uncovered was the fear of hurting others' feelings. This also seemed to make the person overly sensitive to judgments and criticisms, or even what they perceived were slights by other people. Such people also seemed to overcompensate with a tendency to please other people to gain approval, just to avoid rejection or criticism.

The researchers found that the victims of early emotional deprivation also seemed to be assuaged by frequent displays of reassurance. More refractory individuals were beset with feelings of extreme emotional inadequacy: they seemed to believe that they were incapable of being loved or even unable to offer love to another person.

They were also suspicious about displays of affection and reassurance and tended to discount these as flowing from ulterior motives. They also harboured deep feelings of guilt and tended to hoard and collect things as if to compensate for the lack of love in their early emotional life.

The doctors sought therapeutic replacement of the unconditional love. They called it affirmation of the child-like state, which needed to be fulfilled for the person to grow to maturity. The same result could be obtained by transference; with unconditional love being projected and received from a Guru or a Giridhar Gopal, who is Second to None; and whose love knows no bounds.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

INVESTORS TOO WILL HAVE MORE COMFORT

There are two arguments in favour of foreign banks coming through the subsidiary route: managing risks and sharing returns. On the risk front, the need for better control over financial institutions is unequivocally recognised now. The RBI regulates foreign bank branches, but the regulator in the country of incorporation stays primary. The collapse of financial institutions in the supposedly well-regulated jurisdictions in the west has exposed the false comfort of relying on the judgement of foreign regulators.

So how does one exercise more control? Regulation is just one of the instruments. Three other levers have been under active debate: management, ownership and incorporation. Does the bank have 'Indian' management? Does the bank have majority of Indian shareholders? Is the bank incorporated in India? From a control perspective, the third one is the most effective lever. Local incorporation makes sure that the corporate law of the land applies to the entity. Laws determine the standard of governance that is crucial to risk control. Foreign banks incorporated as local subsidiaries and, thus, operating as Indian business entities following Indian laws will be more effective for risk control compared to asking for Indian management or Indian shareholding.

Let us move from risk to returns. The financial performance of foreign banks in India has been defying gravity. During 2004-09, when foreign banks were distracted by crisis in several markets, their share of profits in Indian banking rose from 9% to 14%, and their share in lucrative fee income increased from 17% to 23%. Their profitability, on an average, is double of Indian banks. These profits are not illegal or unfair, they are due to advantages of international network and scale enjoyed by the foreign banks. They can offer some high-margin services that Indian banks cannot. Foreign banks will enjoy this edge till there is consolidation in the Indian banking sector. The branch route reserves value creation by foreign banks in India for foreign investors. If these banks were local subsidiaries with minimum local shareholding, Indian investors, and not just Indian regulator, will have greater comfort.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

YES, FOR BETTER REGULATORY CONTROL

 

The decade-old debate on the mode of foreign banks operating in the country — as a branch or as a wholly-owned subsidiary — received a shot in the arm with the RBI governor's announcement to release a discussion paper on the topic by September 2010. The merits of operating through a locally-incorporated subsidiary for foreign banks include a lower tax rate of 30% against 40% applicable to branches, assuming they redeploy their profits into Indian operations.

This differential will continue under the draft Direct Taxes Code. It has proposed a tax rate of 25% for Indian companies, while the effective tax rate for foreign branches after including branch profits will be 36.25%. The other spinoffs are freedom to set up additional branches, more operational flexibility and impetus to grow inorganically that is significantly constrained under the current regulatory framework.

Despite an enabling framework, there is no precedence of a wholly-owned subsidiary of a foreign bank in India. This is mainly due to lack of clarity on priority sector lending norms: whether they would have to adhere to the limit of 40% of net bank credit applicable on Indian banks or 32% applicable on foreign banks. Another issue is the tax implication of conversion of a branch into subsidiary. This has significant capital gains tax and stamp duty implications.

Drawing lessons from the global financial crisis, it appears that the RBI's policy statement sees more merit in permitting foreign banks to set up subsidiaries in India. Besides allowing for the regulators to exercise greater control over a separate legal entity in India, the Indian subsidiary would perhaps be a little more distant from the difficulties faced by its parent bank in foreign jurisdiction than an India branch of that foreign bank. If there is greater clarity on rules, some of the large foreign banks that have aggressive growth plans for the Indian market, may potentially consider the subsidiary route.

With Indian firms going increasingly global, foreign banks can play a critical role in raising money and connecting them with global clientele and consumers.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

REVAMP FINANCIAL REGULATION

JAIDEEP MISHRA

 

It is useless to close the gates against ideas; they overlap them, noted the visionary contemplating change across borders. That was then, in financially far-more-sedate times. Fast forward to the here and now, and it is clear that in the domain of finance and investment, there are 'challenges of complexity' abroad in the mature markets, and domestically as well, with seeming regulatory overlap much contested in recent weeks. Notice the row between capital markets regulator Sebi and insurance watchdog Irda over unit-linked insurance plans (Ulips) — products hitched to equities and bonds.

The way ahead is forward-looking interregulatory cooperation and coordination in the larger interest of financial stability, and more. What's required is far more focus on the training, practice and knowledge-gathering in the hitherto-neglected field of financial economics. In tandem, we need emphasis on inter-disciplinary thought and action in the realm of law and economics. Perhaps the new national law schools need to launch a thriving working paper series on the emerging areas in finance, regulation and the design of incentives. The idea ought to be to bring about more informed policy-making and regulatory initiatives. Looking ahead, there's also the need for new institutions and proactive institutional mechanisms. For instance, while there is talk to boost financial literacy among the populace, we hardly have data on investment behaviour and attendant attitude towards risk.

Financial markets do after all link the present with the future, and the role of finance is to price, transfer and disintermediate risk. Yet, we lack a national think-tank on financial and experimental economics. For example, we do need to have some idea whether and to what extent commission and fees for agents and distributors help to better diffuse insurance products. And which, in turn, may point at the need for an appropriate policy stance, given the low penetration of insurance here, although Ulips, especially those with little insurance component, may imply excessive risk-taking. And as the financial crisis has shown, path-breaking innovation and speculation may not all be axiomatically-beneficial, socially or otherwise. However, Sebi's ban last year on entry and exit load for investors in mutual funds should boost demand for such products and deepen the capital market. The point is that without a stronger foundation and role for financial economics in market and incentive design, it would be unrealistic to expect sound policy and regulatory action. In parallel, court benches need to be well informed by the bar, for the greater good.

For relevant intervention in the financial marketplace, to disincentivise and debar rent extraction, say, what's required is better domestic articulation of notions of market efficiency , behaviour and completeness. Note that the extant high-level coordinatory committee, chaired by the Reserve Bank governor, has not quite been able to resolve the seeming regulatory turf battle over Ulips. A more participatory and forward-looking body like the proposed Financial Stability and Development Council may make sense: the Union finance minister has already announced that the council will not evolve as a super-regulator .

But then it might not and, in effect, lead to sub-optimal regulation and veritable 'regulatory capture' without varied and fertile professional financial economics, up-to-date thinktank output and regular loud thinking on ways and means to tackle avenues for rent-seeking and information imperfections.

The way ahead is to be better equipped to take into account and internalise the fact that financial markets can be irrational and 'overshoot', while rallying, how much such proclivities matter in our context, and what gainfully can be done about it in terms of regulation on the ground. The situational, growth context is important: one hypothesis in economics has it that if growth in value-added in the macroeconomy goes up by so much, asset prices including those at the bourses — usually the best developed markets — cannot but be positively correlated. It is a related matter that financial regulation in India has primarily been rulebased, complete with a panoply of controls, rigidities and onerous restrictions. Such a financial architecture would increasingly constrain corporates and households, in a general scenario of heightened risks, and so needlessly add to costs and overheads. Hence the need for domestic financial sector reforms and opening up for active bond, currency and interest-rate products, never mind that fancy recent practices abroad like securitisation and resale of mortgage receivables spectacularly bombed and precipitated the financial crisis.

Achange of track for more principles-based financial regulation would be increasingly appropriate in the future. The Sebi-Irda stand-off is already in the courts, but the principle of inter-regulatory panels to resolve differences and come to terms with such phenomenon as lack of symmetry of information between market participants clearly needs to be institutionalised. Likewise, while it makes no sense to remove banking supervision from the purview of the RBI — as in the UK — in financial market segments like currency and interest-rate futures, an inter-regulatory collegium approach would seem thoroughly warranted.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

WE PLAN TO EXPAND CLINICAL RESEARCH IN INDIA: NOVO NORDISK PRESIDENT AND CEO

SARAH JACOB

 

Leader in diabetes care, Novo Nordisk, owns the largest insulin plant in the world. It ships its active ingredients from Denmark to Indian partner Torrent Pharma's Ahmedabad facility, where the final drug is put together for the Indian market. It's not too different from the way Coca Cola is bottled world over, says Novo Nordisk's president and CEO Lars Rebien Sorensen, turning to the Coke can in his hand. In a recent visit to India Mr Sorensen sees the India subsidiary's role in its global framework increasing. In an interview with ET's Sarah Jacob, he talks of the growing transfer of accounting and patenting work to India and expansion of clinical research in this market. Excerpts:

India is home to a substantial number of diabetics and is likely to be a market where you would want to achieve the greatest strides. What does the roadmap look like?

For Novo Nordisk, international markets have been the fastest growing, at 20%, compared to the US, which is growing at 15%, and Europe, which is growing at 5-10%. This region is increasing in relative importance with markets, such as China, Algeria and India, expected to grow. We are focused on expanding clinical research for the registration of products in India and are increasingly recruiting Indian patients to participate in core clinical trials for registering products globally. We have also established a service centre in India to transfer financial and accounting, patenting and clinical data management work. We currently employ 150 people for service functions and as we increasingly transfer more global functions, this number will significantly multiply.

Both China and India are large countries. The existence of the generic industry in India has meant that there has historically been a lack of respect for intellectual property rights has had implications on the pricing structure in India as compared to China. Although diabetes has been recognised as an escalating problem in both countries, there are differences in abilities to implement it and reaching essential drugs are varied at the regional level. As a result, while Novo Nrodisk is growing at 30% in China, India is clocking around 20% growth.

A number of multinational pharma firms has retained stake in their Indian subsidiaries at 51% for years. Why do you think this is the case?

Historically, most western pharma companies have been under represented in China, Japan and India. The limited investment of MNCs in India could be a reflection of the major investments that these firms have recently made in China and Japan. I would suspect that in the future, growth opportunities would push more investments in India. At the same time, India has the lowest prices of pharmaceuticals in the world. Ironically, that means some companies tend to invest less in the market.

 

Indian generic companies were poised to grow into innovative pharma giants, but that hasn't happened. What do you think are the reasons?

Since generic companies have been limited to making bio-equivalents, they may fall short of competencies required for discovery, development or regulatory procedures to take on innovation. Companies must realise that discovery and development projects often fail. There is a reason why they are expensive. Not only do we have to pay for every drug that gets into market, but also the other hundred that failed. I suspect there are many Indian firms that do not have the financial capacity to buy existing innovative drug companies. Novo Nordisk has actually done what the Indian firms have been trying to do. We've graduated from a generic-based company into an innovative one also because the market for insulin is very niche.

Western drug companies seem to be finding it difficult to develop block buster drugs. What future do you envisage for such firms?

It is certainly becoming more difficult to develop block buster drugs. Novo Nordisk was established on the discovery that the lack of insulin leads to diabetes. Initially, we extracted insulin from animal tissues. In the mid 80's, it was discovered that you could take a gene from human insulin and stick it into a mammalian cell or yeast cell to produce unlimited quantities of human insulin. We then developed modern insulin that was a more efficient version and increases patient's convenience. There are possibilities of further development in modern insulin. But the risk of our research is lesser than other big pharmas, which are trying to identify new drugs for unvalidated targets. This is also why several big pharmas are developing 'me-too' or 'me-better' drugs. This has created a big challenge in developing block buster drugs.

What are the solutions for this?

The movement towards generics is a short term desperate solution. It is not likely to generate the sort of growth that international pharma companies are expecting. Science and innovation is the only way they can continue to grow as they have in the past. Companies have tried multiple routes, one of which is to build research capabilities in India, China and Japan.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

RECKITT BENCKISER OPERATING UNDER COST PRESSURES: CMD

RATNA BHUSHAN

 

Reckitt Benckiser, makers of Dettol, Harpic, Cherry Blossom and Disprin, has just completed a decade as a single entity after the merger of Reckitt & Coleman plc and Benckiser NV in 1999. The 7.5 billion-pound UK-based company managed to keep its growth intact during last year's slowdown in India by increasing its marketing spend and pushing small-sized units of its brands, according to Chander Mohan Sethi, chairman and managing director (India) and regional director (South Asia) of Reckitt Benckiser. India is now the seventh largest market of the multinational in terms of turnover and the Dettol brand has "more or less" becoming a Rs 1,000-crore brand here. While it has doubled turnover in five years, Reckitt Benckiser is operating under huge cost pressures. Mr Sethi told ET's Ratna Bhushan in an interview. Excerpts:

How much did the economic downturn last year impact Reckitt Benckiser? How did you deal with it?

To be honest, last year just got tough and tougher. The slowdown was, of course, not as bad here as it was in Europe or the US. But here it was more of a consumer sentiment issue. In an environment like this, the consumer slows down on spending because of weak sentiment, competition keeps getting more aggressive, and there's downtrading (consumers switch to lower-priced brands). So if you want to maintain market shares, you have to focus that much more on marketing investments. Which is what we did. This meant not only increasing advertising and promotional spends but also spending innovatively and stretching the rupee that much more. What we also did was driving small sizes of most of our brands. That was a key initiative. We went all out to push Harpic and Lizol cleaners in 200-ml packs, hair-removal brand Veet in 25-gm and shoe polish Cherry Blossom in 15-gm packs. Then there is Dettol soap at 35-gm – priced at Rs 7 – it has been flying off the shelves. Some of these packs were there earlier, but we focused on these a lot more, beginning last year. It worked for us. Not only did we give the consumer a reason to stay with the same quality of brands she was used to, but also prevented downtrading.

Does that mean you altered your strategy, considering that Reckitt Benckiser has typically targeted urban consumers?

You are right. By definition, we have always been a company targeting the SEC-A, B and C consumer. Our price points have been generally higher. But we found that since SEC-C and D towns and cities had also begun generating demand. That's when we started tapping smaller markets with heightened focus. I would say that last year was the first time we pushed lower-priced smaller packs so aggressively. We were not so focused on semi-urban markets before. We have added about a thousand more towns in the recent past as far as our distribution footprint goes and are now present in 65-70% of roughly 5,500 towns present in the country.

 

Dettol remains your biggest growth driver. Do you see that as over-dependence on one brand?

I don't think so. Dettol is a mega brand for us. But Harpic, Mortein, Cherry Blossom, Colin —each one of these are category leaders by themselves. Coming back to Dettol, it contributes upwards of 25% to our overall sales. We keep adding more consumers to Dettol because awareness of the need for germ protection is increasing. We have been promoting healthy habits through our 'surakshit parivar' programme. Some brands built on the swine flu scare last year. While we did not duck the issue, we continued to position use of Dettol as a healthy habit. I don't think it's corporate responsibility to play on the consumer's fear psychosis.

 

What about margin pressures?

It's a fact that we are operating under huge cost pressures and margins are getting squeezed. But we haven't had too many price increases – I feel that's the easy route to counter pressure on margins. What we've done is, get a lot more aggressive on sourcing raw materials, entering into long-term contracts with our suppliers and working on establishing partnerships with suppliers. I'm not in favour of across-the-board price increases but we'll have to wait and watch.

Any capacity expansion?

Yes, we have just added another plant at Uttaranchal — we already had one there. It's a greenfield plant, on which we have invested Rs 100 crore. Production began rolling in February this year. It will manufacture Harpic and Lizol, among others.

Are you satisfied with the performance of Strepsils and Clearasil –brands Reckitt acquired from Boots in '06? What about Sweetex?

These brands have done well since we relaunched them. But if you ask me if I am satisfied, the answer is, no — we have a long way to go. As for Sweetex, it's less of a priority for us, at least for the time being.

After Airwick airfreshners in 2008, Reckitt hasn't brought in any global brands. Any such plans for this year?
We are in the process of rolling out Finish dishwashing detergent — one of our big global brands. It's already available in some stores. We have tied up with LG Electronics to increase the penetration of dishwashers in India. The tie-up is to spread the awareness about dishwashers here. As is the case with most of our brands — Vanish, Veet, Easy Off Bang — it's about category creation and not just the launch of a brand.

 

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THE ECONOMIC TIMES

EDITORIAL

M&A STREET'S GETTING CROWDED AGAIN'

RAKHI MAZUMDAR

 

Manisha Girotra is no stranger to deal making. As managing director & head of the Swiss bank UBS in India, she has been involved in the $12-billion Vodafone-Hutch deal, the $6-billion Hindalco-Novelis acquisition and the Essar Steel-Algoma deal, among others. Starting out in 1992 with Grindlay's, she cut her teeth in the IPCL disinvestment in 1996. Referred to as the 'Queen Bee of M&A activity', she has also been listed among the 'women to watch' in banking by Fortune magazine. Manisha Girotra was in Kolkata recently to participate in a meeting organised by the Ladies Study Group on Women @ Work. ET caught up with her to get an idea of how the M&A space looks like in a post-recession world and also get her views on corporate sport deals.

How does the deal space look like after the recession? Is M&A activity picking up?

I would say M&A has started happening once again and is gradually picking up across the world. We are seeing more out-bound activity by Indian corporates than in-bound deals. Take the recent deals like Zain -Bharti or Religare, for instance. However, such activity is nowhere near the levels reached in 2007. As far as India is concerned, in-bound M&A is still slow. Perhaps, it will be some time before such M&A activity gathers steam across the world.

Going forward, what are the sectors in which you expect M&A activity to take place?

Information technology (IT), telecom and pharma sectors look promising as far as deal making action is concerned.

You have said earlier that you enjoyed working in India since it is one of the most exciting places in your area of work. Given a chance, which other country would you have preferred to work?

Apart from India, the other country where I would have preferred to work is the US. The scale of activity there is so much bigger. But India is more exciting because it is where one belongs.

UBS India has attracted a lot of women in its workforce. Was it a deliberate move?

In terms of workforce, we have found that women are more loyal and stick to a company longer. In our company, women tend to stay for an average of 7-10 years. In our job, which is a client-oriented service industry, longevity matters in the sense that clients are more comfortable seeing familiar faces.

As a woman in the hard-nosed world of investment banking, how has your journey been so far?

It is easier for the next generation of girls who are now in the investment banking field as women bankers. There are a lot more women in banking now. When we started out, it was much tougher. I remember when I first started working in Delhi way back in 1992, few people in the ministries would even shake my hand. They often mistook me for the banker's secretary. It took a lot of perseverance and a lot of hard work to convince them. So, I would say, the initial 5-7 years were quite tough.

 

With IPL issues dominating the airwaves, I wanted to get your views on corporate sport deals. Has sport as a medium suffered in India because of the lack of transparency in such deals?

I would not like to comment specifically on the IPL. But corporate structures often tend to be multi-layered because some of the corporate groups are family owned and so the ownership is often layered. Hence, they tend to appear complex. Even the Tata Corus deal went through some 14 layers. Sports as a medium is still in its infancy in our country. Perhaps, that is why we see personality-led deal making take place. As the medium matures, I am sure we will see more transparency and more process led.

 

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                                                                                                               DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

SAARC, AT 25, MIGHT SEE A ROSIER FUTURE

 

When the 16th summit of the South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation commences its two-day deliberations in Bhutan's capital, Thimphu, on Wednesday in the silver jubilee year of the organisation's founding, the gathered leaders will need to be mindful of the pace of progress in the regional grouping. They will be called upon to count and promote the positives and agree to strive to negate the negatives. None of this is likely to be easy. Funny histories act as a drag and the initial low base of development — common to all of South Asia — tends to inhibit a faster rate of climb than has hitherto been the case. And yet, it will be churlish to pretend that some of the earlier gloom on Saarc's prospects is not slowly dissipating. Indeed, it is time to note that South Asians are getting away — if ever so slowly — from their habit of uncorking hot air and merely extolling themselves and their ageless value system that promotes cooperation, and are getting down to business. They have entered a phase in Saarc where implementing projects that have been agreed upon is coming into focus. Needless to say, all agreed resolutions and proposals are not acted upon, or all countries — Pakistan included — would have cracked down hard on terrorism, truly the scourge of our region along with poverty and hunger. But there is no question that there is now a tendency to move forward on the development paradigm, and on building Saarc-wide institutions. The whole point about cooperation is being far better understood than was earlier the case. When viewing Saarc's less than vibrant record, it has to be considered that it is a collection of countries in one of the poorest parts of the world. There is only that much they can trade and exchange, and even lower is their capacity to generate as capital flows and investable resources. Half of the member-states of the grouping are in the category of least developed countries, referred to with derision as "basket cases" by the more uncharitable. To make matters worse, when Saarc was formed in 1985, three of the original members were riven by bitterness, being fragments of undivided India. There was also a time in India when the very idea of Saarc was seen as a waste of time. It is a small miracle that the grouping was only partially jolted from time to time in pursuit of its development aims and agenda of broad regional cooperation from which all could benefit; it didn't in the end run into sand. The atmosphere of mistrust between India and Pakistan, the largest two of the group, was a special retarding factor for South Asia's regional body. The suspicions between India and Pakistan are no less than they were before, and still the Saarc countries are not hesitating to put their best foot forward, unlike in the past. Perhaps an important reason for this is India's higher growth path in spite of the odds imposed by a couple of distinctly unfriendly neighbours. With its improved economic fortunes, this country appears ready to invest in Saarc, and all fellow-travellers are happy about this. They cannot match India's financial contributions, but this country is happy to embrace the principle of "assist, as able", something that can sometimes be seen in UN aid arrangements; it easily accepts non-reciprocity as a working principle.

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

A DARK MONEY MAZE

BY INDER MALHOTRA

QUICK ON the heels of the virtual explosion over the "money maze, dubious deals, and Mauritius and Dubai connection" of that shadowy combination of cricket, politics, big business and Bollywood, otherwise called the Indian Premier League (IPL) has come another depressing event that is no less alarming. It is the arrest of the president of the Medical Council of India (MCI), Ketan Desai, for allegedly demanding a bribe of Rs 2 crore from a Punjab medical college to give it a year's extension to run a 100-seat MBBS course. Two other men arrested at the same time are a professor of the college concerned, Dr Kanwaljit Singh, and Mr Jitendra Pal Singh, described by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as "the middleman". The two Singhs were taken into custody when the professor from Punjab arrived at the Vasant Vihar house of the go-between with a sum of Rs 2 crore packed in cardboard containers. The CBI seized the money, too.

Of course, Dr Desai has denied the charge emphatically, and pointed out that he was "nowhere near the cash". Doubtless the "innocent-until-proved-guilty" doctrine must prevail. But the trouble is that thanks to unending judicial delays, such high-profile cases rarely, if ever, reach the stage of finality. The public and the peers of the arraigned can therefore shout themselves hoarse but to no avail.

There is a pressing reason to be particularly concerned about the functioning of the MCI, the institution that regulates and thus practically runs the country's medical education: widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of teaching in this vital area in the mushrooming private medical colleges that now number 160 out of a total of 290. Reportedly, it costs Rs 500 crore to set up a private medical college usually sells seats for anything between Rs 25 lakh and three times that amount.

Since the present case concerns a college in Punjab, it is relevant to record what important functionaries of the Punjab chapter of the Indian Medical Association (IMA) and other prominent members of the profession in that state are saying. All of them are already demanding a "re-inspection" of "all the private medical colleges of the country, which were granted recognition during the tenure of Dr Desai. Chairman of the in-service wing of the IMA Punjab has even said: "Dr Desai's arrest should have come long ago. A person like him should not be spared at any cost. He has jeopardised the future of a large number of students by giving accreditation to colleges that did not fulfil the requisite conditions". According to the chairman of the Punjab Medical Services Association, Dr Hardeep Singh, the "deteriorating standard of the medical colleges opened during (Dr) Desai's time was evident from their poor infrastructure and negligible attendance of the faculty".

Some eminent and highly respected members of the medical profession, speaking on condition of anonymity, have claimed that no individual could have lasted for so long and functioned with impunity without at lease the tacit support of the government that nominates a certain number of MCI members. Nothing should be pre-judged. But an impartial, transparent and speedy investigation into the MCI's working over the years is imperative. For, pollution of education in such sensitive spheres as medicine, engineering and science cannot but imperil the country's future.

Sadly, the current developments are of a piece with what has gone on so far. The powers that be are unwilling or unable to do anything about corruption that is not just rampant but sweeping the country like a tidal wave. Let me cite just a few very recent instances, never mind the plethora of those dating back many years and lost in the politico-administrative-judicial labyrinth. Has anyone heard a word about Madhu Koda and his Rs 4,000 crore allegedly accumulated in just two years when this lone independent in the Jharkhand Assembly was the state's chief minister, courtesy the Indian National Congress? It is only fair to add that before changing his political allegiance, Mr Koda was minister for mining in the BJP-led Jharkhand government!

Since Mr Koda's arrest and those of his henchmen, what else have we witnessed? The Postmaster-General of Goa being arrested allegedly red-handed while accepting a huge bribe in Mumbai? In Bhopal two relatively junior IAS officers, husband and wife, were suspended after Rs 3 crore in cash were found in their home and the CBI had estimated that the known value of their properties was Rs 40 crore — assets disproportionate to their sources of income. This was by no means a stray example of what has come to be nicknamed "DA" (disproportionate assets) cases. A few months ago a mere inspector of Delhi police went to jail because his assets were valued at Rs 12 crore. But since no chargesheet was filed against him during the stipulated 60 days, he must be out on bail.

Particularly scandalous is the record of the CBI itself and the government that controls it, especially where disproportionate assets cases against powerful politicians are concerned. On April 16, the premier investigative agency had reaffirmed to the Supreme Court it had enough evidence in the case against the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister, Ms Mayawati. Exactly a week later the agency informed the apex court that it was "examining" her representation for closing the case! And consider this: In May 2009, the Indian ambassador to the United States, Ms Meera Shankar, had written to the Union government about a number of its civilian and military officers that had accepted bribes from American companies doing business with their departments. No further proof was needed because under US laws the companies concerned had reported these tainted transactions to relevant courts. Nothing happened until October when the media raised a hue and cry. On a TV talk show Admiral (Retd) Vishnu Bhagwat declared that the Chief of the Naval Staff needed just five days to name the naval officers that had received big dollops of dollars. The Prime Minister's Office (PMO) announced that it had ordered prompt action. It is for the PMO to explain why nothing has happened yet. The media should also feel ashamed. After shouting for a few days it has forgotten the sordid episode.

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

DUMB BUT DECENT MEETS SMART AND SLEAZY

BY DAVID BROOKS

Between 1997 and 2006, consumers, lenders and builders created a housing bubble, and pretty much the entire establishment missed it. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the people who regulate them missed it. The big commercial banks and the people who regulate them missed it. The Federal Reserve missed it, as did the ratings agencies, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the political class in general.

It's easy to see why this happened. People who make it into the establishment work and play well with others. They are part of the same overlapping social networks, and inevitably begin to perceive the world in similar, conventional ways. They thrive in institutions where people are not rewarded for being cantankerous intellectual bomb-throwers.

Outside the establishment herd, on the other hand, there were contrarians who understood the bubble (which was the easy part) and who figured out how to take counteraction (which was hard). Michael Burry worked at a small hedge fund in Northern California. John Paulson ran an obscure fund in New York. Eventually, there were even a few traders at the big investment banks who also foresaw the imminent collapse. One of them was "Fabulous" Fabrice Tourre of Goldman Sachs.

If this were a Hollywood movie, the prescient outsiders would be good-looking, just and true, and we could all root for them as they outfoxed the smug establishment. But this is real life, so things are more complicated. According to Gregory Zuckerman's book, The Greatest Trade Ever, Burry was a solitary small-time operator far away. Paulson was cold and diffident.

And as for Fabulous Fab, he seems to be the product of the current amoral Wall Street culture in which impersonal trading is more important than personal service to clients, and in which any product you can sell to some poor sucker is deemed to be admirable and OK.

In this drama, in other words, the establishment was pleasant, respectable and stupid, while the contrarians were smart but hard to love, and sometimes sleazy.

This week the drama comes to Washington in two different ways. First, as is traditional in our culture, the elected leaders of the clueless establishment have summoned the leaders of Goldman Sachs to a hearing so they can have a post-hoc televised conniption fit on the amorality of Wall Street.

This spectacle presents Goldman with an interesting public relations choice. The firm can claim to be dumb but decent, like the rest of the establishment, and emphasise the times it lost money. Or it can present itself as smart and sleazy, and emphasise the times it made money at the expense of its clients. Goldman seems to have chosen dumb but decent, which is probably the smart narrative to get back in the establishment's good graces, even if it is less accurate.

The second big event in Washington this week is the jostling over a financial reform bill. One might have thought that one of the lessons of this episode was that establishments are prone to groupthink, and that it would be smart to decentralise authority in order to head off future bubbles.

Both N. Gregory Mankiw of Harvard and Sebastian Mallaby of the Council on Foreign Relations have been promoting a way to do this: Force the big financial institutions to issue bonds that would be converted into equity when a regulator deems them to have insufficient capital. Thousands of traders would buy and sell these bonds as a way to measure and reinforce the stability of the firms.

But, alas, we are living in the great age of centralisation. Some Democrats regard federal commissions with the same sort of awe and wonder that I feel while watching LeBron James and Alex Ovechkin.

The premise of the current financial regulatory reform is that the establishment missed the last bubble and, therefore, more power should be vested in the establishment to foresee and prevent the next one.

If you take this as your premise, the Democratic bill is fine and reasonable. It would force derivative trading out into the open. It would create a structure so the government could break down failing firms in an orderly manner. But the bill doesn't solve the basic epistemic problem, which is that members of the establishment herd are always the last to know when something unexpected happens.

If this were a movie, everybody would learn the obvious lessons.

The folks in the big investment banks would learn that it's valuable to have an ethical culture, in which traders' behaviour is restricted by something other than the desire to find the next sucker.

The folks in Washington would learn that centralised decision-making is often unimaginative decision-making, and that decentralised markets are often better at anticipating the future.

But, again, this is not a Hollywood movie. Those lessons are not being learned. I can't wait for the sequel.

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

THE LARGE HYPE CREATOR

BY JAYANT V. NARLIKAR

Since last year, 2009, newspaper headlines and TV channels with their breaking news are telling us that we stand on the threshold of knowing how our universe began in a gigantic explosion called the Big Bang. Cosmologists who study questions related to the origin, evolution and the end of the universe have come up with a generally accepted belief that the universe started with the Big Bang some 13.7 billion years ago. The theory underlying this belief contains a lot of speculation that has not been independently verified. Let us see why such speculation is unavoidable once we put all our eggs in the Big Bang basket.

The observations of galaxies out to large distances build a fairly convincing picture that the universe is expanding. If we seek to describe the phenomenon within the framework of the best known theory of gravitation, namely Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, we are led to the conclusion that the universe had a point-like state sometime in the past. The relativity theory breaks down at this stage, and it is assumed that this singular state represents the origin of the universe in a big bang. The physicist starts the universal clock ticking at this instant.

The astronomer, on the other hand, measures the "look-back time". If he observes a galaxy at a distance of a billion light years, he is seeing it as it was a billion years ago, for light has taken a billion years to travel from the galaxy to here. The expanding universe provides a convenient measure of this past epoch. We ask, by how much has the universe grown in linear size since the light left that galaxy. If the answer is, say, five, then it means that the universe has become six times (five plus one) its original size in that period. This growth fraction can be measured in the spectrum of light received from the galaxy and is known, for technical reasons, as redshift. So in the above example the redshift of the galaxy is five. Clearly, the larger the redshift of an astronomical source, the farther is it located from us and the smaller was the universe at the epoch when light left that source in order to travel to us.

By this reckoning, the Big Bang epoch has infinite redshift and it is tempting to visualise a super-telescope capable of seeing as far as that epoch. Unfortunately, this is not possible. The Big Bang theory itself provides the reason why. By the time we try to probe sources beyond a redshift of a thousand, we encounter an opaque universe. Estimates put the age of the universe at that epoch at around a lakh of years. So what lay beyond that epoch cannot be seen by the astronomer. Necessarily, therefore, the astronomer is forced to rely on extrapolations of his theoretical model coupled with speculation to guess what the universe was like before that epoch. This is much like a spectator trying to guess what is going on behind the stage-curtain which has come down between two acts of a play.

To help his speculation the astronomer has turned to the physicist for guidance. As he tries to imagine what the universe was like closer to the big bang epoch, he finds that its constituents were moving with greater and greater speed as the Big Bang was approached. To figure out what happens to them the astronomer therefore needs information on how particles of matter behave at increasing energy. The physicist can provide help because he has built particle accelerators which make them collide at very high energies. Two major particle accelerator labs have been providing useful information on this topic: one CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, and the other, Fermilab, near Chicago, in the US.

It should be noted that these labs have been in existence for several decades and their main purpose is to study the behaviour of sub-atomic particles at higher and higher energies. The quantum theory which became established as the correct framework for studying particles on a small scale tells us that if we need to probe the structure of matter at very very small scales, we will correspondingly need particles of higher and higher energy. Indeed these labs have contributed significantly to our understanding of how particles interact at energies as high as several hundred giga electron volts (an energy measuring unit often written as GeV). For example, the verification of the framework unifying the weak theory with the electromagnetic theory was carried out at CERN by generating collisions of particles of energies of the order of 100 GeV.

The next landmark in high energy particle physics aims very high: it is the energy required for unification of the above electroweak theory with the strong interaction, an achievement that will show that three of the four basic interactions of physics are part of a "grand unified theory", or GUT. Can one augment the capacity of the present accelerator to test the properties of GUT? It will also help the cosmologist in his quest for the state of the universe very close to the Big Bang for, many of the crucial issues of the present universe are related to how the universe operated in the GUT era and shortly thereafter. The recent much hyped Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is planned to reach energies of 7,000 GeV, about seven times the capacity of the previous top accelerators. To date it has reached half that target.

Unfortunately, that holy grail of particle physics is well beyond the present technology or even the technology of the foreseeable future. For the energy needed to be reached is some 1,400 billion times the aimed energy of the LHC!

So why is the LHC so hyped? Certainly if it fulfils its objectives of verifying some details of present theories of particle physics, it will have served its purpose. For example, if it provides evidence for the existence of a speculated particle, the Higgs boson, or gives support to some conjectures of the so-called super-symmetric theory, it will have made a significant advance in our understanding of high energy particle physics. But it is still a long way to go for simulating the Big Bang, as so avidly claimed. Nor does it stand in any danger of accidentally producing world-gobbling black holes.

I wish scientists could forward and correct the media-generated frenzy; otherwise the LHC may stand for a large hype creator.

- Jayant V. Narlikar is a professor emiritus atInter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune University Campus, and a renowned astrophysicist

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DECCAN CHRONICAL

EDITORIAL

POWER OF PARIKRAMA

BY V. BALAKRISHNAN

Elders often remind children to go round the temple from left to right with folded hands, saying silent prayers. Is this just a jaded ritual or is circumambulation beneficial to devotees in any way other than evoking fulfilment of having accomplished a pious act?

In olden days, temples were large structures that were built on large plots of land. Walking around the temple barefoot provided the devotees good exercise. The reverential circumambulation, lying prostrate before the idol, kneeling before the deity are all, in a way, exercises for joints and muscles.

Going around an object from left to right is absolutely in harmony with the system of the brain. If one goes in the opposite direction, the system disapproves of it and the devotee does not feel comfortable. Theology states that circumambulation around a temple takes the devotee closer to the Lord. He is redeemed of his sins, even those that he had committed in his previous births. Such is the power of this observance.

"Prachtchinathi prakara: Agham

Dakaro vanjtchitha prada:

Kshikarath Ksheeyathe Karma —nakaaro mukthidaayakam."

This is what is said about circumambulation in Skanda Purana: The practise of circumambulation rids one of all sins and fulfils his will; it weakens his karma, liability to karma, and grants salvation.

We usually go round the sanctum sanctorum within the premises of a temple. However, if you circumambulate along the pavement outside the main wall of the temple, it gives added benefits. Imagine the heart as a lotus. Keep folded hands close to the chest as a lotus bud and walk around the temple slowly, chanting the hymns of the deity. As you complete the first circumambulation, all major sins get redeemed. The second one wins the devotee the due right to worship the deity. With the third round, one is granted blessings for material prospects.

The number of circumambulations prescribed for each deity are thus: For Lord Ganesha, one, for the Sun God two, for Devi and Lord Vishnu four, and for the holy Banyan tree, seven.

The circumambulation in the morning is meant for cure of diseases, that of the noon for fulfilment of desires, that of evening for mitigation of sins and that of in the night, for attainment of salvation. After completing the circumambulation, the devotee must come before the deity and worship with folded hands.

Our ancestors, who recommended different numbers of circumambulations for different deities have, however, strongly denied all this in Shiva temples.

This is because Lord Shiva is considered an absolute deity. And a circumambulation around his temple will go against this concept. His eternity cannot be undermined.

Further, Goddess Ganga, whom the Lord bears in His head, is believed to be flowing out along the holy drain from the temple. Devotees are not supposed to cross this water. For this reason also, a complete circumambulation is prevented in Shiva temples.

— Dr Venganoor Balakrishnan is the author of Thaliyola, a book on Hindu beliefs and rituals. The author can be reached at: drvenganoor@yahoo.co.in [1]

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

URBAN VARIANT

LIMITED REPLICATION OF A HOAX

 

NO, it can't inspire optimism. Considering that the NREGS has been a gigantic public sector failure, its urban variant may only extend the loop of municipal disasters. And all the more so in West Bengal with its shoddy work culture. The concept is as out-of-the box as it is out-of-the-budget, and with no indication of the fund outlay. And yet the daily rates have been fixed for an indeterminate group. While details are yet to be worked out ~ it hinges on the outcome of 30 May ~ the scheme is meant primarily for municipalities and corporations. Theoretically, it is intended to spur development and generate employment. However, the fact of the matter is that all if not most municipalities, led by the KMC, are horribly overstaffed with "ghost workers" on the payroll. This is an absurdity, bizarrely municipal. Manpower shortage has never been cited as the reason for failure of local bodies. Traditionally ~ whether the Mayor-in-Council is under the CPI-M or Trinamul ~ the sluggish development or non-utilisation of funds is embedded in administrative ineptitude. To the extent that KMC has stalled all JNNURM projects, and now has no option but to return the funds.

Clearly, the state government has exploited the delay in issuing the formal election notification to its advantage. Employment generation is, therefore, only a figleaf to package an electoral gimmick. Which begs a simple query: Do the KMC and other municipalities lack supervisors on the staff to oversee civil construction? For even this category will be taken care of in the guaranteed employment (phase II). The earmarked schemes are those for which any municipality exists ~ water supply, roads, drainage and so on. As regards waterbodies and canals, there is little that can be "preserved" or "excavated" considering the extent of the illegality spread and not merely in Salt Lake. And the ruling party has only the real estate lobby ~ its unofficial front unit ~ to blame for the ecological damage since the Eighties. As yet without a name, the scheme in urban/semi-urban Bengal may turn out to be as much a hoax as in rural India. KMC, for instance, has a record of a changing of the guard. Whether the next Mayor-in-Council is the CPI-M's or Trinamul's, it will have to contend with the red herrings on the trail towards guaranteed employment. For both parties, it might be politically convenient to simply docket the file.

 

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

STERLING SIGNAL

ARMY CHIEF LOOKS WITHIN

 

RIGHTLY the action was little publicised, for the aim was to correct rather than merely create an impression of doing so. The "quiet" directions from the Chief of the Army Staff to replace the commanding officers of two Rashtriya Rifles units for failing to prevent avoidable civilian deaths in the Kashmir Valley ought to caution his men that no lapses in professionalism will be acceptable. For far too long have alibis like "collateral damage, mistaken identity" and so on camouflaged inadequacies in operational conduct, and so elderly persons, suspected smugglers and what have you have been neutralised and then portrayed as militants. That has eroded the credibility of the army, aroused the ire of the both the local people and the civilian administration, as well as given the separatists and militants ammunition in their campaign to slam the Army as ruthless. Having personal experience of counter-insurgency operations General VK Singh is fully aware of the adverse fallout of what can be projected as human rights violations. A single killing can write off the gains secured in a series of goodwill missions. It is true that in the past too have top Army commanders spoken in that vein, but this would be a rare instance of in-house action being taken quickly, before an ugly incident became a political issue.
There can be no making light of the demanding conditions under which the Army operates against militants who do not play by any rules. The field commanders have a difficult balance to maintain ~ keeping morale and commitment to duty high yet also ensuring the men do not go overboard when the bullets fly. It becomes very tricky when there is limited popular support or appreciation of the task in hand. The men in the thick of action are often unable to see the bigger picture, or distinguish between "adversary" and "enemy". But that is when leadership, training and discipline come into play, there can be no compromise. The Army has very good reason to redouble its efforts to uphold human rights, maintain a degree of restraint. Securing the confidence of the people that its counter-insurgency operations in border regions are neither oppressive nor high-handed would be both sword and shield in its battle to prevent any dilution of the protection it receives under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act.  

 

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

AFGHAN DILEMMA

MR BROWN'S UNFULFILLED AGENDA

AFGHANISTAN is the primary foreign policy issue in next month's British elections, but Mr George Brown may have to contend with the dilemma of an unfulfilled agenda. Despite the strong electoral commitment on a pullout by the end of this year in view of the mounting casualties, the outward march may not exactly be calendar-driven. If the proceedings of the recent Nato foreign ministers' meeting is any indication, conditions on the ground will be the singular determinant for the handover and not the domestic underpinning of any Nato constituent. Ergo, it is the military perception of the alliance that will prevail; the election on 6 May is unlikely to advance the British timetable for withdrawal.  Despite the groundswell of resentment against the country's engagement in Iraq and now Afghanistan, it will not be easy for Labour to convince the electorate on the overriding interest of Nato that has clearly overshadowed the Prime Minister's exit strategy. Mr Brown's campaign pledge that Hamid Karzai will be able to take charge of security in at least five provinces, notably Helmand, by the end of this year is unlikely to fructify. Nato leaders ~ Hillary Clinton was present at the meeting ~ have made it implicit that the British election is of lesser moment in the overall construct. Conditions alone will influence the continued presence or withdrawal of Isaf (International Security and Assistance Force).  Despite Mr Brown's political pledge, the message of the Nato meeting is far from reassuring for the domestic constituency.

Indeed, senior Nato leaders are said to be puzzled over the Prime Minister's pledge. Which may have prompted them to set Mr Brown's clock back. The first Nato meeting on the areas to be handed over ~ let alone a pullout ~ is not scheduled before next December. And a definite framework will have to be devised before the actual transfer of authority over security begins. There is hope, however faint, in the statement of the Nato Secretary-General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, that the prospects of the Afghans taking over security was "the light at the end of the tunnel". That light may yet be further away than what the Labour leadership imagines. And crucially, Britain's military brass shares Nato's perception.

 

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

WOES OF NARENDRA MODI

THE 2002 RIOTS REMAIN A RECURRING NIGHTMARE

BY AMULYA GANGULI

 

NARENDRA Modi seems to have woken up rather belatedly to the ignominy of his appearance before the Supreme Court's Special Investigation Team probing the Gujarat riots. As the first chief minister to stand in the dock for questioning by the police, he did not bring any glory to Gujarat, which, he claims, is his life's ambition. At first, he may have thought that he will demonstrate his previously unknown constitutional side by appearing before the SIT. This show of compliance to the law-enforcing machinery was probably considered necessary after his suspected unconstitutional role during the riots.

But if he has had second thoughts, the reason apparently is the uncomfortable nature of the investigation, whose focus is on the orders he gave to the police on the evening of 27 February 2002. Did he, or did he not, tell them to let the Hindus, viz. the saffron outfits, give vent to their anger? Since the SIT may summon him again, and since the Nanavati Commission has hinted that it, too, may ask the chief minister to depose before it, the state government has called into question the SIT's authority to summon the chief minister. As an add-on, the government also wants to know whether the Supreme Court can stay the ongoing trials in Gujarat, as it did following the hasty closure of nearly 2,000 cases by the courts in the state.

BJP & the judiciary

Even as the state government's affidavits are pending before the apex court, it may be worthwhile examining the BJP's attitude towards the judicial system in general. The first doubts about the party's commitment to the laws of the land, as interpreted by the judiciary, were raised when it declared at the height of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement that the courts had no jurisdiction over a matter of faith. If a sufficiently large number of people believed that a mosque had been built on the putative birthplace of one of their gods, they could demolish the offending structure irrespective of what the law said. It was this belief in the restricted powers of the courts which made Kalyan Singh smilingly accept the token punishment of a day's incarceration by the Supreme Court for having failed to abide by the judicial directive to save the Babari Masjid. 
What the former UP chief minister intended to convey by his insolent grin as he emerged from prison was that he was upholding the cause of the Hindurashtra in defiance of the judiciary of a secular state. It may have also been his intent to suggest that a time was coming when the rights of the Hindus would gain precedence over the prevailing pluralist concept of the equality of all citizens, including the minorities. Now, another BJP chief minister is virtually throwing down the gauntlet to the Supreme Court with the articulation of a similar view ~ that the latter had no right to ascertain what happened in February-March 2002 when about 1,200 people died in communal violence.

However, there is nothing surprising about Modi's attempts to keep the outbreak under wraps. For a start, one of his most audacious moves to fob off any probe was to write a letter to President APJ Abdul Kalam soon after the riots, alleging that the interventions by the National Human Rights Commission and others, including the non-government organisations, were an attempt to tarnish Gujarat's image by "exaggerating … stray incidents". Incidentally, it has been one of the longstanding ploys of Modi to dub any reference to the riots as an attempt to smear Gujarat's name and hurt its asmita. What is noteworthy, however, is his casual description of the deaths of 1,200 people as "stray incidents". This crudity can only be matched by his reference to the refugee camps housing Muslim victims of the riots as "child-producing factories".

A curious aspect of Modi's letter to the President was the call for the compilation of the statistics of all the "terrorist or extremist attacks, group clashes and communal violence" that had taken place since 1947 ! Modi's belief apparently was that this massive array of data will help to put the riots in Gujarat in the right perspective by suggesting that it was nothing out of the ordinary. He probably also believed that the Gujarat riots will be forgotten by the time all these figures were collected and published.

Public outcry

Since there was no response from Kalam, Modi tried to prevent the truth from emerging, especially about his orders on the evening of 27 February 2002, by choosing KG Shah to head a commission of inquiry although this judge was indicted by the Supreme Court for his suspected anti-Muslim bias. Following a pubic outcry, GT Nanavati was included in the commission although Shah stayed on till his death.
  But, now, Modi's third attempt to scuttle any viable inquiry into his acts of omission and commission during the riots is undoubtedly the most serious one, for he has virtually challenged the Supreme Court's authority to investigate the matter in any way. 

In doing so, he has evidently crossed the Lakshmanrekha of political propriety, but his desperation is understandable. Any hint from the SIT that he connived at the riots will be hugely damaging for a person who is occasionally touted by the BJP and sections of the corporate sector as a possible prime minister. If Modi has seemingly acted somewhat recklessly, therefore, the reason is his inability to comprehend why his electoral successes ~ he has won two assembly elections after 2002 ~ have brought him no respite from the after-effects of the riots. Nor has the support of virtually the entire upper and middle class Gujarati Hindus been of any help where his image outside the party at the national level is concerned.

The riots have tainted his reputation even more than what the Babari Masjid demolition did to LK Advani. Yet, if social scientist and psychologist Ashis Nandy's description of Modi as "a textbook case of a fascist" is accepted, then it will be easy to understand why he remains mired in unsavoury controversy.
The writer is a former Assistant Editor, The Statesman

 

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER

 

Hillary Clinton may have lost her bid for the US presidency ~ but even her critics admit she has shone as Secretary of State. Rupert Cornwell on the real comeback kidFor a brief moment, you imagined that history had taken a different course. There was Hillary Clinton, stepping up to the rostrum in the White House press room one day last month, to expound on the virtues of the new nuclear arms limitation treaty between the USA and Russia. She performed with her customary authority and command of the facts, as well as the sense of humour, often overlooked, that is another of her trademarks. Might there be problems over ratification in the Duma, the Moscow parliament, a reporter asked. Well, she replied with a giggle, the USA had offered to send White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel over to use his legendary (and foul-mouthed) powers of persuasion on recalcitrant Russian legislators. "If President Medvedev wants to take us up on it, we're ready".

Hillary, in other words, looked a President. But as we all know, she wasn't one. Rahm Emanuel was not her man, he was Barack Obama's. Hers was no more than a supporting act, filling in the details after the man who defeated her in that epic battle for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination had made the big announcement himself, before leaving the room without taking a single question. Yet in a way, it was remarkable she was there at all.

If Barack Obama had not come along and rewritten history, the passage of Hillary Clinton from brilliant lawyer to controversial First Lady to admired United States senator to the woman who went on to win the White House in her own right, would have been the most astonishing story of modern American politics. However, no less remarkable is her current incarnation as America's 67th Secretary of State, an office first held by Thomas Jefferson between 1790 and 1793.

The surprise is not that, by common consent, she's doing the job pretty well. The truly astounding thing, when you remember the length, intensity and ferocity of that 2008 primary struggle, was that Obama offered it to her in the first place.

What was going on, everyone wondered, when word of the appointment first surfaced. Was Obama trying to recreate the "Team of Rivals" whom his idol Abraham Lincoln had put in his cabinet almost 150 years earlier? What about the national psychodrama of the Clinton marriage, and what about Bill, with the ego of a man who had been president and a reputation as a loose cannon? Surely a new President would not let a former one near the wheel room. And how could Hillary's pride allow her to subordinate herself to the man who had bested her?
In reality, the calculations on both sides were more complicated. In fact, the really hard feelings were held by their staffs, not the candidates. Once those were set aside, a deal had considerable attractions. With Hillary, Obama was enlisting one of the world's most famous and popular women to promote the tarnished Brand America. At the same time, he was largely neutralising a potential re-election threat, should the lady have plans of picking up in 2012 where she left off in 2008.

For Hillary too, the change made sense. A failed presidential campaign wins no points in the Senate. She might have been its best-known member and one of its most assiduous. But in the tradition-bound Senate, hard work and celebrity are no substitute for seniority. She was already 61, but would have had to wait years, maybe decades, before one of the plum Senate posts opened up. The most prestigious post in the cabinet was therefore not one to be turned down lightly.

Most striking, perhaps, has been the harmony within the Obama national security team ~ a sea change from the administration of George W Bush, when the dour Dick Cheney became the most powerful vice-president in US history and, during its first term especially, public feuds between Donald Rumsfeld's Pentagon and Colin Powell's State Department made constant headlines.

Some feared a variation on the theme under Obama, with the Clintons stirring the pot. Nor was Hillary's presidential campaign a good omen, handicapped by clashes of egos, by sometimes less than helpful intrusions by her husband, and the Praetorian Guard of loyal retainers known as "Hillaryland", that kept the most well-intentioned outsider at arm's length. But it hasn't worked out that way.

Apart from his trip to North Korea to bring home two jailed American reporters last summer, Bill has scarcely been a factor. Certainly, he was not to blame for the supposedly mistranslated question, while his wife was visiting Africa last summer, which asked what Mr Clinton thought of a Chinese trade deal with the Congo. To which Hillary snapped: "My husband is not Secretary of State, I am."

She has set out to rebuild the State Department from within, boosting its budget and expanding its staff in an effort to recapture the clout lost to the Pentagon under George W Bush. In fact, Hillary has been the model team player, in a team bristling with foreign policy heavyweights. These "competitors" include Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee before becoming Vice President, as well as his successor as chairman, John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 White House candidate, not to mention the Secretary of Defence Robert Gates, a top national security adviser to the first President Bush and the sole holdover from the administration of the second.

Most important of all, though, are Hillary's relations with her boss. Plainly, they get on well, if only from a mutual respect born of the shared trial of the 2008 campaign. In public, Hillary is always deferential. Privately, the 44th President and his Secretary of State meet once a week for 45 minutes. So important is the session for her that when her plane ran into mechanical problems during a February visit to Saudi Arabia, she abandoned her travelling entourage and hitched a ride home with General David Petraeus, who had also been in Riyadh, in order to keep her White House date.

And whatever her power, her popularity is indisputable ~ her approval ratings are better than Obama's. One reason, of course, is that her job keeps her at a safe distance from the President's bitterly contested domestic agenda, and from a polarised, staggeringly unpopular Congress. Another is that Democrats and Republicans are basically agreed on key foreign policy issues. Take it from none other than Chavez, Venezuela's President and a constant thorn in Washington's flesh, who recently described Hillary as "a blonde Condoleezza Rice".
If her first year was a crash course in global affairs, Hillary has stepped up the pace during her second year. In 2009, she made 15 foreign trips, visiting 44 countries; she has already made 11 this year, travelling to 19 countries and spending 30 days on the road. What this gruelling schedule has achieved is open to debate. The most frequent criticism is that in her ubiquity, she has made no issue recognisably her own.

The Afghanistan and Iraq wars probably should not be counted, since they have been run out of the White House. But Iran has ignored every overture and every warning from Washington, pressing ahead with its nuclear programme regardless. Thus far at least, her labours have not brought the US much closer to securing UN "sanctions that bite". As for China, divisions have if anything grown, on issues ranging from trade and currency policy to human rights and nuclear proliferation ~ though blame can hardly be laid at Hillary's door.
Where she did make a gaffe was in the Middle East. Progress towards peace was the tallest of orders, given the intransigence of Benjamin Netanyahu and the weakness of the Palestinian leadership. But she and the President allowed the Israeli Prime Minister to call their bluff over US demands for an outright settlements freeze, then Hillary compounded the error by describing Netanyahu's vague promise to suspend construction as "unprecedented" – a remark that enraged the Arab world. Since then, US relations with Israel have gone from bad to worse.

This year, she set off a mini-storm in London when she declared her readiness to mediate between Britain and Argentina over the Falklands. But the reaction reflected less US clumsiness than the tender sensibilities of sections of the British press over the "special relationship".

Her most concrete achievement has been the "resetting" of relations with Moscow, culminating in the new Start treaty, cutting the countries' nuclear arsenals. A contributory factor is the better personal relationship she has developed with her Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov, who could barely abide Condoleezza Rice.
One day, of course, Hillary will no longer be Secretary of State. So what then? The surprising answer may be: not a great deal. Political disclaimers should normally be taken with a generous pinch of salt. But in Hillary's case there is no reason to disbelieve her when she insists she will not run for president again ~ and when she says she does not see herself sticking in her present job beyond the end Obama's first term.

The Independent

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

VOICES AGAINST TERRORISM

 

Apart from individuals and religious organisations, Islamic scholars have started raising their voices against terrorist forces, says Sohail Arshad

The world has been witnessing a rare phenomenon of individual and collective acts of introspection on the part of Islamic scholars to find out what ails Muslim society today and the reasons why Muslim youth are being driven towards violence. They have been wanting to go to the root of the philosophy inspiring professors of radicalism and, more specifically, terrorism in the name of jihad.

Scholars today have realised, though belatedly, that the fatwa had been a source of inspiration for extremist, radical and sectarian schools of thought in the Muslim world and had given birth to Al Qaida, Taliban, Lashkar-e-Taiyyaba, Al Shahab and other terrorist organisations. Acts of violence have not only harmed non-combatants among Muslims but have also damaged the image of Islam as a religion of peace because even during a war, Islam is against assaulting or harming non-combatants, women, children, the elderly and unarmed persons. The so-called jihad had its political consequences as well.

Therefore, local religious bodies and individuals have started criticising the jihadists and pronouncing fatwas against them. In 2009, Darul Uloom Deoband, the largest Islamic seminary in India, was probably the first to declare the violence unleashed by the jihadi forces like Al Qaida, Lashkar-e-Taiyyaba and others unIslamic and condemned it in the strongest terms. Last month a prominent mufti of Pakistan, Maulana Tahir ul Qadri came out with a 600-page fatwa against terrorism and militancy which was hailed across the globe.
Then there are scholars like Habib Ali of Egypt who is a proponent of the moderate path and has been vocal against the doctrine of violence. Apart from individuals and religious organisations, other Islamic leaders have also raised their voices against terrorist forces.

The most important development in the war against terrorism was the holding of two conferences of Islamic scholars ~ one in Medina and the other in Mardin in Turkey ~ which are expected to have far-reaching influence on the Muslim psyche. According to reports, a four-day conference of Islamic scholars was held in Medina in Saudi Arabia to denounce acts of terrorism. The conference was attended by some 500 scholars of Islsm from all over the world who unanimously asked the extremists to "return to their senses and follow the path of groups that have announced repentance and rejected acts of terrorism". Significantly, the anti-terrorism conferences was sponsored by the government of Saudi Arabia which has been accused of pumping petro-dollars into Muslim majority countries to promote extremism.

Another conference was held in Turkey in which prominent Islamic scholars from 15 Muslim countries participated. Here scholars jointly declared that the fatwa issued by a 14th century Islamic scholar no longer applied. A statement issued by the conference said: "Anyone who seeks support from this fatwa for killing Muslims or non-Muslims has erred in his interpretation... It is not for a Muslim individual or group to declare war or engage in combative jihad ... on their own".

Last month an anti-terrorism declaration was issued for Somalia by leading global Islamic scholars in a conference organised by the Global Centre of Renewal and Guidance (GCRG) which was attended by renowned Muslim scholars from Somalia, Sudan, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Mauritania, Yemen, Libya and the UAE. The declaration though issued with special reference to Somalia is a path-breaking move since it condemns religious justification of violence.

Therefore, the emergence of a united group of the Muslim scholars against the menace of terrorism should succeed in creating a terror-free world.

The writer is a freelance contributor

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THE STATESMAN

EDITORIAL

100 YEARS AGO TODAY

WHISKY TRADE MARK CASE

A case involving questions of commercial interest came up on Tuesday in the Court of Mr Swinhoe, Officiating Chief Presidency Magistrate, when Messrs Kellner & Co., wine and spirit merchants, charged Babus Jotindranath Shaw and Benode Behari Shaw, carrying on wine business in co-partnership at 28 Banstollah Lane, with having fraudulently used certain trade marks of the complainant with intent to induce purchasers to believe that the liquor sold thereunder was of the complainant's manufacture or merchandise.

It is notified that a competitive examination for the selection of probationers for one vacancy in the enrolled list of the Finance Department and two vacancies in the Superior Accounts Branch of the Public Works Department will be held in Calcutta during the last week of July 1910. Only nominated candidates can appear at the examination.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

JOINT EFFORT

 

The brief stopover of the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, at New Delhi en route Bhutan was necessitated as much by the strategic concerns of his administration as those of India. The Karzai government has had India as one of its most steadfast friends, whose support becomes crucial at a time when Afghanistan is about to make one of its most significant and controversial attempts to bring peace to the country in the form of the reconciliation process with the Taliban. Since its declaration at the London conference, Mr Karzai's proposed policy has drawn mixed responses from his Western allies. Over the past month, a greater scepticism has seeped into the West's discourse on this issue, forcing Mr Karzai to postpone the reconciliation drive, which was about to start with a national meet on the matter that was cancelled at the last moment. India, on its part, has consistently pointed out the pitfalls of negotiating with the Taliban and accommodating them in the government. Given their links and cross-border associations, the Taliban in power would not only give Pakistan greater leverage in the internal governance of the country but also keep the region perpetually destabilized. This is a fact, borne out by experience, which India has tried its best to impress upon both the president of Afghanistan and the international community at each of the international fora it has attended since the policy was made public. It reiterated its stand in the prime minister's brief meeting with Mr Karzai in New Delhi before the two nations face their common neighbour — Pakistan — at the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation meet in Thimpu.

 

India, of course, also pledged its commitment to the rebuilding and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan, and elicited an expected response from Mr Karzai in the form of the promise of greater security for Indian workers. It is not that Mr Karzai had been expecting to hear anything different from India. But a month ahead of the much-publicized assembling of the loya jirga in Afghanistan, Mr Karzai needed to convince his neighbours as much as himself that the peace initiative remains in the hands of Afghans. For India, this meeting, as also the Saarc meet, is part of a continuous effort to convince neighbours that regional security is a joint project.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

WITHOUT CREDIT

 

Everybody seems to agree that quality control is of capital importance in higher education in India. Yet confusion prevails over the question as to who should play the controller. Common sense says that it should be the responsibility, if not the priority, of every institution to ensure that the best faculty and infrastructure are made available to its students. It could only be advantageous for an institution if its students go on to scale rare heights. The aura of success would not only enhance the prestige of the institution but also attract other intelligent students, faculty, and more funds to it. Based on this sound logic of market economy, hundreds of young people every year aspire to enter some particular institution, where, they believe, their interests would be best served. It is evident, therefore, that most students have their own accreditation system which helps them sort out various colleges and universities according to a personal hierarchy of priorities. The State, however, seems to put greater faith in the National Assessment and Accreditation Council (which evaluates the performance of institutions across the country) than in individual instincts.

 

Yet a body like Naac is redundant for more reasons than one. The fear of Naac only inspires periodic, frenzied cleaning up among the colleges, just before a team of evaluators is scheduled to visit. For the rest of the year, it is business as usual, as faculty and students remain mired in politics, or laboratories and libraries lie in a shambles. It also appears that many institutions do not even care much about the Naac, considering the 108 colleges in West Bengal alone that are yet to apply for evaluation. This indifference is explained by the prevailing laissez-faire ethos in Indian higher education. As long as the State makes sure that teachers get their salaries every month, and pampers institutions with monetary grants from time to time, no sense of accountability can be fostered among the academic community. A sharp rap on the knuckles cannot be delivered by the Naac alone. It would be a good lesson for colleges if they are deprived of State funds and forced to subsist solely on students' fees and donations. That should take care of errant teachers. Unless they do their duty, teachers would fail to attract quality students, and thus endanger their jobs — as it would be impossible to run the colleges without further enrolment. And so, everyone will get their money's worth.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

 

 

THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE

EVERYTHING THAT IS ROTTEN IN INDIA HAS A DUBAI ANGLE

K.P. NAYAR

 

The sleaze from the Indian Premier League's gutter, which has significantly diminished the country's political class and others in authority — such as the chairman and managing director of Air India, Arvind Jadhav, who willingly converted the airline into a private carrier for the IPL — is a warning that for the Indian State, Dubai continues to be a curse.

 

My first direct exposure as a young journalist to the depth and range of corruption and wrong-doing in the Indian government was in Dubai, where I lived in the 1980s. I used to frequent the office of the owner of a big bank in Dubai. His chief hatchet man, his CEO of sorts — although such fancy corporate designations were unknown in Dubai then — was an Indian from Kerala, who constituted my access to the bank owner, a multi-billionaire businessman whose sprawling global business empire included everything from hotels and car dealerships to newspapers and real estate.

 

It is only an incidental aside to the main narrative of this column that at that time, the bank owner, whose family had huge business and personal stakes in Pakistan, was providing refuge to an exiled Benazir Bhutto in one of his three houses off London's Mayfair and simultaneously running businesses under various names for the head of one of the 22 families which controlled 66 per cent of Pakistani industry and owned 87 per cent of that country's banking and insurance prior to nationalization of those by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. While Benazir was running her campaign against General Zia-ul-Haq from this Dubai businessman's London property — where I first met her — the irony is that the man for whom the same entrepreneur was running benami ventures was one of the most powerful ministers in General Zia's cabinet.

 

The general manager of the bank owned by the Dubai businessman was an amiable Scotsman, who was totally trusted by the owner to look after his wide-ranging interests. One day, the general manager was summoned by the owner and told that a fairly large sum of money needed to be withdrawn from the account of 'Mr Crow' and that the Scotsman should deliver the money to the owner. It would be collected by 'Mr Crow' whom the owner would be seeing in the next two days while he was visiting the Emirate.

 

I sat quietly in a corner of the room, sipping gahwa, a ritual coffee preparation in Arab communities, and wondering who 'Mr Crow' may be. I did not have to wait long to discover his identity: 'Mr Crow' was a very senior civil servant who later became India's foreign secretary.

 

For a journalist with a 'nose' for information, Dubai is one of the most open places in the world. Once a newsman has won the trust of an Arab, howsoever sensitive his position may be, he will share information with you which will be wrapped in multiple layers of secrecy in most other countries. In my decade-long experience in Dubai, people share information with trusted journalists in the full knowledge that it will not be written about — until after decades, as in the case of this narrative. Unless, of course, the journalist is seeking a one-way plane ticket out of the Emirate.

 

So, I found out that the arrangement with 'Mr Crow' was merely the tip of an iceberg of questionable activities in this once-thriving bank, which fell on bad times during one of the Gulf region's cyclical downturns and was taken over by the Emirate's government to be merged with a bigger bank, which was wholly owned by the sheikhdom of Dubai. It is not known what subsequently happened to the secret account of 'Mr Crow'. But the future foreign secretary was not the only prominent Indian to have his illicit wealth stashed away in undisclosed accounts abroad in those days of severe foreign exchange controls at home.

 

Only a few people at the top in the family-owned, poorly-regulated, unaudited banks in Dubai in those days knew the true identity of account-holders like 'Mr Crow'. I have heard the general manager and the owner of the bank in question discuss with the Malayali CEO of the conglomerate the accounts of a 'Mr Frog' or a 'Mr Cat'. I was told in absolute confidence 25 years ago that a rising politician then, who subsequently became a member of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's cabinet, was the holder of one such account while another member of Singh's previous council of ministers had a fat account under a similarly fictitious name.

 

During much of the 13 years when Win Chadha, arms-agent-turned-accused in the Bofors scandal, lived as an absconder in Dubai, India's emissaries who went to the Emirate ostensibly to have him repatriated repeatedly told Dubai authorities that although they were serving papers seeking Chadha's return, in reality they did not want to lay their hands on him. Over the years, such duplicity by New Delhi has cost India the respect of the Dubai government. When Chadha finally returned to India in 2000 during National Democratic Alliance's rule, the then Indian ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, K.C. Singh, successfully used his persuasive powers, not legal coercion to facilitate his return. By then, New Delhi had so completely lost credibility with Dubai in the Chadha case that no Indian official with a modicum of integrity or sensitivity could look the Emirate's authorities in the eye or demand the repatriation of the former Bofors agent.

 

It is no surprise that Dubai became home to the so-called D-Company, the gang of fugitive smuggler and drug dealer, Dawood Ibrahim, who eventually contracted his services to organize terrorist attacks on India on behalf of Pakistan. Or that Dubai was the transit point from India to Pakistan for some members of the Memon family, who planned the serial bomb attacks on Mumbai in 1993. How could the Dubai government be expected to believe that India was serious about getting Dawood back to Mumbai when it has been plain as daylight to the UAE and to Bahrain that at least on two occasions in the 1990s when there was real chance that Dawood — and his brother Anees Ibrahim in the case on Bahrain — would be extradited, New Delhi blew the opportunities to do so.

 

Everything that is rotten in India has a Dubai angle: human trafficking, gold smuggling, money laundering and terrorist financing through the hawala or parallel banking system, and now, the IPL. It is symptomatic of Dubai's dubious importance for India's political class that during every election season in India, the value of the rupee shoots up in the Emirate's money market where the Indian currency is freely available and is actively traded. Not only does its value go up: currency notes of Rs 1,000 denomination suddenly become short in supply, obviously because they are physically transported to India to finance the elections with black money.

 

In the 1980s, when a surge in complaints about exploitation and mistreatment of Indian workers forced New Delhi to offer more institutional protection to immigrant workers, an Indian consul-general in Dubai who sought to ensure such protection was threatened by recruiting agents, Indians who supply labour to the Gulf states. When the consul-general stood his ground, the agents plainly told him that they would go to New Delhi and get their way. Not only did they get their way, but soon enough, the ministry of external affairs instituted several enquiries against the consul-general who eventually left his post under a cloud.

 

The situation has only got worse and more serious since then as Dubai's hold over India deteriorates into a stranglehold. More recently, another consul-general in Dubai, a very senior officer who is currently serving elsewhere abroad, paid with his reputation after South Block instituted investigations against him based — believe it or not — on allegations levelled against him by known frontmen for Dawood Ibrahim. Relying on 'evidence' provided by Dawood's henchmen in moving against the senior diplomat was like relying on a thief's testimony in a case of robbery against himself!

 

Last week, speaking about the rot in the IPL and Indian cricket's Dubai connection in the Lok Sabha, Abdul Rahman, the MP from Vellore, singled out for praise two officers, Yash Sinha and Venu Rajamony, who were recently consuls-general in the Emirate. Given the unfair treatment of some of their predecessors by New Delhi which surrendered to cabals in Dubai, it was just as well that Rahman, who lived in Dubai before contesting from Vellore last year, put his impressions on record.

 

Because more and more of India's rich and powerful are increasingly beholden to Dubai one way or another, the Emirate has now come to believe that India can be treated like another banana republic that Dubai, in fact, is. Last month, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Dubai's ruler, accepted an invitation to be a keynote speaker at a conclave organized by a media group, then used that invitation to wangle a meeting with the prime minister and left without addressing the conclave. True, the government had nothing to do with the conclave, but the Dubai ruler's behaviour betrays a lack of decency which ought to inject an element of caution in any future dealings with the sheikh whose policies have brought Dubai to the edge of a precipice.

 

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THE TELEGRAPH

EDITORIAL

HACKS AND THEIR SPELLING

STEPHEN HUGH-JONES

 

It was an odd letter, even by letters-to-the-editor standards. "Interestingly," wrote one Rebecca Angelini-Hurll to the London Sunday Times, apropos of an article on dyslexia, "I am a fantastic speller." Well indeed, thought I. "Interestingly" merely? Too modest, surely — not every fantastic speller, plainly, is equally deft in the nuances of modesty. Fascinatingly, maybe? Grippingly? World-shakingly, why not?

 

But let's not be too unkind to Ms A-H. What she said next was indeed of interest — in its way. She'd worked for six years at The Economist, it seems, and "every single writer who had a modicum of talent could not spell for toffee — fortunately, they had a PA (me) who could both spell and correct grammar."

 

Well indeed, thought I again. In 35 years at The Economist, I subedited the work of umpteen highly talented journalists, in the home, foreign and business sections alike. Maybe one or two were less than brilliant spellers. But all of them? Most, even? No way. So am I to believe that in whatever section Ms A-H worked for not one could spell, let alone "for toffee" (a nice old expression; I don't doubt her English)? Frankly, phooey.

 

Yet the idea, a humble version of 'genius is to madness near allied', is not in itself absurd. One certainly can have writing talents and yet be unable to spell. Go back a few centuries, and to today's eyes that was true of every writer of English, hugely talented as some were, because spelling was not yet standardised.

 

Oops, I mean standardized, as The Telegraph insists — and is perfectly entitled to, since, as that word shows, there is no absolute, global standard of spelling even now. And back then it was chaos: even Shakespeare couldn't even spell his own name consistently (which, for the record, doesn't prove his plays were really written by Francis Bacon or ghosted for him by Hamlet's father). Spelling was astonishingly unimportant.

 

Fantastic notion

 

Or is that so astonishing? Most languages must have gone through chaos like this. Yet remember the West's formerly huge academic industry of editing ancient Greek and Latin texts. This could lead to fierce clashes: A.E. Housman, a classical scholar as well as a poet, once opined that a certain bad German editor, perusing the work of a worse follower, must have felt "like Sin when she gave birth to Death". And the clashes might arise over tiny differences in ancient manuscripts. Scholars could blame some rival readings on the sheer obscurity of the text, or on the ignorance or plain error of copyists. They recognized regional differences of dialect. They knew spelling had altered over the centuries. But I don't recall any suggestion that variant readings could arise simply because, at a given place and time — say, Athens in the fifth century BC — people disagreed on how to spell.

 

Why not? Maybe because by the 19th century the idea was so alien: by then, all educated people spelt English (or German) the same way. As they do today. True, English has no strict global standard. But the permitted variations are minor and well known. Those apart, almost all serious users of English, unless they truly are dyslexic, almost always spell it the same way; that is, correctly. And in my trade they'd risk their jobs if they didn't.

 

So even if I'd never set foot in The Economist, I'd challenge any fantastic notion that its talented writers, little as I shared some of their views, were all dunces at spelling. Not just do I know they weren't, but it's impossible they could have been, at that magazine or any other. Shakespeare maybe did not worry about spelling; today's journalists have to.

 

THEWORDCAGE@YAHOO.CO.UK

 

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******************************************************************************************DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

FALL FROM GRACE

''IPL WILL SURVIVE AS IT HAS SO MUCH TO OFFER''

 

With the suspension of Lalit Modi from all positions in the Board of Control for Cricket in India, including as the high-flying chairman of the Indian Premier League, the curtain has come down on act one of a controversy that has driven a massive knife into the heart of Indian cricket. An ill-advised tweet making the share-holding patterns in the Kochi franchisee public, triggered a rapid chain of events culminating in Modi's suspension and a show cause notice to him. The brash Modi's role in making the IPL the brand it is today is unquestionable, but in his mistaken belief that he is the IPL and that the IPL is Modi lay the genesis of his dramatic fall from grace.

Modi's admirable vision and undiluted passion, coupled with a shrewd business mind and the ability to identify novel means of selling the IPL, made him popular with players and officials, but his arrogance and utter disdain of any dissenting voice, however justified, won him few friends. His autocratic ways of functioning, tacitly approved by a mute and ignorant governing council, are only just beginning to come to light, as are sharp practices involving sums allegedly running into millions of dollars. His unshakeable belief that he was bigger than the product he created has eventually left him in the wilderness. The suspension is but the first step in a long process that, should it take its logical course, will see Modi left to fend for himself, even as the creation that thrust him into the limelight will continue to flourish.

Serious as the recent taints, including the allegations of match-fixing are, the IPL will remain upwardly mobile simply because as a product, it has so much to offer. Over the first three seasons, fans have lapped it up with unconcealed glee, packing stadiums to the rafters and soaking in the heady mix of outstanding cricket and wholesome entertainment. Unlike Modi, the fans realise that what makes the IPL is not its creator but the parade of stars of different nationalities who set friendships aside and engage in no-holds-barred battles for six and a half weeks. Cricket has shown remarkable resilience in overcoming the match-fixing scandal of the early 2000s; rest assured, this is one more setback it will take effortlessly in its stride. It might be Endgame Modi, but the IPL is far from history.

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

TAMIL LEAD

''A LANGUAGE DEVELOPS WHEN FACED WITH CHALLENGES.''

 

The argument for using mother tongue as the medium of instruction at all levels of education is strong in the country. The issue has been hotly debated by educationists and other stake-holders like teachers and parents. But there has not yet been a widely accepted consensus on it. Governments have changed policies on the language of education and the trends in schools have changed according to times. The benefits of education in mother tongue are accepted at least in theory by most people, though in practice the number of English medium schools are exponentially increasing and more and more parents seek admission for their children in them. But even those who advocate the need for education in mother tongue have accepted the desirability of higher education, especially technical education, being offered in English.

But the Anna University in Tamil Nadu has taken a major step by deciding to introduce Tamil as the medium of instruction in civil and mechanical engineering degree courses in colleges affiliated to the university from the next academic year. One aim is to encourage students from Tamil medium schools to take up technical education. The urban and elitist bias of technical education can be corrected with this. There is also a feeling that students with a Tamil medium background are at a disadvantage when they pursue higher education in English. Promotion and development of mother tongue may be another aim. A language develops when it has to cope with challenges like finding new words and ways of expression. The government, institutions and the people of Tamil Nadu are known for the love of their language and they cannot be faulted for this.
Infrastructure like textbooks, and teachers well versed both in Tamil and the subjects, will have to be readied. This can be done but it is not known if the authorities have given sufficient thought to the job prospects of those who graduate without a working knowledge of English outside the state. Some of them may want to go for higher education also. Communication of technical ideas and concepts will be difficult for them, and they will find it difficult to access technical literature in English. The experiment may be commendable as a sign of pride in mother tongue but it should not hurt the interests of students.

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

A POLITICAL MISFIT

HE COMPLETELY MISREAD NEW DELHI AND ITS SOCIAL SEDUCTIONS WHICH CAN SO EASILY LULL EAGER BEAVERS INTO A SENSE OF FALSE SECURITY.

BY SAEED NAQVI

 

It was clear as daylight that Shashi Tharoor, junior minister in the ministry of external affairs, would not last on the lofty perch provided for him by the ruling Congress party.

Slopes are meant to ascend, of course, but also to descend. However, gliding from the higher echelons of the United Nations to public life in India, a mind of insufficient suppleness may be forgiven for being a little confused between ascent and descent, status enhancement or status reversal. Tharoor was never certain whether Indian politics was a good enough fallback position once he had lost the top job at the UN. This uncertainty was at the bottom of his casual attitude towards politics.

IPL was only the trigger. Tharoor fell victim to a common failing. He completely misread New Delhi, its social seductions which can so easily lull eager beavers into a sense of false security. If feet are not planted firmly on the ground, the heady social swing, the pretentious sham of shallow movers and shakers, can sweep you off your feet. And feet can never be firmly planted either in Thiruvanthapuram or New Delhi, if you have lived half your life in the US. Tharoor fell because he could not adjust.

The case of Shashi Tharoor has lessons for the political establishment. Lateral inductions from the corporate sector and elsewhere into parties have come under scrutiny particularly since the days of Rajiv Gandhi. It is commonly known that politics was more or less thrust on Rajiv after Sanjay Gandhi's death in an air crash.

An IAS officer of the Madhya Pradesh cadre, V S Tripathi was identified to guide him into the ways of the world during Indira Gandhi's lifetime. At that stage Rajiv was comfortable with a small circle of friends like 'Thud' (abbreviation for Thadani) Arun Singh and Vijay Dhar. 'Doscos' (from Doon School) crawled out of the woodworks to take up slots in journalism, tourism and advisory positions around Rajiv Gandhi only after he became prime minister.

The list of those who made a career out of sharing the dormitory with Rajiv Gandhi at Doon School is long. But some talents did surface. Among them Mani Shankar Aiyar — successful IFS officer in his own right, qualified to be Rajiv's mediaman for many reasons. An excellent speaker, writer, and, unlike the apolitical 'baba log,' political to the core, having dabbled in left politics at Cambridge.

The point I am making is that youngsters who clustered around Rajiv were largely political careerists, but for the exceptions I have mentioned. Surely careerists could not be expected to inject idealism into Indian public life. In fact not many of them even had the stamina to survive in politics, exceptions like Kamal Nath notwithstanding.

Breeding ground

Intellectual ideas during the freedom struggle were mostly nurtured in leftist crucibles, with Jawaharlal Nehru as the secular symbol of this school. Tilak, Sardar Patel, Purshottam Das Tandon, Morarji Desai represented Indian nationalism, finely poised on the edge of 'Hindu nationalism.'

The context of the breakdown of feudalism, concurrent with the national movement, strengthened the appeal of the left to the educated and in many cases unemployed youth who gravitated towards left parties and the socialists. Some of them sparkled in parliament as Hiren Mukerjee, H V Kamath, Bhupesh Gupta, Ram Manohar Lohia, Nath Pai. The Hindi belt sent up its own brilliant speakers like Atal Behari Vajpayee and Prakash Veer Shastri.

Subsequent to this generation, the intake of idealistic youth into public life dried up with the onset of political corruption of which the IPL is only the tiniest tributary.

The second generation rural elite, new to wealth and power, concentrated on contracts for canals, culverts and coal mines.

The Maruti-plus middle class, part of the celebrated 300 million Indians on the make, was completely oblivious of the 70 per cent of Indians living in poverty.

For the new political class, the catchment area for young political recruits was restricted to the above categories. Since recruits from these group were creatures of market avarice, the handful of 'decent' leaders left in, say the Congress party, encouraged lateral inductions, like Tharoor, for instance, to give the party a wholesome visage.
These inductions were resisted by the party lineup (quietly, slyly) which since Independence has acquired a positive and a negative characteristic: it is increasingly homespun and aggressively corrupt. 'Good schooling' therefore sticks out like a sore thumb in this grouping.

I am not for a moment suggesting that Tharoor does not know Malayalam or that he is not familiar with Swati Thirunal. My point is that the young inductees to have credibility will have to know more about the debt trap which drives farmers to suicides rather than the garish razzle dazzle of IPL. They will have to vibe with the tribals of Chhattisgarh and Orissa who are holding onto their lands rich in minerals on which are set the eyes of the corporate world.

A national poll in universities and colleges on the tribal-Maoist combine versus the state may throw up a new catchment area for durable political inductees.

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

THE FIGHT AGAINST PATENT MONOPOLIES

THERE ARE BILATERAL AGREEMENTS THAT PUSH THE CENTRE TO INCREASE PATENT DURATION BEYOND 20 YEARS.

BY GOPAL DABADE

On April 26, the world celebrated the World Intellectual Property Day to mark the 10th anniversary of Wipo (World Intellectual Property Organisation). Wipo is an agency of the United Nations established with the objective that its member countries can be assisted in developing appropriate patent laws.

Patents give absolute monopoly for a certain period of time to the inventor and this monopoly is given by the government under the assumption that the inventor has spent time and money in making the discovery. Each country has its own laws governing patent issues and they play an extremely important role on several aspects of our daily life, including access to food and life-saving medicines.

Indian patent laws were amended in 2005, as India is a member of the WTO (World Trade Organisation). The period of patent duration, which was for seven years (for medicines) was increased to 20 years and also from process patent, India changed to product patent. These and many other changes that were incorporated in the patent act were discussed and debated in parliament.

Many of these changes were opposed by several people's organisations not only in India but all over the world, as Indian generic drug companies export affordable medicines to around 200 developing countries. And in addition, these changes would benefit the companies in the rich countries and in several ways would create a burden for generic companies in the Indian context.

Harmful trends

Even after having amended the Indian Patent Act as per the minimum requirements of the WTO, it does not seem to have satisfied the corporate greed. Among the many issues at stake here are two glaring examples: During February 2010, Bayer, the German multinational company, approached the supreme court challenging how an Indian drug company (Cipla) could be granted permission by the Drug Controller of India, to manufacture a drug on which Bayer had patent rights.

Linking patents (that is, the Indian Patent Office) with drug regulating authorities (that is, Drug Controller of India) is a trick used by the big pharmaceutical companies so that the Indian generic companies would not be able to manufacture the drug immediately after the expiry of the patent period and thus the brand company will have a monopoly for greater duration of time.

The drug in this case is Sorafenib Tosylate, which is used to treat kidney cancer and is sold by Bayer at Rs 2.85 lakh for 120 tablets for a month's dosage. Indian generic companies can make it at a much lower cost.

In another example, in Sept 2009, Novartis, a Swiss multinational company approached the supreme court challenging the rejection of its patent on Gleevec. It is a useful medicine which is used to treat a variety of blood cancer and needed to be taken life long to not only increase longevity but also improve the quality of life. Treatment with Gleevec, the one manufactured and marketed by Novartis, costs Rs 1.20 lakh a month, whereas Indian companies — nine of them — are making and marketing it at a price of about Rs 8,000 to Rs 9,000 per month. If Novartis wins the case then Indian generics will have to stop manufacturing it.

In addition to the court case, Novartis is also challenging the provisions like section 3(d) of the Indian Patent Act, which was introduced by parliament after recognising the public health concerns regarding 'ever greening' tactics of pharma companies. It is a common practice of pharma giants to extend their patent monopolies on known medicines by making insignificant or minor changes. This provision acts as a check on patent monopolies for medicines that are not actually inventions, but mere combinations or slightly modified formulations of existing medicines.

In addition there are bilateral agreements (the recent one being between India and EU) that are further pushing the Indian government to increase the patent duration beyond 20 years. Many of these conditions are known as TRIPS plus provisions.

Given this scenario, one wonders how one would celebrate the World Intellectual Property Day in a country that has the largest number of people (649 million) without having access to essential medicines, according to WHO estimates. Ideally, the patents should have created a situation where medicines would be made accessible to a large number of people, but the reverse seems to be the case. Patenting regime is, in fact, depriving millions of people of accessing the life-saving medicines. One wonders if UN authorities have thought of a remedy.

(The writer is co-convener, All India Drug Action Network)

 

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DECCAN HERALD

EDITORIAL

CLACKETY-CLACK

THE SUDDEN CLATTER OF THE OLD REMINGTON WOKE THE ENTIRE HOUSEHOLD.

BY SUNIL GUPTA

 

The typewriter once belonged to my great-grandfather. It is a portable Remington from the early 1920s. The burnished black frame still glints. The keys — pale yellow discs on thin metal strips are as sprightly as ever. Years after great-grandpa's demise, my grandfather retrieved the typewriter from the attic and handed over to my father who went to work on it — oiling, replacing worn-out springs, fixing the latches on its case. He brought the typewriter back to life late one night and the sudden clatter of the old Remington woke the entire household.
  
As long as the typewriter was working, my father refused to buy a new one, a more efficient model. I recall him saying that he did not want the Remington to go back into the attic. So he nursed it along with a silent tenacity. He stubbornly kept the machine from sinking to disrepair and obsolescence.

The little portable is a living bit of my father's past. He associates the machine with a time I can only glimpse through sepia-tinted photographs in the family album: our ancestral country home, grandpa during his school years and great-grandpa standing straight-backed and mustachioed — the portrait of a patriarch.

When my relationship with my father matured into friendship, I realised that much of my father had rubbed off on me. His writing, for instance. I began by helping him check facts in his pieces by scrounging for information in libraries and later on the google. As my father transferred his stories from longhand to type, I would proof the pages. Between us the Remington rang with its busy staccato as the typefaces crashed on to the white foolscap and left their indelible impressions.

My dad gave me the typewriter when I left home to study at St Xaviers in Calcutta. Faced with a busy academic schedule, I worked long hours to complete research assignments. I became adept at using computers and text files. Software packages took over the chore of setting columns and paragraphs. But I continued to use the Remington sparingly mainly to correspond with my father.

Our exchanges continue, even as I settle into a job in another city. The old typewriter has accompanied me. Somehow, I don't perceive it as just a utilitarian piece of machinery anymore. The old portable has become part of the familiar and reassuring in my life. Perhaps, my grandpa felt the same when he took the Remington out of the attic years ago.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

LION'S DEN: UNDERSTANDING EUROPE

BY DANIEL PIPES

 

A newly translated book by French novelist Pascal Bruckner shows how Europeans see themselves as "the sick man of the planet."

 

 

"Nothing is more Western than hatred of the West." So writes French novelist and essayist Pascal Bruckner in his book La tyrannie de la pénitence (2006), translated into English by Steven Rendall and recently published by Princeton University Press as The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism. "All of modern thought," he adds, "can be reduced to mechanical denunciations of the West, emphasizing the latter's hypocrisy, violence and abomination."

He exaggerates, but not by much.

He shows how Europeans see themselves as "the sick man of the planet" whose pestilence causes every problem in the non-Western world (what he calls the South). When the white man set foot in Asia, Africa or America, death, chaos and destruction followed. Europeans feel themselves born with stigmata: "The white man has sown grief and ruin wherever he has gone." His pale skin signals his moral defectiveness.

These provocative statements undergird Bruckner's brilliant polemic arguing that European remorse for the sins of imperialism, fascism and racism have gripped the continent to the point of stifling its creativity, destroying its self-confidence and depleting its optimism.

Bruckner himself concedes Europe's blemishes, but also praises it for self-criticism: "There is no doubt that Europe has given birth to monsters, but at the same time it has given birth to theories that make it possible to understand and destroy these monsters." The continent, he maintains, cannot be just a curse, for its sublime achievements complement its worst atrocities. This he calls "proof of grandeur."

Paradoxically, it is Europe's very readiness to acknowledge its faults that prompts self-hatred, for societies that do not engage in such introspection do not lacerate themselves. Europe's strength is thus its weakness. Although the continent has "more or less vanquished its monsters" such as slavery, colonialism and fascism, it chooses to dwell on the worst of its record.

Thus, his book's title, The Tyranny of Guilt. The past, with its violence and aggression, is frozen in time – a burden Europeans expect never to be able to throw off.

THE SOUTH, in contrast, is deemed perpetually innocent. Even as colonialism fades into the past, Europeans righteously blame themselves for the plight of once-colonized peoples. Eternal innocence means infantilizing non-Westerners; Europeans flatter themselves as the only adults – itself a form of racism. It also offers a way to preempt criticism.

This explains why Europeans ask what they "can do for the South rather than asking what the South can do for itself." It also explains why, after the Madrid bombings of 2004, a million Spaniards marched against, not the Islamist perpetrators, but their own prime minister. And worse, why they saw Spanish civilians "torn apart by steel and fire" as the guilty party.

As shown by the Madrid bombing and countless other acts of violence, Muslims tend to have the most hostile attitudes toward the West, and Palestinians rank as the most hostile of Muslims. That Palestinians face off against Jews, the extreme victims of Western murderousness, makes them a perversely ideal vehicle for rebutting Western guilt. Making matters worse, even as Europeans disarm themselves, Jews take up the sword and wield it unashamedly.

Europe exonerates itself of crimes against Jews by extolling Palestinians as victims no matter how viciously they act, and by portraying Israelis as latter-day Nazis no matter how necessary their self-defense. Thus has the Palestinian question "quietly relegitimated hatred of the Jews." Europeans focus on Israel with such an intensity that one could think the fate of the planet will be determined "in a tiny stretch of land between Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Gaza."

 

And America? Just as "Europe relieves itself of the crime of the Shoah by blaming Israel, [so] it relieves itself of the sin of colonialism by blaming the United States." Excommunicating its American child permits Europe to preen.

Bruckner rejects this easy out, and admires American confidence and pride of country. "Whereas America asserts itself, Europe questions itself."

He also notes that, in time of need, the wretched of the Earth invariably turn to the US, not the European Union. To him, the US is "the last great nation in the West." He hopes that Europe and America will cooperate again, for when they do, they "achieve marvelous results."

But his own evidence points to the unlikelihood of that prospect.

The writer (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

FROM HUNGARY AND AUSTRIA, COME TO ISRAEL!

 

Austria has managed to avoid blame for the Holocaust by claiming it was a victim of Nazi aggression, even though the Anschluss was well-received.

 

 

On Sunday, Hungarian voters transformed the anti-Semitic Jobbik Party into a political power to be reckoned with.

Jobbik, or the Movement for a Better Hungary, was catapulted to 47 seats in the 386-seat legislature in the second of round of voting. In parallel, the ruling Socialist Party was dethroned, falling from 190 to just 59 seats while its coalition partner, the Liberal Party, which enjoyed strong Jewish support, lost its parliamentary presence altogether.

In Austria on Monday, meanwhile, Barbara Rosenkranz, the Freedom Party candidate for presidency, who is also known also as the "Reich mother," earned 13 percent of the nation's votes. She was never expected to win the presidential race, which went to incumbent Heinz Fischer. In fact, Rosenkranz's showing was lower than the expected 17%. Nevertheless, the present Austrian political climate is hardly congenial to Jews.

Right-wing elements in Austria are already attempting to delegitimize Fischer, voted in on an extremely low voter turnout of just over 50%, with the claim that he represents less than half of the voters. They hope Rosenkranz's high profile campaign will pave the way for FP leader Heinz-Christian Strache to be voted the next mayor of Vienna later in the year.

The very fact that Fischer's only plausible rival in the race was the far-right challenger from a party repeatedly tarnished by Nazi associations is indicative of a "terrifying shift to the right" across Europe, according to Germany's Central Council of Jews.

There is nothing new about anti-Semitism in Austria and Hungary. Austrians have managed to avoid culpability for the Holocaust by claiming they were victims of Nazi aggression, even though the 1938 Anschluss was positively received and Austrians were disproportionately represented in Nazi leadership.

What has become the "founding myth" of Austria's Second Republic has facilitated the integration of former Nazis into key positions over the years. In February 2000, after the FP, then headed by the late neo-Nazi Jorg Haider, was included in the country's government coalition, Chaim Chesler, then-treasurer of the Jewish Agency, called on the Jews of Austria to immigrate to Israel immediately.

In post-communist Hungary, anti-Semitism has been fueled primarily by claims of a Judeo-Bolshevik nexus. Historically, Jews played key roles in the short-lived Bolshevik Revolution of 1919 led by Bela Kun and after 1945 a small clique of Hungarian "Muscovite Jews" rallied around the ultra-Stalinist Matyas Rakosi, whose rule ended with the 1956 popular uprising against Soviet rule.

In 1990, after the fall of communism, the vice president of the Hungarian Democratic Forum, a popular political party at the time, openly blamed "Jewish Stalinists" for having destroyed the self-esteem of the Hungarian people.

THERE ARE an estimated 50,000 to 80,000 Jews in Hungary and 9,000 to 20,000 in Austria. What's keeping them there?

As historian Matti Bunzl has pointed out, post-Holocaust Jews of Austria have throughout the years disavowed any Austrian identity. They may have Austrian citizenship, but this is rarely experienced as anything but a formal arrangement. It is safe to assume that many Hungarian Jews feel the same, which explains the high rates of aliya from both of countries until the end of the 20th century.

In the last decade, though, a strong Zionism has gradually been replaced by hopes that the European Union would offer a political entity that provides affiliation regardless of ethnic belonging or nationality – similar, ironically, to what was offered in the 19th century by the Austro-Hungarian Hapsburg Empire.

Jews might have difficulty integrating themselves in a specific European state characterized by a distinct culture, history and religion. But they would find it easier to define themselves more generically as "Europeans," a term devoid of all the ethnically charged particularism surrounding "Austrian" or "Hungarian."

Now, perhaps the time has come for the Jews of Austria and Hungary to reassess the European reality. Between the influx of large numbers of Muslims, who are gradually becoming the main perpetrators of anti-Semitic violence in Europe, and the rise of a rabidly xenophobic Right, as evidenced in the recent elections in Hungary and Austria, Europe, or at least a goodly part of it, is becoming a very unwelcoming place for Jews.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

REJECTING THE BURKA

THE BURKA CAN'T BE PERMITTED UNDER THE FREEDOM OF RELIGIOUS EXPRESSION, JUST AS FULL NUDITY CAN'T.

 

 

The burka ban debate raging in Europe has made it to Israel. MK Marina Solodkin (Kadima) announced this week her intention to initiate a bill that would prohibit the wearing of a full-body and face covering for women. Solodkin said that her bill would not differentiate between Muslims and Jews.

The burka is most commonly tied to Islam. It is worn in more extremist Muslim traditions as part of a conscientious adherence to hijab – the Islamic requirement to dress and behave modestly in public. But in recent years a zealot sect of haredi women, numbering perhaps a dozen or two, has also adopted the burka as part of their understanding of tzniut – Judaism's modesty requirements. The most prominent member of this splinter group, who became known as the "Taliban lady," was charged with sexually abusing her children.

Solodkin, inspired by a recent anti-burka campaign launched by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, argues that the burka is an attack on the dignity of women. We agree.

Whether there are in Israel enough burka-wearing women to justify devoting the energy and resources needed to legally discourage the phenomenon is unclear. But in principle, a strong argument can be made for banning the burka and what it represents.

First, the custom is misogynistic. The aim of covering a woman from head to toe is to blot out her feminine presence in the public domain; to turn her into a nonentity that cannot express her desires and her thoughts; to deny basic human interaction. Religious freedom, like any other right, is granted on condition that it is not exploited for destructive goals, such as the subjugation of women.

Muslim women who say they choose to wear the burka might argue that they are no more a product of male domination than anorexic western women vainly striving to meet men's prurient demands for a perfect body. But while the objectification of women is wrong, it cannot be compared to the brutal erasing of their very presence. The burka deviates so radically from accepted Western norms that it cannot be permitted under the pretext of freedom of religious expression, just as full nudity can't. That's why the vast majority of moderate Muslims oppose the burka.

The burka also undermines social cohesion. Women who wear the burka in Western countries send out a strongly anti-integrationist message. It is part of a wider rejection of Western values by radical Islamists who insist on full communal autonomy and the official recognition of Sharia law, including the imposition of the niqab (full veiling of the female face), and sometimes the right to perform female genital mutilation.

In Britain, for instance, this total lack of willingness to integrate on the part of some Muslims has become an obstacle to the formal learning of English, has heightened inter-communal tensions, and has reinforced the ghettoization of Asian Muslims into separate enclaves with high unemployment and increased social alienation.

Finally, the burka can be a security or crime risk: It hides the identity of a potential terrorist or criminal.

FOR THESE reasons, lawmakers in several European countries, including Holland, Austria, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany, Italy and France are pondering anti-burka legislation. In January, Denmark decided to restrict niqab in public institutions.

 

Those who support such legislation realize that an easygoing multiculturalism works only when there are basic shared values and a willingness to integrate. But European multiculturalism has deteriorated into rudderless moral relativism and a pusillanimous reluctance to criticize radical Islamic customs for fear of being branded an Islamophobe.

Sadly, some Jewish leaders, such as Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, chief rabbi of Moscow and leader of the Conference of European Rabbis, have helped foster such unfounded fears. "Sixty-five years after the liberation of Auschwitz," wrote Goldschmidt in the New York Times in February, in an op-ed opposing the idea of bans on the burka, "Europeans can permit themselves to be squeamish about how things start and how things, if left unabated, can end." As a rabbi, he added, "I am made uncomfortable when any religious expression is restricted, not only my own."

Goldschmidt has got it wrong. Europeans have a right to feel uncomfortable. But not, as Goldschmidt argues, because Europeans are being too hard on Muslims. Rather, because they are being too soft.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

HYPOCRISY ALL AROUND

BY YOSSI ALPHER

 

When Palestinians name streets after terrorists, then deny this is incitement, this is hypocrisy. But Israel is no less hypocritical.

 

The incitement issue is rife with hypocrisy on both sides. It is exaggerated by both Israelis and Palestinians so as to excuse their refusal to negotiate and to "score points," particularly with the international community. While the latter should be tough on incitement, it should not permit that issue to obfuscate the need for immediate progress toward a solution in more pragmatic spheres of the conflict.

When Palestinians name streets and squares after out-and-out terrorists, label them freedom fighters and glorify them in their school curriculum, then deny this is incitement, this is hypocrisy. But when Israel focuses on this phenomenon and ignores the progress made by the Palestinian Authority in cleaning up its textbooks and Friday mosque sermons, this is no less hypocritical.

MOREOVER, THE Netanyahu government appears to be willfully ignoring the increase in incitement against Palestinians and Arabs in general in Israel's school system – particularly the religious schools, where 80 percent of high school students recently supported denying equal rights to Arab citizens of Israel – and in the rhetoric of religious leaders like Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, leader of Shas. Indeed, there are features of the Israeli media that for years have "incited" against the Palestinian Authority without anyone taking conscious notice. Take, for example, the television and newspaper weather maps that obliterate the Palestinian Authority much the way Palestinian textbook maps ignore Israel.

The point is not that incitement in Israel is as bad as in Palestine (it isn't), or that it began under the current Israeli government (it didn't – decades ago we named squares after Jewish terrorists who murdered Arab civilians before 1948).

Rather, the point is that the government of Israel appears uninterested in countering Israeli incitement even as it goes out of its way to excoriate Palestinian incitement. Needless to say, Palestinian complaints about Israeli incitement hardly serve the cause of objectivity when they focus on issues like the very name of Ben-Gurion Airport.

Yet the incitement issue goes far beyond Israeli-Palestinian relations, and here too hypocrisy reigns. Throughout the Arab world and much of the Muslim world there is vile, racist incitement against Israelis and Jews in general.

From newspaper cartoons to school curricula, from Friday sermons to the sale of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, from Iran to Algeria, Jews and Israelis are vilified daily and pervasively. Egypt and Jordan, Arab states at peace with Israel, are no exception.

We do virtually nothing about this. Nor have we ever allowed it to interfere with otherwise peaceful relations with our neighbors. We understand that even a cold peace rife with incitement against us is far better than war. Those of us who take the trouble to discuss the issue with our Arab neighbors discover very quickly that peace has not brought about the slightest readiness in Cairo to acknowledge the Jews as a Middle East people with the right to self-determination in its historic homeland. Many Muslims everywhere continue to view Jews as, at best, adherents of a second-class religion to be tolerated only if it abandons territorial and sovereign aspirations. In coexisting with Israel, they practice their own form of hypocrisy.

So why do we concentrate on the Palestinians? Is it because we and they are fighting over the same territory and the same historic-religious sites that we demand more of them as a condition for negotiating or ending the conflict? Is the intimacy of our conflict the reason for demanding a host of security constraints that we also don't seek to impose on our other neighbors? Or is it because Palestinians have never had a state of their own and were scarcely considered a people until a few decades ago that we feel we can impose additional conditions?

To be sure, these are all legitimate Israeli concerns when it comes to dealing with the Palestinians. But they don't justify the hypocrisy over incitement.

The writer is co-editor of the bitterlemons family of internet publications. He is former director of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies at Tel Aviv University. This article was first published on www.bitterlemons.org and is reprinted with permission.

 

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

LION'S DEN: UNDERSTANDING EUROPE

BY DANIEL PIPES

 

A newly translated book by French novelist Pascal Bruckner shows how Europeans see themselves as "the sick man of the planet."

 

 

"Nothing is more Western than hatred of the West." So writes French novelist and essayist Pascal Bruckner in his book La tyrannie de la pénitence (2006), translated into English by Steven Rendall and recently published by Princeton University Press as The Tyranny of Guilt: An Essay on Western Masochism. "All of modern thought," he adds, "can be reduced to mechanical denunciations of the West, emphasizing the latter's hypocrisy, violence and abomination."

He exaggerates, but not by much.

He shows how Europeans see themselves as "the sick man of the planet" whose pestilence causes every problem in the non-Western world (what he calls the South). When the white man set foot in Asia, Africa or America, death, chaos and destruction followed. Europeans feel themselves born with stigmata: "The white man has sown grief and ruin wherever he has gone." His pale skin signals his moral defectiveness.

These provocative statements undergird Bruckner's brilliant polemic arguing that European remorse for the sins of imperialism, fascism and racism have gripped the continent to the point of stifling its creativity, destroying its self-confidence and depleting its optimism.

Bruckner himself concedes Europe's blemishes, but also praises it for self-criticism: "There is no doubt that Europe has given birth to monsters, but at the same time it has given birth to theories that make it possible to understand and destroy these monsters." The continent, he maintains, cannot be just a curse, for its sublime achievements complement its worst atrocities. This he calls "proof of grandeur."

Paradoxically, it is Europe's very readiness to acknowledge its faults that prompts self-hatred, for societies that do not engage in such introspection do not lacerate themselves. Europe's strength is thus its weakness. Although the continent has "more or less vanquished its monsters" such as slavery, colonialism and fascism, it chooses to dwell on the worst of its record.

Thus, his book's title, The Tyranny of Guilt. The past, with its violence and aggression, is frozen in time – a burden Europeans expect never to be able to throw off.

THE SOUTH, in contrast, is deemed perpetually innocent. Even as colonialism fades into the past, Europeans righteously blame themselves for the plight of once-colonized peoples. Eternal innocence means infantilizing non-Westerners; Europeans flatter themselves as the only adults – itself a form of racism. It also offers a way to preempt criticism.

This explains why Europeans ask what they "can do for the South rather than asking what the South can do for itself." It also explains why, after the Madrid bombings of 2004, a million Spaniards marched against, not the Islamist perpetrators, but their own prime minister. And worse, why they saw Spanish civilians "torn apart by steel and fire" as the guilty party.

As shown by the Madrid bombing and countless other acts of violence, Muslims tend to have the most hostile attitudes toward the West, and Palestinians rank as the most hostile of Muslims. That Palestinians face off against Jews, the extreme victims of Western murderousness, makes them a perversely ideal vehicle for rebutting Western guilt. Making matters worse, even as Europeans disarm themselves, Jews take up the sword and wield it unashamedly.

Europe exonerates itself of crimes against Jews by extolling Palestinians as victims no matter how viciously they act, and by portraying Israelis as latter-day Nazis no matter how necessary their self-defense. Thus has the Palestinian question "quietly relegitimated hatred of the Jews." Europeans focus on Israel with such an intensity that one could think the fate of the planet will be determined "in a tiny stretch of land between Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Gaza."

And America? Just as "Europe relieves itself of the crime of the Shoah by blaming Israel, [so] it relieves itself of the sin of colonialism by blaming the United States." Excommunicating its American child permits Europe to preen.

Bruckner rejects this easy out, and admires American confidence and pride of country. "Whereas America asserts itself, Europe questions itself."

He also notes that, in time of need, the wretched of the Earth invariably turn to the US, not the European Union. To him, the US is "the last great nation in the West." He hopes that Europe and America will cooperate again, for when they do, they "achieve marvelous results."

But his own evidence points to the unlikelihood of that prospect.

 

The writer (www.DanielPipes.org) is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.

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THE JERUSALEM POST

EDITORIAL

YALLA PEACE: STOP SAYING TOLERANCE

BY RAY HANANIA

Until everyone starts accepting the other's views and even their historical narratives, I am not sure either side should be building museums of tolerance.

 

 

I met Simon Wiesenthal as a cub reporter in the early 1980s. I was one of the only Palestinian Americans working as a full-time reporter at a daily paper in the country. My editor, who was Jewish, must have thought it funny to assign a Palestinian reporter to cover Jewish American and Holocaust events.

I didn't mind, though. Wiesenthal received an honor from the Decalogue Society, the association for Jewish lawyers in Chicago. I interviewed him and we had a great conversation. He was fixated on me being Palestinian, but in a positive way.

At the end of the evening, he gave me his autograph, which I put alongside autographs from other Middle East luminaries including Abba Eban (whom I debated on national television when I was 25), Menachem Begin and Yasser Arafat.

Wiesenthal told me he believed the Palestinians deserved a state, and hoped violence would be overcome by peace. He said Palestinians needed a visionary leader who could see peace and work toward it, and not be distracted by the ongoing violence.

Wiesenthal, to me, was a very tolerant person who seemed to consider the feelings of others in his quest to hunt down Nazi war criminals. That's why I am concerned, as are all Arabs and Muslims, with the Wiesenthal Center's plans to build a "Museum of Tolerance" on land adjacent to what was once a prominent Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem.

The Wiesenthal Center defends the decision, arguing the land was used as a municipal parking lot by the government for many years and no Muslims complained.

Well, they did complain, but who listens when a Palestinian complains about anything in Israel? (No one listened when Israel bulldozed dozens of Arab homes and expelled the residents around the Western Wall in order to expand it.) It's not a good defense to argue, "well, Muslims didn't complain when concrete was laid on top of the cemetery and cars were parked there."

The other argument is that Muslims planned to build something on it years ago under the British Mandate, but are opposed now because it's the "Jews" who want to build on it.

MY ATTITUDE is simple, and I am a very tolerant person. If Muslims want to do something with a Muslim cemetery, that is their business and their right. Jews don't have a right to do anything with a Muslim cemetery. And Muslims don't have a right to do anything with a Jewish cemetery, either. Sadly, that has happened, too. Arabs have desecrated Jewish cemeteries.

These acts of desecration have been the result of our unending conflict.

It's not unusual to have an Israeli institution built on top of something the Arabs and Muslims hold sacred.

Israel rarely worries about what Arabs think, whether they are citizens or neighbors.

Yad Vashem, for example, is built in close proximity of the land of Deir Yassin where the pre-state organizations, the Stern Gang and the Irgun, killed about 100 Palestinian civilians.

I understand the building of a memorial to the 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis. But to do so on a spot sacred to others, and where others were killed? Some might not see that as being very tolerant at all.

Certainly, there is no equivalency between a mass campaign to murder 6 million Jews and the killing of "only" 100 civilians.

The sad truth is, intolerance is rampant on both sides. Palestinians' continued support of extremism and violence against Israeli civilians gives Israel its best defense: Hey, the Arabs do it! Palestinians and Arabs have massacred Jews.

That is not a good defense. It is an intolerable defense. You can't defend a crime, a killing, an unethical or immoral act or policy by saying, "Well, the other side did the same thing."

I'm not just picking on the Israelis. As I have said, Palestinians do it too.

Here's a great idea. Maybe we should all stop. Maybe Palestinians and Israelis should spend a little less time on intolerance and a little more time showing compassion and concern. Yes, tolerance for each other.

What Palestinians and Israelis clearly seem to lack is tolerance. Until everyone starts tolerating each other better and tolerating their views, grievances, claims for justice and even their conflicting historical narratives, I am not sure either side should be building museums of tolerance. Or claiming to be more tolerant than the other.

We can't claim to be tolerant of challenges facing the world when we can't even be tolerant of the challenges that face us in our own little space in Israel and Palestine.

Maybe the Wiesenthal Center might consider building a Museum of Palestinian-Israeli Tolerance and Peace.

I'd support that. I bet the late Simon Wiesenthal would have supported it, too.

Named Best Ethnic Columnist in America by New America Media, the writer is a Palestinian- American columnist and peace activist. He can be reached at www.YallaPeace.com

 

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

SHAME AT SAHARONIM

 

Haaretz reported that refugee children who come to Israel with or without their parents - sometimes their parents die along the arduous route from Africa - are held in Saharonim Prison in the south along with adult prisoners. Detaining children there violates state regulations requiring the separation of minors and adults, trained psychological staff and educational activities.

The Justice Ministry's legal aid department, which represents the "unaccompanied minors," those in Israel without their parents, determined that they are being held in Saharonim illegally. A department representative who toured the facility was horrified to find that children over 3 are held in tents and prefab homes with adult detainees and in overcrowded conditions, "and may therefore be exposed to harassment and dangers."

 

The facility is not equipped to deal with children and youth and lacks the appropriate psychological staff and educational activities. The Givon facility in central Israel, where most minor refugees are held, does have a separate wing, although conditions are harsh.

The complaint about the disgraceful treatment didn't come from aid organizations this time, but from a state entity that deals with refugee rights and is now demanding that the responsible authorities find an appropriate place to hold these minors. They are neither criminals nor terrorists, but victims of persecution - people in distress who do not belong in jail but in a suitable facility that can treat them appropriately and provide for their needs, such as a boarding school.

The Israel Prison Service's explanations that the minors were held temporarily with adults at Saharonim due to a shortage of places does not suffice. The refugee children deserve humane treatment like any other person, even if they entered Israel without a visa, and the government is obligated to see to their welfare. Forcing harsh detention conditions on them, while subverting procedures, is not the way to handle illegal immigration from Africa.

 

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

PUSHING FOR A PROVISIONAL PALESTINIAN STATE

BY ALUF BENN

 

The announcement of upcoming "proximity talks" between Israel and the Palestinians raises a number of questions - what exactly will they talk about? What else can be renewed in the peace process, where everything seems to have been tried while peace remains elusive? What trick does George Mitchell, the mediator of the hour, have up his sleeve that was kept from his frustrated predecessors?

Israel wants to extract itself from the morass of control over the Palestinians, who accuse it of apartheid and force it to choose between its Jewish identity and its democracy. But Israel also wants to keep most of the West Bank, the settlements and security control, and to enjoy exclusive rights over Jerusalem.

Israel's answer to this stagnation calls for upgrading the Palestinian Authority of Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad to a body responsible for a polity within provisional borders. This dwarf state would be created by a special UN vote, effectively absolving Israel of responsibility. The dispute over the remaining territories, refugees and Jerusalem would be settled later in talks between two sovereign states, Israel and Palestine, not between an occupier and its subjects.

 

The Palestinians want as much of their historical homeland as possible, to be rid of Israeli soldiers and settlers, and to maintain international support. The Palestinians are calling for the creation of a state within the 1967 borders, with small land swaps that would leave the large settlements on the Israeli side, Jerusalem divided as the capital of two states, and the return of an undetermined number of refugees to Israel. They fear that unless they receive the maximum now and instead settle for a mini-state, the world will lose interest in them just as it ultimately came to terms with Israeli control over the Golan Heights.

Leaders on both sides must prove they have not given up, that it was the other side that reneged. Both Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Abbas see negotiations as a zero-sum game rather than a give-and-take in which both sides benefit from a redistribution of resources.

Abbas opposes an interim arrangement, and Netanyahu is unwilling to sign on to a final-status deal. Each has adopted a strategy of attrition, locking into his position and battering the other with accusations in an attempt to win over the American mediator. The Palestinians are hoping Barack Obama will blame Netanyahu for the diplomatic stagnation and force Israel into a favorable final-status agreement. Israel expects that the U.S. president, hungry for foreign-policy achievements but restricted by Netanyahu's supporters in Congress, will settle for an interim agreement and impose it on the Palestinians, just as he retreated from his demands for a complete settlement freeze and a halt to Israeli construction in East Jerusalem.

Can the sides be bridged? A year ago the Reut Institute recommended that Washington present a vision for a final-status agreement to give the Palestinians a "diplomatic horizon," after which a Palestinian state would arise within provisional borders. President Shimon Peres has presented a similar initiative, calling for separate talks on an interim arrangement and a final-status agreement respectively.

After a year of fruitless wrangling over a settlement evacuation, a provisional Palestinian state seems like the most practicable arrangement, either through mutual agreement or a unilateral Israeli decision. It is, of course, subject to political limitations, but Israel could settle for a limited evacuation of settlements and outposts, retain security control and not even negotiate over Jerusalem for now. Meanwhile, the Palestinians are not being ordered to offer anything in return - not to recognize Israel as a Jewish state or relinquish the right of return, both of which Netanyahu is demanding as conditions for a final-status agreement. But here, too, lie the initiative's weak points. Disputes over the most sensitive issues will remain, ever threatening to bubble over, and Israel will be drawn into internal clashes over settlers - all without an actual solution to the wider conflict.

Netanyahu believes that the only answer to the current diplomatic stagnation is an interim agreement based on a Palestinian state within provisional borders, but he is hesitant to openly state his support for the idea. He would rather reach that result for lack of an alternative, under heavy U.S. pressure, and if possible, in exchange for an American attack on Iran - just as his predecessor Ariel Sharon evacuated Gaza only after George W. Bush conquered Iraq.

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

ISRAEL MUST PREPARE FOR NUCLEAR TERROR THREAT

BY CHUCK FREILICH

Nuclear terrorism is one of the gravest threats to the world's security - so says United States President Barack Obama, who recently convened an international conference on the issue. In Israel, sunk in its own troubles, nuclear terrorism has elicited little interest until now. Beyond the dimensions of the threat, nuclear terrorism poses two unique problems in terms of deterrence. One is that the elements liable to employ nuclear terrorism are nihilist in nature - they are prepared to pay any price for Israel's destruction and are therefore not given to deterrence. The other is the absence of an "address" for purposes of deterrence and retaliation.

Nuclear terrorism is liable to be employed against Israel with the aim of causing unprecedented destruction, deterring it from offensive moves like striking at the Iranian atom or defeating Hezbollah and Syria, imposing diplomatic-security dictates, weakening its national strength, and more. Hezbollah and Hamas, extremist though they may be, have thus far evinced a clear ability to weigh advantages and disadvantages in their conduct, i.e. characteristics of a "rational player," and therefore are apparently given to deterrence. Most observers believe that Iran, too, is basically "rational" and given to deterrence.

 

However, the ability to employ nuclear terrorism is liable to change those patterns of action and, above all, there is the problem of nihilist elements like Al-Qaida, which has operated intensively to obtain a nuclear capability and presumably is continuing to do so today. Clearly, Israel should act on the diplomatic and intelligence level, on its own and in cooperation with the United States and other countries, to foil any possibility of the threat emerging. The main question is how it should act if it finds out that a plan to develop a nuclear terrorism capability already exists or has reached an advanced and even operational stage.

 

In face of these possibilities Israel must adopt a tough and unambiguous deterrence policy. It has to be clear to all that Israel will act immediately, without restraint and with all the means at its disposal, both against those directly involved and against those who are only suspected, on the principle of "shoot first, ask later."

However, while this deterrent approach could well be effective against Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas, it is very doubtful it would influence Al-Qaida. The accepted wisdom to the effect that this organization is not subject to deterrence is liable to be correct, but it has not yet been proven and the implications are grave. Therefore, there is no alternative but to examine whether there really does exist a threat, no matter how grave, that could serve as a basis for deterring Al-Qaida, such as the destruction of population centers and sites of symbolic and religious importance to Islam. The very thought is repugnant, but possibly only such threats have the potential to prevent an unprecedented threat to Israel.

The good news is that insofar as is known, no terrorist organization has succeeded in obtaining nuclear capability. The technological obstacles are many, the international community, under the leadership of the United States, is increasingly on the alert and apparently Israel is in no immediate danger. Therefore, we have time ahead of us to prepare and formulate a comprehensive thwarting and deterrence policy. One thing is clear: The dimensions of the threat are intolerable and necessitate pertinent preparation, the sooner the better.

The writer served as deputy national security adviser. An extensive study of this issue has been published by the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

 

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

ARE THEY ALL REALLY ANTI-SEMITES?

BY GABRIEL SHEFFER

 

Most Israelis are not fond of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan or other foreign figures who criticize Israel. However, it is well worth listening carefully to some of the things they are saying. One of Erdogan's criticisms, for example, is that Israel cannot shake off responsibility for the continuation of the conflict and Iran's plans to develop nuclear weapons.

There is truth in this criticism, insofar as it concerns the positions of Israel's governments and most of its people. Israel looks at itself in a one-way mirror. It tends to attribute all its troubles to the other side and protest that its hands are clean. This tendency became much more marked after the Holocaust, declined somewhat after the establishment of the state and has gained pace since the 1970s. It has strengthened considerably in recent years, especially under rightist governments.

On the international plane, this one-sided approach is evident in the attitude toward the United Nations and international organizations in general. The origin of this approach goes back to David Ben-Gurion's time. In fact, the tendency to accuse the UN and other international organizations of anti-Israeli positions has not changed at all since then - as witnessed by the reaction to the Goldstone report, which has been described as a clearly anti-Semitic document.

 

The one-sided Israeli approach that accuses personages, political parties and non-Jewish organizations of anti-Semitism when they criticize Israel ignores Israel's contribution to these manifestations. Immoral behavior by Israel and Israelis - for example, conducting relations with and selling arms to "leper states" in South America, Africa and South Asia - is directly related to the criticism.

The Israeli one-sidedness is also seen in the crude accusations by Israelis and Diaspora Jews about U.S. President Barack Obama and his administration. They are accused of being anti-Semitic, anti-Israeli and preferring Muslims and Arabs. But Obama and his administration, in which there are many Jewish appointees, are very far from those positions. And if criticism of Israel is expressed, this comes in reaction to Israeli moves and derelictions.

With respect to the Israeli-Arab-Palestinian conflict, Israel has contributed and is contributing to the inability to reach a solution; it is also contributing to the inability to manage the conflict reasonably and fairly. The gap between Israeli politicians' statements and deeds is large, and contributes a great deal to the continuation and exacerbation of the conflict, parallel to the other side's contribution. Note, for example, the decision to approve military orders enabling the deportation of thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank. These things also apply to Israel's position concerning Iran's aspiration - and perhaps also Syria's - to obtain nuclear weapons. Iran's development of nuclear weapons is in part a response to the nuclear capability that foreign media reports attribute to Israel. It's clear that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu understands this, so he did not attend the nuclear conference that Obama convened. These are just some of Israel's major contributions to the criticism of it. If the government really intends to change Israel's attitude in a fundamental way - and this is very doubtful - it must cast off its blinkers. This is because every conflict and clash is two-sided, and because Israel - as well as the other side - has significantly contributed to the processes taking place around it.

 

The writer is a professor of political science at Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

 

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HAARETZ

EDITORIAL

ANOTHER KIND OF CAPITAL

BY MERAV MICHAELI

 

The battle over salary caps for top corporate executives is directly linked to the corruption affairs currently being investigated, not only because the two cases involve substantial corruption, but also because they reflect the current state of things in Israel. The only thing that matters here is money. The corruption affairs have revealed that people in public positions did not view the assets and capital under their control as a means to shape society, the state and the people who live here. They viewed it as a vehicle for lining their pockets.

The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu once suggested that various types of capital could be converted into other kinds of capital. Society is built on a variety of types of capital and power, each with its own value. Money is only one of them, and it can be converted into other kinds of capital and power such as education, social status and beauty.

This means that a person with no money can possess a different kind of power, which he can exchange for money. No less important, however, he can decide not to exchange it for money because his nonmonetary capital is capital and power in its own right, and some people prefer it to money. This includes public stature that shapes a person's way of life, education that shapes ways of thinking and provides new options, art that is appreciated for its beauty and creativity, and a whole range of other possibilities.

 

Israel has undergone a transition to extreme neoliberalism, during which the public has been intimidated. Haaretz journalist Aluf Benn has called this process "national capitalism." Money has become the only power that matters. Not education, not ability, not excellence, not uniqueness, not reputation. In addition, even holding public office is not really valued anymore, not even social status and background. (Beauty, meanwhile, is as plentiful as garbage, and is treated accordingly). The only thing that determines your status in today's Israel, what you are worth and what you can attain, is how much money you have.

So the race for money is in full swing, in all its insanity. Almost any symbolic, cultural, social or other kind of capital is up for sale, and its value is constantly declining. It's also clear that people with money find it much easier to obtain the means to make even more money.

In the process, money is concentrated in the hands of the wealthy, giving them more power to do what they want and serving their interests in every field of endeavor. This leaves less money and power in the hands of most members of society. (Simply for illustrative purposes, a report by the Adva Center to be released today shows that employers' share of national income has risen over the past decade to 17 percent, while employees' share has fallen to 60 percent.)

Earlier this week I spent hours trying to find one "senior executive" willing to talk about the proposed law to cap his salary. I didn't find one. Everyone politely declined. A senior media expert told me, with justification, that if someone has butter on his head, he doesn't go out in the sun. It's also clear that there really is no way to justify a salary of NIS 1.5 million a month, even if it's being paid to an executive whose company has huge earnings.

The monumental support for salary caps for top executives, which is coming from some totally unexpected sources, is evidence of a backlash against greed, arrogance, ostentation and exploitation. Too many people have exploited too many other people for too long. The camel's back is beginning to break.

The battle for limits on the salaries of senior executives is not "only" a battle over a more egalitarian distribution of money. It marks the beginning of Israeli society's battle to recover its positions of power that don't necessarily depend on money. It's a battle by parts of society for the right to hold capital that is not monetary and still be a powerful player in society. There are other kinds of capital, and each variety has value in its own right. And they are beginning to come to the fore.

 

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******************************************************************************************THE NEW YORK TIMES

EDITORIAL

WALL STREET CASINO

 

Congressional Republicans have concluded that screaming foul about the banking bailout and blocking financial reform is a clever strategy for the fall elections.

 

This approach ignores some pretty basic history: that the banks imploded while Republicans held Congress and

the White House; that President George W. Bush started the rescue; that many Republicans voted for the bailouts; and that they stabilized a financial system that was perilously close to collapse.

 

More important, it's a distraction from the very real reasons the nation needs to tighten the rules governing finance. They were on vivid display on Tuesday in a hearing room just down the hall from the Senate floor where Republicans voted the day before to block debate on a Democratic financial reform bill.

 

Current and former Goldman Sachs officials tried to defend their practice of trading incomprehensible mortgage-based investments of little demonstrable economic value and enormous destructive capacity. Instead, they underscored why much of this work should be curtailed.

 

The Securities and Exchange Commission has accused Goldman of defrauding clients by selling them a complex instrument without telling them it was designed so another client could bet against it. Testifying before the Senate subcommittee on investigations, Goldman executives denied withholding information. They insisted there was nothing wrong with selling mortgage-backed products while placing bets against them.

 

They called it "risk management." Most people call it stacking the deck.

 

We do not know whether Goldman broke the law, but we know this gambling is too dangerous. Banks like Goldman turned the financial system into a casino. Like gambling, the transactions mostly just shifted money around. Unlike gambling, they packed an enormous capacity for economic destruction — hobbling banks that made bad bets, freezing credit and economic activity. Society — not the bankers — bore the cost.

 

That's why objecting to financial regulation overhaul on the grounds that it might allow future bailouts is such a specious argument.

 

The bailouts, which many Republicans acknowledged were necessary at the time, cost taxpayers about $87 billion, or 1 percent of gross domestic product. The crisis cost more. Falling tax revenues, unemployment insurance for millions of jobless workers and a fiscal stimulus to stop the economy's slide is projected to boost the federal debt to more than 65 percent of G.D.P. next year.

 

Financial reform is needed to try to ensure such a crisis never happens again, and the bill cobbled together by Senate Democrats is reasonably tough. It would ban many — unfortunately not all — of the private, custom-made derivatives at the center of the financial meltdown and force most derivative trading onto open exchanges. Banks trading in custom-made products would have to build larger cushions of capital to protect themselves.

 

The bill would establish a consumer protection agency to stop predatory lending, impose new oversight on hedge funds and make it possible for regulators to dismantle big banks that were deemed to pose an imminent risk of failure. And it would create a $50 billion fund, by the nation's largest banks, to cover commitments of a failing institution that was being wound down.

 

Whatever Republican campaign mailings may say, the fund was designed to avoid bailouts. The bill's failing is not that it's too weak. It's that it could be stronger.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

WHAT'S MORE COMPROMISING THAN MONEY?

 

The Supreme Court abdicated its responsibility to address fundamental questions of ethics and fairness when it declined to review the case of Charles Dean Hood, an inmate on death row in Texas.

 

The one-line order, issued without comment from any of the justices, left in place an egregiously tainted 1990 double-murder conviction. Eighteen years after Mr. Hood was sentenced to death, the state trial judge, Verla Sue Holland, and Tom O'Connell, then the Collin County district attorney, admitted that they had had a secret affair that appears to have ended not long before the trial.

 

After considering these seamy circumstances, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals last year denied Mr. Hood's request for a new trial, ruling — incredibly — that he took too long to raise the conflict of interest and should be executed. Yet it took a court-issued subpoena to get the two officials to confirm their long-rumored affair. Their success in hiding their relationship should not count against Mr. Hood.

 

In a separate appeal, Mr. Hood was granted a new punishment trial on grounds that jurors were not allowed to properly consider mitigating evidence that might have persuaded them that he didn't deserve a death sentence. The ruling made no mention of their entanglement. That trial is pending.

 

Judge Holland's failure to recuse herself violates the most basic, and obvious, principles of judicial ethics and due process. The Supreme Court should have grabbed the case to say so and order a new trial for Mr. Hood. That was the course urged by 21 former judges and prosecutors and 30 experts on legal ethics who supported Mr. Hood's petition to the Supreme Court.

 

The Supreme Court correctly ruled last year that millions of dollars in campaign spending on behalf of a judge's election bid created an intolerable "probability of actual bias." The court decided that Chief Justice Brent Benjamin, of the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, was required to recuse himself from a case involving Massey Energy, one of the country's biggest coal companies, after Massey's chief executive spent $3 million to help get Justice Benjamin elected.

 

The right to a fair hearing, before an impartial judge, is at the heart of the nation's judicial system. If money raises a serious question about that impartiality, love seems to be at least as worrisome. The Supreme Court, sadly, failed in its duty to clearly draw that line.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

NEW YORK CITY'S INSPECTION SCANDAL

 

New Yorkers are rightly alarmed at the ease with which an inspector who was licensed to test buildings and construction sites for lead or asbestos risks got away with filing hundreds of false reports for at least a decade. The Bloomberg administration says reforms that were already in progress when the deception was uncovered will make it less likely to happen in the future.

 

But the jaw-dropping scope of the fraud carried out by just one inspector raises legitimate concerns about city oversight. It also raises the possibility of collusion between builders and property owners and the inspectors they hire to perform legally required safety tests.

 

The inspector, Saverio Todaro, who was at one point certified by city, state and federal agencies, operated a company through which he claimed to perform environmental inspection and testing services, including lead clearance testing, asbestos air monitoring and asbestos inspection in the New York City area. Favorable reports allow property owners to certify that their apartments presented no lead risks to young children or that proposed demolition projects would be asbestos-free. That means they do not require special filings with the city or costly abatement efforts.

 

As William K. Rashbaum reported in The Times on Tuesday, Mr. Todaro submitted results for more than 200 buildings and apartments, including some renovated for the city's affordable housing initiative, without performing a single test.

 

The city environmental agency suspended Mr. Todaro's license in 2004 but failed to notify other public agencies for which he did asbestos-related work. As a result, he continued to file reports until 2008, when an employee of the city's health department noticed a suspicious pattern in his work.

 

City officials say that they would notify other agencies of suspensions and irregularities in the future. The city also says it is well on the way to a system that will make it impossible for inspectors who have been suspended from filing subsequent reports.

 

City Hall should also consider strengthening and consolidating oversight of the testing regime, which currently is spread across several city agencies.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

GETTING OUT

BY VERLYN KLINKENBORG

 

Nine Angus bulls are moving down the fence line in a pasture along Clear Creek, north central Wyoming. I can see only their backs, black and as powerfully angled as the mounded coal in the hopper cars running north to Montana. There is a man on horseback ahead of the bulls and another behind them. They turn the bulls, out onto the asphalt just at the highway crossroads.

 

It is, to use an old word, a viridescent day. The cottonwoods stopped moaning in the rain overnight. Every creature is suddenly addled with the season. A pair of sandhill cranes stand motionless against the hills. A bald eagle circles higher and higher. A tom turkey works the fence line, making Kabuki moves, his eye on some invisible hen. The deer are trapped in their winter coats, looking disreputable. The air is full of the ticking of red-winge blackbirds, full of the soft spring sun.

 

But what I hear myself thinking is, "The bulls are out." They make for Clearmont then change their minds. They head toward me, Sheridan way, before the riders veer them off, whooping and swinging great, stiff team-roping loops. The bulls are not belligerent, only confused. They don't know the question they're being asked, much less the answer. The correct direction, as it happens, is Buffalo, and soon the nine are strung out in an amiable line along the ditch, snatching mouthfuls of grass as they make their way down the road.

 

My worst dreams are the ones in which the horses or the pigs get out. I like tight fences and good working gates. I like to see animals with deep grass and their heads down in it, grazing contentedly. I think I share my sense of order with those nine Angus bulls, who are being driven from home with too many choices. They go the right way at last just to calm the men on horseback.

 

That's when I know where I am. The road stretches for miles into the low hills in every direction. The fences are tight, all the gates closed but two: the one the bulls came from, and the one where they're heading. There is nothing but pasture and creek bottom, nothing but green grass and the highway and the sound of bird song. There was no getting out for those bulls. They crest a hill to the west, and I can feel the whooping and hollering inside me dying down.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

OLIVE OIL AND SNAKE OIL

BY MAUREEN DOWD

 

WASHINGTON

 

You kept expecting Tom Hagen to jump up and object to a senator's question on behalf of his Don.

 

The wood-paneled Senate committee room had an old-school look. The combed-over committee chairman, Carl Levin, had an old-school look. And the Congressional hearing trying to illuminate surreptitious and avaricious behavior by an amoral, macho gang was the 2010 equivalent of the 1950s Mafia hearing depicted in "Godfather II."

 

"Government Sachs," as the well-connected Goldman Sachs is known, was called to account by the actual government on Tuesday. And the traders and executives who dreamed up the idea of packaging smoke were every bit as slick, evasive and dismissively unapologetic as Michael Corleone. He only claimed to trade in olive oil; they actually delivered the snake oil.

 

You know you're ethically compromised when Senator John Ensign scolds you about ethics. The Nevada Republican is under investigation by the Senate Ethics Committee and the F.B.I. for chicanery surrounding an affair with a staffer. His wealthy parents paid off the mistress and her husband, who was also on Ensign's payroll.

 

"I think most people in Las Vegas would take offense at having Wall Street compared to Las Vegas. Because in Las Vegas, actually people know that the odds are against them. They play anyway," said the righteous Ensign. "On Wall Street, they manipulate the odds while you're playing the game. And I would say that it's actually much more dishonest."

 

There was a bipartisan jackpot in casino metaphors.

 

"How does that differ from going out to Caesar's Palace, the sports book, and making a wager on the outcome of an athletic contest?" Senator John McCain of Arizona asked C.E.O. Lloyd Blankfein.

 

But the Republicans' whacking of Wall Street's wise guys lost a little of its punch when you knew that they were ducking out to the Senate floor, trying to thwart Democrats' efforts to pass a bill tightening regulation of Wall Street. Republicans ignored the contradiction in this, the same way Goldman Sachs ignored the conflict in betting against the product it sold to clients.

 

President Obama bashed Wall Street to pose as a tough populist. The S.E.C. dragged itself away from porn long enough to make an example of Goldman Sachs to shore up its image as a strict enforcer. And Goldman Sachs came to Washington to try to recover an image for integrity.

 

As Americans lost homes and lined up for jobs, Goldman made $13 billion in 2009, and Blankfein got a bonus of, as he haltingly admitted to McCain, "um, um, nine million."

 

"The idea that Wall Street came out of this thing just fine, thank you, is something that just grates on people," Delaware Senator Ted Kaufman told Blankfein. "They think that you didn't just come out fine because it was luck. They think that you guys just really gamed this thing real, real well."

 

Baby-faced Josh Birnbaum, the former managing director who urged betting against subprime mortgages, did not polish the firm's reputation with his elitist smirk and name-dropping of Wharton.

 

"Mr. Birnbaum, do you know what a stated income loan is?" Senator Kaufman asked.

 

"I think it's just what it sounds like," Birnbaum replied, like a petulant schoolboy in detention.

 

The Goldman crowd was certainly cosmopolitan. Blankfein dropped a Latin phrase (Goldman had a "de minimis" business in direct home loan mortgages) and French peppered Senate Exhibit No. 62, from the petite, handsome Fabrice Tourre, the S.E.C. target who called himself "the fabulous Fab" in a 2007 e-mail.

 

"More and more leverage in the system, l'edifice entier risqué de s'effondrer a tout moment. ... Seul survivant potentiel," gushed the highflying Frenchman charged with creating subprime mortgage investment deals intended to fail. That translates loosely to: the cheese stands alone.

 

Continuing to talk about himself in the third person, he wrote, "Standing in the middle of all these complex, highly levered, exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of those monstruosities!!! Anyway, not feeling too guilty about this. ..."

 

In an e-mail to his girlfriend, he called his "Frankenstein" creation "a product of pure intellectual masturbation, the type of thing which you invent telling yourself: 'Well, what if we created a "thing," which has no purpose, which is absolutely conceptual and highly theoretical and which nobody knows how to price?' "

 

In another e-mail to her, he blithely joked that he was selling toxic bonds "to widows and orphans that I ran into at the airport." At least the Fabulous Fab had the good manners to cloak his feelings of fabulousness in front of the committee and put on an earnest mask. Luckily for Goldman, greed may trump ethics. The firm's stock closed higher Tuesday. Wholesale olive oil closed higher as well.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION

BY THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

 

China is having a good week in America. Yes it is. I'd even suggest that there is some high-fiving going on in Beijing. I mean, wouldn't you if you saw America's Democratic and Republican leaders conspiring to ensure that America cedes the next great global industry — E.T., energy technology — to China?

 

But, before I get to that, here's a little news item to chew on: Applied Materials, a U.S. Silicon Valley company that makes the machines that make sophisticated solar panels, opened the world's largest commercial solar research and development center in Xian, China, in October. It initially sought applicants for 260 scientist/technologist jobs. Howard Clabo, a company spokesman, told me that the Xian center received 26,000 Chinese applications and hired 330 people — 31 percent with master's or Ph.D. degrees. "Roughly 50 percent of the solar panels in the world were made in China last year," explained Clabo. "We need to be where the customers are."

 

 

After all the work that has gone into knitting together this bipartisan bill, which has the support of key industry players, it would be insane to let this effort fail. Fortunately, on Tuesday, Reid was hinting about a compromise. But, ultimately, the issue isn't just about introducing a bill. It's about getting it passed. And there we are going to need the president's sustained leadership.

 

President Obama has done a superb job in securing stimulus money for green-technology and in using his regulatory powers to compel the auto industry to improve mileage standards to a whole new level. But he has always been rather coy when it comes to when and how much he will personally push an energy/climate bill that would fix a price on carbon-emitting fuels. Without that price signal, you will never get sustained consumer demand for, or sustained private investment in, clean-power technologies. All you will get are hobbies.

 

The president clearly wants this energy bill to pass, but his advisers are worried that because the bill will likely result in higher electricity or gasoline charges, Republicans will run around screaming "carbon tax" and hurt Democrats in the midterm elections. I appreciate the president's dilemma. But I don't think hanging back and letting the Senate take the lead is the right answer. This is a big leadership moment. He needs to confront it head-on, because — call me crazy — I think doing the right and hard thing here will actually be good politics, too.

 

I'd love to see the president come out, guns blazing with this message:

 

"Yes, if we pass this energy legislation, a small price on carbon will likely show up on your gasoline or electricity bill. I'm not going to lie. But it is an investment that will pay off in so many ways. It will spur innovation in energy efficiency that will actually lower the total amount you pay for driving, heating or cooling. It will reduce carbon pollution in the air we breathe and make us healthier as a country. It will reduce the money we are sending to nations that crush democracy and promote intolerance. It will strengthen the dollar. It will make us more energy secure, environmentally secure and strategically secure. Sure, our opponents will scream 'carbon tax!' Well, what do you think you're paying now to OPEC? The only difference between me and my opponents is that I want to keep any revenue we generate here to build American schools, American highways, American high-speed rail, American research labs and American economic strength. It's just a little tick I have: I like to see our spending build our country. They don't care. They are perfectly happy to see all the money you spend to fill your tank or heat your home go overseas, so we end up funding both sides in the war on terrorism — our military and their extremists."

 

Much of our politics today is designed to make people stupid, confused and afraid of change. The G.O.P. has been particularly egregious on energy and climate. I believe if you talk straight to the American people on energy and climate, they will give you the right answers, and, ultimately, the support needed to trump the vested interests and lobbyists who have kept us addicted to oil. Obama has all the right instincts on this issue. He just needs to trust them. If he brings his A-game to energy legislation, Americans will follow — and then maybe we can have a good century.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

POWER FROM TRASH ...

o 

BY NORMAN STEISEL AND BENJAMIN MILLER

 

IT'S been 25 years since the New York City Board of Estimate, under Mayor Edward Koch's leadership, approved a plan to reduce the need for putting municipal garbage in landfills by developing facilities to burn it to create energy. At the same time, the city took the first steps toward creating a recycling program. Since then, disposal costs have risen faster than inflation, and the need to find better methods of getting rid of wastes is even greater.

 

That fledgling recycling program evolved into the effective system the city has in place today, but no waste-to-energy plants were ever built. Instead, in 2001, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani closed the city's last remaining landfill, and since then the city has sent every pound of nonrecycled municipally collected trash out of the city — about 15 percent of it to a waste-to-energy plant in Newark, but most of it to destinations in western Pennsylvania, eastern Ohio, Virginia and South Carolina. In such places, New York's waste despoils the landscape at a rate of 140 acres a year.

 

As New York City's garbage decomposes, it releases some 1.2 million metric tons a year of carbon dioxide and its equivalents — primarily methane — into the atmosphere. On top of that, the fuel it takes to haul 11,000 tons of waste hundreds of miles six days a week releases an additional 55,000 tons of greenhouse gas per year.

 

When commercial waste collected by private carters is added to the total, hauling New York City's waste to landfills uses half as much fuel every year as the city's taxi fleet running 24/7. The combined annual greenhouse emissions from hauling and putting this waste in landfills amount to half as much as Con Edison releases to produce the city's electricity.

 

Since New York began exporting its garbage, the Sanitation Department's budget has more than doubled, to $1.3 billion in the current fiscal year from less than $600 million in 1997. And in the past seven years, the costs of the city's landfill contracts have gone up more than $90 million, enough to pay 1,000 full-time firefighters, nurses or teachers.

 

So what should we do? For starters, New York should try to reduce the amount of waste its citizens produce — for example, by imposing a fee for collection of waste but not recyclables. Much of what remains could be recycled or composted; these are the most cost-effective and environmentally benign ways to deal with waste. But they cannot handle everything that people throw out.

 

The city's Solid Waste Management Plan calls for hauling the rest of the garbage away by train rather than by truck. But while trains use only a third as much fuel as trucks do, and produce only about a third of the emissions, they will still burn some 3.5 million gallons of diesel fuel, emit 50,000 tons of greenhouse gases and cost tens of millions of dollars — all to carry away New York's garbage every year.

 

We can do better. The fraction of New York's garbage that requires disposal should be processed in waste-to-energy plants — which not only produce energy but are also cheaper and less polluting than landfills. (The city's Newark contract is its least costly disposal arrangement, and it produces only one-forty-fifth of the greenhouse gases that putting the same amount of garbage in landfills would.) If all of the city's nonrecycled waste were sent to local energy recovery facilities instead of distant landfills, the city would save diesel fuel and generate enough energy to supply 145,000 homes — thus avoiding the combustion of nearly three million barrels of oil to generate electricity.

 

The main impediment to moving ahead on waste-to-energy plans has been a lack of political will. But Mayor Michael Bloomberg, in his final term and free of electoral constraints, has the opportunity to make new plans to build a sustainable waste-management system that could serve for decades.

 

Since not all of the facilities could be built at one time, the plan could include a mix of both long-established technologies and some whose advantages are just beginning to be demonstrated. The most widely used kinds of waste-to-energy facilities — mass-burn, steam-turbine electric generators that use waste for fuel (rather than gas, oil or coal) — are typically relatively large. Newer kinds of facilities — like those that subject waste to hot plasma to produce a synthetic fuel gas, or those that use anaerobic digestion to make methane — could be built on smaller sites.

 

More than a decade ago, countries in the European Union committed themselves to stop burying anything other than inert materials (like broken glass and construction rubble) that are not easily recycled, biodegraded or burned. By immediately taking steps to do the same, New York City could reduce its use of costly landfills — ultimately by 90 percent or more. It's the only responsible way for the city to manage its waste.

 

Norman Steisel was the New York City sanitation commissioner from 1978 to 1986. Benjamin Miller, the author of "Fat of the Land: Garbage in New York, the Last Two Hundred Years," was the Sanitation Department's director of policy planning from 1989 to 1992.

 

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

... AND SEWAGE, TOO

BY ROSE GEORGE

 

Leeds, England

 

ON several quiet streets in Sheffield, a northern English city an hour from here, are street lamps that look like ordinary gas lamps, but do not burn ordinary gas. Instead, their light comes from gas released from the sewers that run beneath them. Thus, they are both relics of the past, when gas lamps lighted our streets, and of the future, when excrement and wastewater will again be seen as a resource, not a waste.

 

"Wastewater" has always been recognized to have some value. In 1860, as waterborne sewer systems were becoming the norm, an alderman named Mechi told Farmer's Magazine that "if the money value of our sewers could be shown to the British farmer in bright and glittering heaps of sovereigns, he would gasp at the enormous wealth, and make great efforts to obtain the treasure." Mechi was talking about the fertilizing nutrients in human "waste," which he thought were needlessly ruined by mixing excrement with water, but he might also have been talking about its wasted energy potential.

 

Sludge, the solids that remain after sewage has been cleaned into effluent, has a high B.T.U. content (a measurement of fuel's energy); it burns efficiently and well. Other aspects of wastewater treatment can also reap energy: anaerobic digestion (whereby bacteria munch on the organic contents) produces methane, which with turbines can become combined heat or power. Microbial fuel cells can use bacteria to get electricity from sewage, while gasification, a high-temperature process, can reap fuel-ready gas from sludge.

 

When it comes to harnessing energy from wastewater treatment, it sounds as if we are spoiled for choice. Then you look at the numbers. Of the 16,000 wastewater treatment plants in the United States, about 1,000 process enough gallons (five million daily) to be able to generate cost-effective energy using anaerobic digestion. Yet only 544 use anaerobic digestion, and only 106 of those do anything more with the gas produced than to flare it.

 

If those 544 treatment plants generated energy from their sewage, the E.P.A. concluded in a 2007 report, they could provide 340 megawatts of electricity (enough to power 340,000 homes), and offset 2.3 million tons of carbon dioxide that would be produced through traditional electricity generation. In the effort to reduce greenhouse gases, the E.P.A. said, this would be equivalent to planting 640,000 acres of forest or taking some 430,000 cars off the road.

 

Gasification, like anaerobic digestion, is an age-old process. It used to supply gas lamps in some American towns, too, before piped gas became the norm. The process — a thermal conversion at high temperatures — could probably be done in a garbage can. But the utilities haven't been eager to push the technology. The sewage treatment process — essentially, filter, settle, digest — hasn't changed much since the early 1900s, because it works. And drying out sludge enough to make it burnable takes money and energy. Pilot projects may take several years to pay for themselves, which can clash with short-term budget cycles.

 

Other factors may force the industry's hand. It takes considerable energy to clean sewage, and energy costs have risen along with global temperatures. Now isolated pioneers are showing how investing in "waste" can pay off: London's Thames Water utility now generates 14 percent of the power it needs from burning sludge or methane, saving $23 million a year in electricity bills.

Also, it's green to burn the brown stuff. Resource recovery from wastewater counts as renewable energy, which makes sense: we're hardly likely to stop providing the raw material anytime soon. So why continue to flush away a resource whose value, even under the dim light of a sewer gas lamp, should be blindingly obvious?

 

Rose George is the author of "The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why It Matters."

 

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USA TODAY

EDITORIAL

Our view on border control: Arizona's ugly immigration law reflects price of inaction

 

Rarely does ignoring a pressing problem — be it medical, financial or that ka-thunk in your car — make it go away. And so it is with illegal immigration.

 

Three years after comprehensive immigration reform collapsed in Congress, the nation's southern border remains porous. About 10.8 million illegal immigrants still make the USA their home, and businesses across the nation hire them in droves. Many states and communities, fed up with Washington's inaction, have taken immigration enforcement into their own hands — often with draconian measures of dubious constitutionality.

 

The latest, and perhaps ugliest, is the law enacted in Arizona last week that requires local police to question the legal status of anyone they "reasonably suspect" of being in this country illegally. That's an open invitation to racial profiling of Hispanics, and it has set off protests from the Phoenix statehouse to the U.S. Capitol.

 

Legal challenges might ultimately overturn the law, but they'll do nothing to dent the legitimate frustrations behind it. Arizona and other border states bear the brunt of the nation's failed immigration policies. It's sad, but not surprising, that 70% of Arizonans favored the law, according to a Rasmussen poll earlier this month. Even during the recession, illegal immigrants made up nearly 10% of the state's labor force.

 

Arizona taxpayers spend hundreds of millions of dollars to educate and provide medical treatment for illegal immigrants and their children. And violence by smugglers and Mexican drug cartels has reached such proportions that Arizona's U.S. senators last week called for the National Guard to protect the state's southern border.

 

The tool that Arizona lawmakers fashioned to address those problems is crude by any measure, though not quite as crude as critics claim. It specifically bars ethnic profiling, and it does not give police authority to stop people arbitrarily on the street and demand their papers.

 

But in practice it's hard to believe the law won't lead to harassment of citizens and legal residents. Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-Calif., suggested on MSNBC that along with "behavior," police will look at someone's "type of attire ... right down to the shoes" to determine if they raise suspicions.

 

Supporters have yet to explain satisfactorily just what will give police reasonable suspicion that someone they stop, say for a traffic violation, is an illegal immigrant. And, in fact, one way to stop police questions is to present some specified form of government ID — an idea that smacks of having to carry your "papers" to be safe. But only if you happen to look Hispanic.

 

Just the prospect of the law, scheduled to take effect in about three months, is sowing suspicion of police in migrant communities, which could prevent people from reporting crimes or cooperating with investigations.

 

And all just because of stubborn opposition in Congress to reasonable compromise. The outlines of a solution have long been recognized: sealing the border, sanctioning employers, allowing temporary workers, and providing a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants already here who work, stay out of trouble and pay taxes.

 

Until Washington makes the tough decisions to fix the nation's intolerable, unjust and mostly ignored immigration system, bad solutions like Arizona's will just keep on filling the vacuum.

 

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USA TODAY

EDITORIAL

Even now, world fails Rwanda

By Andrew Wallis

 

NYANZA, Rwanda — The killers had gathered them together at night, thousands of men, women and children, at the garbage dump outside town. When they began to throw grenades into the terrified throng, 8-year-old Marlene Maniraho scurried for her life, meeting a young mother and her child as they fled into nearby undergrowth. Both had lost limbs, but the militia soon caught up with them. Marlene was forced to watch as her beloved brother was hacked to death with machetes. The young mother and child later shared the same fate.

 

She cheated death only by pretending to be dead. As Marlene recounted her story recently, a large crowd's audible groan of anguish cut the night silence. They came to this massacre site on the outskirts of Kigali, the capital, to mark the 16th anniversary on April 7 of the genocide that ripped apart this central African country of 11 million people in 1994. During those 100 days of hell, more than 800,000 were killed. The nation erupted as the Hutu government determined that in order to stay in power, it must exterminate minority Tutsis.

 

It was a shameful moment for the United Nations, which decided to do nothing. Or, more precisely, the U.N. "peacekeepers" there were reduced from 2,500 to a meager 450 as the blood-letting began. As a result, all that the helpless blue helmets left in Rwanda could do was stand by and watch the killings.

 

How has the world responded to this historic negligence in the heart of Africa? With tragic indifference. For even today, the perpetrators run free while the wheels of international justice barely move. The people of Rwanda deserve better, and the world by now should certainly know better.

 

Hunting the killers

At the time, the Clinton White House ignored pleas for intervention. Fours years later, President Clinton issued a reputation-saving apology: "We in the United States and the world community did not do as much as we could have and should have done to try to limit what occurred."

 

Only France got involved, but unfortunately for the Tutsis, it was on the side of the genocidal government. Afterward, many of the culprits fled to Europe and North America. They still dream of a comeback, but for now they use old skills to get new work as academics, doctors or even priests. At least 20 fled to Italy to new parishes with unsuspecting flocks. Life is good.

 

After the Holocaust, Simon Wiesenthal set up his center in Vienna to track down Nazi fugitives. Fed up with official state apathy, Wiesenthal's detective work has, in the ensuing 60 years, uncovered perpetrators in their comfortable new lives. Wiesenthal succeeded when politicians turned their back on the 1948 Genocide Convention. This convention, set up in response to the Holocaust, promised to prevent and punish "acts committed with the intent to destroy ... a national, ethnic, racial or religious group." The 140 ratifying countries assured the world that perpetrators of such monstrous crimes against humanity would never again be allowed to settle undisturbed.

 

In his home outside Paris, Alain Gauthier has taken on a Wiesenthal-esque mantle. By day he is a teacher, but by night and in every moment of spare time, this quietly spoken Frenchman tracks down the Rwandan killers. While his government shows no will to prosecute the alleged perpetrators it allows to remain on its territory, Gauthier and his tiny, voluntary organization — the Collective of Civil Parties — searches them out and issues legal writs against them. It's a start. But many of the accused have been released by seemingly indifferent judges, while others, now French citizens, are free to travel away. After more than a decade before the French courts, some cases are still no nearer to a judgment and have taken on an almost Dickensian aura.

 

At the Nuremberg trials, leading Nazis were swiftly put before the allies and hanged. For Rwanda's victims, there is no Nuremberg. There is only the U.N. court set up in 1995 with much American government money — and guilt — in Arusha, Tanzania. But U.N. justice is painfully slow. The trials have already cost over a billion and the court has only completed a meager 50 cases, or roughly one case every four months. The trial of the genocide mastermind, Theoneste Bagosora, took six years before he was given life in December 2008.Others have received sentences of eight or 15 years — not much for atrocities of this scale.

 

Is this justice?

In Arusha, light sentences or acquittals due to technical errors and feeble prosecutions are all too common. As Robert Jackson, the U.S. chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials, wrote, such sentences only "mock the dead and make cynics of the living."

 

Meanwhile, Rwandan survivors still travel from their villages to the U.N. court to testify against the accused. Many suffer from AIDS, and the journey and court interrogation are physically as well as emotionally traumatizing. Most have no anti-retroviral drugs — unlike the accused who get a U.N. treatment.

 

Is this justice, they ask? It seems as though the West has failed them again. It failed to stop the genocide, and now it fails to bring those responsible to task for their appalling crimes. In Kigali, U.N. and embassy flags have been flown at half-staff marking the 16th anniversary of the genocide. It becomes just another empty token of half-felt regret, unless the global political will is found to search out and punish the culprits in their comfortable Western exiles.

 

Those politicians who ignore the killers in their midst in Europe and North America must wake up to their moral responsibilities. After all, justice delayed is, indeed, justice denied.

 

Andrew Wallis is a freelance journalist and author of Silent Accomplice: The untold story of France's role in Rwandan genocide.

 

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USA TODAY

EDITORIAL

Don't dismiss early education as just cute; it's critical

By Lisa Guernsey

 

Picture an arborist puzzled by an ailing tree. He has tried giving it more water. He has protected it from blight. Why won't it grow?

 

If the tree stands for public education, the arborist is today's education reformer. Ideas continue to pour forth on

how to help students, fix schools and revamp No Child Left Behind. But none tackles the environments the tree experienced as a sapling, when its roots never got the chance to stretch out and dig in.

 

Few would dispute that public education is in trouble. Last month's reading scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress showed that two-thirds of U.S. fourth-graders cannot read well enough to do grade-level work. Many schools are not measuring up to federal standards.

 

Now consider what dominates the debate on how to make amends: charter schools, public school choice, dropout prevention programs, linking teacher pay to student performance. President Obama has embraced many of these ideas, which might help some children in some districts.

 

Misplaced focus

But have we forgotten to look underfoot? Experts talk too often about poorly performing middle or high schools and dismiss elementary and preschool time as the "cute" years. But these are the years we should focus on.

 

Science continues to provide insights — and warnings — about how much of a person's capacity for learning is shaped from birth to age 8. Young children need to experience rich interactions with teachers, parents and other adults who read to them, ask questions of them, and encourage their exploration of myriad of subjects.

 

Unfortunately, the state of early education is not good. In a 2007 national study in Science, researchers found that only 7% of children in the elementary grades were getting consistently high-quality instruction and attention to their emotional needs.

 

Kindergarten, which faces unstable funding, is troubled, too. School teachers get little training on the best methods for reaching 5-year-olds.

 

Lag in preschool

And many children are still not getting the benefit of preschool. While a few states, such as Georgia and Oklahoma, offer universal prekindergarten,in others only 10% of children are enrolled in a public preschool program, according to the National Institute for Early Education Research. Expensive private programs are not an option for many working families.

 

To earn the label of true education reform, the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind must recognize these earliest years. The law should include a fund that extends to third grade. It should encourage districts to use their Title I dollars (which go to districts with economically disadvantaged families) to build better programs and partner with existing preschools. It should require districts to integrate data from children's earliest years with K-12 data so that parents, schools and communities can track how their children are progressing relative to the kinds of programs they experienced before and during elementary school. It should ensure that funding for professional development extends to preschool teachers and principals.

 

Above all, the law should reward states, districts and schools that create high-quality programs and have the data to show that they work.

 

If No Child Left Behind cannot help foster better learning environments from the beginning, we will forever be that arborist, scratching his head at why, despite so many fixes, our students still aren't reaching for the sky.

 

Lisa Guernsey is the director of the Early Education Initiative at the New America Foundation. She is the co-author of a new report, "A Next Social Contract for the Primary Years of Education."

 

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USA TODAY

EDITORIAL

Opposing view: We're protecting our citizens

By John Kavanagh

 

Arizona's new anti-illegal immigration law is an effort to "crack down" on illegal immigration and the harm it causes Arizona, including crime and back-breaking public expenses to incarcerate, educate, medically treat and provide other services to illegal immigrants and their children. Arizona has been forced to assume responsibility for immigration enforcement because of the federal government's refusal to secure the border and conduct adequate internal enforcement.

 

Some fear that the law will empower police to challenge the legal presence of all Hispanics, legal and illegal, based solely upon their appearance, but that's not correct. Police officers may only question the immigration status of a person when they have "reasonable suspicion" to believe that the person is in the U.S. illegally. This provision merely extends to immigration offenses a half-century-old tool called "stop and question," created by the U.S. Supreme Court. To prevent racial profiling, the law states that in constructing "reasonable suspicion," police officers "may not solely consider race, color or national origin."

 

Another misconception is that the law requires residents to carry identification papers. Not true. This mistaken belief stems from a provision that creates a presumption of legal presence, if a person voluntarily presents specified forms of government-issued identification. Failing to present identification papers is not grounds for arrest.

 

Nor will the law divert police resources from more pressing matters. Police officers are only required to make "reasonable" legal presence inquiries "when practicable," so that officers will be free to prioritize their time. Likewise, no questioning is required when it would "hinder or obstruct an investigation," so that the police do not have to question all crime victims and witnesses about their immigration status.

 

The sad fact is that the Bush administration dropped the ball on immigration enforcement and that the Obama administration cannot even find it. The primary responsibility of government is to protect its citizens, and illegal immigration poses a growing threat to safety. Until such time as the federal government secures the border and adequately enforces immigration laws internally, Arizona and other states will have no choice but to protect their citizens.

 

John Kavanagh, a Republican, is a member of the Arizona House of Representatives and a sponsor of the new law.

 

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TIMES FREE PRESS

EDITORIAL

IN DISTRICT 4: WARREN MACKEY

 

Dr. Warren Mackey, the incumbent District 4 Hamilton County commissioner, is caught in a bind. Technically, he's unopposed in his bid for a second term, but legally he could still lose the election and his commission seat. Debbie Gaines, his erstwhile opponent in the May 4 Democratic primary, withdrew from the contest in March. That was too late to have her name removed from the ballot, so ballots cast for Ms. Gaines count. If she should amass more votes than Dr. Mackey, she, according to law, would win the seat. Dr. Mackey obviously prefers a different outcome.

 

He is working industriously to assure District 4 voters that he is taking the election seriously despite Ms. Gaines' withdrawal. He's asking for their votes on May 4 by reminding them of his past service and his continued desire to represent them.

 

He has sound reasons to campaign against an opponent whose name is on the ballot but who is not actively seeking votes. Strange things can and do happen in politics, and that could occur in his race if Mr. Mackey's supporters believe he's automatically got the election nailed and fail to vote for him.

 

Earlier this month, for example, voters in Tracy City in Grundy County elected a deceased man as mayor. The gentleman died after ballots were printed but before Election Day. His name remained on the ballot and he received a majority of votes. The circumstances of that election are quite different from the District 4 primary, but the point is germane. The winner of the District 4 primary will win office. There is no Republican opposition in the August general election.

 

Dr. Mackey deserves a better fate -- and widespread support from district voters. He first won an interim Commission appointment to fill a seat vacated by William Cotton and then was elected to a full term. A history professor at Chattanooga State Technical Community College, he is interested in both education and the welfare of his district. He has served his district and the county well.

 

He's proved to be a highly visible, positive and active community leader. His tenure on the commission has been marked by consistent vision, by adherence to sound fiscal principles, by an ability to focus on important issues and by his willingness to undertake the often unsung but essential work of building foundations and alliances for the county's short and long-term economic, civic and social progress.

 

Mr. Mackey is progressive on issues of taxation and city-county tax equity, the need to properly plan and manage county growth and infrastructure and the possible consolidation of city and county services. In every instance, his guiding principle, he says, is that taxpayers are well served, that their interests protected and that they get the "best bang for their buck."

 

He strongly supports education and good schools, but his support is not unconditional. He rightfully advocates equitable achievement and fiscal standards for schools. He backs scrutiny of school spending and close monitoring of student progress, arguing convincingly that both are necessary to earn and retain public support.

 

He also is interested in improving public health and recreation, civic unity and the quality of life for county residents. He has measurably contributed to that through his office's discretionary fund to support seven increasingly strong neighborhood organizations, youth leagues, Weed and Seed programs, and track and recreation facilities.

 

Dr. Mackey's commendable record and broad-minded view of the county's needs and its future argue persuasively for his re-election in any circumstance, but especially so in a contest against a phantom candidate who has publicly declared disinterest in holding office. We urge his election.

 

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TIMES FREE PRESS

EDITORIAL

IF WE SPENT TOO MUCH ...

 

What will happen to you if you constantly spend 10 percent more each year than your income?

 

It's no mystery: You'll go broke and be in very deep trouble.

 

Well, the same is true of the federal government when -- year after year -- it spends many billions of dollars more than it has coming in from taxes.

 

The difference is that you can't dodge the inevitable result very long, while the federal government irresponsibly can delay a showdown.

 

Our federal government has piled up a staggering national debt of $12.9 trillion, and rising. Our taxes are paying interest on it, while debt grows!

 

How much is the debt growing? Currently, the national debt is growing close to $1.5 trillion a year!

 

Don't you think it is the responsibility of the president of the United States to present budgets that at least would slow the growth of the national debt, and point toward eventual responsible federal finance?

 

Don't you believe it is the job of Congress to call on the president at least to begin finding solutions to financial irresponsibility?

 

Well, President Barack Obama has decided to dodge his responsibility. Instead of taking the budget deficit and debt problem into his own hands to insist on cutting many unconstitutional, unnecessary, unsound and inflated federal spending items, President Obama has simply appointed a "commission" to give him some deficit-reduction "suggestions."

 

He has appointed the National Commission on Federal Responsibility and Reform. But it is expected to offer solutions that won't be fully implemented until 2015 -- after President Obama's current term of office will be over, and the debt and deficit problems surely will be much worse.

 

Why doesn't the president do his job now? It's because it's a tough problem that he doesn't want to face.

 

So right now -- in 2010 -- the federal government is spending about 10.3 percent more than the total of our entire gross domestic product, or GDP.

 

We've been doing it too long, with bad consequences.

 

Didn't the president ask for the job of leading our country responsibly -- now?

 

The president isn't doing his job.

 

Unfortunately, neither is Congress.

 

Nor do "we" want to face the problem and painfully solve it.

 

That means the deficit and debt and our tax problems will get worse.

 

Do we have the kind of leadership we need?

 

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TIMES FREE PRESS

EDITORIAL

IN DISTRICT 4: WARREN MACKEY

 

Dr. Warren Mackey, the incumbent District 4 Hamilton County commissioner, is caught in a bind. Technically, he's unopposed in his bid for a second term, but legally he could still lose the election and his commission seat. Debbie Gaines, his erstwhile opponent in the May 4 Democratic primary, withdrew from the contest in March. That was too late to have her name removed from the ballot, so ballots cast for Ms. Gaines count. If she should amass more votes than Dr. Mackey, she, according to law, would win the seat. Dr. Mackey obviously prefers a different outcome.

 

He is working industriously to assure District 4 voters that he is taking the election seriously despite Ms. Gaines' withdrawal. He's asking for their votes on May 4 by reminding them of his past service and his continued desire to represent them.

 

He has sound reasons to campaign against an opponent whose name is on the ballot but who is not actively seeking votes. Strange things can and do happen in politics, and that could occur in his race if Mr. Mackey's supporters believe he's automatically got the election nailed and fail to vote for him.

 

Earlier this month, for example, voters in Tracy City in Grundy County elected a deceased man as mayor. The gentleman died after ballots were printed but before Election Day. His name remained on the ballot and he received a majority of votes. The circumstances of that election are quite different from the District 4 primary, but the point is germane. The winner of the District 4 primary will win office. There is no Republican opposition in the August general election.

 

Dr. Mackey deserves a better fate -- and widespread support from district voters. He first won an interim Commission appointment to fill a seat vacated by William Cotton and then was elected to a full term. A history professor at Chattanooga State Technical Community College, he is interested in both education and the welfare of his district. He has served his district and the county well.

 

He's proved to be a highly visible, positive and active community leader. His tenure on the commission has been marked by consistent vision, by adherence to sound fiscal principles, by an ability to focus on important issues and by his willingness to undertake the often unsung but essential work of building foundations and alliances for the county's short and long-term economic, civic and social progress.

 

Mr. Mackey is progressive on issues of taxation and city-county tax equity, the need to properly plan and manage county growth and infrastructure and the possible consolidation of city and county services. In every instance, his guiding principle, he says, is that taxpayers are well served, that their interests protected and that they get the "best bang for their buck."

 

He strongly supports education and good schools, but his support is not unconditional. He rightfully advocates equitable achievement and fiscal standards for schools. He backs scrutiny of school spending and close monitoring of student progress, arguing convincingly that both are necessary to earn and retain public support.

 

He also is interested in improving public health and recreation, civic unity and the quality of life for county residents. He has measurably contributed to that through his office's discretionary fund to support seven increasingly strong neighborhood organizations, youth leagues, Weed and Seed programs, and track and recreation facilities.

 

Dr. Mackey's commendable record and broad-minded view of the county's needs and its future argue persuasively for his re-election in any circumstance, but especially so in a contest against a phantom candidate who has publicly declared disinterest in holding office. We urge his election.

 

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TIMES FREE PRESS

EDITORIAL

IF WE SPENT TOO MUCH ...

 

What will happen to you if you constantly spend 10 percent more each year than your income?

 

It's no mystery: You'll go broke and be in very deep trouble.

 

Well, the same is true of the federal government when -- year after year -- it spends many billions of dollars more than it has coming in from taxes.

 

The difference is that you can't dodge the inevitable result very long, while the federal government irresponsibly can delay a showdown.

 

Our federal government has piled up a staggering national debt of $12.9 trillion, and rising. Our taxes are paying interest on it, while debt grows!

 

How much is the debt growing? Currently, the national debt is growing close to $1.5 trillion a year!

 

Don't you think it is the responsibility of the president of the United States to present budgets that at least would slow the growth of the national debt, and point toward eventual responsible federal finance?

 

Don't you believe it is the job of Congress to call on the president at least to begin finding solutions to financial irresponsibility?

 

Well, President Barack Obama has decided to dodge his responsibility. Instead of taking the budget deficit and debt problem into his own hands to insist on cutting many unconstitutional, unnecessary, unsound and inflated federal spending items, President Obama has simply appointed a "commission" to give him some deficit-reduction "suggestions."

 

He has appointed the National Commission on Federal Responsibility and Reform. But it is expected to offer solutions that won't be fully implemented until 2015 -- after President Obama's current term of office will be over, and the debt and deficit problems surely will be much worse.

 

Why doesn't the president do his job now? It's because it's a tough problem that he doesn't want to face.

 

So right now -- in 2010 -- the federal government is spending about 10.3 percent more than the total of our entire gross domestic product, or GDP.

 

We've been doing it too long, with bad consequences.

 

Didn't the president ask for the job of leading our country responsibly -- now?

 

The president isn't doing his job.

 

Unfortunately, neither is Congress.

 

Nor do "we" want to face the problem and painfully solve it.

 

That means the deficit and debt and our tax problems will get worse.

 

Do we have the kind of leadership we need?

 

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

TIMES FREE PRESS

EDITORIAL

CHATTANOOGA MAGLEV CHOO-CHOO?

 

We all remember the world-popular song of the World War II era about the "Chattanooga Choo-Choo."

 

It's a catchy tune with fun words about a make-believe passenger train from New York's Pennsylvania Station to our Chattanooga. Tex Beneke memorably sang about it, somewhat nasally, on 1 million-plus phonograph records with the famed Glenn Miller Orchestra.

 

Chattanooga long had been a railroad center in early years, when trains led to our city's industrial, passenger and War Between the States importance. But while freight trains remain very important here, we haven't had any extensive passenger train service in Chattanooga for a long time, except for the Tennessee Valley Railway Museum's fine local excursions.

 

But from time to time, there is renewed "talk" about the possible development of a "maglev" -- magnetic levitation -- passenger train connecting Chattanooga with Atlanta, and eventually Miami to the south and Chicago to the north.

 

Mayor Ron Littlefield has been talking about a maglev version of a modern Chattanooga Choo-Choo recently.

 

As fast as passenger air flight is, just think of the time it takes to get to the Chattanooga airport, Lovell Field, check in, get through security and then board an aircraft. You can drive to the Atlanta airport in less than a couple of hours and connect with the world. But even that's not very convenient.

 

Just "imagine" boarding a maglev train -- propelled along a rail with magnetic force causing the train to rise above the track and smoothly reach speeds of hundreds of miles an hour!

 

There are some maglev trains in existence now -- for example, between Paris and Marseilles, France, and even out of Shanghai in Communist China, among others. Maglev trains are realities.

 

So there have been dreams of being able to have maglev trains between Miami and Chicago -- via Atlanta and Chattanooga.

 

Mayor Littlefield says Chattanooga and Georgia should be thinking about maglevs.

 

The "catch"? The mayor said, "We've got to come up with the money." Isn't that often the problem? There has been talk of a federal transportation grant to study the idea of having a maglev train ease the Atlanta airport overload by connecting with the under-used Chattanooga airport, for one example.

 

But, "Pardon me, boy," while the maglev idea is intriguing, and could in time become reality, it's an expensive proposition. It's worth studying, but don't expect to buy a ticket on a Chattanooga Choo-Choo to Atlanta very soon.

 

Subscribe Here! German tastes

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TIMES FREE PRESS

EDITORIAL

'SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS'

 

Americans have traditionally, vehemently, resisted the notion of requiring citizens to carry national identification papers to verify their citizenship or legal residency status. Arizona's new law requiring immigrants to carry proof of their legal immigration status -- and become subject to police stops and detention on sight if they fail to possess such documents -- effectively and wrongly leaps that long guarded barrier to unprovoked police stops. It also promises to produce the specter of a police state that its conservative anti-immigration otherwise claim to abhor.

 

The new law might scare undocumented immigrants to avoid the sight-line of police, but it will do little to accomplish its goal of reducing illegal immigration. What it is almost certain to do is unleash a wave of racial and ethnic profiling against brown-skin Hispanics, who, whether citizens or not, now must fear leaving home without whatever important documents they need to prove their right to walk the streets.

 

This sort of law, signed last Friday by Gov. Jan Brewer, may be what some citizens wrongly think is needed to thwart a flood of illegal immigration in Arizona But if that's the case, it's hard to imagine that they and Arizona's pandering Republican legislators, who adopted this bill on a strict party-line vote, gave bill SB1070 thorough constitutional scrutiny.

 

The new law, supporters say, will give police "the tools" to do what the federal government has failed to do with regard to stopping illegal immigration. There's just enough of a half-truth in that to fan zealots' ire.

 

It is true that Congress has failed to produce a comprehensive immigration reform bill, mainly because of the virulent partisan divide that infects debate over immigration reform. Yet almost any competent reform bill would be superior to what Arizona's Republican lawmakers cooked up.

 

The law not only requires immigrants to carry documents to validate their legal residency (or citizenship). It also requires police officers, unless they are inhibited by an investigation or medical emergency, to stop anyone who appears to be a possible illegal immigrant and check their documents, and to arrest and expel those found to be without legal documentation. Further, it allows citizens who believe their police and public officials are not enforcing the law to file lawsuits against them.

 

Those provisions, police have argued, will make it hard for police and sheriffs to do their ordinary police work of catching criminals. They also say, with good reason, that the law will make Hispanic citizens and legal immigrants needlessly afraid of police, and inhibit their willingness to share information.

 

Larger concerns involve the trampling of general civil rights because of the inherent racial and ethnic profiling demanded by the law. That seems both self-evident, and intolerable under this nation's Constitution. Arizona's neighbors -- California on its western border and New Mexico to the east -- and Texas are already majority-minority states: fewer than half of their residents are white, and large shares of their minorities are Hispanic. Similarly, Nevada to its north, along with Georgia, Mississippi, New York and Maryland, are now less than 60 percent white.

 

In these circumstances in Western states, that leaves Arizona police looking at half the state's population, mostly brown-skinned, and wondering if they are legal or illegal immigrants, or life-long or naturalized citizens. Whom should they stop to demand to see their legal identity/visa/residency papers? What portion of citizens and legal immigrants may be wrongly stopped, and possibly illegally detained?

 

In short, Arizona's new law cannot stand, and Americans should not want it to stand, regardless of their views on immigration. America does need comprehensive immigration reform. Brown-shirt, police-state laws that foster racism and discrimination do not qualify under any immigration metric.

 

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TIMES FREE PRESS

EDITORIAL

COULD WE STOP AN IRANIAN NUKE?

 

Amid recent reports that the wild Iranian regime may be working on development of a nuclear weapon, several big questions arise.

 

Can Iran produce a nuke? Could it threaten Israel and other neighbors? Could it threaten the United States? And could the United States prevent an Iranian nuclear strike against any potential target?

 

Those are serious questions with no sure answers. The best answer is to be sure Iran never gets a nuclear weapon. How could we do that? Well, the answer to that question is part of the big problem. We can't safely ignore the subject

 

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TEHRAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

NO MORE PEACE CHARADES, MR. PRESIDENT

BY LINDA S. HEARD

 

"Since you, Mr. President and you, the members of the American administration, believe in this, it is your duty to call for steps in order to reach the solution and impose the solution — impose it," he said. "Don't tell me it's a vital national strategic interest, and then, not do anything."

 

It's no wonder that Abbas is frustrated. The Palestinian National Authority has been playing by Washington's rules for many years without result. The Bush White House demanded democratic elections but after confirming that the vote that brought Hamas to power was free and fair, Palestinians were treated like pariahs. Fatah was then told to distance itself from Hamas resulting in Palestinians being split into two feuding camps when Israel promptly announced there was no Palestinian partner for peace.

Successive American administrations have blessed a two-state solution, international conferences have been held, various U.S. envoys have shuttled back and forth, while column inches on the topic could probably circle Earth several times. The proof of the pudding is in the eating and, until now, nothing sweet has emerged.

Reasons for this lack of progress are two-fold. No American leader has been willing to go head-to-head with Congress that never fails to prove its sycophantic stance toward Tel Aviv; mainly because lawmakers fear the wrath of the career-breaking pro-Israel lobby. The only president to show real support for the Palestinian cause is Jimmy Carter who brokered the 1978 Camp David Accords. But, the heat was so great that, last year, he apologized to Israel for stigmatizing the Jewish entity in his book, "Palestinian Peace, Not Apartheid".

The crux of the matter is Israel's unwillingness to exchange occupied land for peace. Why should it? This is a country that was born out of force and has existed in a state of war for more than six decades. Most of U.S. would find this untenable but Israelis have become accustomed to military conscription and spending half their lives as reservists.

They are used to being issued with gas masks and holing up in bunkers. Indeed, they are brought up with an "us against the world" bunker mentality. And, strangely, although Israel is a wealthy nuclear-armed regime with one of the world's most powerful military forces, it is still defined by a victim narrative that has long passed its sell-by date.

In the same way that a person born without a sense of smell can't appreciate the scent of mowed grass, most Israelis cannot understand the concept of peace. Moreover, many are unaware of the immorality of occupation because Israel has never been seriously rapped on the knuckles. And so it gets away with building an illegal apartheid "fence", constructing illegal colonies on the West Bank, evicting Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem and maintaining Gaza under an illegal blockade. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown is even attempting to prevent alleged Israeli war criminals being prosecuted in British courts. If this culture of impunity continues with the complicity of the international community, there will never be a state called Palestine.

To quote the words of the late Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, what was taken by force must be returned by force. He may have a point. Some commentators have advised the Palestinians to take a leaf out of Mahatma Gandhi's book but each time Palestinians adopt peaceful protest they are shot at, tear-gassed or arrested.

However, war isn't the answer either because, unlike most countries, Israel would launch its nuclear weapons, which it was on the point of doing during the 1967 and 1973 wars.

This doesn't mean to say that Israel can't be punished in other ways.

Bringing Israel to book and rendering Israelis into a position of discomfort whereby peace might look like an attractive option would require a concerted effort by the U.S. and its allies. Israel should be labeled the rogue state it is. Washington should withdraw its $3 billion annual aid and stop supplying Tel Aviv with weapons, aircraft, missiles and spare parts. The UN Security Council should subject Israel to economic and trade sanctions while the EU should cancel the EU-Israel Association Agreement.

Other countries in the region have their own part to play. For instance, Turkey could cease its military, strategic and diplomatic cooperation with Israel and nullify the free trade agreement between the two countries. Turkish-Israeli relations are already strained following Israel's aggression on Gaza. With Turkish aid boats heading for Gaza on May 15 in an attempt to break the siege, things could get worse.

Jordan and Egypt might threaten to reconsider their bilateral peace treaties with Israel. Peace between Israel and Egypt is already cold to freezing. There is little interaction between the two peoples other than in Red Sea resorts while Egyptians are discouraged from visiting Israel. Indeed, Israel's ambassador to Egypt must be the only diplomat with a sparse social calendar. The comedic movie "Al Safara fil Amara" (The Embassy in the Building) starring Adel Imam says it all.

A few days ago, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak confirmed that Egypt was committed to peace if Israel does the same, but, last Saturday, his Foreign Minister Aboul Gheit referred to Israel as an "enemy" during a press conference held in Beirut. When asked whether he was visiting Lebanon to convey a warning from the Israeli government, he snapped saying his purpose was not to relay messages "from the enemy to a sister Arab state". "Egypt stands by Lebanon under all conditions and in the face of all threats," he said.

The Jordanian monarch King Abdallah has recently warned that the failure of peace talks could trigger war. Under heavy pressure from the White House, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says he's willing to engage in proximity talks and discuss thorny issues. It's not surprising that Palestinians are more inclined to yawn than celebrate. They know this hawkish leader is stalling for time until Jerusalem becomes wholly Jewish and the expansion of Jewish colonies on the West Bank thwart their dreams of a state.

No more charades, President Obama. Do you want to leave behind you a real legacy or will you settle for becoming a footnote in history? The ball is firmly in your court. Please run with it!

(Source: Arab News)

 

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

 

FROM THE BOSPHORUS: STRAIGHT - WHAT'S GOING ON IN TURKEY?

 

It's not surprising to see that the headlines of the newspapers are no longer hit by the news on the constitutional reform proposals. It's not because they have become less important and less attractive for the public opinion, but simply because they were beaten by some very sour news coming from different parts of the country.

 

It was two days ago when the country was shocked by allegations against eight male students ranging in age from 11 and 14 raping two toddlers at a boarding school in Siirt, a southeastern Anatolia town. The shock effect of the incident was not decreased though it was learned that it occurred a year ago.

 

The same town made headlines last week with accusations of broad sexual abuse of teenage girls. It was in fact this media coverage brought last year's blood-chilling incident to light.

 

Yet, another news piece of a terrible incident came from Edirne, a northwestern town bordering Greece and Bulgaria. A man was arrested for allegedly raping his own daughter during the past eight years since the time she was 13, as well as for allegedly sexually abusing the daughter born to his own daughter as a result of the rape.

 

Meanwhile, residents of İzmir, a city on the Aegean cost, were frightened after an alleged serial killer killed three people in three days.

 

These sorts of crimes are not unique to Turkey, thus no need for abrupt conclusions. However, they also deserve scientific attention to find the root of these crimes and a better way to deal with them.

 

Here a few lines from the Daily News' yesterday's story on Siirt's sexual abuse tragedy:

 

"According to data from the Psychiatric Association of Turkey, research made among 16,000 children in Turkey revealed the rate of subjection to abuse was 33 percent. The research showed that factors such as poverty, unemployment, lack of social support, domestic turmoil and violence or too many children in one family increased the possibility of minors being subjected to abuse."

 

The figure is very high and touches on the very bad side of life that requires a comprehensive study on stopping these sorts of inhumane crimes. The government has the main burden on its shoulders but should be backed by scientific research conducted by universities, civil society and the media.

 

Here, we should mention the Education Minister Nimet Çubukçu's reaction against the media for its coverage on the Siirt incidents. She said she could see no use in reporting on a story that occurred a year ago.

 

Unlike the minister, we think we see use in reporting on such issues, if they took place in a relevant time span. That's the only way we can raise the necessary public awareness of such issues. That's how we can be more careful to stop such crimes from being committed elsewhere. And that's the only way we can see how someone's ignorance can make us feel ashamed to be human

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

A SENSITIVE APPOINTMENT TO THE TOP OF THE MİT

SEDAT ERGİN

 

The National Intelligence Organization, or MİT, was under the military's influence until the late President Süleyman Demirel formed a coalition government with the Socialist People's Party, or SHP, at the end of 1991.

 

However, there have been three exceptions, including during the Celalettin Karasapan, Hüseyin Avni Göktürk and Ahmet Korur periods. Karasapan had a diplomacy background and served during the Democratic Party government, and Göktürk had a law and politics background. Both served as the MİT directors for a short time. Korur was the acting director during the Prime Minister Adnan Menderes period.

 

MİT turned more civilian with Köksal

Until the appointment of Ambassador Sönmez Köksal to the top of the organization in 1992, the upper level administration mostly consisted of military members.

 

Although it seems odd today, this was the reality for decades. MİT directors, after 1980 in particular, were always Lt. Gens. whose names were submitted by the General Staff to the government, and that secured the status and weight of MİT directors at the level of corps commander.

 

According to the law, an MİT director answers to the prime minister, but they did see chiefs of the General Staff as superiors.

 

The MİT turned more civil under the former MİT director Köksal, and one of the critical steps taken during that period was the reduction of personnel with origins in the military to a symbolic level. Owing to Köksal, the organization improved human resources policy and set as objectives hiring employees fluent in foreign languages and obtaining a new generation of intelligence gatherers.

 

Erdoğan's closer dialogue with Taner

After Köksal returned to the Foreign Ministry in 1998, the appointment of professional intelligence agents who were raised in the organization became a new tradition. In fact, in replacement of Köksal, the once director of operations Şenkal Atasagun was appointed as the MİT director. And Atasagun left his seat to assistant director Emre Taner in 2005.

 

It's known that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came together with Taner frequently with regards to the Kurdish question, in particular, while Taner was the assistant director. In the mean time, the organization turned more civil and adopted a rather flexible line of conduct in the Kurdish issue. Mr. Prime Minister extended Taner's tenure twice, for six months each, although it was time for Taner to be retired.

 

This time, a change will take place. Apparently, Erdoğan has decided to appoint the 42-year-old bureaucrat Hakan Fidan who has been closely working with Mr. Prime Minister at the Prime Ministry in the last two-and-a-half years. Fidan was initially appointed as the MİT's new assistant director, and he will be the new director as of late May.

 

Fidan served as a noncommissioned officer in the military for about 15 years while he continued his academic career. During his retirement period, Fidan graduated from the University of Maryland and received masters and doctorate degrees at Bilkent University in Ankara. He was the chairman of the Prime Ministry's Turkish International Cooperation and Development Agency, or TİKA, during the ruling Justice and Development Party's, or AKP, first term.

 

Afterwards, Fidan was appointed as the MİT assistant director in Nov. 2007 and became one of the closest working partners of Erdoğan.

 

As a tradition is left behind

Fidan's official appointment to the top seat of the MİT means that a tradition settled after Köksal is now being left. It would be perfect if the tradition had been maintained in order to give a message of confidence to the MİT personnel for the future. However, appointments from outside of the organization are seen quite often in the Western world.

 

Intelligence is a career all along. Though Fidan is an experienced high-level bureaucrat, his accumulation of

intelligence is limited rather to academic studies. For this reason, he will take over the organization without having any experience in intelligence, as was the case with Köksal in 1995.

 

The process of change in the world brings new threats and risks. In this case, change is needed in intelligence organizations as well. There is a need for adaptation. Appointment of Fidan will flare up discussions over MİT reform.

 

One final point is about the MİT's capabilities. Governments have always been attracted to power, so the new MİT director should define the boundaries of his organization very well. Besides, civilian intelligence should be maintained.

 

These are the critical points waiting for Fidan.

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

SHOAH IS ALL RIGHT; HOLOCAUST ISN'T

BURAK BEKDİL

 

Once again, the usual we-must-look-it-up-in-the-Thesaurus season in Washington is over and we all can sigh with relief. The thesaurus must have depleted its alternative entries for the word "genocide," as evidenced by President Barack Obama's repeat of the words "Meds Yeghern" in reference to the 1915 killings of Ottoman Armenians. So, "Great Calamity" is all right. "Genocide" is not.

 

The U.S. president's selection for this year's April 24 menu has confused hearts and minds. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was not offended, but his Foreign Ministry was.

 

Some Turks were jubilant that President Obama avoided the term pushed by diaspora Armenians and their congressional allies. Some took to the streets and shouted, in protest, "Allah is the greatest!" as if they were marching for jihad.

 

Apparently there is something sick in the Turkish psyche. Turks are too prickly about being called genocide committers, but wear bitter smiles when they are called "the committers of one of the greatest atrocities of the 20th century," or when their ancestors are accused of causing a "devastating chapter." Bizarre? Just "Turkishly" confusing…

 

Another bullet dodged, and many Turks breathed easily in all corners of America. Some may have told their Turkish-American sons and daughters that they can now take a deep breathe and relax… See, it's just "one of the greatest atrocities of the past century," or merely "Meds Yeghern," but not "genocide."

 

The Armenians, on the other hand, must have thought of Mr. Obama as a leader who ended up just like any other human being – for the second time now, making promises he could not keep. It should not come as a surprise though because presidents George H. Bush and George W. Bush broke similar pledges, and President Bill Clinton leaned on Congress not to pass genocide commemoration measures. Hearts and minds tend to break.

 

Hence the Armenian National Committee of America's statement, describing Mr. Obama's declaration as "yet another disgraceful capitulation to Turkey's threats, offering euphemisms and evasive terminology to characterize this crime against humanity."

 

Mr. Obama was probably cute enough when he also mentioned how encouraged he was about the Armenian-Turkish dialogue, and the Turkish domestic debate about the issue. He was fair and unfair, depending on which side of the Alican border one lives, when he mentioned the Turks who helped the victims of other Turks' atrocities. All in all, his abstention from the dangerous word was sufficient for many to be content on the western side of the border, if not all together jubilant; and sad and disappointed on the other side, if not angered.

 

As always, the Turks look divided. Serious faces in the corridors of grey buildings; prickly, less prickly and too prickly statements in reaction to the word "atrocities;" increased security around the Turkish embassy and consulates in the United States; but for the time being the Turkish ambassador to Washington seems not to be packing up once again for another lengthy stay in Ankara.

 

President Obama's speech was grey. Armenians were heart-broken and felt cheated yet again. They believed the Turkish powers on the U.S. were deep. Turks were not happy that the issue did not disappear from the face of the earth, along with the victims' bones, and that Mr. Obama's speech was ambiguous and not supportive enough of their cause.

 

But there was some good coming out of this sad day. More and more Turks are making attempts to understand the issue and the scientific proof of atrocities, or genocide, depending on which part you belong. Three outdoor commemorations of the "Armenian Genocide" on April 24, a lecture by a diaspora Armenian journalist in Istanbul and a two-day conference on the "Armenian Genocide" in Ankara took place, while obstacles, counter-protests and fascist rhetoric tried to disrupt the events and reminded the few hundred participants of the long way ahead.

 

Is it genocide? Will the much-spoken archives help? Will there be a film soon, an adapted version of "Schindler's List," which not only shows the torment but also those on the other side who helped the victims? If the person who had coined the term genocide, Raphael Lemkin, declares the Armenian tragedy as "genocide," will that suffice?

 

One thing is clear though. Whether or not we like the Obama speech, it indicates that the president still opposes the "genocide" resolution, and its likelihood to pass is now slimmer than before.

 

Could human nature not help us here to provide a convincing argument? Could we not say: "Dear Armenians; we know you expect an apology but apologies come from nations – in majority at least – who can accept their faults, attempt to change and take lessons from their wrongs… Sorry, that's not yet us. See, just a day before your 'commemoration,' which was our Children's Day, our beloved prime minister told the 'child prime minister of the day:' 'You can do whatever you please, you can hang them or use your sword, the choice is yours…' So do not take it personally, dear Armenians, it is not personal, this is us, your neighbors. Hello!"

 

But let's try to derive some crisis resolution methodology from the "Obama jurisprudence" on the "genocide" dispute. Because for two years in a row, Mr. Obama's preferred term for the tragedies of 1915-1920 is "Meds Yeghern," will the president agree to a Turkish apology for "Meds Yeghern," instead of "genocide?" Why should he not propose to Congress a resolution recognizing "Meds Yeghern" instead of "genocide?" Not many Turks would care if they are accused of having ancestors who had caused "Meds Yeghern."

 

"Shoah" is all right; "genocide" is not

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

WHY ARE OUR AZERBAIJANI FRIENDS SO CRANKY?

MEHMET ALİ BİRAND

 

You'll remember when some time ago I wrote an article without any bad intentions what-so-ever about our Azerbaijani siblings pointing out that they suffice with only watching from a distance how Turkey struggles with respect to genocide allegations.

 

I asked, "Where are you?"

 

Be it in the U.S. Congress or in different places of the European Parliament in which Turkey fights a battle, the Azerbaijani are never to be seen. It is not necessary that they act in unison with Turkey but they could continue lobbying, spend money, advertise in papers like the Armenians do or write books.

 

I said, "You don't do any of these and when Turkey finds a formula to get rid of the heavy load on its shoulders you revolt and overreact with words like 'This does not suit Turkey.' Is this attitude just?"

 

Again I encountered strong reactions from our Azerbaijani siblings. 

 

To be honest, I can't understand this crankiness reaching even the ranks of the presidency.

 

Why?

 

If we can't talk about it among friends, where else would we be able to do so?

 

Shall we keep it to ourselves?

 

And I took care not to behave awkward in these discussions.

 

For instance, I do not say, "You perceive Turkey as a sibling but why don't you recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus?"

For, I know the reason.

 

Or I don't write about concerns of Turkish businessmen saying: "Guys, last year 110 business men abandoned Baku because your bureaucracy hindered them. Why do you pursue politics hindering Turkish business men from conducting their business?"

 

For, I am aware that some businessmen conduct businesses other than what they're supposed to do.

 

They need to know that there is a limit to their crankiness and stop setting their partisan media on me.

 

One of the biggest mistakes of those sitting in glass mansions is throwing with stones at others.

 

Just a brotherly (friendly) reminder.

 

            

 

First do your jobs right, then call the media for account

There is no need for me to tell you about how disgusting the incident in Siirt is. It has been argued about in the media for days now.

 

The murders have surfaced one and a half years ago.

 

When it was reflected in public recently, hell broke lose.

 

This incident was so scary that the media maybe for the first time behaved extremely cautious. There were no pictures of the accused children. No shots related to the incident. The families were not bothered. No speculations made.

 

Our politicians became so upset all of a sudden that you wouldn't believe it.

 

They thought publishing such news would not go well with journalism.

 

I am astonished about reactions by our Minister of Education. I know her sensitivity in such matters.

 

But this time she just overreacted.

 

She just complained.

 

I do not agree with you.

 

I think this incident is the duty of journalism.

It is the duty of a journalist to make Turkey talk about it in order to prevent such incidence from happening again.

 

To tell the truth, instead of asking why did you publish the Siirt incidence they should have said you are late by one and a half years. They should have criticized us for not making it public earlier.

 

Can you imagine, one and a half years past since the incidence and there has been no court case as of yet.

 

And our politicians worry about Siirt receiving a bad reputation and traumata to be experienced by the families

and children.

 

Whereas this incidence should be open for discussion in public in order to prevent a reoccurrence.

 

Who will be accountable for the children's death?

 

 And who will interrogate those covering up this incidence?

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

COLLECTIVE SHAME

YUSUF KANLI

 

As if the latest reports regarding the sexual abuse of children in a remote Anatolian city was the product of a systemic campaign by the media to hurt the reputation of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government - as if such cases have never ever happened in any part of this country of 73 million people, but some news people with ulterior motives against the AKP forged such stories - as if kids as small as two years old were not mass-raped and one killed, the lady minister in charge education (and who in the previous government was in charge of women and childrens' affairs) accused the media of rehashing old stories to create an image in the Turkish public that, under AKP rule, pedophile crimes and the sexual abuse of children have increased.

 

The lady minister, unfortunately, was wrong in assuming that this is a campaign aimed at hurting her government. This is not a campaign to hurt the AKP, but the bitter reality that surfaced in a remote Anatolian city. It is unfortunately not confined to just to that remote city, but rather a collective shame of the entire Turkish society. Because of peer pressure, closed family structures and the very fact that often those involved in the sexual abuse of children are either members of the family or close neighbors, unfortunately child abuse, like domestic violence cases, are often not reported. Furthermore, there are no statistics available in Turkey on this very painful issue and therefore no one can say for sure what the dimension of the problem really is.

 

Yet, it is a fact that there are thousands of homeless children in the streets of this country's cities. These children are employed by some dark figures. Look around, you will see many of them begging, selling tissue paper or chewing gum almost at every junction of Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir, Diyarbakır and elsewhere. In the first four months of this year, well over sixty kids were stolen from their families, some were found dead, the vast majority of them are still missing.

 

Covering up and not reporting on the issue may help forget the problem and create a feeling as if no such issue exists in Turkey. But such an attitude will not contribute to a resolution of this very serious situation, which is definitely a crime against humanity.

 

Accusing the media of "exaggerating" the child rape problem or "over-exposing" the issue with the intention of harming the government is not an attitude that befits a lady minister who, besides being an education minister now, was in charge of women and children affairs in the previous government. On the contrary, rather than putting the blame of such incidents on the media, as if it was the media that raped the small kids, or imposing censorship on the media, the lady minister must concentrate on identifying why such incidents take place in our society. Furthermore, she should at least order an investigation into such allegations, as well as claims of the use of brutal force against children, at child protection centers affiliated with her ministry.

 

These two cases of "organized sexual abuse of children" in that remote Anatolian city might be presented by the lady minister as "isolated cases" that should not be "generalized." Perhaps she should go through page 3 of newspapers and see how isolated indeed is such horrible use of force, sexual abuse and inhumane treatment on small kids, unprotected women and at worst disabled kids and women. The difference between these two cases of sexual abuse of children in that remote Anatolian city was that for a change the media did not report them on the third pages, but put them on front pages because of the dimensions of such aberration and because such an advanced degree of pervert barbarism was never ever reported in this country.

 

The lady minister would perhaps like to see the media concentrating on the political agenda set by the government. She perhaps would like to see a media glorifying the prime minister, the ministers and the government's policies and shunning all articles on the bitter realities in the country. Her government has partly managed to achieve such a media as almost half of the papers and TV stations have entered or been compelled to enter into an allegiance with the AKP while the rest have been effectively reminded of their limits with various executive actions, particularly by some officious tax men.

 

But, the sexual abuse of children, domestic violence, missing children and kids employed by some dark figures at city squares as beggars are collective shames of this country and definitely a collective effort is needed to overcome them.

 

To say the least this issue is far more important than the constitutional amendment obsession of the prime minister. Rather than trying to trade the blame, it should be the high time to do something to end this collective shame

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

'BLACK SWAN' VOLCANO OFFERS US LESSONS

MATTHEW LYNN

 

For a generation or more, no one ever gave a second thought to Iceland. Now it has shaken up the world twice in a couple of years.

 

First its banks collapsed in the most dramatic illustration of the fragility of our financial system. Now an Icelandic volcano has spewed ash into the sky, prompting a shutdown of European airspace. The continent has been paralyzed.

 

Both happenings are strangely similar. They are, to borrow a phrase from financial theory, "black swan" events: unexpected developments, coming out of nowhere, for which no one has any kind of contingency plan. And they are a warning about the fragility of the modern economy.

 

The lesson, surely, is to be aware of how easily whole industries can be blown apart. And to make sure we build systems robust enough to survive the worst that can be thrown at them. If the flight ban can teach us that, we should welcome it –even though thousands are stranded far from home.

 

The Eyjafjallajökull volcano has caused chaos on a massive scale since the April 14 eruption. Its last major eruption in 1821 lasted more than a year.

 

It can teach us useful lessons, if we want to learn them. 

 

First, we are dependent on air travel. Our economy is kept in motion by fleets of jetliners and a network of airports. Business revolves around meetings in hotels next to the runways. Documents are ferried around by air. Even the food in grocery stores often lands a day before from another continent.

 

But air networks are very delicate. They are constantly at the mercy of the weather, mechanical failure, labor strikes and terrorist plots. We should have learned after the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington not to depend so much on flying. Likewise, we should listen more to the climate-change scientists warning about the impact of global warming. Perhaps the chaos of the last few days will teach us that our economy needs to be more grounded, both metaphorically and literally.

 

Second, we forget that distance counts. Globalization has made the world seem a very small place. E-mails ping from continent to continent in the blink of an eye. Social networks allow us to be friends with people thousands of miles away as easily as if they lived in the next street. Money flashes from country to country, and ideas and trends zip around the world. 

 

And yet, when the technology breaks down, it is a long way from Helsinki to Madrid, or from New York to Berlin. Try doing that journey the old-fashioned way -- by car, by boat, or on foot -- and you suddenly realize the distance between places still counts for a lot. The world isn't as much of a global village as we think it is. It's still a vast place, and the local can often bite back at the global.

 

Third, we need to prepare for the unexpected. A couple of years ago, it was the financial system that fell to pieces. Right now, it is the transport system. In both cases, the cause was something we didn't expect, or make any plans for. We thought hedge funds might blow up the banks -- instead some rather dull-looking mortgages did. We thought terrorists might spread chaos through the airline system -- it turned out that ash from an Icelandic volcano did that job.

 

'Black swans'

 

In reality, "black swans" are everywhere. Much of Europe's energy is now supplied by Russia. Is that really stable in the long term? Much of our food is now genetically modified. What would happen if we suddenly discovered it wasn't safe anymore? The euro is a relatively new currency. It has struggled to cope with a few deficit issues in Greece, one of the smallest member states. There must be half a dozen different kinds of crises that could mean the money most of the continent relies on doesn't work anymore.

 

All sorts of unexpected events are lurking in the shadows. By definition, we haven't thought about them. It is because they are so unexpected that they are so dangerous. What we can do is think harder about the threats, get better at forecasting them, and find ways of making ourselves less vulnerable.

 

Air travel is useful. It is the quickest and usually the cheapest way of getting around. But we shouldn't depend on it as much as we do. We shouldn't rely so completely on any single network, whether it is financial or technological. That should be obvious to everyone. But sometimes it takes something as powerful as a volcanic eruption to make a simple point.

 

*Matthew Lynn is a Bloomberg News columnist

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

END OF CONSCRIPTION IN SIGHT

JOOST LAGENDİJK

 

I always found it strange that it was possible in this country to buy your way out of the army. In Turkey, military service is compulsory for all male citizens over the age of 20. But Turks who have worked outside the country for at least three years do not have to serve the full 15 months but can return home after a basic military training of only 21 days – on the condition that they pay a certain fee, currently slightly more than 5000 euros.

 

Hundreds of thousands of young men have used this opportunity in the past and many more are ready to accept such a deal now. The Ministry of Finance is happy with it, the General Staff is not. The issue came up again last week when the prime minister announced that, despite the opposition of the military, the present system will be continued. Personally, I think it is unfair to allow men who can afford to spend 5000 euro on this to become essentially draft dodgers. While guys who don't have that money, must serve and run a considerable risk of getting killed or wounded while on duty. But that is not the point I want to make.

 

The whole debate on the pros and cons of the opt-out system distracts from the underlying basic question: how long will Turkey be able to continue with compulsory military service? In the last 20 years, many countries all over the world have switched to a professional army without any conscripts. Examples are the United States, India, Australia and Japan. In Europe, France, the United Kingdom, Poland, Spain and Italy have all abolished mandatory service. The only big European Union member state that maintains conscription forces is Germany, for historic reasons that go back to the first half of the 20th century and the devastating consequences of unleashed militarism.

 

Turkey seems to be stuck half way. Since 2007, the Turkish Armed Forces, or TSK, tries to combine the best of both worlds. While maintaining conscription, the military is in the middle of a far-reaching but slow modernization and professionalization process. When successful, the result would be a mixed system in which tasks requiring specialization and brigades expected to bear the brunt of fighting, would be left to professional soldiers. It would increase capability and continuity and it is a logical consequence of a radically changed threat perception. The main tasks of the present Turkish army are participating in international missions and fighting terrorism at or just across the border. Both sorts of operations call for small, flexible and skilled units, not large amounts of poorly trained foot-soldiers.

 

But the logic of modern warfare is just one of the elements in the ongoing debate on the future of the TSK. As military specialist Gareth Jenkins put it: "The gradual professionalization of the army, even if it is initially only in certain units, is likely to weaken the emotional bond formed by military service; raising the possibility that the requirements of improved military efficiency may come at the costs of a reduction in the TSK's ability to influence the political process in Turkey."

 

School textbooks still portray the military as something essential to Turks. It is the reason that many in the TSK are afraid that a fully professional army would sever what they regard as the "sacred bond between the Turkish nation and the profession of soldiering." It is obvious that the choices that have to be made will not only be influenced by rational arguments. Many emotional hurdles will have to be overcome as well.

For me the best outcome of these considerations would be a downsized, professional army that sees no role for itself in politics, that is responsible to the Minister of Defense and whose budget is determined and controlled by the Parliament. That would really be an invaluable service to the country!

 

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HURRIYET DAILY NEWS

EDITORIAL

A REQUIEM FOR ARMENIANS—A SEQUEL

MUSTAFA AKYOL

 

My latest piece in these pages, "For the fear of God: A requiem for Armenians," proved to be quite controversial. And I, as usual, was blamed by some readers for being a bunch of nasty things. (A "traitor" to my own nation who is funded by evil foreigners, a "fake" Turk who hides his crypto-Armenianness, or a deceitful Islamist hell-bent on destroying secular Turkey.)

 

I am not going to waste my time by trying to explain that I am really not the man in these caricatures — or that I really don't have fangs and claws. But let me try to explain why I wrote a requiem on April 24 for the Armenians who perished in 1915. Because I hope that the reasoning (and the sentiment) that I followed might also help other Turks build a more righteous attitude in this poisonous controversy.

 

A tale of two arguments

I have been listening to both sides of this controversy, Turks and Armenians, for years. And I have realized that we Turks often use two major arguments.

 

The first one is what I call the There-Was-A-Reason argument. By this, we are trying to tell the world that the expulsion of Armenians from Anatolia in 1915 was forced by a troublesome political context. The Ottoman Empire was crumbling. It had seen its Muslim populations slaughtered in the Balkans and the Caucasus by the Russians and their allies. The Ottoman elite had reason to suspect that Armenian nationalists were the fifth column of Russia, with which they were at war. The same elite also feared that an independent Armenia in the east would be disastrous for the Turks.

 

Now, this is all true. And I, too, have written about these in this very paper. ("After All, Who Remembers the Ottoman Muslims?" on Feb. 15, 2007, and "Let's Be Honest on Genocide" on March 9, 2010) But understanding the context of something is different from seeing it as justified.

 

What we should honestly ask ourselves here is whether it was justified to expel a million people from four corners of Eastern Anatolia to the Syrian Desert. If this was done simply to "secure the eastern border from Armenian militias," as we often say, then why not only men but also women, children and the elderly were also driven out of their homes? Was it too hard to see that most of those innocents could not survive the hundreds of miles of marching under the brazing sun without food, water and shelter? Was it too hard to see that some could even be pillaged, raped and murdered?

 

These questions make me suspect that the "tehcir" (expulsion) law of the young Turkish government of the time was something more than a security measure. It rather seems to me as an ethnic cleansing for some political design. And I don't know you, but I, as a rule, am passionately against all ethnic cleansings — whether they might be committed by the Serbs against the Bosnians, the Israelis against the Palestinians (see episodes such as Deir Yassin), or by my own country against the Armenians.

 

At this point, I am sure, some of the Turkish readers will raise the objection that I call the second major Turkish argument: But-We-Were-Killed-Too.

 

And this is true as well. Turks suffered horrible massacres at the hands of Armenians militias, in a few incidents before 1915, but in a much larger vengeance campaign in 1916 and 1917, when the Russian forces invaded several cities in northeastern Anatolia. The cruelty inflicted on the Muslim population at that time has become notoriously famous in Turkey, and we keep remembering that. We also rightfully condemn modern-day Armenia for occupying a large portion of Azerbaijani land, and creating a million refugees ("qacqins") living in terrible conditions.

 

Yet still, I believe, the fact that we Turks also suffered should not make us blind and indifferent to the suffering on the other side, whose proportions are undoubtedly much larger. The fact that we remember and honor our own dead, in other words, should not prevent us from feeling mercy and remorse for the hundreds of thousands of perished Armenians.

 

The beginning of wisdom

My intention to speak of a "Muslim conscious" in my previous piece, by referring to some muftis and other devout Ottomans who tried to save the Armenians in 1915, was to bring in some new perspective to this moral side of the issue, which I see as the heart of the matter. I did not say, "Muslims do not commit genocide," as Prime Minister Erdoğan unconvincingly said in another context. I rather implied that Muslims should not do such horrible things if they will remain true to the principles of their faith, as some exemplary figures saw clearly during the Armenian exodus.

 

This is important because a particularly Islamic critique of the tragedy of 1915 might be the key to Turkey's way forward. Until recently, those who questioned the official narrative on this matter were only a bunch of Western-educated secular liberals, whose language looked too alien to the majority of society. But recently some conservative Muslim pundits have also entered debate saying that their values are represented by not the Young Turks, who were secular nationalists, but the muftis who opposed the killings "for the fear of God."

 

So, well, perhaps the Psalmist was really on to something. "The fear of the Lord," might really be, at least once in a while, "the beginning of wisdom."

 

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 I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

MUSHARRAF IN THE DOCK?

 

The reported withdrawal of security protocol for former president General Pervez Musharraf by UK authorities will please many. This is not necessarily because they believe the former military ruler was involved in the murder of Benazir Bhutto, but because it is generally felt that he has led far too comfortable a life since his 2008 exit from the presidency. There are many crimes people are unwilling to forgive the general for – most notably his 2007 crackdown on the judiciary and the independent media. However, even in the case of Benazir's assassination, Musharraf's role deserves study. This is all the more so given the investigation now on against a serving general, who happens to be a relative of Musharraf. It is of course far too early to suggest that they may have been involved in plotting the crime. But certainly suspicions exist and it would be wise to put these to rest.

General Musharraf's lawyer has denied any action by UK authorities. The matter still needs to be confirmed. But again, regardless of what happens on this count, Musharraf is a man many Pakistanis would like to see answer for his crimes. Indeed demands that he be brought back to the country have been made repeatedly. As a man who has not infrequently spoken of his own courage, perhaps the general should consider a return, face his countrymen and explain to them his various deeds. Today, the shadows cast by a number of these still hang over us. The unfinished business of the NRO and the mess it created remains to be resolved; tensions created between the executive and the judiciary still linger on. The present government has done little to help matters. It is also an irrefutable fact that policies adopted by Musharraf played a big role in weakening mainstream political parties. Both the PML-N and the PPP were victims. This may explain some of the issues facing us on the political playing field today. All those who, through the years, witnessed them will be glad that General Musharraf may face at least some kind of censure. In the past, dictators have escaped scot-free after committing all kinds of crimes. It is time this tradition was ended once and for all. If this were indeed to happen an important precedent would be set in place that would serve us well in the future.

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

DODGING THE CENSOR

Freedom of the media is oft-cited by those who project and manage our image around the world, and it is true that compared to many of our neighbours our media enjoys freedoms that many do not – but you do not have to look very deep to find the censor at work. As reported in this newspaper last Monday the internationally renowned filmmaker, Katia Lund, has been denied a Pakistan visa. The reason? Whilst it will never be officially acknowledged her visa has been denied because she was going to make a film about gang-rape victim Mukhtaran Mai. The Musharraf regime did all it could to make life miserable for Ms Mai and to blacken her name but she endured and has gone on to become a global icon for the struggle that women face against oppression and discrimination. A worthy subject for a serious Hollywood film one might think, and moreover one that was said to present Pakistan in a positive light – something we could do with more rather than less of. It would appear that the current dispensation is no more charitably inclined towards Ms Mai than was its predecessor.

Katia Lund visited Pakistan and Ms Mai in 2007 and had no reason to think she would have any difficulty in getting the visas for herself and her crew, but it was not to be. She made all the right applications, bought her ticket (at the request of our mission in Brazil where she lives) – but no visa. In an acidly-worded email to a Pakistani embassy official in Brazil she points out that despite our government's attempts to block physical access to Ms Mai she had been able to circumvent them using Skype to do her interviews and the internet to conduct her research. To quote her directly: "Thanks to the modern world, your power to withhold visas has failed to deprive people of the right to tell their story. You managed to keep nothing but your own silence." Mukhtaran Mai has already been the subject of several documentaries seen around the world, at least one of them an award-winner, and it was only a matter of time before a feature film was made. The small-minded myopic pettiness of whomever it was that denied Ms Lund her visa tells the rest of the world that parts of our government resemble little more than a bunch of petulant infants. High time you grew up, gentlemen.

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

FINDING FAZLULLAH

The question surrounding the whereabouts of the former leader of the Taliban in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah, lingers on. In the aftermath of the successful Swat operation, it had been claimed that he had fled to Afghanistan. Subsequent reports stated he had been injured or was in hiding somewhere within the country. It has been impossible to know what is true. But the fact of the matter is that, in more ways than one, the Taliban in Swat remain a force to be reckoned with. At a recent seminar in Islamabad, researchers who had been to the area reported that women in particular remained fearful of a Taliban return. There is evidence that their apprehensions are not fanciful.

Recent reports from the Swat area have spoken of targeted killings aimed at eliminating anti-Taliban elements, including those who raised a 'lashkar' against them. It is significant too that despite the announcement of a significant sum in head-money for key Taliban figures that include Fazlullah, they have not been given away. If indeed the militant leader is present in the area, as his spokesman has indicated, there must be people who are aware of his whereabouts. Their unwillingness to give him – or other wanted men – away indicates that the terror of the Taliban remains in place. This is an ominous sign. The authorities need the support of people to vanquish militants. This can come only if dread disappears. The cycle of violence and revenge meanwhile continues. There is no knowing when it will end and this sense of uncertainty makes it harder to bring about the kind of change we urgently need to see in Swat and other such areas if a fresh start is to be made there and an end put to the dark reign of obscurantist militants.

 

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I. THE NEWS

LITTLE TO CELEBRATE

PART III

ASIF EZDI

It is not so much those who commit petty crimes who go scot-free but the big-time looters of national wealth and many of them reach the topmost echelons of the power hierarchy. If anyone doubts that, he should try counting the recipients of kickbacks (ten percent being the gold standard), money-launderers, currency smugglers, tax cheats, profiteers, loan defaulters, electricity thieves, holders of fake degrees and others of that ilk who sit in our legislatures or seats of power. Bravo, Qazi Anwar, for pointing your finger at these parasites!

As regards the amended Article 17 which dispenses with the requirement of intra-party elections, Ahsan Iqbal of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) had two explanations, both patently untenable. The deletion was justified, according to him, firstly because the relevant clause had been introduced by a discredited military usurper; and, secondly, because the law on political parties already provides for these elections. He did not explain why he and his party have no problems with retaining some other constitutional changes made by the ousted dictator, such as the lowering of the voting age to 18 years, but are unwilling to accept one that would militate against dynastic rule.

Also, Ahsan Iqbal is evidently unable to appreciate the difference between a constitutional requirement to which all laws must conform and an ordinary law which can be repealed or amended by the government through a simple majority, or even an ordinance. He may also be unaware that a constitutional requirement under Article 17 can be invoked, unlike a simple provision of the law, to make a complaint under the original jurisdiction of the High Courts and the Supreme Court.

Ahsan Iqbal also had a peculiar and convoluted explanation to offer for the amended Article 63A--which empowers the party head, in place of the head of the parliamentary party, as before--to declare a member of parliament to have defected and thus disqualified himself from continuing to sit in the house. The real purpose of this amendment, he explained, was to separate the holders of government posts from those occupying party office, which was a long-standing demand of independent political analysts. If the PML-N is so committed to separation of party and government offices, why then is it that Shahbaz Sharif continues as president of the PML-N as well as Punjab chief minister? And does Ahsan Iqbal seriously expect anyone to believe that his party's Quaid will give up his party post if he fulfils his dream of becoming prime minister again?

For a constitutional reform whose avowed purpose is to restore the parliamentary system and the "trichotomy" of powers, a major priority should have been to curb, if not abolish, the ordinance-making power of the government. This is a legacy of the colonial period and its abuse has become so institutionalised that legislation by ordinance has become the norm rather than the exception. But instead of placing any limits on the issuance of ordinances, the 18th Amendment has doubled the maximum life of ordinances from four to eight months. All that is needed is a resolution by either the Senate or the National Assembly. And our parliamentarians happily went along with this encroachment by the executive on what should be a preserve of the legislature.

Ahsan Iqbal contends that after the 18th Amendment, the government will no longer be able to issue the same ordinance over and over again. He has obviously not read the amendment carefully, because there is nothing in it that prohibits the repeated reissuance of the same ordinance. Ahsan Iqbal is no ordinary MNA. He was also a member of the Constitutional Reform Committee. Yet he too signed the committee's report without bothering to find out what exactly he was putting his signature to. This is typical. He is not the only member of parliament who voted in favour of the amendment without fully understanding the implications.

Nawaz Sharif seems to have given his attention exclusively to the procedure for the appointment of judges. He has had little to say on such trivial matters as the concurrent list, party elections, the defection clause or the ordinance-making powers of the government. After making a few somersaults on the issue of appointment of judges, he too went along in the end with the deeply politicised procedure proposed in the amendment. A judge should never be called upon to cast a vote on a political matter, but that is what each member of the judicial commission, including the serving judges, will now be doing at the nomination stage. Not only the person who is eventually appointed as judge but also the judges who vote on his nomination will become politically tainted. This would affect the public standing of the judiciary and will be harmful to its independence.

The constitutionality of the new Article 175A on judicial appointments has now been challenged in the courts. A system which has become such a highly contentious issue by itself becomes flawed. This does not augur well for political stability. Now that Gilani has got all the powers of a head of government, he should try to defuse the situation by taking two immediate steps. First, he should dismiss Babar Awan and in his place appoint a law minister who will take his orders from the prime minister and cooperate in the enforcement of the Supreme Court's decision on NRO. Second, he should start a dialogue on the issue of judicial appointments with the leaders of the lawyers' movement who have voiced opposition to the new system.

Our legal maestro, Aitzaz Ahsan, has only added fuel to the fire by his warning that if the Supreme Court invalidates Article 175A, there will be a confrontation between the judiciary and the legislature. This amounts to an attempt to intimidate the courts. A confrontation between the institutions is exactly what those affected by the NRO judgment are seeking in the hope of saving their skin.

In Pakistan's history, every major constitutional amendment has begotten another amendment to undo some of its provisions. The 18th Amendment is not going to be an exception to the rule. It was the result of behind-the-scenes deals made between the major parties and their allies, mainly to advance the narrow interests of their leaders. It was pushed through parliament at supersonic speed without due deliberation. Public discussion on it was stifled first by the secretiveness of the committee's proceedings and then by its rushed passage. It is riddled with linguistic, grammatical and editing errors.

Its many flaws are now coming to light thick and fast. The consensus among the political parties clearly does not represent a national consensus. The gap between party goals and national aspirations is crystal-clear. Even Rabbani, the main author of the 18th Amendment, has started talking of the 19th Amendment. The sooner it comes, the better for the country's political health. But, please, not with Rabbani, more so after his attempt in a TV interview on 26 April to justify the continuation of Zardari as the party chief while sitting in the Presidency.

Here is a quick list of what the 19th Amendment should do to strengthen parliamentary democracy and separation of powers:

--Lay down in clear terms that the president will renounce his party affiliation before taking oath of office and will stay above party politics

--Introduce proportional representation for the national and the provincial assemblies

--Introduce direct elections for the Senate and abolish seats for "technocrats"

--Reduce the terms of the president and of the National and provincial Assemblies from five to four years

--Reintroduce a shorter Concurrent List and transfer final control over the subjects to the provinces by giving them the power to override federal legislation through a qualified majority in the provincial assembly

--Abolish the ordinance-making power of the government, except when the national or provincial assembly stands dissolved

--Depoliticise the procedure for making judicial appointments

--Make party elections mandatory

--Disqualify for life corrupt politicians and those guilty of committing crimes

--Restrict the immunity of the president and governors to acts done in their official capacity

--Abolish the defection clause so that members of parliament are freed from the diktat of the party leaders and can vote according to their conscience.

(Concluded)

The writer is a former member of the Pakistan Foreign Service. Email: asif ezdi@yahoo.com

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

SUCH IS DEMOCRACY

SYED UMAIR JAVED

The discussion on the 18th Amendment has taken an unfortunate turn in legal and academic circles. Rather than voicing legal and political arguments, both the proponents and opponents of constitutional review have turned the debate into a comedy of threats and doomsday predictions. In doing so, they are avoiding the real issues surrounding the whole debate. There is no denying that the Indian basic structure doctrine is not part of the Pakistani constitutional jurisprudence. Nevertheless, the most important question before the Supreme Court, if it chooses to hear the petitions against the amendment, will be whether parliament has unlimited power to amend the constitution as provided under the Article 239 (6).

There is unlikely to be any serious legal obstacles for the Supreme Court to hear the case if it so desires. It is a well-settled law in Pakistan that ousting clauses in the constitution, similar to that in Article 239 (5), cannot oust the jurisdiction of the superior courts absolutely. It is for the Supreme Court to decide the parameters of any clause that seeks to oust judicial review. A reiteration of this principle can be found in Chief Justice Iftikhar M. Chaurdhry v. President of Pakistan PLD 2010 SC 61 wherein the court, while discussing the ouster of the courts' jurisdiction by Article 211 of the constitution held that a mere incorporation of such a provision does not preclude the court's judicial review power.

It is extremely interesting to note, without passing any judgment, that both the Articles 239 (5) and (6) were inserted into our constitution by General Zia's Constitution (Second Amendment) Order, 1985 (P.O. No. 20 of 1985), just years after the Indian Supreme Court invalidated similar worded amendments in the Indian Constitution in Miverva Mills v. Union of India 1980 AIR 1789.

It can be argued that parliament, itself being a product of the constitution, cannot have unlimited powers to amend the latter. The original constitution, albeit the amendments introduced by a dictator, did not propose that parliament would have unlimited power to amend the former. Taking a view to the contrary would assume that parliament would have the power to do any of the following: hand over sovereignty to another nation, do away with the fundamental rights of the people, make constitutional or legal posts inheritable, disallow women to cast votes and declare the Supreme Court's decision not binding on the executive etc. Such an approach is in agreement with argument which seeks to differentiate between a legislative assembly and a constituent body, parliament being the former rather than the latter.

Proponents of unlimited power invariably base their argument on the principle of parliamentary sovereignty that exists in British common law. It is however, difficult to understand how the principle, which was established to provide stability in an otherwise chaotic, unwritten constitutional arrangement, can be applied in a jurisdiction, like Pakistan, which has a written constitution, wherein no one pillar has supremacy over the other or the constitution.

It, therefore, comes as no surprise that the Supreme Court has time and again referred to the 'basic features' of the Constitution. Mehmood Khan Achakzai v. Federation of Pakistan, PLD 1997 SC 426, Wukala Mahaz Barai Tahaffuz Dastoor v. Federation of Pakistan, PLD 1998 SC 1263, Zafar Ali Shah v. Federation of Pakistan, PLD 2000 SC 869, Pakistan Lawyers Forum v. Federation of Pakistan, PLD 2005 SC 719 and Sindh High Court Bar Association v. Federation of Pakistan PLD 2009 SC 879 all discuss the concept. While it is true that the judiciary has not subscribed to its Indian counterpart's notion of a basic structure till date, it is also equally true that it continues to refer to the concept of 'basic features', however feeble it maybe. It is also correct that the superior judiciary continues to interpret articles harmoniously to crease out potential conflicts between provisions of the constitution. Using the two together, essentially, is a path which may lead to the same result as the Indian basic structure doctrine, even if the effects are not as pronounced. The question that the Supreme Court needs to answer clearly is whether there is a need to adopt the basic structure doctrine to protect the salient features of the constitution, including the fundamental rights and the separation of power.

This is not to say that the 18th Amendment, including the provisions relating to the judiciary, would necessarily be invalid if seen through the lens of the basic structure doctrine. In fact, theoretically, if it is decided that parliament does not have unlimited power to amend the constitution, or that a basic structure exists in the constitution, constitutional review and constitutional interpretation of any amendment thereafter must be done giving the greatest possible latitude to the parliament's will. In other words, even if a basic structure doctrine is adopted, the Supreme Court should not divert from its established practice of not striking down amendments, unless the later present a naked and unavoidable attack on a very small and limited list of basic features, a course that can be reasonably expected given the precedents.

We, as a democratic people, must understand that parliament amending the constitution and the Supreme Court conducting constitutional review, do not lead to a clash of institutions. It is surprising to see lawyers, including Aitzaz Ahsan, Hamid Khan, Babar Sattar and Ali Kurd, giving ultimatums and predicting war if the Supreme Court conducts constitutional review. Such an attitude is extremely irresponsible. Our individual and collectives views aside, we must defer to the constitution and allow the legal process to take its own course. We must also, as a nation, accept the Supreme Court's decision in this matter, whatsoever it may be, whether or not we agree with it. Such is democracy.

The writer is a lawyer. Email: sujaved@ gmail.com

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

NO MIRACLES IN BHUTAN

SHAMSHAD AHMAD

The 16th SAARC Summit opens in Bhutan's capital, Thimphu, this morning with leaders of its eight member-states already assembled there for two-days of another "landmark" event. Every annual summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation is a "landmark" event ending with a new declaration full of lofty rhetoric. The Thimphu summit is unlikely to do more.

There will be no miracles in Bhutan. We will only have yet another high-sounding but low-yield declaration in which the SAARC leaders will credit themselves for another "comprehensive and forward-looking milestone" in regional cooperation. But in reality, it will be only a rehash of the same old and familiar promises and commitments that have had no meaning to the region's peoples and masses.

SAARC has been described as a talk-shop. An essential part of it is the "retreat" where the participating leaders meet in an informal setting for discussions on the overall regional situation. But the problem is that discussions on bilateral and security-related issues in the region are barred in SAARC.

This year's central theme is climate change, on which the member-states will try to evolve a common SAARC position to be followed at the UN's Climate Change Summit in Mexico later this year. Progress in implementation of outstanding projects, especially operationalisation of the $300-million SAARC Development Fund and a governing mechanism for the proposed SAARC University in Delhi will also be reviewed. The question of food security might figure in the talks.

Besides these routine activities, there will be no new groundbreaking initiatives in South Asia's regional landscape. SAARC is notorious for its paper-loaded and meetings-oriented approach. It holds too many meetings with no results. Postponement of SAARC summits is a regular phenomenon. In 25 years it has held only 15 summits. Other meetings always materialize behind schedule and contribute nothing to regionalisation of trade.

It took ten years for SAARC members to agree on a preferential tariff arrangement and another ten to come round to a consensus on the South Asia Free Trade Agreement (SAFTA), which became operational in 2006. Although it has been expected to have potential, intraregional trade is less than 2 per cent of GDP.

SAARC leaders have been talking of their organisation's regional potential and stressing the need to make SAARC a "more vibrant institution" so that it becomes a strong voice in international economic forums, meaningfully contributing to regional peace, progress and prosperity. They also do not tire in expressing concern on the "inherent weaknesses and shortcomings" in SAARC's "regional approach" and in calling for more pragmatic action plans in pursuing "attainable" regional cooperation goals. We are familiar with this rhetoric at every summit meeting where the leaders regularly "reaffirm" their commitment to the principles and objectives outlined in the SAARC Charter. This is what the Colombo Declaration adopted at the 15th SAARC Summit in 2008 said, and this is likely to be the sum total of the 16th Summit in Thimphu.

SAARC came into being as an expression of South Asia's collective resolve to develop a regional cooperative framework and for the region to adapt itself to the changing times for the socio-economic well-being of its peoples. Woefully, even in the silver jubilee year of its existence, the desired change is nowhere in sight.

Despite the commonalities and strengths of the region, which is home to one-fifth of humanity, South Asia today remains one of the world's poorest areas, with a vast majority of its peoples still living in grinding poverty and subhuman conditions. Five of SAARC's eight member-states – Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives and Nepal – belong to the UN's category of Least Developed Countries, or LDCs. South Asia's total external trade is only a small fraction of the region's GDP while its intraregional trade is equally non-consequential.

With its unbroken legacy of poverty, hunger, disease, illiteracy and conflict, SAARC, as a regional cooperation organisation, has not gone beyond declaratory pronouncements, with no tangible achievement to its credit. It has neither helped in improvement of the quality of life in the region, nor accelerated South Asia's economic growth and social progress, nor even to the cultural development of its member-states. With one or two exceptions, SAARC countries also lag behind in development of genuine democracy, rule of law and good governance.

What has gone wrong with SAARC is a question that keeps agitating the minds of policymakers and practitioners of all sorts both within and outside this region. With its negligible output and a yawning gap between its promises and performance, SAARC still has a long way to go before it really comes of age. The common vision upholding the ideals of peace, stability, good-neighbourliness and mutually beneficial cooperation among its member-states remains a distant dream.

To perform, SAARC requires an enabling environment in the region, free of mistrust and hostility, without which no regional arrangement anywhere in the world has worked. In fact, political differences and bilateral disputes have impeded SAARC's performance from the very outset. While many regional organisations around the world, including the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) came into existence to face common external challenges, the main problem of the SAARC region is internal: mutual mistrust.

SAARC, as an organisation, has many faults and weaknesses inherent in its structural and functional architecture, and even some glaring shortcomings in the principles and objectives laid down in its Charter. But the absence of an enabling environment is the biggest and deepest fault line that cuts across the region, leaving South Asia with little regional impulse for any notable process towards genuine regional cooperation.

The absence of an intraregional mechanism for settlement of disputes has also severely limited SAARC's capacity to contribute to regional peace, security and development. Like ASEAN, this region also needs a Regional Forum to reinforce an intraregional process of confidence-building, preventive diplomacy and peaceful settlement of disputes.

SAARC's faults can be removed through the rewriting of its Charter, redefining of its goals and objectives, reordering of its priorities and action plans, redress of its systemic aberrations, restructuring of the Secretariat, rationalisation of the decision-making and budgetary system, reinforcement of the organisation's operational capacity and streamlining of its functional methodology.

But SAARC's fault line will not be removed unless the member-states bring in greater political will, rising above narrow national interests and, instead, assuming joint ownership of their regional effort for mutual benefit.

South Asia needs an exceptional impulse to keep abreast with the changing times. This fresh regional impulse must spring from within South Asia. Only then will our peoples be able to harness the full potential of their region and to join the worldwide quest for economic growth and development.

The absence of any political role in SAARC has had a crippling effect on the organisation's capacity to provide an environment for mutual cooperation. The absence of any political role in SAARC has had a crippling effect on the organisation's capacity to provide an environment for mutual cooperation. No wonder, a former Sri Lankan foreign minister once warned that unless SAARC dealt with bilateral issues, "it will remain a deaf, dumb and blind Association."

 

The writer is a former foreign secretary. Email: shamshad1941@yahoo.com

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

HARNESS THIS TALENT

MUHAMMAD YASIR KHAN

It was quite heartening to receive positive comments from several academics, economists and researchers in response to my previous column, 'Economists sans research'. It must be made clear that the motive of my article was to encourage economists and public sector experts to engage in some soul-searching. The multilaterals and donors shall keep on doing their programme development and related report writing, while the local experts shall focus on locally developed policy measures, well grounded in research, to answer our social and economic problems and to minimise our reliance on donor-funded policymaking.

Questions have been raised on how to develop this capacity of economists to conduct research, especially in the public sector. The answers are numerous. We are not the first country in the world to do so. There are many examples before us such as the loose group of economists put together by Mahathir Mohamad, the more structured approach of policy research departments in every ministry of the Singapore government, or the independent non-profit think tanks like the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) in the US.

The lack of independent research bodies in Pakistan is ubiquitous in all fields. But the dangers of not having one in a field as important as economic policy cannot be clearer. One can argue that we do have centres for research, such as the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics (PIDE), the fact, however, is that the PIDE has not been able to influence the case for research-based policymaking. Instead, we have seen a decline in the quality of work originating from the PIDE over the years, indicating weaknesses in the institution.

Human beings - and more so economists - respond to incentives, and Pakistani economists are no different from their global brethren. Hence, the incentive structure defines their responsiveness to research. Incentives, however, are usually confused with monetary benefits alone which is definitely not the case, at least not for economists. A look at the global fraternity of economists reveals that except for a few "rock stars" most have been content with limited monetary benefits. That does not mean such economists are selfless human beings. Their incentives lie in the recognition they get from academics, policymakers and media for the amazing research work they conduct. On the other hand, the Pakistani economists are faced with an incentive structure in which monetary benefits and recognition alike are associated with non-research work related to donor-funded projects. Thus the primary requirement to develop local research is to change the incentive structure.

The first step to address the problem of incentive structure is to establish an autonomous research body, empowered to advise and assist ministries in policy research. Such a body will not only address the monetary concerns of the researchers but also provide opportunities for recognition. The body shall focus on advising the government on the basis of research through the network of economists that shall be constructed around it. Such a body shall draw from the pool of energetic researchers through yearly fellowships and with the requirement to deliver at least one publishable research article focusing in any area of economic or social policy. This research body shall also be entrusted with the responsibility to periodically ascertain social indicators as well, which will save us from the needless public spats that some economists indulge in to defend the governments of their liking.

A second but related step shall be to engage young students, from various disciplines related to economics and policy, in primary research. The young minds are eager to apply their theoretical knowledge, the opportunities for them are, however, limited. Every year numerous social sector programmes and sub-programmes are introduced by the government, but they are rarely studied in detail or have their impact evaluated in an objective fashion. If we can, through the research centres proposed above, link our undergraduate and graduate students to these projects on impact assessment, monitoring and various other aspects of programmes, we can definitely develop a well-trained cadre of policy researchers in a few years' time.

Any half-baked effort to promote indigenous policy research will surely add to the long list of our failures. But given the current predicament, we are in dire need of local research-based policymaking, which can be achieved by streamlining the amazing talent we have in this country, which may eventually lead to real capacity building within our public sector organisations.

The writer is a policy analyst. Email: myk 2111@columbia.edu

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

WHO IS BEHIND THE HAZARA UNREST?

PART I

MOSHARRAF ZAIDI

The writer advises governments, donors and NGOs on public policy.

"When we are in Mardan or Charsadda, it is "Da Punjabian dey" (we are Punjabi), and when we are in Lahore or Faisalabad, it is "Khan Saab" (i.e., we are Pathans). But we're not Punjabi. And we are not Pathan. We are from Hazara. Why is that so difficult to understand?"

When I first learnt that there was some kind of an adverse reaction to the renaming of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, I was more than slightly miffed. NWFP is a ridiculous name. If Punjabis can inhabit Punjab, Sindhis can inhabit Sindh, and Baloch can inhabit Balochistan, it seemed quite ridiculous that Pakhtuns should be denied that same opportunity. When this controversy emerged as a major story in the national media, around the last week of March, even the addition of the word Khyber was anathema to me, a watering down of the legitimate and rightful name of Pakhtunkhwa.

In fact, in my column on March 30, in which I was unsparingly critical of Nawaz Sharif's dithering on the 18th Amendment, I even wrote that "by opposing the ANP's proposal [the PML-N] claims it is standing up for speakers of the Hindko and Potowari languages. Can speakers of Brohi, Seraiki and Urdu as their first-languages also expect this kind of moral probity from the PML-N for their languages? Of course not."

Until the first week of April the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa renaming controversy seemed to be part of a cynical political game being enacted by the Muslim League opposition parties to delay what would become the crowning achievement of the post-BB-Shaheed PPP--the passage of the transformational 18th Amendment. Just when it seemed to be going pear-shaped, Nawaz Sharif seemed to relent on his position on the name of the province, having won the argument on judicial appointments. On April 8, the National Assembly passed the 18th Amendment, and history was in the making.

Over the weekend of April 9, however, protests in Hazara Division (which is made up of five districts, Abbotabad, Haripur, Mansehra, Battagram and Kohistan) grew visibly louder and angrier. When police firing resulted in the deaths of eight people in Abbotabad on April 11, I was convinced that while the "Noon League" may still be guided by national interest, the PML-Q's incurable cynicism was costing lives and, perhaps as importantly, costing the people of Hazara a chance to celebrate a glorious moment in national history with the rest of the country.

During the past two weeks, I was repeatedly asked a question that is a common Pakistani response to things that we know very little about. "Who is behind it?" The utter absence of a rational and linear tradition in the Pakistani discourse, and the dominance of the military in civilian affairs have produced this involuntary reflex of conspiracy-theorising in the Pakistani mind. When we don't agree with a cause, and we see large crowds protesting that cause, our natural and instinctive response is to question the legitimacy of the cause itself.

Many of us that were involved in the movement for the restoration of the chief justice of Pakistan of course know this feeling all too well. For the better part of two years, the historic movement was repeatedly described as a product of one kind of conspiracy or another. From army officers to PPP jiyalas, anyone that was opposed to the movement had a wild theory to explain the movement. Anything, but to have to accept that the movement was real, and represented real people's real aspirations.

Though tempted to lay into the PML-Q and its desperation as being primarily responsible for stoking a fire among the more than five million people of Hazara Division, I thought it might be worth my while to actually call some of my friends and acquaintances that belong to the region. After speaking to several people from Hazara that come from completely different walks of life, I was even more ambivalent. For some strange reason, people from Hazara, including ethnic Pakthuns, kept expressing a deep-seated disappointment at the renaming of the province. Sooba Hazara (the demand for a separate Hazara province) came up in every conversation.

The next day, determined to explore what was really going on, I decided to make the short trek up to Hazara Division to find out for myself: who is behind the unrest in Hazara?

The answer, I discovered quite quickly and emphatically, is simple. Discounting for all kinds of response biases, the predominant force behind the unrest in Hazara are the people of Hazara themselves.

 

The question of why people from Hazara are so strongly opposed to the name Pakhtunkhwa for their province is not a simple one to answer. The demand for Sooba Hazara is the product of a complicated confluence of factors, rather than a simply linguistic or ethnic issue. The deaths of eight protestors on April 11 has given thrust to the deep sense of resentment that the Pakhtunkhwa debate has ignited in one of the most stable and peaceful regions in the country.

One of the people I met in Abbotabad was Baba Haider Zaman, the former District Nazim of Abbotabad and now the head of the multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, cross-party rainbow coalition that is articulating and amplifying the demand for Sooba Hazara. Zaman is a frail and saintly old man who seems physically incapable of being angry about anything. A lifelong local politician, Zaman shot to fame in the region when he stood up to Nawaz Sharif in the late 1990s, an era during which Sharif was virtually invincible in the region. Zaman was endorsed by the PML-Q the last time he won an election (as District Nazim of Abbotabad), but is a fiercely independent politician.

That independence is what has helped coalesce every single political party in the region around the coalition that he now leads. Their demand for a separate province seems like a manufactured one at first. Yet when I spoke to ordinary citizens, businessmen, bus conductors and waiters in Abbotabad and in Haripur, there was universal support for the idea. Hazarewals are not making this up. There is real and palpable resentment at the ANP, and a national narrative that seems impervious to the idea that the Hazara region cannot be, by any measure of ethnicity, language, and politics, Pakhtunkhwa.

I repeatedly badgered the people I met, to explain to me why they resented their Pakhtun brothers for being able to live in a province that validates their identity. To a man (and woman), I was told that the people of Hazara have no resentment for Pakhtuns. And to a man I was asked why it was so difficult for me to understand that Hazarewals are not Pakhtuns.

I met local politicians from the PPP, the PML-N, the MQM, the PML-Q, Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamiatul Ulema-e-Islam. Every single one wants a separate Hazara province. The two ANP MPAs from the region (Gohar Nawaz Khan and Qazi Asad) are even further ahead of the field. They have already filed resolutions in the provincial assembly for a Hazara province.

There should be no doubt. The autocratic leaders of the political parties might now attempt to get mileage from the issue of Sooba Hazara (as Chaudhry Shujaat is attempting), but they stand widely discredited in Hazara.

The unrest in Hazara is the product of a complex and long-standing cocktail of administrative, political, social, ethnic and linguistic issues. It is organic and unlikely to disappear from the radar of regional and provincial politics for a long time.

(To be continued)

www.mosharrafzaidi.com

 

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I. THE NEWS

EDITORIAL

LET THEM KNOW

TAYYAB SIDDIQUI

Pakistan's involvement in the war on terror as a front-line state has, over the last eight years, played havoc with its economy which was already in a bad shape due to many factors including the Afghan war and the resultant influx of three million Afghan refugees. It had to bear, yet again, an awful burden. The war has cost Pakistan enormously and will have far-reaching consequences on its political and strategic future. The tragic part of the whole exercise is that neither the people of Pakistan have been taken into confidence with regard to the range and extent of their country's involvement in the war or the consequences thereof, nor the international community has been briefed on the magnitude of Pakistan's suffering.

The operation against militants in the tribal areas, besides entailing huge losses, has led to the exodus of about half a million civilians from those areas, disrupting their lives forever. There has been a lot of talk of economic assistance and aid provided to Pakistan but no accurate figures are available from any source. It appears from the condescending manner in which aid to Pakistan, particularly from the US, is announced, that a great favour has been done to Pakistan. Also, there is a lot of confusion on the issue of disbursement of aid. The US administration has informed Congress that Pakistan has received $18 billion including $11.5 billion as "military assistance" since September 2001. Of this amount, $7 billion are on account of the Coalition Support Fund. While the amount cannot be verified, its designation is grossly misleading. The payments on account of the CSF are reimbursement of the services rendered and facilities provided by Pakistan and should not be mentioned as assistance.

Pakistan's role in the war led the country to near financial collapse in 2008 and it had to ask its friends to bail it out from the crisis. Strangely enough none came forward. President Zardari in his naiveté expected $10 billion from international donors but not a single cent was committed until Pakistan agreed to the humiliating terms of the IMF. A group was formed by the name of 'Friends of Pakistan' and a conference was held in Tokyo in 2008 in which pledges to provide $5.638 billion to the country were made. Till date only $251 million have been received against the actual commitment. This should have been an eye-opener for our government.

Also, much hype was created about the strategic dialogue but regrettably none of Pakistan's request was given any tangible response except for announcing $125 million for the energy sector. Pakistan must make it clear to the world in general, and to the US and the European Union in particular, that it will continue its cooperation in fighting terrorism only if it is provided full international support on various fronts including the economic front.

So far the government has failed miserably in letting the international community know the enormous price Pakistan has been paying to make the region terrorism-free and to promote global peace and security. If terrorism is a threat to world peace and security, as indeed it is, other countries must also come forward and take the strain in order to eradicate the menace of terrorism from this world.

The writer is a former ambassador. Email: m.tayyab.siddiqui @gmail.com

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

FLEECING SCHOOL FEE SYSTEM

 

THERE are, of course, some private schools which are, by and large, service-oriented with motivated people running them with the mission to spread quality and modern education. These schools are contributing significantly to the promotion of education and students of these institutions have shined in different spheres of life.

But these are exceptions and the fact remains that the vast majority of private schools are nothing but money minting dens, run by non-professional and greedy individuals, who know nothing about education but use their institutions to fleece the general public. Missionary spirit is totally lacking and these are considered by their owners as an industry and have become so-called education tycoons. A survey conducted by the APP, the leading news agency of the country, has pinpointed the pathetic situation prevailing in private education sector, where students and parents are forced to pay heavy fees for poor learning. Apart from a number of drawbacks and deficiencies, they have become another source of financial burden on the hard-pressed people as fees are hiked every now and then and suddenly without any justification. They charge hefty fees comparable to those imparting quality education and extending a number of facilities to students but are far behind in ensuring delivery of the required service. They receive exorbitant fee from students but pay pitiably low salary to teachers and even do not make them payment for summer vacation despite getting full fee from students for these holidays. They also get heavy amounts in the name of annual charges, registration fee, library fee, sports fee, security and laboratory fee but have no such facility or negligible set-up for the purpose. Their teachers are also non-qualified and by the time they get necessary experience they move out to greener pastures. The survey has also rightly pointed out that the students are advised to buy school uniform and stationery from the fixed stores from where the owners get commission. Uniforms and syllabus are also changed very frequently, adding to the burden of the poor parents. We have education ministries both at federal and provincial levels but regrettably they have closed their eyes to this broad daylight robbery that takes place everywhere in the country. The present Government, which claims to be people's Government, should please listen to the plight of the parents and devise a transparent and effective mechanism to regulate working of the private educational institutions. Parents should also have a say in this mechanism.

 

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

THANK YOU CIA!

 

ACCORDING to a report by Washington Post, the CIA has magnanimously changed its tactics of killing people through the dreaded drone attacks. It reportedly is using new, smaller missiles and advanced surveillance techniques to 'minimise civilian casualties in its targeted killings of people in Pakistan's tribal areas'. We are thankful to the American intelligence agency for its humane, considerate and caring view of its mission to kill innocent people.

Shouldn't this show that ultimately the CIA has started thinking about the woes of the people and has come out with a perfect mechanism for precision killing of terrorists and militants? In the first place it makes no difference whether you kill people with sword or bullet. Murder is murder by whatever means you carry it out. Secondly, the CIA claims that the technological improvements have resulted in more accurate operations that have provoked relatively little public outrage but the claim is rebutted by two counter-terrorism officials of the United States who have been quoted to have said that the number of civilian deaths is 'extremely low' meaning thereby that innocent people continue to become target of these attacks. You can't justify or compensate the loss of even one human being and here thousands of people have been killed mercilessly for no fault of theirs. Thirdly, it is not the only question of use of sophisticated technology and better ground coordination to avoid collateral damage but the real issue is that of violation of the sovereignty of Pakistan. People of Pakistan have been condemning these attacks and urging the United States to respect the former's sovereignty. There has also been demand that the United States should transfer the technology to Pakistan and the mission to target terrorists should be left to the latter's forces but there is no visible progress. The only solution to this problem is to halt these attacks altogether, as sophistication in technology is a mere gimmick, which would not satisfy the people of Pakistan.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

MAKE PEOPLE AWARE OF VAT'S IMPLICATIONS

 

WHILE the country is passing through a difficult period where it is accepting worst type of dictation from the IMF, the Government is in a hurry to get approval of Parliament and Provincial Assemblies for enforcement of Value Added Tax (VAT) from the next financial year, which is one of the conditions of the Fund. However there is opposition to its imposition from business community and Sindh Province has adopted a different course making it known to the Federation that it would collect the VAT on Services on its own.

It appears that the stakeholders are either not fully aware of the VAT or they are interpreting it for their own advantage. VAT is a general consumption tax levied on goods and services. It has become a pivotal component of the tax systems of both developing and transition economies and seen as a key instrument for securing macroeconomic stability and growth. The Government had committed to the IMF that integrated VAT regime would be enforced on goods and services with its collection through FBR. However in the 7th NFC Award, the Federal Government had accepted the right of provinces of taxing services. As a result Sindh Province compelled not only the Federal Government but also the IMF to accept its demand. According to experts, if Sindh's demand was accepted, there would be disputes on origin and destination between Karachi and Islamabad, double tax burden and high collection cost. We think there is a need to inform the people, particularly the business community about the implications of the imposition of VAT so that their misunderstandings could be removed, otherwise there would be again protests and shutdowns that would further dent our economy already under stress due to prolonged load-shedding. VAT being an indirect tax is a regressive tax and the main challenge for economists and tax designers would be to mitigate its regressiveness and make it consumer-friendly. At the same time we would impress upon the Federal Government to make Sindh agree on the imposition of an integrated VAT on goods and services otherwise it would be difficult to implement it.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

WAR ON TERROR, SOME FOOD FOR THOUGHT

FRIENDLY FIRE

KHALID SALEEM

 

On the outskirts of the beautiful city of Algiers a visitor would find the very well maintained Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery. Buried there are servicemen who lost their lives fighting for the ultimate victors during World War II. Etched on the gravestone of one young soldier one finds the epitaph: "Some day we shall know the reason why". Could there be a more apt summing up of man's anguish over the insanity of war than this poignant outcry of the distraught family of this young victim?

Despite the so-called march of civilization and the staggering advance of technology, the tragic fact remains that, try as they might, no one has so far been able to accurately pinpoint 'the reason why'. Over the years men have gone to war against other men at the behest of ambitious leaders, killing and maiming their fellow beings in the process. And yet, when history was at last writ –by the victors – nothing but nothing emerged to justify the carnage, the cruelty and the havoc wrought as a result of these horrendous campaigns.

History of man's march toward civilization (?) is replete with vivid instances of man's inhumanity to man; of man's greed, rapaciousness and untold ambition. All to what end? Man's inherent mental capacity to distinguish right from wrong is, instead, utilized to justify the unjustifiable; man's covetousness of what is not his but rather the veritable right of his fellow beings. This has ever been the tragedy of humankind that appears to have lost its way in the labyrinth of rapaciousness and untold ambition. Each war that has been fought has had its own peculiar justification and its own particular set of advocates. These advocates (spin-doctors in modern lexicon) take pains and go to any extreme not only to justify the conflict but also to glorify the gory details in ways only these individuals are capable of. In the current conflicts the powers that be have coined a brand new pretext: preemption. This pretext is based on the philosophy that a mighty power has the inherent right to hunt down and destroy any hapless minion that in its opinion could one day be a threat to its own selfish interests. It is all a bit wooly but then it is not for the victims to reason why. The two wars being waged in Afghanistan and Iraq are no different from the wars in the past waged by those who coveted what was not rightfully theirs. The solitary difference is that the visual media have conferred on the conflicts an entirely new dimension. People around the world follow them like on-going soap operas; only that the bullets are real, the smart bombs and daisy cutters lethal and it is real human beings who are being cut down. The euphemisms devised by the spin-doctors and drilled into the memory banks of the anchormen and women do not make the carnage any less tragic.

What is surpassing these two wars in insanity is the chapeau 'war on terror' that shows no sign of waning down. The world, as a result, is passing through an extremely difficult, nay critical period. Talk everywhere is of belligerence, not peace; of bigotry, not tolerance. War, which was once regarded by

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

ELECTRICITY: FROM DEFICIENCY TO SURPLUS

RIZWAN GHANI

 

Government's failed energy policy. PM's Ten Point Energy Conservation plan has fallen flat. Gillani's statement about seeking Obama's help in energy sector, and Energy Minister's statement that Rental Power Projects (RPP) are essential for the country show that inept PPP leadership is powerless to control private energy sector (PES) , unwilling to solve electricity crisis or partner of PES in destroying Pakistan. America has failed to manage its energy sector. It is lagging behind China and most European countries in terms of using "green" renewable energy resources.

Pakistan's RPP are costly, outdated and foreign fuel based energy generation will push national economy into non-ending cycle of debt and price hike. After clearing Rs. 400 bln circular debt, government has once again allocated Rs.116 bln for ending circular debt. Pakistan has to end heist of national wealth in broad daylight by PES. Gillani's decision sanction Rs. 20 bln for repair of three power stations clearly shows that PES is not maintaining energy infrastructure. A total of Rs. 548 bln (including $125 million US aid) has been paid to PES on different pretexts, which is more than Public Sector Development Program budgetary allocation (Rs. 495 bln) for 2009-10.

Renewable energy is the future to transform Pakistan from electricity deficient to electricity surplus country. An energy policy review in China showed that renewable energy is the right road for development (30 March, China Daily). China surpassed Germany (25.77 GW) by generating 25.8 GW electricity from wind turbines. Beijing plans to generate 150 GW of electricity from wind power by 2020 (April 13, China Daily). One GW is equal to 1024 MW. Thus, China will generate 12.5 GW every year. It costs $one million to generate one MW of electricity from renewable energy resources. Gillani's failed energy marathon could only come up with total savings of 1500 MW (33 percent reduction in load shedding) out of total 5000 MW shortage and there was no vision to tackle the issue permanently.

Five months are required to end current energy crisis permanently. Had PPP government been serious, it could have overcome current electricity shortfall in five months by adopting Beijing's successful renewable energy plans. PPP government for unknown reasons instead doled out Rs. 548 bln ($6.3 bln) to private energy sector. The amount could have been used to generate 6,300 MW electricity from renewable resources, end load shedding permanently and produce a surplus of 1300 MW. Next, it would have brought down current annual fuel imports bill from $9 bln to $3.7 bln by reducing furnace oil imports by sixty percent. Furthermore, it would have saved the country 25,475 MMCF of gas required to generate 6,300 MW at the rate of 4.04MMCF gas daily to generate one MW of electricity (Govt. promises 33 percent cut in load shedding, local news April 24). Thus, by adopting renewable energy resources billions of MMCF of gas could have been freed for domestic consumers and saved billions of dollars being paid for furnace oil import, which in turn fuels inflation and resultant poverty.

Permanently harnessing Pakistan's future electricity demands. Energy Minister has disputed output figures of 10,300 MW instead of 19,000 MW (PM's 10-point conservation plan local news). He forecasted national energy need to grow to 112 GW by 2030. Pakistan can permanently harness country's future energy needs by adopting an energy policy based on China's energy model. Nationalize energy sector, adopt renewable energy and establish National Energy Commission for better energy coordination with National Development and Reform Commission (April 22 & 21, China Daily). China and America are producing 26 GW and 36 GW from wind energy, respectively. Global wind energy capacity is going to increase from 159 GW at the end of this year to 409 GW by 2014 (China overtakes Germany in wind power, 13 April, China Daily). Germany and Spain are producing 8GW and 3 GW from solar panels (April 21, New York Times). Thus, renewable energy could equip the nation to meet energy targets ten years ahead of its projected needs.

PPP government is part of electricity problem. It has failed to put up a comprehensive policy for generating electricity from renewable energy. The details of Board of Investment's Solar Energy Policy (local media, 23 April) show that there are no concrete plans to adopt renewable energy at national level. Other countries have already finalized their renewable energy policies. The details of UK's political parties "Green" manifestoes show plans for "low carbon industrial zones", marine energy hubs in south, electric car industry in north, zero emission by 2050 and £8.7 bln to help domestic electricity consumers to switch to solar panels (Green Manifestoes, April 25, The Guardian). American media is also calling for proactive action to replace fossil fuel with alternate energy to save $26 bln being incurred annually on it (Tea party with a difference, April 25, New York Times).

Public selling electricity to government. In 1942, Washington adopted Marshall Plan for electricity generation and distribution by individuals in rural America. National Rural Electric Cooperation is its current form (www.nreca.org). The plan helped overcome electricity in months. It allowed the individual homeowners to sell surplus electricity to local and state energy companies. The companies in turn sold the electricity to local industry within the state and companies of neighboring states. This system saved line losses, theft, sustained local industry and in turn economy and kept the price low. Federal Government passed necessary laws, funded necessary infrastructure to sustain and support sale of surplus energy through national grid. Pakistan has 29 million houses. Each house by using renewable energy resources can become "Zero Energy Home" or turn itself into "clean energy powerhouse" selling energy to state. The different variables of this simple system can help Pakistan overcome energy shortage within months. American farmers are using wind turbines at hamlet, village level to sustain local agriculture. Due to successful energy policy, China is having excess energy "problem" (Too much energy, April 22, China Daily). Steps needed to facilitate adoption of renewable energy. Nationalize energy sector to cut commodity prices (http://www.thecommentfactory.com/resource-nationalism-is-back-2877). The high cost of electricity is undermining Pakistan's exports despite low labor costs (local news, April 23). Reduce salaries of energy sector to the level of government servant pay scales. Cut overhead in energy sector including private security companies hired by energy sector. Enforce anti-corruption laws in letter and spirit. China has awarded death sentence to Deputy Leader of State Bank of China for involvement in corruption and taking kickbacks. Public should be allowed to file FIRs against government employees in local courts to help people fight corruption. Government has to scrap immunity and departmental protections of its employees to end corruption in public sector.

Invest in renewable technologies not subsidies. Pakistan needs to pass laws to promote renewable instead of giving subsidies. Pakistan needs to adopt renewable energy targets to protect its exports targets under "Green Laws", meet UN "Green" objectives and cut cost o

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

NO ROADMAP TO ARREST VIOLENCE

ASIF HAROON RAJA

 

When the US decided to invade Afghanistan in October 2001, both Afghanistan and Pakistan were on very friendly terms. For the first time in Pakistan's history its western border had become safe. Within Pakistan, FATA and Balochistan were peaceful and people of the two regions were as patriotic as of any other region. Suicide attacks or car bomb blasts were unheard of. Tribesmen of FATA stood fully committed to defend western border at their own. It was owing to their sense of patriotism that Pak government never felt the need to send regular troops there. Small scale localized skirmishes were dealt by the Political Agent who had at his command Khasadars and Frontier Constabulary. On rare occasions assistance of Frontier Corps was sought. Despite common ethnic and religious affinities between the people living both sides of the Durand Line, the people of FATA never allowed foreign influence to penetrate within their domain. Afghanistan government's machinations never made any impact on them despite extreme poverty and underdevelopment in FATA. Likewise NAP, latter ANP's desire for Pakhtunistan failed to cut ice in FATA.

 

War on terror coined by George W. Bush led neo cons was neither Afghanistan nor Pakistan's war but US war. It was started by the US not to eliminate or curb terrorism but to achieve mercantile and strategic interests. A huge intelligence infrastructure near Kabul was built in late 2001 to carryout covert operations against Pakistan, Iran, China, Russia and Central Asian States. India with the assistance of others took upon itself to weaken Pakistan from within and described its notorious intelligence agency RAW as best suited to undertake effective clandestine operations since it had already made deep inroads in various regions of Pakistan. Base of Kabul suited RAW since it provided direct access to FATA, NWFP and Balochistan. India maneuvered to establish anti-Pakistan and pro-India regime in Kabul comprising members of non-Pashtun Northern Alliance. Oil was sprinkled in FATA and Balochistan to make them restive and to gradually spread flames of militancy towards contiguous NWFP and Punjab.

Military operations launched by the troops in South Waziristan antagonized the Waziris and Mehsuds who decided to confront the Army. Foreign agencies exploited the clash they had engineered; cultivated some among them and offered cash, weaponry, moral support and intimate guidance how to go about conducting successful guerilla warfare.

Having made the two Waziristans and Bajaur restive, Lal Masjid episode was planned by the masterminds in Kabul to provoke the government and security forces as well as the militants of FATA and Swat. RAW agents slipped into the mosque and held Maulana Ghazi and others hostage and prevented them from striking a deal. Use of excessive force by security forces in July 2007 against women and children angered the militants. The sad event resulted in intensification of recruitment of young recruits, which eased the task of plot makers. To seek revenge suicide bombers were unleashed to wreck havoc in major cities. The plot thickened when Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) under unknown Baitullah Mehsud with tentacles in all seven tribal agencies came into being from nowhere in December 2007. TTP's linkage with Fazlullah led militants in Swat was part of the gory plan. In Balochistan, KGB, KHAD, RAW had managed to make ingress into Baloch dominated areas in early 1970s. After kindling Baloch nationalism among Marris and Mengals with the help of Baloch Students Organization (BSO), the trio supported Marri-Mengal led insurgency in 1973. Old links were revived by the new band of CIA-FBI-RAM-MI-6-RAW after 9/11 to extend support to Akbar Bugti and later to Brahamdagh Bugti led Baloch insurgency directed towards creation of independent Balochistan. During over eight years of fighting the ghosts of terrorism, hardly a day has passed peacefully in the two affected countries. Each suicide or bomb attack or group attack claimed tens of innocent lives and destruction to property. Suicide attacks have become a norm and it is now being said that it is Pakistan's war of survival and that the US had no role in igniting terrorism in Pakistan. The brigade of US lovers vociferously lends strength to this argument and shifts the blame to Gen Zia's legacy. These morons suffering from amnesia forget that the US had a key role in promoting gun and drug cultures in Pakistan during the Afghan Jihad against Soviet forces in the 1980s and in militarizing the society. In that timeframe CIA was not only indulging in massive drug trade from Afghanistan to European and US markets via Pakistan to finance Jihad, but also making use of Jihadis like gun fodder to defeat the Red Army and to disintegrate USSR.

The US achieved its objectives at the cost of death of over 1.5 million Mujahideen herded from all over the Muslim world. USA became the sole super power without shedding a single drop of blood in the war. Now the US is gunning down same Jihadis whom it used to describe as holy warriors. Purpose behind creating barbaric Pakistani Taliban was to reuse Jihadis against Pak Army, defame Afghan Taliban, make the concept of Islamic rule an object of disgust and ridicule, and to pave way for creation of Pashtunistan.

Notwithstanding the treacherous role of our detractors, major part of blame fall on the shoulders of our rulers who readily get lured for personal gains and fall into the trap. The civil society, security forces and the country as a whole are going through hell owing to myopic and self-seeking policies of our leaders who have no sense of making distinction between friend and foe. By agreeing to fight US dictated senseless war on terror and giving up Kashmir card in a platter under the policy of appeasement with India, Gen Musharraf caused irreparable harm to Pakistan.

Current rulers are following the same self-destructive policies as a result of which Pakistan continues to bleed. Eight years have lapsed since Pakistan was pushed into the pool of terrorism, but we are still swimming against rough tides to stay afloat, not knowing when we will touch the shore. Well knowing that use of force will aggravate rather than solve the problem of extremism and terrorism, our rulers continue to rely on the instrument of force and feel satisfied with tactical battles won by the Army at a very high price. No road map has so far been made how to put an end to cycle of violence. Tactical victories provide temporary relief only but by no means cure the disease. Till such time root causes of terrorism are not addressed through wholesome socio-politico-economic package and foreign support to terrorists dry up, scourge of terrorism will not get cured.

The writer is a retired Brig and a freelance defence analyst.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

INDIA, UNITED NATIONS & KASHMIR

DR GHULAM NABI FAI

 

Dr Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India's assertion that "there can be no redrawing of borders in Jammu Kashmir" and former Indian Supreme Court judge Saghir Ahmad's recommendation "to restore the autonomy to the extent possible" need to be supplemented by some observations from the view point of the people of Kashmir. These deserve to be borne in mind by all those who wish the conflict to be justly resolved once and for all. When the Kashmir dispute erupted in 1947-1948, the United States took the stand that the future status of Kashmir must be ascertained in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of the people of the territory.

The UN Security Council adopted a resolution on 21 April 1948 which was based on that unchallenged principle. So the issue in Kashmir is about the right of self-determination which was agreed upon by both India and Pakistan, endorsed by the Security Council and accepted by the international community. The concept to convert the existing cease-fire line into a permanent International boundary is an ideal non-existent solution. Any such suggestion is an insult to the intelligence of the people of Kashmir. One cannot imagine a better formula for sowing a minefield in South Asia that will lead them to a nuclear disaster. The people revolted against the status quo and status quo cannot be an answer? Also, Kashmiris wish to emphasize that their land is not a real estate which can be parceled out between two disputants but the home of a nation with a history far more compact and coherent than India's and far longer than Pakistan's. No settlement of their status will hold unless it is explicitly based on the principles of self-determination and erases the so-called line of control, which is in reality the line of conflict.

The idea of autonomy for Kashmir is an absolute fallacy. Here one has to rely on a provision of the Indian Constitution. All Constitutions of the world are subject to amendments and Indian Constitution is no exception. If not now, in the foreseeable future, the Indian legislature can delete this provision in the Constitution and the move will not even need a debate in the Parliament. Secondly, Kashmiris have had the experience of a limited autonomy, which was first practiced under a personal understanding between Prime Minister Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah and later provided for by Section 370 of the Indian Constitution. Kashmir was granted autonomous powers over all sectors excluding communications, defence and foreign affairs. It was eroded and eventually whittled away by the forces of circumstances.

My opinion was confirmed by a poll conducted jointly by major news outlets on Aug 12, 2007: CNN-IBN and Hindustan Times in India and Dawn and News in Pakistan. A majority of those polled in Kashmir Valley (87% to be precise) preferred freedom (Azadi). The Azadi means both the rejection of line of control into an international border and rejection of concept of autonomy. However, there is but one fair, just, legal, and moral solution to Kashmir which was provided by the United Nations.

The procedures contemplated at early stage of the dispute at the United Nations for its solution may be varied in the light of changed circumstances but its underlying principle must be scrupulously observed if justice and rationality are not be thrown overboard. The setting aside of the UN resolution is one thing; the discarding of the principle they embodies is altogether another. So the settlement has to be in accordance with the wishes of the people; impartially ascertained; in conditions of freedom from intimidation.

Kashmiris are open to a constitutional dispensation that answers all of India's legitimate national security and human rights concerns. With regard to the former, they are willing to explore permanent neutrality for Kashmir along the model of the 1955 Austrian State Treaty and a renunciation of war or the threat of force in international affairs along the model of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. They are willing to consider abandoning a military force like Costa Rica, Haiti, and Panama. Moreover, they hold no objection to providing community quotas in government offices along the lines of the 1960 Constitution for the Republic of Cyprus to safeguard against invidious discrimination of any religious or ethnic group, i.e., Pandit, Buddhist, Sikh, and Muslim alike.

With good faith by all parties common ground leading to a final settlement of the Kashmir tragedy can be discovered. An appointment of a special envoy by President Obama, like Bishop Desmond Tutu will hasten the way of peace and prosperity in the region of South Asia.

 

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PAKISTAN OBSERVER

EDITORIAL

 

PAKISTAN HAS TO WORK, DESPITE ITS FAILINGS

VIEWS FROM ABROAD

MUSTAFA QADRI

 

Many an observer has written Pakistan's obituary. Whether or not it was ever a good idea, Pakistan has managed to survive the past six decades. Although ethnic and religious identity politics has routinely threatened its dismemberment, there remains no credible option but to make Pakistan work. Few states have their very existence queried more often than Pakistan. Given that this strategically important country has become synonymous with terrorism and nuclear proliferation, that might not seem surprising. But such sentiments are not merely fodder for foreign observers eager to pontificate on the failings of the subcontinent's first Islamic republic.

Pakistan's chronic incapacity to adequately deliver the basics to most of its citizens has led many here to champion ethnic separatism or Islamic revolution. The hope is that these alternate visions of statehood will finally deliver the promises Pakistan has struggled to provide. It isn't uncommon to hear Pakistanis, especially in the Punjabi heartland, speak of the need to move towards "Islamic" values to wash away the stain of rampant corruption, poverty and crime. But concerted efforts to Islamise Pakistan have been breathtaking failures that have stoked these very same ills while exacerbating division. Islamic organisations, for instance, are afforded a range of tax and other exemptions that many cynically exploit to avoid government oversight or taxation. It isn't uncommon for landlords to bribe district preachers to promote their agendas, like evicting Hindus or Christians from valuable real estate. But a forced Islamic identity poses a deeper problem. It is impossible to agree on what it precisely means to be Muslim, let alone how to implement the mechanics of an Islamic State in modern times. Sadly, that hasn't stopped successive Pakistan leaders from mobilising Islam as the signal marker of citizenship. This has had particularly dire consequences for minorities and women. Legislative amendments from 1973 onwards turned non-Muslims into second-class citizens. Yet even such chauvinism has not satisfied the most ardent Islamists. The Pakistan Taliban movement, a Pashtun network of militants and activists, has looked to establish an ultra-conservative emirate along the tribal frontier with Afghanistan. But along with ceaseless attacks by Pakistan and US forces, its strict adherence to violent coercion over everything else has, unsurprisingly, failed to capture the popular imagination. Mainstream Islamic parties have consistently polled poorly in all general elections that major secular parties have been allowed to contest unmolested.In contrast, ethnic identity politics has proved more resilient in Pakistan. The Baloch community have taken the most strident approach – many openly call for complete separation from Pakistan. But sections of the Pashtun, Sindhi and Urdu communities have also canvassed greater autonomy. No expression of political aspiration has been more severely repressed by Pakistan's security forces than ethnic nationalism. For Balochi, Pakhtun and Sindhi separatists, the consequences have been dire: disappearances and extra-judicial murder of activists, their relatives or perceived sympathisers has been rampant for decades, especially in Balochistan. Separatists too have been guilty of reprisal attacks, kidnappings and killings.

Going as it does against the very grain of Pakistan's claim to be a home for the subcontinent's Muslims, ethnic nationalism has been condemned by both Islamic and the elite as a mischievous attempt to destabilise the nation. In reality, it has always been a direct consequence of marginalisation. That is why Bengalis, incensed by systematic discrimination from Pakistan's Punjab dominated institutions, fought to create Bangladesh in 1971. At political rallies in the Balochi, Pakhtun and Urdu-speaking slums of Karachi, you can hear the echoes of 1971 today. But the idea that ethnic nationalism will unlock true freedom, or that Pakistan itself is an impediment to liberation, is a dangerous fantasy. Despite Pakistan's failings, the alternatives are far worse than anything we have already faced. Just as importantly, the story of Pakistan is not monolithically negative. Pakistan has weathered a remarkably savage civil war under very public pressure from the US, a country deeply mistrusted here. If anything, the war and its consequences have helped to unify the nation, be it through a shared experience of terrorism, the commitment of everyday Pakistanis to live their lives, or philanthropy for victims of this war.

Our country has developed a vibrant media and telecommunications industry, while civil institutions are at present more robust and accountable than ever before. A recent package of constitutional reforms will see greater autonomy given to the provinces. The president has been stripped of the powers, inherited from a past dictator, to dismiss national and provincial assemblies and appoint military chiefs and provincial governors. Ordinary Pakistanis may not appreciate the reforms all that much, and who could blame them? Most continue to live in disgraceful poverty despite successive governments pledging, and failing, to alleviate their suffering.

Pakistan remains a deeply troubled land. But the concept of Pakistan is not at fault. At the core the problem has always been the elite's exploitation of our divisions and resentments to avoid proper scrutiny of their abject disregard for the average Pakistani. We must learn to live with our differences, to compromise and express dissent in a constructive fashion. A commitment to genuinely accountable parliamentary democracy is the only viable platform for this in the foreseeable future. — The Guardian

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

LEAD-LADEN VEGETABLES

 

The detection of lead at a level much higher than the World Health Organisation (WHO) recommended limit in five widely consumed vegetables across the country is certainly a cause for seious concern. No less an organization than the Bangladesh Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (BCSIR) has confirmed this after conducting a test on samples collected from all 64 districts. So the authenticity of the findings should be beyond doubt, notwithstanding the sense of perplexity involved. The highest concentration of lead found in potatoes is 136.28 micro grams in a kilogram and this rather dubious credit goes to Madaripur district. Other districts to top the list for lead concentration in cabbage, lalshak radish and beans are Habiganj, Chittagong, Pirojpur and Narsingdi respectively.

Presence of lead in food items beyond permissible level is a sure source of slow poisoning of human body. BCSIR chairman could not be more categorical when he claimed that intake of such contaminated vegetables in the long run may cause damage to human bones, brain, blood, kidney and thyroid gland. What happens to cattle or animals which eat some of these vegetables raw has not been mentioned but one can see that the risk posed to them can be equally or more potently damaging. In that case, there are double chances of lead entering into the food chain.

This surely does not bode well for a country with poor health infrastructure. So the best solution is to stop the absorption of lead at source by potentially more active leafy vegetables. Poor quality chemical fertiliser and untreated bio-fertiliser usually made from poultry feed are known to be a most widespread source of absorption by the soil and then by vegetables. This clearly indicates where the solution lies. Certainly, the quality of fertiliser has to be improved and tested before application in soil. As for untreated bio-fertiliser, there is need for its treatment and getting rid of harmful agents like lead. The cost involved in doing so is likely to be far less than the health cost the nation will pay in future if no remedial measures are taken now.      

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

SAARC ENVIRONMENT

 

South Asian countries agreed to create a common fund for adapting, implementing and transferring technologies that will reverse the adverse impacts of climate change in the region. But the creation of the Fund fell short of what most members wanted, which was to have legally-binding quotas for carbon emission - ahead of the 16th climate summit scheduled to be held in Mexico later this year. Apparently, India was the lone country to oppose the idea as it has long held the view that such cuts should be voluntary and non-binding for each country.     

However, it is quite evident that there is growing concern among the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation (SAARC) countries that climate change is an important issue that needs immediate attention. The prime minister of the current summit's host-country Bhutan, Jigmi Yoser Thinley, was eloquent in describing the impact of climate change on his country and the region. He particularly mentioned the quick melting of the glaciers and the loss of permafrost from the mountain peaks as evidence of the fast deteriorating environment.
It is certainly hoped that the 16th SAARC summit will come up with something substantial to justify its long existence.

 A wide array of "green technologies" is widely available now. These include renewable energy sources including solar, wind, hydrogen and bio-fuels. It is important to remember that those using such sources will be in an advantageous position in future. Therefore, if the member-states of SAARC desire they can easily combine economic advancement with green technology. Some developing countries like China have already adopted national income accounting in terms of "Green GDP". There is no reason why the SAARC countries cannot do so.   

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

SORRY SIR, NO ENTRY..!

 

"..Owner of India's best stadium can't enter Willingdon club…" Mumbai Mirror April 27th
So you watched both the IPL semi finals and also the finals? You marveled at the state of art stadium where the matches were played you heard that it was owned by D Y Patil, who also named it after himself, you heard the said man is also the Governor of Tripura, and then you hear that a prestigious club in Mumbai refuses membership to him!                

"Oh my God!" you shout, "The man's got everything, name, fame and money, yet he was refused!
I can hear Patil himself saying, "I built a stadium, called it after myself and even became a governor so that I would be accepted by everyone!"

Yes, the shock that Governor Patil and his family are undergoing right now is that they were rejected after working hard to be accepted.

Not your fault governor, that's how the world is.

"So what did I do wrong?"

And as I seem to hear the pathetic cry from the governor, I remember some verses from the Holy Scriptures; and if you permit me, I'm going to read them out to you:

'If you are invited to a wedding feast, don't always head for the best seat. What if someone more respected than you has been invited? The host will say, "Let this person sit here instead." Then you will be embarrassed and will have to take whatever seat is left at the foot of the table.'

'Do this instead--sit at the foot of the table. Then when your host sees you, he will come and say, "Friend, we have a better place than this for you!" Then you will be honoured in front of all the other guests. For the proud will be humbled and the humble will be honoured."

A lesson for all of us isn't it?

How often we strut into a meeting expecting to get the best seat, expecting to be recognized and find nobody knows us? How often we wait for the group we sing with to allow us to sing the solo and cringe when it is given to somebody else?

I can see Mr Patil screaming outside the club, "Can't you see the state of the art stadium I've built? Can't you see I'm a governor?"

"We couldn't be bothered, go away!"

And we walk to him, "Come with us sir!"

"Where?"
"Sit at our table!"

"Here?"

"Yes sir, sit with us at our lowly table, enjoy being a nobody, and then watch…"

"Governor Patil what are you doing there, come, come, come and sit at the head table." 

"Governor Patil come and become a member of the club, we need you!"

Aha! You got to be humble to be thus honoured..!

—bobsbanter@gmail.com

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

A CASE FOR SAARCOSAI

CO-OPERATION AMONG SOUTH ASIAN SUPREME AUDIT INSTITUTIONS

ASIF ALI

 

Offices of the Auditors General, though differently named in different countries are globally known as Supreme Audit Institution (SAI) having origin and mandate in the constitutions of the respective countries. The International organization of the Supreme Audit Institution (INTOSAI) was established in 1953 which has now 177 SAIs with its head office in Vienna, Austria having full official recognition of the respective governments of the SAIs.

INTOSAI has developed international standards for financial accounting and auditing with the sole purpose to offer proper guidance to the SAIs around the world. It is also a pioneer in the area of training by holding workshops and seminars funded by UN and other donor agencies. In 1986, the INTOSAI Development Initiative (IDI) was created with the objective of enhancing accounting and financial control operations, particularly in the developing countries through the exchange of information and training for auditing practitioners with head office in Ontario, Canada.

INTOSAI promoted the creation of regional groups to assist it to achieve its objectives with regionally focused agenda within the charter and spirit of INTOSAI. Thus the organisation of Latin American and Caribbean SAIs (OLACEFS) was created in 1965, African organisation of  SAIs (AFROSAI) in 1976, Arab organization of SAIs (ARABOSAI) in 1976, Asian organisation of SAIs (ASOSAI) in 1978, South Pacific Association of SAIs (SPASI) in 1987, Caribbean organisation of SAIs (CAROSAI) in 1988 and European organisation of SAIs (EUROSAI) in 1990. Besides, the heads of SAIs of the Gulf Co-operation Council (GCC) decided to work together to augment the efforts of ARABOSAI and ASOSAI by convening its first meeting in 1983.
Thus it appears that in order to enhance the capacity and effectiveness of SAIs around the world, close co-operation and partnership in the sphere of maintaining and practicing high international standards of auditing is essentially important. It is more necessary for the SAIs of the developing countries where due to unsatisfactory levels of transparency and accountability in the governance, rampant corruption, malpractices and financial mismanagement seriously impair steady economic growth overcoming poverty and other social ills. The countries belonging to the South Asian Association of Regional Co-operation (SAARC) namely Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Maldives and Sri-Lanka, are developing countries with bulk of the population remaining under poverty level. SAIs playing vital constitutional overseeing role of the detecting financial wrongs committed by administration and recommending ways and means to improve upon the management of the public funds granted by the parliament are required to possess high quality of auditing capability to efficiently report to the parliament about the state of management and utilisation of public money economically, efficiently and effectively for the purpose for which the parliament appropriated the sum.
Hence arose the importance of forging the SAIs into a South Asian regional grouping under the umbrella of INTOSAI. With that view in mind, the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General (OCAG) of Bangladesh organised a two day long "Regional Auditors General Conference" on August 30-31, 2004 at Dhaka in association with the World Bank and the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA). Twenty-two delegates from eleven countries including the President of the General Auditing Bureau of Saudi Arabia, Auditors General of Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Malaysia, Maldives, Nepal and Sri-Lanka, Additional Auditor Generals of Pakistan, Cambodia and the Philippines attended the conference. The representative from India had to cancel her visit to Dhaka at the last moment due to her sudden indisposition.

The main theme of the conference was 'Harmonizing Institutional Efforts for Promoting Accountability in the Public Sector.' The two-day business sessions dwelt at length with public sector auditing standards in the global perspective, public sector accountability in Bangladesh, the private sector audit objectives and methodology and the foreign donors' involvement in the professional improvement of the public sector accountability scenario.
One of the strongest recommendations of the conference was to create a forum of regional SAIs of South Asia for exchange of experiences, methodologies and information providing a platform for finding out solution to problem belonging to common legacy. OCAG of Bangladesh specifically proposed the formatting of a forum of the SAARC SAIs to be called SAARCOSAI under the SAARC secretariat which was endorsed in the conference.

Unfortunately the idea could not be carried through due to bureaucratic knots. The time has come to revive the idea of  SAARCOSAI consisting of the offices of the Auditors General of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri-Lanka with the following objectives:

* Fostering co-operation by strengthening ties among the member SAIs.

* Exchange of views, experiences, technologies, expertise and research in the fields of public sector auditing.
* Providing co-operation in the fields of training and human resource development.

* Carrying out peer review to acquire mutual benefits.

* Assimilation and implementation of INTOSAI and ASOSAI agenda in conformity with the regional conditions.
* Promoting modern audit approaches like, environmental audit, social audit, forensic audit, audit of public works, audit of projects, audit of disaster management etc.

* Sharing knowledge, skill and experiences to the benefit of all SAIs of SAARCOSAI.

Interestingly there already exist within SAARC South Asian Federation of Accountants (SFA) , Association of Management and Development Institution in South Asia (AMDISA), Federation of state Insurance Organisation of SAARC countries (FSIO), etc. There is no reason why SAARCOSAI should not come into existence in this age of globalisation and regional co-operation. The true spirit of regional co-operation as enunciated in the SAARC charters fully conforms to the creation of SAARCOSAI at the quickest possible opportunity. It is hoped that Bangladesh government will immediately take up necessary steps in this regard to strengthen and enhance transparency and accountability of the governance in Bangladesh along with SAARC countries. This is very useful in view of the forthcoming SAARC summit in Bhutan.

(The writer is former Comptroller and Audit General of Bangladesh.)

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

REVISE HIGHER EDUCATION FOR PRAGMATIC DEGREES

SAYEED AHMED

 

The number of highly educated yet unemployed people is multiplying day by day at an alarming rate. Students after studying for more than 16 years, and also mastering a particular discipline for more than four years, find themselves jobless. They have to pass through a very narrow strip of government jobs which are very uncertain in most of the cases, and depend very much on many factors like political favouritism, nepotism, etc. On the other hand, the expanding private sector now demands business as well as very much field-specific professional degrees like BBA (Bachelor of Business Administration), MBA (Masters of Business Administration), MBM (Masters in Bank Management), MDS (Masters of Development Studies), MPH (Masters of Public Health), etc. Now the big question arises before the nation: what should be the real objective of higher education-to provide students with specialised knowledge in particular areas or to create professionally skilled people to fit in the existing job markets home and abroad? We are not here to ignore the importance of knowledge and education as such, but we have to focus more on the necessity of professional knowledge and skills that ensure jobs home and abroad. In developing countries like Bangladesh, where education is the only asset to many young people and where many poor parents spend all their money and property to give their children good education, the degrees must have job value.

Unfortunately, we have failed to create good job market home and abroad for the graduates of all disciplines; rather, the situation is highly haphazard. The number of jobs that the government offers is very limited and the process they take is very lengthy, tiresome and very often not fair at all. Most of the jobs that private companies offer look for Business graduates and demand MBA degrees or other professional degrees like MDS, MPH, MBM, etc. Then where is the place for graduates of general disciplines?

Hundreds and thousands of students after doing Honours and Masters in different general subjects from various parts of the country throng Dhaka City for jobs. As they have to stay for a kind of indefinite span of time, they rent rooms, look for part time jobs for supporting themselves in a very difficult city like Dhaka and end in attending private tuition. At this stage, graduates find that their degrees in general disciplines do not match with the required responsibilities and skills of the jobs available in the country. So, they take coaching for job examinations, look for business degrees if they have enough money, and finally find themselves depressed. After completing Honours and Masters degrees in an extended period of time for session jams, the graduates naturally look for good jobs and some kind of settled life. But the reality is they have to rush for acquiring some skills that they need to fit in the available jobs. Why didn't they learn these skills in their long education life? Where's the gap? Didn't they have such courses in their curriculum? Why didn't the policy makers include these courses in the curriculum? 

As the National University is producing the maximum number of graduates in the country, the question naturally comes up-what is the output of National University? How are the graduates of this university doing? Are they equipped with necessary academic knowledge and professional skills required for performing different responsibilities at various places? Except the students who are self-motivated or get sufficient guidelines from parents or respective educational institutions, students of National University, throughout the country are not doing well. We must admit that the quality of education students of Dhaka City College and a government college in a small town outside Dhaka city are receiving is not same though both the institutions are offering the same National University degrees. Then, what is the contribution of National University itself in improving and maintaining the quality of education? This is true that the university has flooded the opportunity for Honours degrees throughout the country but for the lack of quality maintenance, the effort is producing substandard and unskilled graduates every year thus increasing the burden of highly educated yet unemployed people in the country. Corruption nibbles every part of this university. Students wings of ruling political parties usually admit students in different colleges for their party's interest or only for earning money thus leaving aside the original merit list; teachers usually ignore teaching in the class (if that is a government college) and decorate their respective drawing rooms to offer private tuition; students look for short-cut ways to pass the exams and finally come out as unfit graduates in both academic and professional grounds. Honors degrees in general disciplines don't fit into the socio-economic perspective of our country. This kind of degree may be applicable to highly specified technical disciplines like medicine, engineering, etc., but for general disciplines, we should go for faculty-based degrees coupled with the skills of some common subjects. A student studies one discipline in particular and a few other subjects to support the study of that specific subject in an Honours course. So students become specialised in their respective subjects in honors courses, and they can work only in those major fields. They can't work in a field if that demands skills of the other kind. There are several subjects that public universities and colleges under the National University offer Honors courses in but don't have sufficient job opportunities in the country to apply that knowledge. Some sample subjects of this kind include: Philosophy, History, Archeology, Anthropology, Social Work, Islamic Studies, Botany, Zoology, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, etc. They have a little job field, basically in teaching and to some extent in research.
Degrees should be faculty-based, not discipline-based. Think about BBA degree. A student while doing BBA is studying several subjects related to business. They are studying Business Studies, Management, Marketing, Accounting, Finance, Business Maths, Computer, Banking, English language, Bangladesh Studies, Statistics, etc. that help learners acquire skills to perform responsibilities at different business positions. So Honours in Management and BBA are totally different disciplines. We should have degrees like BBA. For example, we may have Bachelor of Arts where students will study courses of Arts and Culture; Bachelor of Humanities where students will study courses of Literature, Language, Philosophy, History; Bachelor of Education, etc. Irrespective of the disciplines, all students must study some common courses like Computer, English language, Presentation Skills, Ethics and Manners, Religion, Bangladesh Studies, etc.

We have to put importance on technical education also. And to do this, we need to reconstruct the technical education system. Existing technical colleges, institutes, and centres are not producing quality graduates as we see that most of them lack competence in practical knowledge and decision making skills. In most of the cases, the technical colleges, institutes and centres are plagued with insufficient number of lab instruments, skilled teachers, English language lab, bad influences of teacher's politics and student's politics, etc. The government should allocate sufficient money on the budget to improve the quality of technical education in the country. Simultaneously, the government must maintain a strong vigilance on the existing private technical institutes as many of them are reportedly known to be fake or plagued with various problems. Quality technical education can open up job opportunities at home and abroad. As we know in many countries there is a strong demand for technical people like graphics designers, hardware and software engineers, telecommunication engineers, civil engineers, mechanical engineers, nurses, paramedics, plumbers, electrical engineers, radiologists, etc. At home we have good demand for civil engineers, telecommunication engineers, textile engineers, and others.
Our educational degrees must fit into the required skills and knowledge of the jobs available at home and abroad; otherwise, the graduates, at the end of the day, discover themselves good for nothing with a few pieces of paper as educational certificates. Those papers certify that the graduates completed some educational degrees, but they don't certify that the bearers are competent enough to perform the desired responsibilities of various positions.

(The writer is a staffer of The Independent.)

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

DEADLINE APRIL 20

HARADHAN GANGULY

 

Shocking examples of people suffering due to lack of coordination and result of failure in reaching targets by concerned authorities often go ample.

If the target is a stride towards poverty reduction and failure is due to heartless political differences and feuds, the message is more shocking.

Yes, such a shocking incident has taken place recently in Jaldhaka and Kishorganj upazilas.

News reporting on the incident reads like this: government's employment generating progamme meant for ultra poor could not be started in Monga- prone Jaldhaka and upazilas in Kishorganj district because the period of the 40-day programme expired on April 20. Feuds among selection committee members belonging to different political parties in the unions over compiling lists of beneficiaries created the deadlock, depriving 15,000 extreme poor of getting employment opportunity in the lean period.

The project fund is supposed to be returned after the April 20 deadline as the programme was not implemented. The UNOs of Jaldhaka and Kishoreganj upazilas gave hints like these. After successful completion of a 60-day employment generating programme in November-December last year, the government initiated the second phase of the programme to create employment opportunity for about 50,000 extreme poor in six upazilas of the district for 40 more days. The period of the second phase was March 10 to April 20.

Under this programme, a beneficiary was supposed to get Tk 120 a day for working in various rural development fields. A nine-member committee comprising of local body representatives, elite, social workers, women representatives, members of the professional groups was supposed to make lists of beneficiaries for finalising by the upazila selection committee headed by UNO.

Activists of four political parties are dominating the committees. As usual, they insisted inclusion of the names of their men in the lists of beneficiaries. Reportedly, there are also allegations that bribes were taken from the poor to be enlisted.

Who will answer or be blamed for such irresponsibility in implementing bodies for which the extreme poor have been deprived.

This failure is a blow to government's splendid safety net programmes in those areas to arrest Monga.

We are accustomed to term 'Monga' for a long time. It is a seasonal localised poverty-a period of joblessness that results in prolonged impoverishment and destitution of a group of population in the rural areas of northern Bangladesh. Employment, entitlement and income opportunities in these areas sharply decline, even collapse in the months of 'Ashwin' and 'Kartik'(Sept-Oct), particularly characterised by agricultural lean season, at time compounded by floods, river erosion and droughts. Mainly people living on the banks of the Teesta, Dharla, Brahmaputra and Jamuna rivers are the victims of Monga, immediately before Aman harvesting.
But various studies now prove that seasonal poverty like Monga in the north is no more. Government's sincere and successful programming within shortest period for social safety net objectives and their implementation has been able to change the scenario. Paradigm shifted due to introduction of various demands raising income and employment generating projects and innovative crop production like BIRRI-33. Sixty day employment generating programme is another applauded step. Monga - a time framed famine like poverty in Northern region - is almost non-existent. What is prevalent there instead has been a chronic rural poverty characterised by persistent income poverty and deprivation caused due to river erosion, declining purchasing power from the lack of employment opportunities, limited access to health care facilities and meager institutional opportunities for health service, wide malnutrition, dropouts from schools, widening gender inequalities and early female marriage. From long past, these are very natural manifestations of rural socio-economic poverty in general and in the northern zone in particular. We are concerned about this long dragged poverty. So employment generating initiatives have been continuing with more vigour during the present regime.

Anyhow, the Monga is being withered away by timely intervention efforts of government and other non-government organisations. What we come across is persistent rural poverty all over the year.
However, local administration of Jaldhaka and other upazilas  informed, after the deadline 20 April, money sanctioned for employment creation would be returned unused. In that case, fate of 15,000 extreme poor would be pushed downward due to political feuds and differences.

(Prof. Haradhan Ganguly is a free lance columnist of The Daily Independent)

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

THE DESIGNER BABIES

SYLVIA MORTOZA

 

In 2007 a UN study said the world should quickly ban cloning of humans and allow exceptions only for strictly controlled research to help treat diseases such as diabetes or Alzheimer's. Experts at the UNUniversity's Institute of Advanced Studies said that without a ban, governments would have to prepare legal measures to protect clones from "potential abuse, prejudice and discrimination." Obviously nobody was paying attention and, as a result, the fear of human cloning received short shrift from the media. But human cloning was once a major issue with the UN.

Today's lack of interest in implementing a ban has encouraged scientists to continue their efforts to produce a cloned human baby and, except for a few countries that introduced legislation, it is only a matter of time before cloned babies come into the world. Human cloning has already advanced to the extent that scientists can produce human embryos with not two, but three parents! With nothing to really stop them from ushering in an era of designer babies, it is time the UN wakes up to its dangers and UN responsibilities and introduces a ban acceptable to everyone.

The embryos in question - which effectively have two mothers and one father - have been genetically engineered to be free from incurable muscle, brain, heart and digestive illnesses, some of which kill within hours of being born. Sounds relatively harmless but as researchers at Newcastle University say that, within three years, it could allow women whose families are blighted by disease the chance of bringing a healthy child into the world, we must go deeper into this as the breakthrough is a step towards human cloning that erodes the sanctity of human life. But the updated fertility laws which came into effect last year, has left the door open for legislation to be amended quickly and, lead researcher Professor Doug Turnbull said, if this happens, the first babies could be born in as little as three years.

Josephine Quintavalle, of campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said that (although) the technique was a step towards human cloning (as) we know very little about the beginning of life, it is extraordinary how willing we are to break down one of the most obvious barriers, which is that it takes a sperm and an egg to create an embryo. We have got to find better ways to cure these diseases.

If such advances in genetics make it possible to "select our children's genes and characteristics," to my mind this is a most frightening phenomenon. We need to consider carefully the moral and ethical limits of going down this path. Surely there is a moral or ethical difference between using genetic technologies to prevent disease and using them to enhance human capacities? And what effect human genetic modification may have on society? Two questions regarding designer babies come to mind. The first addresses the specific technologies that might be used to modify or select a baby's genetic makeup. The second looks away from technological details to focus on the very idea of a designer baby. And last but not least, are the technologies of genetic modification and selection safe enough to be used on humans?

Any debate on this subject brings to mind attempts to design babies by practicing eugenics promoted by the Nazis. Some think we should reject genetic enhancement out of hand because of its connection with the eugenics programmes promoted by the scientific minions of Adolph Hitler who sought to shape the German population by murdering those judged inferior and encouraging those they saw as their betters, to reproduce. Although today we find this practice abhorrent, it or something similar was standard practice in other countries too.

Advocates of "liberal eugenics" would take responsibility for human enhancement from the state and pass it to individuals who would be guided by their own distinctive values in their selection of genetic advantages. Recent discoveries about the influence of genes on human traits such as susceptibility to disease, shyness, and athletic ability open up the possibility of transferring these techniques to human beings. But we should remember that multiple genes influence many of the traits we may want to select. A gene affects intelligence only in combination with other genes, and we are unlikely to find single genes whose modification would reliably produce a 20-point boost in IQ, for example. But a scientist once said you could screen for personality traits. 
Preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) does not involve the genetic modification of human embryos and hence avoids some of the risks, but it is not entirely risk-free. Some fear that the removal of one or two cells from eight-cell embryos might have implications for the well being of people created by PGD. However its defenders respond that the cells of eight-cell embryos are totipotent, meaning that they are undifferentiated and equally capable of forming all the cells of the human body. Although this technology has been in use for almost a decade, it is too early to say with any certainty, whether or not it is wrong to go ahead.

Cloning is an alternative. Some people view cloning as a last-ditch response to infertility, while others may see it as a way of selecting the characteristics of a child. This choice would be exercised through the choice of the person to be cloned. Whereas one person might pursue physical attractiveness on his child's behalf another may choose intelligence. But those who hope to clone a designer baby should be wary of genetic determinist misrepresentations of the technology. Even if we understand how somatic cell nuclear transfer might enable us to make a designer baby for ourselves, science is not quite ready to create children by cloning and may not be such an attractive proposition to prospective parents who place value on a genetic connection with their child.

Apart from this, there are major concerns about the health of clones. Animal clones suffer from a variety of problems that some scientists connect with incomplete reprogramming of somatic cell DNA or damage inflicted by the process of nuclear transfer. Human clones may also suffer from these problems, which raises the question, should we not make a moral distinction between treating or preventing diseases, and enhancing traits? Many believe that while therapy is justifiable, enhancement is not. Opponents of the argument for enhancement say there are morally significant differences between upbringing and genetic enhancement. Francis Fukuyama for instance, thinks that genetic enhancements may change our descendents to such an extent that they lose their humanity. According to him, environmental influences operate only within limits set by genes. Even ambitious education programmes leave their subjects with their humanity intact. A genetically enhanced child is more fittingly described as a posthuman. In other words the price paid for super intelligence will be the experiences that give human lives meaning.

If in the future designer babies are free of disease, super-intelligent, and routinely compose symphonies whose brilliance surpasses that of Beethoven's, is it right r wrong to go ahead? Will such genetic enhancement lead to a discriminatory society? Liberal democracy is a cooperative venture in which all are seen as having something to offer. Will genetic enhancement bring this social arrangement to an end? At the moment it is only legally possible to carry out two types of advanced reproductive technologies on humans. The first involves choosing the type of sperm that will fertilise an egg: this is used to determine the sex and the genes of the baby. The second technique screens embryos for a genetic disease: only selected embryos are implanted back into the mother's womb.

Maybe we should leave it that way.

(Sylvia Mortoza is a staff writer of The Independent.)

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

DECLINE AND FALL OF POLITICAL EUROPE

MICHEL ROCARD

 

A series of decisions taken over the last few years in Europe have alarmed me. The first imposed the rule of unanimity within the European Union for any decision regarding foreign policy or the use of armed force for other than humanitarian purposes. Because everyone must agree, nothing is agreed. As a result, Europe cannot develop a common foreign policy.

The second alarming decision limited the Union's budget to a mere 1 per cent of EU GDP, thus preventing any new common policy initiative for much of the past decade. The third decision concerns the British vetoes of the candidacies of Jean Luc Dehaene and Jean Claude Juncker for President of the European Commission. When this last British 'no' came down, I sadly declared the death of the political Europe, a charge that brought me harsh criticism, even from friends.

These decisions have become more alarming over time as the need for 'more Europe' has become progressively more obvious. Only a united and strong Europe can tackle the global fight against climate change, encourage the adoption of new financial rules in order to avoid the excesses that led to the crisis of 2008-2009, and handle a rising China that will soon account for 20 per cent of world trade.

The great banking, financial, and economic crises, which every country in the world still confronts, has made things worse. Ireland, by far the biggest beneficiary of EU membership has demonstrated a powerful anti-European reflex, despite being hit early and hard by the crisis.

Meanwhile, Germany, long the proud holder of the European torch, has increasingly turned its back on that legacy, particularly after the markets reminded Germans that their country was much more Europeanised than they seemed to believe or realise. Germany rallied to Europe when the crisis was at its global nadir last year. But, now that fear of a global Armageddon has receded, Germany has turned inward.

The timing of this is particularly odd, as this new insularity comes almost immediately after Germany, France, and Great Britain cynically agreed to endow the EU with both a president of the EU Council and a foreign affairs minister. But the nominees for those offices betrayed the intentions of all three EU powers: honourable and competent though President Herman Van Rumpoy and Baroness Catherine Ashton may be, they are perfectly unknown and thus pose no threat to the powers that be in Berlin, Paris, and London.
Of course, there is still the euro, Europe's only great political success over the last two decades. But now even that is coming into question, thanks to Germany. Everyone admires Germany's rigorous management and capacity to reform. We also admire its monetary seriousness, attachment to fiscal rigour, and quest for exports, despite its lack of consideration for the harm done to those enduring the deficits corresponding to Germany's surpluses.

But the crisis has changed everything. It impaired a number of European countries less robust than Germany. The three Baltic states, Hungary, and non-EU Iceland are bankrupt. Of course, they don't belong to the eurozone, but Greece, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland do, and their problems are nearly as desperate.
Yet Germany insists on imposing its own rigor on the eurozone as a whole, a strategy the above-mentioned states can pursue only at the risk of social chaos. These countries may exit the crisis - their crisis - only if monetary policy allows them room to grow. But Germany refuses this option, thus seriously endangering Europe' common currency.

In opposition to almost every eurozone foreign minister or president, the chairman of Ecofin, and the European Central Bank's president, Germany insisted that the International Monetary Fund be brought to the rescue of Greece, a brute denial of the principle of solidarity behind the euro. And, thanks to Germany, the interest rates that Greece will pay for loan packages put together by other eurozone countries will be very high, which means that its economy will be unable to recover for some time, and that its financial drama will weigh heavily on the euro's collective destiny.

Moreover, German Chancellor Angela Merkel took the liberty of pondering whether imperiled states should be excluded from the eurozone. In doing so, she offered a solution that is totally excluded by the euro's founding treaties, but served notice that Germany may be prepared to destabilise the zone and common currency to meet its own policy ends. While Merkel seems to believe that all eurozone countries should play by the same rules, she does not seem to realize that today it is Germany that is going it alone in pursuit of its own narrow national interests.

Why is Merkel acting this way? One reason is that she leads a coalition government that is facing electionns, and that finds itself in a very tricky situation with its own parliament. But if short-sightedness and domestic policy pressures lead every EU member to do anything and everything they want in their own interests, Europe will soon drift from an economic crisis to a political one.

If political Europe had more power, the Greek crisis would have been dealt with through a brutal conversation at the top. But there is no political Europe and not much energy left in the economic Europe.
Given the state of global finance, the euro's demise would be a phenomenal catastrophe. It can still be avoided, but only if all Europeans remember their solidarity and act with unusual courage and tenacity.

(The writer is a former French Prime Minister and former leader of the French Socialist party, is a member of the European Parliament.)

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.

 

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THE INDEPENDENT

EDITORIAL

IBBL'S RURAL DEVELOPMENT SCHEME: AN EVALUATION

PROF M SADEQ

 

Islami Bank Bangladesh Ltd. has taken up Rural Development Scheme to activate the rural economy and develop model villages through integrated approach. The objective of the scheme is to create income generating and productive self-employment opportunities through extension of investment for development of rural areas and thereby contribute in alleviating rural poverty. Investment under this scheme is allowed for purpose of Production of 21 kinds of major crops, v12, food, cereals and cash crops, off-farm activities like dairy, beef flanging, goat rearing, poultry, shop keeping, peddling, etc; rural transport like rickshaw, rickshaw van, cart etc; irrigation equipment, hand tube-well rousing materials, in all covering about 343, types of economic activities. Islami Bank Foundation, a subsidiary organisation of the bank engaged in social welfare activities takes care of the requirement of sanitation, medicare and education of the villages through integrated area development approach under Islamic model. Undoubtedly this scheme of rural development is an ideal one and, if materialised perfectly, is sure to bring about a radical change in the scenario of a village; but perfect materialisation of the scheme in a particular village is likely to be hindered by certain limitations, over which a controlling branch may not have any control. One of the serious limitations that an IBBL branch faces now is the paucity of competent manpower which is to work for implementation of the project. At present not more than 2/3 persons are engaged for implementation of RDS in the selected villages, under jurisdiction of a branch. It is not possible for 2/3 persons to render service intensively if the span of their work area is not optimum. A bank branch may select any number of villages to turn them into model ones. For example, there may be ten villages under RDS, and if there are 2000 people in each village the total number would come to 10,000 for 2/3 employees. If a family comprises 5 members, there would be 2000 families to be attended by these poor number of employees. If each group of RDS beneficiaries comprise five members, (one member from one family) there shall be 400 groups to be served by 2/3 RDS workers. Each village shall have 80 groups, which is not possible to be carefully handled by such miserably poor number of workers. The theoretical idea of RDS may be spread to the selected villages, but it will be very difficult to make any village a model one. The flag of a model village may be hoisted in every village, but no village shall stand as a 'flag' for all other villages.

There may be 50 villages under jurisdiction of an IBBL branch. It should not be possible for the bank branches to attain the objective of RDS. If it attempts to distribute the available facilities to all the villages, in such case each and every village may be fortunate to have the taste of RDS, but the motto of building a model village shall remain a dream only. As such it would be prudent and wise to select a very limited number of villages, say, two or three, under jurisdiction of a bank branch and give intensive care and service to these limited number of villages, so that they may turn into model ones within a very short period of time. These villages, after their up gradation as model ones shall stand as milestones for all other villages under jurisdiction of the bank branch concerned. Such villages shall be eye-openers for other villages. People from other villages shall come and see for themselves how a model village looks and what steps have to be taken to make villages as model ones. One or two model villages are enough to make all other village as model one. This scheme of work may require perspective plan. What I want to stress here is to take the course of action with intensive care. When a bank branch selects a village for development it should give intensive care to the village from wide angles of view. It should treat a village like a precarious patient who deserves intensive care and nursing for his recovery and development of physical and mental health. A village is like a precarious patient.

It needs mention here that a limited number of paid workers should not be left alone with the development of a village. The people of the concerned village should be motivated to come up to participate in the development of their villages. If a sizeable number of people, both man and woman, can be enlisted in the development work of the village, the load of work of bank shall be much reduced. The work of development is a two-way traffic. The givers of development benefits and the receivers of the same should respond simultaneously. The bank may extend all out corporation and support for development of a village, but if the village do not give any importance to such co-operation and support from banks end, all help and support must go in vain. That's why the bank should make it a point to motivate the village-people and make them realise that the village is their own and all development programmes are taken for their welfare only.

This is the case about any project everywhere. A village-development project is a joint venture: the villagers are in one side and the bank on the other. If a bank branch decides to give an investment benefit of say taka ten million in the form of farm and of farm equipments before ensuring their utilisation by the villagers the investment is most likely to be unproductive and futile. Hence, it would be judicious to train up the people about utilisation of the equipments. And after due satisfaction such investment should be made. It means proper training and motivation should be given first and thereafter money or moneys worth should be handed over to them.

In order to make an assessment of the success of the RDS I have visited some village of my locality and observed that very few members of the RDS groups have acquired basic knowledge regarding aims, objects and working process of RDS. The reason may be attributed mainly to the extremely poor number of bank people engaged for the job and poor motivation work done upon the would-be interest people of the village. Some people alleged that bank-employees who have been designated and assigned to work for RDS are unable to discharge these duties properly due to limitation of there capacity. One field worker and one supervisor are assigned in a number of villages to work for RDS; but they can simply go and come to the village, without doing any work intensively and vigorously. In my opinion if a village is to be developed in the truest sense of the term, the duty-area of the Field Work and the field supervisor, should be only one village for a particular term of period, say 3 to 5 years, and some volunteers comprising group leaders numbering at least 20 per cent both male and female (50 per cent male and 50 per cent female) be selected from the village, who would work as whole-time volunteers for materialisation of development projects of the village. Such volunteers shall work under direct supervision and control of the branch manager. They would maintain regular contact with the branch and shall enjoy cordial treatment from bank's side. These volunteers would get due recognition of their valuable service and the bank branch may also maintain record of their service for evaluation after a certain period. Successful volunteers may in course of time be absorbed in the regular work of RDS in the village they belong to. The bank workers, would make it their point to recruit volunteers, train them and build them up to take up the work of RDS independently without the help of bank-workers if adequate number of trained and skilled volunteers are made available in the village it will not be very difficult for the bank branch to a convert a village into a model one as envisaged by Islamic shariah.

In the end I would like to summaries the points as under.    

1. The bank branch shall select only 2/3 villages under RDS. Each village shall get intensive care by the bank with assurance of 100 per cent treatment needs for all round development of the village. Each village under RDS shall have one field worker and one supervisor.

2. The first and foremost duty of the Field officer and Supervisor shall be to make recruitment of at least 20 (Twenty) volunteers. 10 male and 10 female from the selected village.

3. The field officer and Field Supervision shall give the volunteers necessary training for (at least for 4 weeks).

 

This training shall be targeted towards development of knowledge and skill of the volunteers about RDS. If twenty volunteers are properly trained adn equipped for implementation of RDS according to Islamic Shairah it will be very easy for IBBL to achieve its goal of RDs.     

4. The IBBL may make branch-wise list of volunteers and may decide to prefer these volunteers for regular absorption. Branch Managers would submit to H.O. the list of volunteers according to their qualification and merit. 

5. The volunteers chosen for the RDS should be posted the information that the IBBL authority would give due preference to the successful volunteers, while making regular appointment to the post of field workers and Supervisors. Certain percentage of quota of RDS job may be reserved for the volunteers who may have rendered at least two years voluntary service towards implementation of RDs in a particular village. Testimonial of such voluntary successful service shall be issued by the branch concerned duly countersigned by the Zonal Head of IBBL. 

6. The bank branch shall give full concentration towards development of a particular village under its jurisdiction. It will make detailed study of the village to find out its problems and potentialities. It will make an exhaustive programme of development-covering everything from A to Z of the village. No aspect of the village shall remain outside the development programme. From the development of morality to the development of economic condition shall be equally stressed by RDS of IBBL.

7. The target of RDS shall be to eradicate moral poverty as well as economic poverty. RDS shall make village-people both morally and economically developed to a reasonable standard. There shall be balanced development of morality and economy of a village. Such balanced development of ethics and economics is a prerequisite for a peaceful and stable social order. A village cannot be termed as a model one, if 100% of it people are above poverty line financially, and far below the poverty line morally.

8. Moral development is a pre-condition for all others developments of a society. Without development of ethical aspects no other development can be ensured. IBBL is committed to the development of the ethical aspects of our village people along with their economic development. They give equal stress both on morality of people and their economic condition.

The above observations and suggestions made in the above paragraphs are in greater public interest. The RDS of IBBL is by far the best of rural development programmes now in operation in Bangladesh. Since it gives equal stress both on ethics and economics it should give better and quicker response if implemented as per the suggestion, laid down above. IBBL authorities may kindly take proper steps so that the blessing of Islamic banking and economics reach to the village people through its RDS and the superiority of Islamic economics and banking is felt by rural people by the display of a "Model village" developed according to Islamic Shariah.

 

(The writer is a Professor of International Islamic University, Chittagong, Dhaka Campus, Dhanmondi, Dhaka.)

 

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

DEVOID OF COMMON SENSE

FAIR WORK AUSTRALIA HAS THE HALLMARKS OF A STAR CHAMBER

IF Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard want a clear example of why their rigid industrial relations system needs urgent reform, it is the workplace watchdog's decision to reject a deal between one of Australia's largest employers, McDonalds, and one of the nation's largest trade unions.

Fair Work Australia commissioner Donna McKenna took 111 pages to explain her ruling, but Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association head Joe de Bruyn, not renowned for placating bosses, believes she didn't understand the agreement. Young, casual workers with more sense than Ms McKenna would welcome a deal that kept them in pocket money for flipping hamburgers after school.

It is bad for the economy and for workers that the centralised IR system intrudes so far into the relationships between employers and employees that it even strikes down deals brokered by strong unions. In January, the tribunal rejected a deal struck with two unions at Bupa Care Services to remove overtime payments when staff wanted to work extra hours. To borrow the Prime Minister's phrase, his ideologically driven system has reached "a bridge too far". If productivity is to improve, workers, employers and unions should be left to make arrangements without a meddling star chamber .

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

SO THAT'S WHAT HE MEANT BY A GREAT MORAL CHALLENGE

KEVIN RUDD HAS DAMAGED HIS CREDIBILITY ON CLIMATE CHANGE

THE Prime Minister's decision to put his climate change legislation on ice reveals a government low on political conviction. No talk now of taking the emissions trading scheme to the people in a double-dissolution election campaign. Kevin Rudd will not use up any more of his political capital to address "the greatest moral challenge of our time". The winner is surely Tony Abbott, free to attack Mr Rudd at the election as a man of elastic beliefs. Indeed, Mr Rudd has adopted the opposition's approach of direct action - such as technology - to combat carbon emissions. After years of campaigning for a carbon price to deliver business certainty, all the Prime Minister now offers are the sorts of measures he derides when they come from the Leader of the Opposition.

After the global push on climate change fell apart at Copenhagen last December, it was clear Australia's response needed calm review. When the Coalition knocked back the ETS in the Senate, the political difficulties of fighting an election on a "great big tax" added to the need for caution on Labor's part. When the scientific failings in the work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change emerged, it was apparent that Mr Rudd, who had so passionately tied himself to the green crusade, had a big problem. Now the Prime Minister's humiliation is complete, his ETS delayed not just until 2013 but effectively consigned to history, given he will not call a double-dissolution poll to secure the bill's passage.

Mr Rudd may attempt to salvage some credibility by arguing that he has changed his mind because of the slow international movement on addressing climate change. But there is not much he can do to erase from the record his rhetoric about the moral imperatives behind his scheme. Since the 2007 campaign, Mr Rudd has positioned himself as the aggressive action-man on climate change. Now we see he will not go to the barricades on his cap-and-trade scheme.

This newspaper backed the ETS as a market-based system for putting a price on carbon that would keep Australia competitive in a global economy. We saw economic and political logic in a minimalist scheme that had the limited ambition of reducing our emissions by 5 per cent. We argued it would have little impact on the economy. Even so, we did not want the scheme rushed through ahead of the rest of the world and we cautioned Mr Rudd about using the ETS to boost his multinational credentials at Copenhagen.

In March this year, as the US backed away from its cap-and-trade approach, we noted that going it alone on a carbon price would disadvantage Australia's export sector. At the same time, putting a price on carbon here would not have much impact on global greenhouse gases, given that we account for only 2 per cent of global emissions. It was messy, but we still hoped for rational political debate from both sides of politics on how to move ahead on climate change. Instead, we got more grandstanding from Mr Rudd and his senior colleagues as they struggled to champion their own scheme. Rather than coming clean with voters, they derided Mr Abbott and the Coalition for its alternative control plan based on direct action, such as energy efficiency and carbon sequestration.

Now the Prime Minister has capitulated, unprepared to test his policy with the Australian public at a double dissolution election and yet seemingly unable to offer a clear alternative. Yesterday, the government was spinning the end of the ETS as a $2.5 billion saving to the forthcoming budget. Ministers were busy trying to blame the Coalition and the Greens for killing the ETS. Resources and Energy Minister Martin Ferguson, who has been saying for weeks that Australia needed a price on carbon, was yesterday offering technology as a solution. No one in the government, it seems, knows how to deliver to business the security needed to ensure investment in the coal and energy sectors.

This is no way to handle a major policy reversal that leaves business high and dry and voters bewildered. In 2007, Mr Rudd campaigned on climate change. This time around, he will try to bury it. After the high expectations generated on the issue, the Prime Minister will have only himself to blame if voters see it differently.

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

THE PUBLIC INTEREST SOLD SHORT

ABC AUDIENCES AND FAIRFAX READERS DESERVE BETTER

READERS of the Fairfax press and ABC audiences must have been surprised by major political announcements of late. The Rudd government's axing of its $2.45 billion roof insulation scheme, the scrapping of Green Loans and the review of the $16.2 billion school building program must have come as a bolt from the blue for those relying solely on The Sydney Morning Herald and The 7.30 Report for news as coverage of the problems besetting the schemes had been so scant. Perhaps this is why the ABC's Insiders barely mentioned the school stimulus review after it was announced.

Better late than never, we applaud the Four Corners investigation of the insulation debacle and The Age's newfound interest in school stimulus inefficiencies. Their follow-ups would have been helpful when The Australian was unearthing the defects, case by case, school by school, state by state, drawing the wrath of Julia Gillard in parliament in June and other ministers. With plenty of stories still to be told, we urge the rest of the ABC and The Sydney Morning Herald to join in after being beaten comprehensively every day, for months, by this newspaper and lately, by talkback radio. A decade ago, such failure would have drawn the wrath of media proprietors or chief executives, possibly even precipitating a change of editors.

The failure of Fairfax editors and senior gallery journalists and many in the ABC to provide incisive critiques of the Rudd government partially stems from an issue identified by Queensland anti-corruption commissioner Tony Fitzgerald. Two decades ago, Mr Fitzgerald noted that: "complementary techniques of secrecy and news management allow governments to exercise substantial and often disproportionate influence on what is published in the media." Lacking the diligence and drive to scrutinise public spending and the carrying-out of election promises, the federal political coverage of much of the media has succumbed to the pressure applied by government spin doctors. These appear to have learned their trade from the NSW Labor Right, which for years kept much of the Sydney media busy with strategically leaked "splashes" reannouncing major projects that never eventuated. Thirty years ago, Queensland's Joh Bjelke-Petersen called it "feeding the chooks". In 2010, readers and audiences in Sydney and Melbourne deserve greater sophistication.

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

RUDD'S DANGEROUS CLIMATE RETREAT

AS RETREATS GO, THEY COME NO BIGGER THAN KEVIN RUDD'S DELAYING OF HIS ONCE CHERISHED EMISSIONS TRADING SCHEME - ONE OF THE MOST SPECTACULAR BACKDOWNS BY A PRIME MINISTER IN DECADES.

If you want an equivalent, think of Gough Whitlam delaying Medibank, Paul Keating deferring the float, Bob Hawke folding on the abolition of the tariff or John Howard surrendering on his GST.

There will be many words written about Rudd's retreat but it is simply crystallised: he is a prime minister without the courage to champion the policy that defined him.

Deferring the ETS to 2013 almost certainly means Rudd will ditch his double-dissolution option.

Rudd has decided to acquiesce in the disintegrated consensus for his ETS rather than seek to salvage his climate-change policy. It is a tactical choice to retreat, wait for a better domestic and global setting and seek, down the track, to rebuild political support. But for what? Maybe for his ETS or a different ETS or another policy. Nobody knows. But this choice, justified by prudence, will stamp Rudd's career and cast a permanent shadow over his credibility.

Consider this present mess: he won't fight for his ETS; he won't abandon his ETS; he says on the eve of the 2010 election he will re-consider the ETS on the eve of the 2013 election; yet Labor has no more chance of a Senate majority in 2013 than it has today.

Having told the nation and the world that he would never delay Australian action on climate change, Rudd's new policy is the long delay. Having attacked the Coalition last year for political cowardice in not legislating the ETS, Rudd now shuns the chance to legislate the ETS. The brazenness is exceptional.

In truth, Rudd has lost his nerve. This is a political and policy retreat. He says the ETS remains "the most effective and least expensive" means of combating greenhouse gas emissions. His tacticians will call this smart and they may be right. But it betrays a government weak to its core. Understand what this is about: it is giving Rudd a political strategy to maximise his re-election by removing the only mechanism he had to deliver his ETS policy. He has chosen safe politics over policy delivery. Any voter who believed Rudd was genuine about climate change needs to reassess.

Rudd, in fact, wants the best of all worlds: to keep his integrity, abandon any serious fight for his policy and take the safest possible path to re-election. This is a government arrogant in double-speak yet timid in policy courage.

Yet Rudd is hung by his past pledges. Having said his ETS was one of the "most important structural reforms to our economy in a generation" and having branded climate change "the great moral and economic challenge of our time" and having insisted that his ETS bills be passed by the Copenhagen conference, Rudd cannot decide with impunity that any such action can be deferred for another three years. This suggests a lack of conviction, dangerous for any government's decision-making and public policy.

If Rudd lacks conviction on climate change - one of the core policies that won him the 2007 election against Howard - what does this say about Labor's mettle and its beliefs?

Rudd's retreat invites the judgment that he is running scared of Tony Abbott and has decided, in effect, that Australia will not legislate an ETS until the Opposition Leader agrees, or until the Greens agree. Why is the option of a double-dissolution election so dangerous compared with a normal election? Polls show a majority of the public wants action on climate change. Abbott will run his "great big tax" scare whatever form the election takes. Indeed, Abbott said yesterday he wants the coming poll to be an ETS referendum. So how far does Rudd run?

The point is that Labor is addicted to absolute risk minimisation. The era of Keating and Howard is long gone. Rudd now implies he won't impose an ETS on the nation by winning a double-dissolution election mandate and legislating via a joint sitting. He is also saying something else: he wants a domestic consensus to underpin Labor's ETS. This is now explicit. Having compromised the double-dissolution path, Rudd can legislate only by striking a partnership at some time in the future with either the Coalition or the Greens. His government is hostage to this stance. Any idea that either the Greens or Abbott will fall into line if, as expected, Rudd is re-elected, seems fanciful. The Greens will benefit at the ballot box for their obstructionism. It will require Abbott's replacement as Liberal leader before the Liberals re-assess their position. The risk for Rudd is that he becomes a leader whose inability to legislate his climate change policy erodes his standing in the next parliament, with the judgment being he missed his best chance at this year's re-election.

By this decision, Rudd has abandoned much of the policy he has championed as Prime Minister. His message was that Australia should not wait for the world; he said the longer Australia delayed, the higher the cost it would pay; he said action now was vital for investment certainty; he said Treasury modelling revealed climate change action would not damage the economy; and he sought a leadership role for Australia and himself to speed global negotiations. Now there is another policy reality: Australia wants to wait on Barack Obama's US. It is hardly a surprise.

Some people may think the judgment that Rudd has made one of the greatest backflips in decades is too harsh. Yet this judgment rests solely on Rudd's own words, actions and priorities. On December 15, 2008, he said: "Climate change is nothing less than a threat to our people, our nation and our planet." Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and Howard never invoked such imperatives for their own reforms. "It [climate change] is a threat that, if left unaddressed, has the capacity to permanently affect our way of life," Rudd said. "The incontestable truth of climate change is that a decision not to act is in fact an active decision; an active decision to place the next generation at grave risk." This is the decision Rudd has now taken; he can hardly complain if he is judged by his own words.

On November 6 last year, Rudd gave a speech to the Lowy Institute, declaring: "When you strip away all the political rhetoric. . . there are two stark choices, action or inaction. The resolve of the Australian government is clear; we choose action." He attacked Coalition sceptics for risking "our children's fate and our grandchildren's fate" by their delaying tactics. Accusing Malcolm Turnbull, soon to lose his head over this issue, of an "absolute failure of leadership", Rudd said: "No responsible government confronted with the evidence delivered by the 4000 scientists associated with the international panel could then in conscience choose not to act."

Rudd will find it more difficult than he anticipates to rebuild the political consensus for climate change action precisely because his credibility is so damaged.

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

PROPORTIONAL VOTE A DISASTER

LAST WEEK THE RUDD GOVERNMENT PUT A FEDERAL CHARTER OF RIGHTS IN THE REFORM RUBBISH BIN. PROGRESSIVES DEPLORED THE MOVE. AFTER ALL, THEIR CAMPAIGN FOR A CHARTER WAS A FIRST-ORDER IDEOLOGICAL FIGHT. A CHARTER WOULD HAVE ENABLED THE LEFT TO ENTRENCH AN AGENDA OF SPECIAL INTERESTS THAT WOULD HAVE NO CHANCE OF FINDING SUPPORT UNDER AUSTRALIA'S TRADITIONAL WESTMINSTER DEMOCRATIC SYSTEM. SO THAT BEGS THE QUESTION: WHAT'S NEXT IN THE LEFT'S BAG OF ANTI-DEMOCRATIC TRICKS? IT'S HARD TO IMAGINE THAT THE PROGRESSIVE DISDAIN FOR WESTMINSTER DEMOCRACY IS SUDDENLY AT AN END.

Their next line of attack against democracy may come from a different angle. It's possible we may start hearing a whole lot more from progressives about the merits of proportional representation. The argument will have that same feel-good quality used to push a charter of rights. You know the schtick. Someone has to look out for the little guy (read: special interest minority groups) against the majoritarian evils of Westminster democracy. If they can't be protected by judges wielding a charter of rights, then at least let's get a similar result with a proportional system in parliament.

You need only cast your eyes towards Britain to witness this new assault on democracy. The rise of Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg is being hailed as a progressive moment not to be squandered, a chance to repair a broken political system. Commentators in The Guardian are excited at the prospect of a "well" hung parliament with a vote for Clegg being described as the equivalent of hitting "a bloody great big reset button".

The reason is that Clegg wants to cement proportional representation into the British electoral system. Indeed, Clegg's kind of electoral reform is described as the deal breaker, the price a minority government must pay for the support of the Liberal Democrats.

And you can see why British voters may find this talk appealing. So wretched is the British economy and political system, electoral reform is now referred to as the "the hygiene issue". The stench of the expenses scandal lingers. Who can forget the toffy Conservative MP wanting taxpayers to pay for clearing the moat at his country manor house, not to mention having the piano tuned and fixing the stable lights? And Gordon Brown's government is left to explain unemployment at a 15-year high and a pound stg. 167 billion ($279bn) budget deficit, more than 11 per cent of gross domestic product.

Not surprisingly, the electoral office has reported a sharp surge in voter registrations, with more Brits keen to decide how to fill their 650-seat House of Commons on May 6. If the polls are correct, many disaffected Brits are heeding Clegg's call to "do something different this time".

But make no mistake. The Tories and the Brown Labour government have created Cleggomania. When the two main parties bring politics into disrepute, a large protest vote follows. Unthinkable just a few weeks ago, the Lib-Dems now sit second place in the polls on 28 per cent, just behind the Tories on 32 per cent and ahead of Labour on 26 per cent. After the first leaders debate, Clegg won a 72 per cent approval rating, up there with Winston Churchill at his height. After the second debate, the Liberal Democratic leader said "something really exciting is beginning to happen".

Exciting only if you fall for the myth that proportional representation is good for democracy. Truth is it's rotten for democracy. Proportional representation will bestow disproportionate influence on minor party leaders to become kingmakers. Forget democratic principles of voters knowing what they voted for and politicians being accountable for their promises. Post-election horse-trading between minor parties and minority governments will mean election promises count for nought.

Just look at the Tasmanian tale so far. A month after the March 20 election, Tasmanians still had no clue who would govern them. The resulting hung parliament delivered disproportionate influence to the Greens, the party that attracted votes from only one in five Tasmanians. The result? A series of broken promises. Labor Premier David Bartlett said the party with the highest proportion of votes should govern. Didn't happen. Bartlett said he would not deal with the devil: there would be no Labor-Greens coalition. He did. Senior Labor MPs said they would never sit in a cabinet that included Greens. They do.

To be sure, all governments, no matter the electoral system, break some election promises. Witness Kevin Rudd's latest broken promises in the past week alone: the government won't be building 260 new childcare centres and has dumped its emissions trading system until 2013. But Rudd will be accountable for all his broken promises come election time. By contrast, broken promises are part of the fabric of proportional representation. Indeed, the only pre-election promise a party can keep once elected is that all other pre-election promises will probably be broken as part of the negotiations of minority government. So much for democratic accountability.

And when minority governments become the rule, forget about strong, stable governments making tough economic decisions. The sort of gutsy reforms that transformed the British economy under Margaret Thatcher won't happen again if Clegg gets his way with proportional representation. Of course, this is precisely what the Left has in mind, hence their catch-cry about voters embracing a progressive moment.

All the big reforms that transformed the New Zealand economy happened before the introduction of mixed-member proportional voting, the NZ version of proportional representation. Since then, deals with minorities have wound back reforms and special interests have prevailed. For example, ridiculous concessions were given to the Maori Party to grease the passage of an emissions trading system. And NZ has anti-smacking laws thanks to Greens MP Sue Bradford despite 85 per cent of New Zealanders opposing the laws.

Thankfully, a referendum on NZ electoral reform in 2012 is a chance to do away with a system that was introduced there only by accident when then Labor prime minister David Lange misread his debate notes in 1987 promising a system of voting that neither main party supported and one that NZ voters still do not understand. But don't count on it.

The Left is canny at pushing anti-democratic agendas using slogans about improving democracy. You can see it happening in Britain now. And it will happen again in the lead-up to the NZ referendum. Perhaps it's only a matter of time until the same people who lobbied for an Australian charter of rights will start pushing for proportional representation here, too. If so, just remember that it's like getting a tattoo. Proportional representation may seem cool at the time. But what follows is a lifetime of regret.

janeta@bigpond.net.au

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

PERENNIAL GUILT TRIP DISTORTS EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE

"NOTHING IS MORE WESTERN THAN HATRED OF THE WEST." SO WRITES FRENCH NOVELIST AND ESSAYIST PASCAL BRUCKNER IN HIS BOOK LA TYRANNIE DE LA PENITENCE (2006), CAPABLY TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY STEVEN RENDALL AND RECENTLY PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS AS THE TYRANNY OF GUILT: AN ESSAY ON WESTERN MASOCHISM.

"All of modern thought," he adds, "can be reduced to mechanical denunciations of the West, emphasising the latter's hypocrisy, violence and abomination."

He exaggerates, but not by much.

He shows how Europeans see themselves as "the sick man of the planet" whose pestilence causes every problem in the non-Western world (what he calls the South).

When the white man set foot in Asia, Africa or America, death, chaos, and destruction followed. Europeans feel themselves born with stigmata: "The white man has sown grief and ruin wherever he has gone." His pale skin signals his moral defectiveness.

These provocative statements undergird Bruckner's brilliant polemic arguing that European remorse for the sins of imperialism, fascism and racism has gripped the continent to the point of stifling its creativity, destroying its self-confidence and depleting its optimism.

Bruckner concedes Europe's blemishes but he also praises it for self-criticism: "There is no doubt that Europe has given birth to monsters, but at the same time it has given birth to theories that make it possible to understand and destroy these monsters."

The continent, he maintains, cannot be just a curse, for its sublime achievements complement its worst atrocities. This he calls "proof of grandeur".

Paradoxically, it is Europe's very readiness to acknowledge its faults that prompts self-hatred, for societies that do not engage in such introspection do not lacerate themselves.

Europe's strength is thus its weakness. Although the continent has "more or less vanquished its monsters" such as slavery, colonialism and fascism, it chooses to dwell on the worst of its record. Hence his book's title, The Tyranny of Guilt. The past, with its violence and aggression, is frozen in time, a burden Europeans expect never to throw off.

The South, in contrast, is deemed perpetually innocent. Even as colonialism fades into the past, Europeans righteously blame themselves for the plight of once colonised people. Eternal innocence means infantilising non-Westerners; Europeans flatter themselves as the only adults, itself a form of racism. It also offers a way to pre-empt criticism.

This explains why Europeans ask what they "can do for the South rather than asking what the South can do for itself". It also explains why, after the Madrid bombings of 2004, a million Spaniards marched against not the Islamist perpetrators but their own prime minister. And worse: why they saw Spanish civilians "torn apart by steel and fire" as the guilty party.

As shown by the Madrid bombings and countless other acts of violence, Muslims tend to have the most hostile attitudes towards the West, and Palestinians rank as the most hostile of Muslims. That Palestinians face off against Jews, the extreme victims of Western murderousness, makes them a perversely ideal vehicle for rebutting Western guilt. Making matters worse, even as Europeans disarm themselves, Jews take up the sword and wield it unashamedly.

Europe exonerates itself of crimes against Jews by extolling Palestinians as victims, no matter how viciously they act, and by portraying Israelis as latter-day Nazis, no matter how necessary their self-defence. Thus has the Palestinian question "quietly re-legitimated hatred of the Jews".

Europeans focus on Israel with such an intensity that one could think the fate of the planet will be determined "in a tiny stretch of land between Tel Aviv, Ramallah and Gaza".

And America? Just as "Europe relieves itself of the crime of the Shoah by blaming Israel, [so] it relieves itself of the sin of colonialism by blaming the United States." Excommunicating its American child permits Europe to preen.

For his part, Bruckner rejects this easy out and himself admires American confidence and pride of country. "Whereas America asserts itself, Europe questions itself." He also notes that, in time of need, the wretched of the earth invariably turn to the US, not the European Union. To him, the US is "the last great nation in the West".

He hopes that Europe and the US will co-operate again, for when they do, they "achieve marvellous results". But his own evidence points to the unlikelihood of that prospect.

Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. www.DanielPipes.org.

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THE AUSTRALIAN

EDITORIAL

ONE DAY OF THE YEAR ALSO IMPORTANT TO NON-ANGLO IMMIGRANTS

WATCHING Q & A'S SPECIAL ANZAC EDITION ON ABC1 THIS WEEK, I WAS STRUCK BY A QUESTION POSED BY A YOUNG WOMAN OF ASIAN BACKGROUND: DOES THE ANZAC TRADITION HAVE ANY MEANING FOR AUSTRALIANS OF MIGRANT HERITAGE?

Former Defence Force chief Peter Cosgrove, sitting at one end of the panel, responded that it wasn't for anyone to prescribe to others how they should feel about Anzac. Another panellist, historian Henry Reynolds, responded that Australians were indeed divided about Anzac because the tradition was bound up in Britishness and hence could never include those of non-British backgrounds.

As someone of Chinese and Lao extraction, born overseas, I confess that I, too, have had my doubts about the Anzac tradition.

I recall more than 10 years ago sitting in a eucalyptus grove at Hurlstone Agricultural High School in Sydney's southwest, listening to a fellow student deliver a speech about the Anzac spirit. She spoke passionately about our celebrated old boy John Edmondson, who was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for his actions at Tobruk in 1941. She spoke movingly about how "our forebears" fought to defend our country and the Australian way of life.

Yet, as I listened, I felt as though something wasn't quite right. They were noble sentiments, that I can't deny. But there was something amiss with this particular student delivering them and with me endorsing them.

The reason was that this fellow student at the lectern was someone like me, of an Asian background, even if like me she spoke with an Australian twang. Being someone like me, it seemed out of place that she would be speaking about "our forebears".

Indeed, how could I engage with Anzac when my own great-grandfathers never fought in Gallipoli and, at the time, were merchants and rice farmers on the banks of the Mekong and in southern China? How could I make sense of Anzac when the Australia that Diggers fought to defend was one that would have kept my ancestors out under the White Australia policy?

In time I've come to accept the Anzac story as part of my own. To belong to a national community is also to inherit a tradition. And if there are ambivalences, we should be prepared to use our moral imagination. Even so, when I returned last Friday to my old school to speak at its annual Anzac ceremony, I thought about just how many of the black-haired students before me have felt the pangs of exclusion.

Of course, they needn't feel excluded. Anzac is a story broad enough to include all Australians, whatever their origins and backgrounds.

To believe that the Anzac tradition is frozen in time at Gallipoli -- that it speaks only through the stentorian voices of Ellis Ashmead-Bartlett and Charles Bean, and involves no more than glorified British race patriotism -- is to indulge tired ideological prejudices. The 1960s of The One Day of the Year author Alan Seymour were a half-century ago now. Old cultural warriors would be better off laying down their arms. Australia has moved on.

And so, back at Hurlstone last week, I told students about the late Jack Wong Sue. Sue was a Chinese-Australian from Perth who served behind enemy lines in Borneo during World War II as a decorated member of Z Special Unit (Z Force), a crack Allied commando unit. Sue would later become a well-known figure and play a prominent role in Anzac Day marches in his home town. I wish I had known about Jack Sue more than a decade ago.

I wonder, though, what Reynolds would make of a figure such as Sue. In their recent book, What's Wrong with Anzac?, Reynolds and his co-editor Marilyn Lake argue that our commemoration of Anzac Day involves a corruption of patriotism. Anzac militarism, they contend, prevents us from celebrating our civilian history of nation-building.

We should certainly take pride in an Australian democratic tradition and our history as an egalitarian social laboratory.

But are we so unsophisticated that we cannot engage in both Anzac remembrance and nation-building memory? Must respecting Anzac lead us to expunge our democratic achievement from our collective imagination?

Lake and Reynolds leave us in no doubt about their answer. What they fail to realise is that reflecting critically on our national myths needn't involve celebratory self-loathing. Their stridency is likely to resonate only with those who believe our history has few redeeming qualities.

Australians today are moved by Anzac not because we believe in the virile manhood of a bronzed Anglo-Saxon Australian race fighting on behalf of empire.

Our patriotism isn't the kind of classical militarism of laying one's life at the feet of one's country for eternal glory.

Rather, we are moved because we are humbled by the contributions and sacrifices of those who have gone before us. We are reminded to live up to the very best of our traditions.

Such patriotism can unify us more than divide us. Even someone like me can sign up to that.

Tim Soutphommasane writes the Ask the Philosopher column in The Weekend Australian and is the author of Reclaiming Patriotism: Nation-Building for Australian Progressives.

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

THE TRUTH AND THE TREASURER

 

THE sale of NSW Lotteries has been yet another demonstration of the NSW government's shambolic relations with private investors. The Treasurer, Eric Roozendaal, appears to have been so keen to claim it as a victory that he has misled Parliament.

The government's solicitor received a letter, dated March 17, from lawyers for G-Tech/Ontario Teachers, an unsuccessful bidder in the NSW Lotteries auction, complaining that the winner, Tatts Group, had been allowed to bid for unclaimed prize money, and had increased its offer as a result, when others had been told repeatedly the unclaimed pool was not part of the deal. As we have pointed out before, this means taxpayers may have forgone up to $50 million on the deal from other contenders whose original bids, conforming to the rules, were higher than Tatts Group's.

Roozendaal told Parliament last week, in response to an opposition question, that no unsuccessful bidder had put in a complaint through the processes available, and none had complained to the probity auditor.

Given that the report of the government-appointed probity auditor has been used repeatedly, by the Treasurer and also the Premier, Kristina Keneally, to defend the outcome, it needs to be said that the value of such a procedure is brought into question by this episode. The auditor in the case, RSM Bird Cameron, is making no comment on the process. On the question of the process's fairness, though, its report reads: ''No issues noted'', and on that of accountability, transparency and consistency the only possible difficulty found is a change to the timetable. We do not doubt the auditor's thoroughness or professional acuity, but the result speaks for itself. NSW taxpayers, who foot the bill for this process, are entitled to ask: if undisclosed changes to the bid conditions favouring individual bidders do not raise issues of fairness or consistency, what would? Is there any point to a procedure which cannot detect obvious shortcomings?

The G-Tech letter was clearly a complaint: it was sent to the probity auditor as well as to the Solicitor-General and to the Treasury. There is no point in the government pretending otherwise. NSW residents are accustomed, unfortunately, to contemptuous behaviour from their political leaders and their scant respect for parliamentary standards. They should not, however, have to put up with it. Truth matters always, but it matters particularly in a contentious issue such as this in which disappointed bidders have evidence to suggest that the field on which they were playing was not level. Roozendaal should apologise for misleading Parliament and correct the error he made.

 

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

NEMESIS FOR THE EURO

THE rescue loans taking shape for the Greek economy are by no means the end of the crisis in European finances. The €45 billion ($65 billion) from the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund will just cover the servicing payments on national debt and the gap between revenue and spending in government finances this year. A larger sum will be required in coming years before the sovereign debt levels off at nearly 150 per cent of gross national product in 2014.

This would leave Greece second only to Japan in government indebtedness. But unlike Japan (and Italy, whose government is almost as bad), Greece has been heavily dependent on foreign rather than domestic subscribers to its bonds. And even the precariously high point of stabilisation depends on the Greek government carrying out the economic cold-turkey detoxification it has promised.

This will test the country's social fabric. Hard hit by the effects of the global financial crisis on tourism and shipping, Greeks have reacted angrily to the bursting of their bubble. Overly generous pensions and public sector salaries needed to be cut, work practices liberalised, and the vast black economy brought into the tax net, while the government needs to restore honesty and transparency to its accounts. Fortunately there is a new Socialist government, led by George Papandreou, which may be the best placed to convince the Greeks this is the best course to follow.

However there will be elements willing to push the situation towards default on sovereign borrowings. This would not be fatal for the Greek economy, or force its exit from the European single currency, and without the option of devaluation might actually hasten reform by inflicting much harder pain in a shorter time. But it could prove crippling for a lot of European banks, requiring more bailouts from their taxpayers, and increase fears of default and hence borrowing costs for other weak European economies, first Spain and Portugal but perhaps even Italy. The prospect has persuaded a reluctant Germany and France to launch the rescue.

Greece has meanwhile blown open the grand flaw in the euro project. The single currency was supposed to bring advantages of scale and high standards across the European economy. But there has been no effective discipline on government finances, allowing evasive practices like the off-budget spending of Athens and continued tapping of the low interest rates earned by the hard work and frugality of the Germans. Europe is weakened as a result, and there is no guarantee the Greek drama is a lasting catharsis.

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

RUDD HAS QUIT THE BATTLE ON CLIMATE CHANGE

SIX months ago, the Rudd government still insisted on the urgency of its emissions trading legislation. It acknowledged the difficult political context in which the debate over carbon emissions was being conducted in Australia: divisions within the Coalition made it increasingly unlikely that then opposition leader Malcolm Turnbull would be able to win his colleagues' support for an ETS deal, and the prospects of the UN climate conference at Copenhagen were uncertain. Nonetheless, the government argued that the planet faced no greater environmental threat than human-induced climate change, and maintained that Australia must play its part in the international response to it. This was consistent with the stance that Labor took during the 2007 election campaign. Now, however, another election looms - and responding to the environmental crisis has been put on hold for three years.

The government has shelved legislation establishing the emissions trading scheme it negotiated with Mr Turnbull, probably until 2013 at the earliest. Since the Liberal leadership coup that replaced Mr Turnbull with Tony Abbott, the ETS had been a crucial policy difference between Labor and the Coalition, one that might have become the trigger for a double-dissolution election. Now it has become just another moveable item on the agenda, to be deferred if it might hinder the government's chances of

re-election. And so it has happened: cabinet's strategic priorities and budget committee has dropped the scheme from the four-year budget forward estimates.

This has tactical advantages for a government that next month must unveil, in the 2010-11 budget, the fiscal strategy on which it will seek a second term. Shelving the scheme saves an estimated $2.5 billion, since in the early years of an ETS the revenue generated by the scheme will be less than the cost of compensation for industry and households. And that, it seems, has clinched the argument for a government worried by Mr Abbott's portrayal of the ETS as a ''great big new tax''.

Not for the first time, the Rudd government has shown itself to be easily spooked by opposition rhetoric, however flimsy it might be. Just as it rejected the proposed human rights charter on the grounds that it might be ''too divisive'', so the government is again demonstrating its preference for shunning a matter of contention rather than going to the effort of arguing its case. On the issue of carbon emissions, Mr Abbott might well find fertile ground for tax scares: a Lowy poll released this week shows that although 72 per cent of those polled want early action to reduce emissions, 33 per cent don't want any such action to increase their electricity bills. The fact that oppositions can make mischief with community ambivalence on an issue, however, does not leave governments with no option apart from quitting the field, and thereby implicitly conceding the argument. Yet that is what the Rudd government has chosen to do.

Indeed, in explaining that choice yesterday Prime Minister Kevin Rudd adopted the Coalition argument that the government so strongly resisted in the lead-up to the Copenhagen conference. Mr Rudd cited ''slow progress in the realisation of global action on climate change'', apparently now accepting there is little sense in Australia being other than a follower in global climate policy. Not so long ago, he and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong were arguing that if countries such as Australia were not prepared to take an initiative in curbing emissions, achieving concerted global action would be all the harder.

Yet Mr Rudd also wants Australians to think the government has not walked away from what seemed so important in 2007. ''Climate change remains a fundamental economic, environmental and moral challenge for all Australians and for all people of the world,'' he said. For at least the next three years, however, the Prime Minister has decided he is not up to that challenge.

Source: The Age

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THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

EDITORIAL

STATE IN A SPIN OVER TRANSPORT CRITICS

HOW many bureaucrats does it take to mastermind a response to a leading critic of the state's public transport policies? Answer: none. The job of devising strategies to discredit the work of RMIT academic Paul Mees was contracted out to a highly paid consultant, who billed the government $5460 for four days' work on two reports. Dr Mees says he didn't know whether to be flattered that the Transport Department couldn't find someone among its more than 1100 staff to respond to his critiques. Such levity aside, spending money in this way to counter government critics is a serious misuse of public funds.

Consultant Paul Zabakly has done well out of the government. It paid him a total of $2.6 million between March 2002 and September 2009, according to invoices obtained under freedom-of-information laws by the state opposition. In that context, the bill for his rebuttals of Dr Mees' work was small change. In 2006, a report co-written by Dr Mees attracted considerable attention for its conclusion that privatising train and tram operations had cost the state $1.2 billion more than if it had stayed in public hands. Mr Zabakly was paid $3960 to produce an analysis of the report, which then transport minister Peter Batchelor publicly attacked soon afterwards. Last September, Mr Zabakly was paid $1500 for analysing another report by Dr Mees. The department later relied on this work in its attempt to discredit that report.

So fierce have the government's responses been that Dr Mees left Melbourne University after being threatened with demotion following a Department of Transport complaint. If public transport was working well, it is unlikely the government would be so sensitive to criticism. The fact is that the system's performance is declining. Last month's record of one in five train services running more than five minutes late is the worst it has been in the time of this government and the Kennett government.

Last September, Premier John Brumby told Parliament newly signed franchise contracts would deliver ''the non-negotiables - punctuality, reliability, safety, first-rate customer service and cleanliness. Passengers will notice changes from day one.'' Did he have his fingers crossed?

The government, having spent $60 million on hiring Metro to replace Connex, is paying millions more for consultants and advertising in a bid to put a positive spin on an area of serious policy failure. Efforts to discredit Dr Mees are a waste of time and money, if only because commuters do not need experts to tell them what is obvious every day: public transport isn't up to scratch.

Source: The Age

 

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THE GUARDIAN

EDITORIAL

IN PRAISE OF … POLITICAL ACTIVISTS

THERE IS SOMETHING NOBLE ABOUT FIGHTING FOR A CAUSE BECAUSE YOU BELIEVE IN IT – WHATEVER THE RESULT

Politics has been professionalised. Elections have not. Under warm April skies, people have been giving up their time to deliver leaflets, canvass, put up posters and generally chivvy reluctant fellow citizens to take politics seriously. Many of them know that their candidate has no chance of winning; some have been working for years in a forlorn cause; most are now suffering a backlash from a parliamentary expenses scandal that they played no part in creating and did not benefit from. There is not much glamour, these days, in joining a political party or campaigning for it, but activists are all that stop elections becoming desiccated television events, won by the party able to spend the most money and spread the most fear. There is something noble about fighting for a cause because you believe in it, a shared spirit of community that breeds its own shared skills. Every experienced campaigner has tales of dangerously snappy letterboxes and snarling dogs, and develops a kind of political sixth sense, able to distinguish by sight a non-voter or a soft Lib Dem from a firm Tory. Recent research by psychologists found that political engagement creates its own pleasures: the reward seems to be in the taking part, not any success it might bring. That is good news for all those people whose bank holiday weekend will be taken up with canvass returns and last-minute pleas for support. Only a minority will be able to cheer a winning candidate on election night. But all of them deserve thanks.

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THE GUARDIAN

EDITORIAL

DEATH OF BLAIR PEACH: THE TRUTH AT LAST

This was a bad incident at a very bad time – but the case remains a standing warning to the Metropolitan police

On 23 April 1979 Blair Peach, a teacher and activist, was killed on an English street, in daylight, in front of witnesses, by a member of the Metropolitan police. It has taken 31 years for the force to release documents that confirm this is true, and confirm too that the force had a good idea who killed him and did nothing about it. In fact they covered it up.

Many things about policing have changed for the better since then. Yesterday the Metropolitan police released everything they have previously kept back about the case: 3,000 documents, including a report by Commander John Cass, which found that the group of officers involved in Mr Peach's death were telling "easily recognised lies". The Cass report should have been published 30 years ago. Mr Peach's partner Celia Stubbs has fought bravely over the years to see it. But it has at least emerged now, and it would be wrong to say the Met of today is, underneath, still the Met of 1979. From the Scarman report onwards, the force has been made to confront its failings and reform.

But disturbing echoes of the past remain. The Met would like yesterday's release of documents to mark the closing of a lamentable era, the sort of world shown in the series Life on Mars, when officers, as in the case of the Special Patrol Group responsible for Mr Peach's death, kept whips and weighted coshes in their lockers. No police officer, it is to be hoped, would get away with that now. But members of the Territorial Support Group, which replaced the SPG in 1987, were involved last year in the death of another man at another demonstration. The parallels between Ian Tomlinson's death, as a bystander at the G20 protests, and Mr Peach's killing are not exact. But they are close enough to be worrying.

The police handling of the Southall protest which led to Mr Peach's death was abominable. No public statement of sympathy was ever made by the police. In spite of detailed criticisms and complaints at the time about police conduct, including the killing, no police officer was ever disciplined in any way, much less prosecuted for any act committed at Southall. Police refused to offer evidence or to co-operate with the independent inquiry.

This was a bad incident at a very bad time. Mr Peach became a kind of martyr figure and his case was exploited as symbolic of all police oppression. That did not help his family and friends. But nor does it in anyway excuse the fact that a force whose duty was to protect the peace instead destroyed it, wrecking community relations in a way that led, after 1979, to terrible riots. The lessons of that have been learned, but the Peach case remains a standing warning to the Metropolitan police.

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THE GUARDIAN

EDITORIAL

FIXING PUBLIC FINANCES: CALL OFF THE PHONEY WAR

Notion of trying to pull off one of the biggest spending cuts in British history within one parliament is just implausible

Like bald men squabbling over a comb, the election battle over economic policy has been a huge barney over the immaterial. David is being reckless with the recovery, says Gordon, because he wants to make spending cuts of £6bn. By not cutting that £6bn now, Gordon is simply storing up trouble, says David. As for Nick, well, he at least shows his figures in his election manifesto. No subterfuge there.

Except there is plenty of subterfuge – all round. All three parties have failed to "come clean" on how they will reduce government borrowing, says the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies. In their presentations on the economic battleground yesterday morning, IFS researchers pointed out that the big debate on how to reduce the budget deficit was – so far – just so much hot air. Over 80% of Conservative and Labour plans for spending cuts over the next parliament have still not been identified. The Lib Dems are almost as bad, with 74% of their cuts still completely unclear – while Nick Clegg's goal of finding £5bn through clamping down on tax avoidance is described by the IFS as flatly unrealistic.

Even if Labour and the Lib Dems dot all the Is and cross all the Ts in their plans for fixing the finances – and it is a big if, a £50bn if – they will be attempting the biggest cuts in public services since the IMF came knocking in the 70s. If the Tories really intend to follow through their blueprint, they will make the biggest cuts since the second world war.

Consider that for a moment. Any government that tried to squeeze public spending that sharply would not merely be making itself unpopular – it would be risking Greek-style mass protests. Even then, it might not be possible: cabinet ministers would struggle to axe sufficient public services fast enough. The very notion of trying to pull off one of the biggest spending cuts in British history within one parliament – which is the goal that all three parties subscribe to – is just implausible. Whatever they say publicly, all serious politicians must know that deep down.

There are other ways to manage a deficit. National income could grow more, and so bring in more tax revenue to pay down the borrowing. Ministers might also accept the inevitable and admit that it will take longer than four or five years to halve the deficit. There is no economic reason Whitehall should not do this. Yes, bond investors lending to the government would almost certainly ask for higher interest rates (although the kind of meltdown seen in Greece or Portugal this week remains unlikely, because Britain has much longer-term borrowing), but they are not taking any of the parties' plans seriously at the moment. If politicians accept that it will take longer to bring down the public debt, that would not only be more humane – it would be more realistic too. Sure, it would not please the rabid shrink-the-state brigade, but their argument always owed more to ideology than economics. For everyone else on all sides, it is time to call off the phoney deficit war.

Apart from deadlines to pay off government borrowing, the parties need to show much more concern to divide the bill between taxpayers and public-service equitably. Reducing the debt should be done as fairly as possible (with the burden to fall on those better able to bear it) and do as little harm to the social fabric as possible. On this score, the Tories do worst of all, with George Osborne's cuts in inheritance tax and national insurance helping the upper and middle classes most. Labour's supertax and rise in national insurance are both progressive, and Alistair Darling has put a bit more of the burden for fiscal tightening on tax rises. Even then, the IFS points out that, in sorting out the fiscal mess of the early 90s, John Major and Ken Clarke split the balance between spending cuts and tax rises far more evenly than Labour plans to do. A shaming comparison.

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DAILY EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

WE HUMANS DON'T HAVE A MONOPOLY ON EMOTION

BY JAN ETHERINGTON

 

THIS week a picture story of a group of chimpanzees comforting an elderly female chimp as she lay dying provoked not only a collective "aaahhh!" but a chorus of "they're behaving just like humans".

 

In fact they're behaving just like chimpanzees. While in the past we might have been tempted to describe them as "mimicking" human  behaviour, particularly in the PG Tips chimps' tea party  commercials – when it comes to family, feelings and a sense of community the chimpanzee is doing very much what comes naturally to a higher primate.

Pansy, at 55, was the oldest chimpanzee in the UK and the film taken at Blair Drummond Safari Park of the hours leading up to her death shows group members gathering round, grooming her, studying her face, nudging her gently in an attempt to revive her and even holding her hand.

They were anxious, caring and even after Pansy had died her daughter returned and stayed at her mother's side all night. This doesn't surprise primatologist Jane Goodall at all. She remains the only human ever accepted into chimpanzee society and lived with a troop in Tanzania for many years, bonding with a high-ranking female, giving them all names and studying their social hierarchy.

She discovered that chimpanzees not only use but actually make tools, something previously  considered the
defining difference between humans and other  animals. "The long hours spent with them in the forest have enriched my life beyond measure and what I have learned from them has shaped my understanding of human behaviour, of our place in nature."

Chimpanzees are exceptionally bright but animal behaviourist Roger Mugford adds: "If you told me this behaviour had been seen in cockroaches I might have my doubts but on my farm I observe sentient behaviour in many species. One of my cows died in childbirth and the cow's daughter and granddaughter were nearby, watching anxiously as the crisis deepened. I find when I've weaned the calves the mothers are inconsolable, trying to follow the baby, lowing. They have an elevated heart rate and stop eating for a while. We still tend to see animals as  inferior to us in their instincts but as humans we have lost so many perceptions and sensibilities that in many ways we could learn from them now."

 

Many species have a ritualistic approach to death, which mirrors our own funeral ceremonies. When elephants die the herd leaves the carcass to be stripped by carnivores and then returns to touch and move the bones in a formal farewell.

Dr Jonathan Balcombe, author of Second nature: The Inner Lives Of animals, reveals that dozens of studies of
species from chickens to chimps show that, "just 30 years ago it was scientific heresy to ascribe emotions such as delight, boredom or joy to a non-human. now we know that animals don't merely live in the moment, they have lives, moods and  dispositions". The view that "animals don't feel things like we do" simply isn't true.

Animals have memories, attachments and sense danger and fear. There are strict rules in this country that when animals go to slaughter they do not see the beast ahead being killed as this adds terror and stress to their final moments.

Dolphins, with their extraordinary sonar skills, can "see through" a solid object. But for those of us who don't encounter dolphins or chimpanzees, life with domestic pets often makes us anthropomorphise their behaviour.
"He understands every word I say"; "He's jealous of my boyfriend"; and even "He doesn't like watching EastEnders".

As a dog owner I can see where the similarities end and the line is drawn that makes them different from us. My English Setter was for many years an official pets as therapy (PaT) visitor to the Princess alice Hospice. I soon saw what makes dogs different from human visitors.

However careful we are, we humans find it difficult to hide a look of pity and concern as we approach a patient's bedside. My dog just breezed up, tail wagging and gazed at the patient as if he or she was the most beautiful sight. The delight on the patient's face was proof that there are some things animals do much better than us.

 

There's a lot to be said for animal instinct.

           

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DAILY EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

INSULTING THE POPE IS AN UTTER DISGRACE

BY ANN WIDDECOMBE

 

THE real significance of the Foreign Office memorandum about the forthcoming papal visit does not lie in the coarse contempt for Catholicism which it embodies but in the assumption of the civil servant who wrote it that it would be perfectly in order to circulate it to Downing Street and beyond.

 

He clearly believed that his mockery would be shared by whoever read it and that the values it so thoroughly trashed would not.

One severe reprimand and prompt move later he now knows otherwise but I suspect that he is still a bit puzzled because he is the product of a secular age which dismisses Christianity and, although he is said to be an Oxford graduate, he has probably as much grasp of theology as I have of rocket science.

Yet would he have made the same jokes if the visitor had been the head of another religion? he suggests Pope Benedict should launch a new brand of condoms. Would he have dared suggest that a visiting ayatollah should launch a brand of pork sausage?

The memo was supposed to describe the ideal visit and that says all you need to know. The ideal visit for this young  know-all and his fellow civil servants who subscribed to the agenda is for the Pope to renounce Catholic teaching. Would he have suggested that a rabbi should do likewise with Jewish teaching?

Anybdy who has ever worked in an office knows that fake memos are circulated as jokes and ridiculous ideas are suggested in brainstorming sessions and if that were all that had happened here I would have brushed it aside but this is something on an altogether different scale. This was not a rogue e-mail but an official document deliberately not accidentally circulated.

The result has been that our Ambassador to the holy See has been obliged to go and apologise to the Vatican for any offence caused by the British Government. Tony Blair and latterly Gordon Brown both issued personal invitations to the Pope to visit. You do not issue an invitation and then as host insult the guest. Already relations are strained with the raft of legislation suppressing Christian conscience in this country, not least the tyrannical requirement that Catholic adoption agencies, which place the most difficult children, should place some with homosexual couples or close down.

 

The Pope is said to have observed to Tony Blair that Britain is a very difficult country in which to be a Christian. An official, as opposed to purely pastoral, visit was meant to heal some of the wounds. Instead there is now more strain than ever and all because some clever-clogs, mocking fools in the Foreign Office don't understand that this visitor doesn't speak for some foreign potentate but for millions of people in this country and billions across the world and that its memorandum has insulted them all.

 

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DAILY EXPRESS

EDITORIAL

NHS SHOULD SPEND MONEY ON PATIENTS NOT DRUG ADDICTS

BY ROSS CLARK

 

IF I were Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, I don't think I would want to run into a nurse who has had to inform a cancer patient that no, drugs commonly prescribed for the disease in other countries are not available on the NHS.

 

At the college's annual conference in Bournemouth on Monday Dr Carter made a plea for a drug to be prescribed more freely but it wasn't one to treat cancer or macular degeneration, another condition where patients are being denied a drug available in other countries: it was heroin.

Dr Carter wants the NHS to set up "drug consumption rooms" where heroin addicts can obtain their fix courtesy of taxpayers' money. He claims that free heroin on the NHS would cut crime.

It is offensive enough that a nurses' leader should be considering handing out free heroin to junkies when people, ill through no fault of their own, are under threat of losing their eyesight or even their lives through want of funding for therapeutic drugs. But it is even more serious that anyone should be contemplating an extension of a liberal drugs policy which has been a complete and utter failure.

There is nothing novel about the idea of the State handing out free drugs to satisfy addicts' habits. The Government has been doing it for years in the form of methadone, a heroin-substitute which has been prescribed in ever-increasing quantities: there are now 147,000 people on methadone, accounting for a large slice of the £500million a year spent "treating" drug addiction. The justification for prescribing methadone was that it was supposed to reduce drugs-related crime. Yet the opposite has happened.

A study of 400 drug-users in 2008 revealed that those prescribed free methadone were committing just as much crime as those who were buying their heroin from dealers. What free methadone has done, however, is to increase the number of people dependent on opiates and the number dying as a result. While methadone is supposedly less addictive than heroin it is still deadly, being responsible for several hundred deaths a year. Among them was two-year-old Derek Doran, who died in 2006 after drinking methadone which had been prescribed for his mother.

 

How much worse does the drugs problem have to get before the Government's touchy- feely approach to drug use is abandoned? It has become an article of faith onthe Left that Britain's drug problem is the result of a nasty,
authoritarian war against drugs which has gone horribly wrong and succeeded only in increasing addiction and crime to feed addicts' habits. If only Britain were to adopt a more enlightened policy on drugs such as in Holland, goes the argument, then we wouldn't have nearly such a big drugs problem.

But this analysis is wrong on all counts. The Government is not engaged in a "war" against drugs. On the contrary it has softened its stance over the past decade and not just by downgrading cannabis. Until the Nineties drug rehabilitation programmes were aimed at getting people off drugs. The Labour government elected in 1997 subtly changed that, declaring its aim to reduce the harm caused by drug-taking rather than the drug-taking itself. Hence the free metha- done: the theory was that by encouraging junkies to indulge their habits in controlled conditions they would be less likely to die and less likely to steal to feed their habits.

Drug-users are now treated not as authors of their own mis- fortune but as innocent victims of an evil drugs trade, while at the same time as handing out free methadone Tony Blair used the suppression of the heroin trade as one reason for invading Afghanistan.

Little incentive is given to drug-users to give up their habits: in its pamphlet The Phoney War On Drugs the Centre for Policy Studies cites the case of an addict who was prescribed increasing doses of methadone. He was lauded for making an "effort" to get his life under control even though all he had done was switch from drugs obtained on the streets to officially prescribed drugs.

There is no war against drug- users: cannabis-users can now smoke their weed with impunity so long as it is not in an enclosed public space. Neither is there much of a war against drug- dealers. Prosecutions for supplying class B drugs have plummeted from 5,201 to 568 over the past decade. The quantity of heroin seized on its way into the UK has fallen by two-thirds since 2000.

Britian is now much more lenient towards drugs than is the supposedly relaxed Netherlands, where authorities have begun to row back from years of liberal dogma. There, drug seizures have increased. Drug-users are increasingly being forced into residential rehabilitation programmes – not, as here, handed free drugs.

It ought to be obvious that making something free whether it be beer or heroin will lead to a rapid increase in consumption. Every budget the Chancellor explains that he is raising the tax on alcoholic drinks in order to reduce drunkenness so why does anyone think that handing out free drugs will somehow cut their use?

Britain now has three times as many problem drug-users per 100,000 population than does the Netherlands. It is a national disgrace and one which will not be solved by ever more liberal policies which have been shown to be a failure.

It is high time we returned to forcing drug-users out of their habits, not feeding them with free drugs.

 

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THE GAZETTE

ILL-CONSIDERED, PETTY ATTACK ON MCGILL

 

Education Minister Michelle Courchesne has neither common sense nor public support on her side in her attack on McGill University. She, or Quebec's next education minister, or her boss Premier Jean Charest, will have to back down from her ill-considered, petty, petulant position.

The facts are simple: Quebec students in the master of business administration (MBA) program at McGill's Desautels Faculty of Management have been paying Quebec's bargain-basement tuition. With per-student government funding, that's $12,000 in revenue per student/year. But the program costs $22,000 per student/year to run. You see the problem.

McGill's solution is simple: Forego the government money, raise tuition to $29,500, and use the surplus to beef up the program (and to subsidize needy students).

Running an MBA program is costly, Dean Peter Todd told us, because professors - many of whom could be top managers in the private sector - earn more than other profs; because the new curriculum involves team teaching; and because students are offered a lot of career advice and planning.

These factors add value but they add cost, too. Similar tuition-fee systems are popping up at business schools across Canada. Top Ontario business schools, Todd told The Gazette, spend $30- to $35,000 per student per year.

Remember that an MBA program is unlike any other: Students enter with an average of five years' work experience; three years after completing the program they're earning an average of $104,000, McGill says. Many MBA students have part of their fees paid by their employers. (All this is unique to business schools, so there is no thought of this model being expanded to other faculties or subjects.)

It's all too complicated for Courchesne, apparently. She abruptly notified McGill last week that if it goes ahead, she will claw back $28,000 per MBA student from the university.

Her position, though brain-dead, is at least clear: We won't give you the money you need to run a good modern MBA program, and we won't let you get it from students, either.

Yet the minister has no problem with the $65,000 tuition fee for the mid-career executive MBA program McGill operates jointly with the Université-de-Montréal-affiliated HEC. This raises in some minds the suspicion that Courchesne's real problem is about language.

However, McGill Principal Heather Munroe-Blum said in an interview this week that she thinks the problem is cultural, not linguistic. She might be onto something. Courchesne's absurd insistence on equality - "our responsibility is to ensure that the quality of teaching is comparable all across Quebec" - sounds ominously like a willingness to level downward, since we can't afford to level upward. Plenty of observers have detected in Quebec a sullen sort of "egalitarianism" which disdains, and even tries to punish, excellence.

Universities forbidden to aspire to excellence certainly will not produce any. But Munroe-Blum noted hopefully that Finance Minister Raymond Bachand, and others, have lately emphasized that Quebec urgently needs excellence, in education and in wealth creation, if we hope to maintain our way of life and afford all our social programs. The governing Liberal Party's slogan, for what it's worth, is "shine among the best."

If a willingness to foster excellence truly is "now emerging as a priority" in Quebec, as Munroe-Blum suggests, then somebody really should tell Courchesne about it.

Excellence isn't cheap, and the world of business schools is intensely competitive. In 1999, McGill's MBA program was ranked 35th in the world in Financial Times ratings, Lucien Bouchard and other prominent supporters of the Desautels proposal wrote in Saturday's Gazette; today it ranks 95th.

In its effort to improve the MBA course, the faculty of management and McGill's top officials have support from the MBA students' association, from an impressive chorus of well-placed McGill grads, from many other "lucids," from many in the media, and more. Its proposal is buttressed with additional student aid. If Courchesne persists in her foolish position, Charest should change her mind for her.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

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THE GAZETTE

GO, HABS, GO!

When the Canadiens began this first playoff round against the Washington Capitals, only the most tenacious of diehard Habs' fans could summon much optimism.

So it has been exciting to see Canadiens mania spread as the team has played its heart out, winning the first game in D.C., losing an overtime heart-breaker in game two, and now battling back from a 3-1 deficit. We pity anyone trying to draw a crowd to any other event around here tonight.

These are not the powerhouse Canadiens of the glory years. But this year's players, inspired by the supernatural Jaroslav Halak, have given their best against a bigger and, on paper, better Washington team.

Well, as Reggie Jackson says, that's why they play the games. In pro sports it's motivation, flowing like electric current through a dressing room, that can make the difference. We're already proud of our team, but we sure would like a victory tonight.

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

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THE KOREA TIMES

EDITORIAL

LANDMARK SEAWALL

TIME TO MAKE ACTION PLAN FOR DEVELOPMENT

South Korea has set a new record by building the world's longest seawall. On Tuesday, the nation celebrated the completion of the 33.9-kilometer-long seawall along the southwestern coast. It has taken 19 years to put the finishing touches to the landmark work. It beat out the present record-holding dike at the Zuiderzee Works in the Netherlands by a margin of 1.4 km.

The construction of the seawall began as part of a pork-barrel reclamation project in 1991 backed by then-President Roh Tae-woo's campaign promise. Its original purpose was to turn the Saemangeum tidal flat, 280 km south of Seoul, into farmland. However, the project has taken twists and turns. The work was once suspended over a legal battle by environmentalists opposing what they claimed could destroy the ecosystem.

But, it survived to change the map of the coastline between Gunsan and Buan in North Jeolla Province. The reclamation has so far cost the nation 2.9 trillion won ($2.6 billion) to create 40,100 hectares of land. It is good for the densely populated country to have new land equivalent to two-thirds the size of Seoul.

What matters now is how to utilize the land and match its development with the environment. The nation does not need additional farmland, especially rice paddies, as stocks of the staple food have been on the rise while the overall agricultural sector is seeing a decline. In 2008, the Lee Myung-bak administration changed the course of the shovel-ready project to reduce the ratio of farmland from the original 72 percent to 30 percent.

The move was inevitable. And early this year the government came up with an ambitious plan to transform the reclaimed tidal flat into a waterfront city resembling Amsterdam or Venice. The core of the 10-year blueprint is to set up an economic hub for Northeast Asia. The authorities are seeking to build an industrial complex, international business quarters, tourism and leisure facilities, ecological parks, and science and research centers.

But, the all too rosy scheme lacks concrete action for development. It also faces a tough challenge over how to finance the mega city plan requiring 21 trillion won until 2020. The government plans to mobilize taxpayer money to shoulder half of the costs, while encouraging the private sector to take up the remainder.

However, the state has no other choice but to incur a growing budget deficit, especially when the nation is pushing for a revised administrative town plan for Sejong City and a massive four-river refurbishment project. Besides, specialized industrial and business cities will be built across the country. Against this backdrop, businesses are reluctant to run the risk of investing in different development projects.

The success of the Saemangeum project may depend on whether it can attract large foreign investment. Without inviting multinational businesses to the would-be-hub of Northeast Asia the nation cannot achieve its goal of turning the reclaimed tidal flat into an internationally-acclaimed waterfront city.

 

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THE KOREA TIMES

EDITORIAL

POST-CRISIS PATH

APING INDUSTRIAL NATIONS ENTAILS HUGE RISKS

The Group of 20 economies has demonstrated a commendable unity in ending the global recession over the past few years. Unfortunately, however, the joint front among the 20 rich and emerging countries showed signs of fracturing when their finance ministers and top central bankers met in Washington last week.

This is not a desirable turn of events for Korea, host of the G-20 summit in November. Yet, what's crucial ― even more important than the successful hosting of the meeting ― will be Seoul's management of its own economy by maintaining growth momentum without touching off adverse side effects, including runaway inflation and the burst of asset bubbles.

What the government's financial and monetary policymakers should do in this regard is becoming increasingly clear: raise the key interest rate. This is especially so, now that the Washington meeting virtually left the ``exit strategy'' to each government according to its own circumstances.

But neither Finance Minister Yoon Jeung-hyun nor Bank of Korea Governor Kim Choong-soo are likely to move any time soon. As reasons for delayed action ― or inaction ― they cite the still weak employment figures and the lack of self-sustaining recovery by the private sector.

These may not be entirely lame excuses but have been used for too long. The national economy grew 7.8 percent in the first quarter, marking the biggest expansion in more than seven years. It indicates Korea is far closer to fast-recovering emerging economies like China rather than industrial countries of the United States or those in Europe, requiring swift actions to prevent any possible overheating of the economy, as Beijing has already done.

It is really worrisome some government officials are hinting that Seoul may be seriously considering a rate hike in the second half of the year or even during November summit.

This is little different from them saying they would make economic policies with non-economic considerations in mind, such as the June 2 mayoral and gubernatorial elections as well as the biggest diplomatic event Seoul will have played host to.

The officials must reconsider. They should think on why both foreign and local experts ― the International Monetary Fund and even the Korean Economic Research Institute, a think tank for the Korea Federation of Industries, a chaebol lobby ― are calling for Korea to increase the interest rate before it's too late.

It is of course a politically difficult move, especially considering any rate rise would lead to increased financial burdens on debt-ridden households and further sagging of the already slumping housing markets.

But these should be reasons for applying the brakes quickly ― if gradually ― for the alternative would be an abrupt crash as an inevitable result of prolonged speeding up, or the record-low interest rate for 16 months or even up to 21 months.

Whether it is going back to monetary stringency or implementing new banking regulations and financial reform, the nation needs to worry about its own economy rather than overly caring about its global status and reputation as a summit host. Korea must remind itself it is not an industrial country but an emerging economy and act accordingly.

 

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THE KOREA TIMES

EDITORIAL

ELITE COLLEGES SOFTEN ON ROTC BANS

BY DALE MCFEATTERS

 

Scripps Howard News Service

In the anti-war fervor of the late 1960s and early 1970s, strikes, sit-ins, demonstrations and the occasional arson drove the ROTC off many campuses. Over time the officer training programs gradually returned but not to the Ivy League and other highly selective schools.

They were kept off by what seemed, and probably was, an animus against the military, and the ``Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy provided a pretext for banning them under the guise of standing up for the rights of gays and lesbians.

DADT, to use the shorthand, bars openly gay and lesbian individuals from the armed services but also prohibits the military from asking about an individual's sexual orientation. The policy is not wholly the military's doing. Congress enacted it into law and President Bill Clinton signed it in 1993.

While that made the White House and Congress were complicit in the policy, the uniformed military bore the brunt of academic displeasure. Many campuses went a step further and barred military recruiters altogether until in 2006 a unanimous Supreme Court said those institutions could lose their federal funding for doing so.

However, now, according to the Boston Globe, such elite schools as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Stanford, Brown and the University of Chicago are rethinking their ROTC bans and over time may allow the program back on campus.

The softening attitude was given impetus when, shortly after President Barack Obama called for DADT's repeal in his January State of the Union address, Defense secretary Robert Gates told Congress the Pentagon was taking the first steps toward eventual repeal, a course endorsed by chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Mike Mullen.

One would also hope that that academia's new attitude has something to do with the great respect the American public has for the military post-9/11.

Harvard's 20 ROTC students must go to MIT or Boston University for their training. While some of the smaller area colleges that use the MIT program provide transportation for their students, Harvard does not. Nor, according to the Globe, does it give academic credit for their military science courses.

Some of the restrictions on ROTC cadets were so petty as to amount to spite. The Globe says that Harvard now allows them to list their ROTC affiliation in the school yearbook.

They can now get their officers' commissions in Harvard Yard following graduation, and in a major sign of the improving atmosphere for the military, Harvard president Drew Faust now attends the commissioning ceremony.
Faust should go a step further and welcome ROTC back on campus. The best and brightest in cap and gown and the best and brightest in uniform have been estranged too long.

Dale McFeatters is an editorial writer of Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com).

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THE KOREA TIMES

EDITORIAL

SPACE: AMERICA CONCEDES THE LEAD

BY 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.

In mid-April, three Americans with a very special status ― they have all commanded missions to the Moon ― made their dismay public.

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

The letter was timed to coincide with 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.

 

Obama insists that this sacrifice will allow the U.S. to pursue a more ambitious goal, but his plan to 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'' program 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 U.S. the big rockets it would need to meet 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 program's timetable was slipping and would undoubtedly have slipped further, as such programs 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' worth of the defense budget.

But it would have kept the United States in the game. 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'' program 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 Obama leaves office in 2016 (should he be re-elected in 2012), the United States 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 programs.

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 Jeff Bezos; John Carmack, programmer of Doom and Quake; Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal; and of course Richard Branson of Virgin Everything.

``Our success is vital to the success of the U.S. space program,'' 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 Obama know this? Very probably, yes. One suspects that he would actually be cutting NASA's budget, not very slightly raising it, if its center 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 United States 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 be Chinese or Indian, not American.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

 

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THE KOREA TIMES

EDITORIAL

MAVERICK RIDES INTO VALLEY OF NATIONAL DEBT

BY MARTIN SCHRAM

Scripps Howard News Service

Week after week, millions of Americans watched and waited. Watched on small screens, in state-of-the-art black-and-white, as James Garner rode into town. Waited for him to get himself into trouble and then talk himself out of it.

Which he always did, being as he was America's first favorite Maverick ― Bret Maverick. The flawed, but impossible-not-to-like maverick.

This week, on Tuesday, maybe a handful of Americans tuned in to watch, in state-of-the-art color, the small-screen video stream on White House Web site, as yet another oldfangled maverick ― Wyoming's former Sen. Alan Simpson ― loped onto the set of a production that promises to be every bit as unentertaining as it is urgent.

This was the first meeting of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform (translation: the president's bipartisan debt reduction commission), whose work is absolutely vital to lives of your children and grandchildren.

It was there that Simpson did his best to enliven by reprising his own most famous role ― as the maverick I first got to know when he first came to Washington three decades ago, then came to admire as a flawed but impossible-not-to-like maverick.

What I liked most about Simpson was that he was not just a straight-talker, but he seemed to be the only person in town who worked at convincing you of his own unimportance.

Which, of course, is why Alan Simpson became so important and ultimately why he became the Republican Senate whip, a traditionally no-glory nose-counter with the un-maverick job of keeping his herd from straying. Now he has much the same task, as he is co-chairing the commission along with former Clinton White House chief of staff, Erskine Bowles.

The two presided side-by-side at Tuesday's meeting, and they seemed to be every bit as close in purpose as they were different in temperament. Bowles plays the role of every earnest and predictable chief operating officer; Simpson is a Will Rogers jester-in-chief, proudly unpredictable.

One by one, the commission members told us in dire terms about the peril we face unless the unsustainable, out-of-control national debt is sharply reduced ― now. When it came time for Simpson to speak, he quickly got down to the business of telling his commission colleagues about himself ― which, in his maverick manner, meant telling us what others say is wrong and wacky with him.

Simpson, whom I've known to be a strong national defense hawk and a stalwart fiscal conservative, said he was never much of a favorite with ``the extreme right wing of my party." He said he has been criticized for being the president's ``toady" and for ``covering his fanny" by accepting the job of commission co-chair.

He told us he believes abortion is a woman's personal decision and that he supports gays and lesbians. He said he hated the hatred that has overtaken Washington. ``I never figured out too many ways to figure out how to diddle the other side … Hatred mainly corrodes the container it's contained in."

Washington is city where many are quick on the draw but occasionally quicker on the trigger ― which is to say, politicians sometimes shoot themselves in the foot. What I remember most about Simpson was a time when he made an attack based on information I knew was unverified and probably unknowable. When I called, he listened at length ― then surprised me by agreeing he was wrong and be began trying to undo his mistake.

The commission has just until December 1 to argue about cutting safety-net entitlement programs, raising taxes ― and most likely, doing both and being blasted by true-believers on all sides. The real question is whether the commissioners have the fortitude to forge a genuine plan.

In this capital of self-styled straight-talkers, we need a commission of straight-listeners who will listen with open minds and then have the courage to make sure that we stop forcing our children and grandchildren to pay for our compromising ways.

Martin Schram writes political analysis for Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com). E-mail him at martin.schram@gmail.com.

 

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THE KOREA TIMES

EDITORIAL

ARIZONA GOES AFTER ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS

BY DALE MCFEATTERS

Scripps Howard News Service

The recession, with its near-10 percent unemployment rate making the U.S. less of a draw for job seekers, took much of the fire out of the national debate over illegal immigration.

Now that the economy is picking up, so is the debate, with an unfortunate boost from the state of Arizona in the form of an intrusive new law targeting illegal immigrants.

The law requires state and local law enforcement to check the immigration status of anyone they have a ``reasonable suspicion `` of being in the country illegally. It is based on the somewhat novel premise that the illegal immigrants are trespassing.

The legal challenges to the law, when it goes fully into effect in three months, will not be long in coming, and President Barack Obama, who called the law ``misguided, `` seemed to be looking for a suitable occasion for a federal challenge when he instructed the U.S. Department of Justice to monitor its implementation.

The law requires legal immigrants to carry proof of their legal status at all times; failure to do so is punishable by up to six months in jail and a fine of up to $2,500. Critics say that if this requirement is allowed to stand it opens the way to something the nation has long resisted, a uniform national ID.

Day laborers here illegally can also be arrested for soliciting work.Local police forces have long been leery of being pressed into the business of enforcing federal immigration laws.

And unless Arizona law enforcement has a lot of free time on its hands, the business of questioning suspected illegals, checking their documents, processing them into the system and then trying to get the feds to take them off its hands will surely divert the police from more pressing public-safety issues.

The Arizona law allows local police and governments to be sued if they fail to vigorously enforce the immigration laws.

Arizona does not have the most illegal immigrants ― California has that honor, and other big states have considerably more ― but the estimated 460,000 there now have a disproportionate impact in a relatively maller state. And tightened enforcement elsewhere has pushed illegal border-crossers into Arizona.

The state is being only mildly dramatic when it claims to be ``ground zero `` for illegal immigration. And Republican Gov. Jan Brewer has a point when she says the state government was forced to act because the federal government hasn't.The federal government tried, and failed, under President George W. Bush, and congressional Democrats are gearing up to try again this year. Illegal immigration is a federal problem, and only when federal immigration laws are overhauled can the government make a meaningful start at solving that problem.

 

Dale McFeatters is an editorial writer of Scripps Howard News Service (www.scrippsnews.com).

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THE KOREA TIMES

EDITORIAL

DOWN MEMORY LANE

BY SEEMA SENGUPTA

KOLKATA ― While spending an unobtrusive holiday on the occasion of my 33rd birthday this March, some interesting yet hitherto unattended facts and queries engulfed my mind.

Though organizing pompous parties or receiving gifts are no more on the agenda these days, spending quality time with my family has been a priority for quite some time now. Reminiscing those exciting birthday bashes when it was virtually a custom to have hoards of chocolates, savor my favorite dishes and receive the choicest of gifts from my parents and acquaintances, is one of my favorite pastimes.

This year too my brother pampered me with some junk stuff in spite of being on a strict dietary regimen to lose some excess flab. But then this particular day, I prefer to remain totally carefree and can readily ignore the dos and don'ts of the grueling weight management program.

One important vacuum in my life for the last five years has been the absence of Kutus, my late pet dog. Especially on my birthdays, I miss her like anything. She used to be more enthusiastic than the birthday girl and would always loiter around to have the first taste of the delicacies prepared exclusively for the occasion.

During my school days, all the birthday gifts that I was presented with were very special assets. Though I was not fascinated by designer apparel, expensive jewelry or Barbie dolls, the adventure series of Belgian reporter Tintin however enticed me.

Even today, given a chance I spare no opportunity to go through the immortal narratives of Herge ― Tintin's creator ― with renewed vigor and enthusiasm. I really don't know why reporter Tintin fascinates me more than characters like Harry Potter?

Sometime I do ponder over the realistic possibility of Tintin's character inspiring me to choose this journalistic profession.

Moreover, Tintin's pet dog Snowy ― a small white terrier created an impregnable impression in my tender mind. Perhaps, Snowy is hugely responsible for what I am today, especially my love for dogs.

I can vividly recollect buying the glossy Tintin comics with my pocket money once in a while as it was the most expensive book during those days.

I am still the proud owner of some of Tintin's memorable collections but unfortunately not the entire series. Then there is also the peculiar coincidence of Tintin's adventure in Tibet attracting me the most among all the issues.

Perhaps this is a natural corollary to my uncle Major Rabindranath Sengupta's organic linkages with the Tibetans built up during his assignment in Establishment 22, the Tibetan unit of the Indian army. In fact, I always adored Tintin's unwavering commitment toward his friends and associates.

It is this intense feeling that actually urged him to trek through the inhospitable and treacherous Tibetan terrain in a daring rescue mission after the plane carrying his young Chinese friend Chang crashed in the high mountains.

That is precisely the reason why I emulated his uncompromising nature and attitude while dealing with the case of my uncle's sudden disappearance three decades ago. He was on a secret mission deep inside Pakistan when captured alive near the picturesque town of Muree sometime in March 1978.

Being a thorough Piscean born on the ides of March, it is indeed a Herculean task to break the characteristic cocoon of softness and ruthlessly deal with an obstinate establishment determined to conceal their misdeeds.

I was indeed hoping against hope that the angels would grant the greatest birthday gift of my life this year ― the safe return of my uncle back home. But then it seems that apart from divine intervention a staunch backing from the international community is an essential requisite to achieve my objective.

Returning to the utility of the Tintin comics, the short and easily adaptable vocabulary used in the narratives make it one of the best English learning instruments for children anywhere in the world.

It is indeed a simple learning process with beautiful photographs that makes the reader comfortable with the colloquial version of the language.

Adding to the learning curve is the underlying messages inculcated delicately, leaving the younger generation blessed with sublimity and a scientific temperament.

Going through the exciting activities of Tintin and his associates Captain Haddock, Professor Calculus, and the twin detectives Thomson and Thompson actually raises the spirit of camaraderie in an individual.

To me however, the conversation between Snowy and his master remains the most enjoyable segments that depict the selfless devotion of canines toward human beings.

The character Snowy actually leaves everybody spellbound with his sparkling intelligence and unparallel loyalty. A child going through this adventure series therefore gets the lesson of showering compassion to animals.

As I tide through the vagaries of life, Tintin remains my foremost mentor even today. Hopefully, the children in Korea and the world over will imbibe the adorable traits so eternally associated with one of the greatest adventure heroes of all time.

Seema Sengupta is a journalist based in Kolkata, India. Her articles have been published by The Tribune, The Telegraph, The Pioneer, The Asian Age and other newspapers. She can be reached at seemasengupta@vsnl.net.

 

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THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

GREECE'S CRISIS, EUROPE'S TEST

 

The Greek economy continues to slide. The promise of an aid package from the European Union a few weeks ago briefly stanched speculation against Athens, but relief proved fleeting. Acknowledging that the Greek economy was "a sinking ship," Prime Minister George Papandreou last week formally called for an international bailout, a move that focuses attention not just on Greece, but the entire EU.

 

Will the union be able to marshal a consensus that helps Greece and demonstrates the shared sense of purpose that must guide the EU if it is to survive?

 

Warning signs have been flashing for months as Greek debt matures and the government tries to negotiate its extension. The country owes about $400 billion, a deficit larger than its entire economy; it needs to borrow about $72 billion this year alone. The government budget deficit last year reached 13.6 percent of GDP, four times the limit set by the EU. Next month, $11.3 billion in 10-year bonds are due, and concerns about Athens' ability to come up with funds have pushed interest rates on those bonds to nearly 9 percent, three times the rate for other EU governments.

 

On April 11, the prospect of a crisis obliged euro-zone governments to offer Greece an emergency aid package of up to 30 billion euro, with another 10 billion euro expected from the International Monetary Fund. EU governments ultimately saw little alternative to an assistance plan, despite fears that it would encourage other governments in the euro zone to plan on aid in the event of encountering difficulty. On April 23, Greece asked euro-zone governments and the IMF for financial aid. It is expected that the amount of aid eventually received may even exceed the amount offered earlier in the month.

 

Papandreou blamed the crisis on the economic policies of his predecessors and their inclination to fudge national statistics. But he also knew that the real problem was that Greeks had lived beyond their means and that they would have to adjust their lifestyles. The Greek government has already implemented two austerity packages that reduce spending, by freezing pensions and cutting public wages, and increase revenue through tax hikes. That has triggered a predictable response from Greece's labor unions; they have protested vigorously, calling national strikes, some of which have become violent. But interest rates continue to climb.

 

Market skepticism is understandable. Athens does not have a strong record of implementing stern measures. With unemployment set to reach 13 percent next year, 20 percent of the population already living below the poverty line and Greece set to be the only EU economy in negative growth next year — the IMF forecasts a 1.1 percent contraction — there is little stomach for measures tough enough to turn the situation around. Not surprisingly, the rating of Greece's sovereign debt has been downgraded.

 

That prompted Papandreou to invoke the EU promise. Activating the rescue plan will, he explained, "send a strong message to the markets that the EU is not playing their game and will not leave its currency at risk." In fact, however, the loans are not yet guaranteed: Individual EU governments have to get approval from their national legislatures.

 

While assistance is deeply unpopular in some countries — Germans in particular are loathe to bail out a country that lives beyond its means when they accept austerity — it is likely to be approved. The IMF needs approval from its board, but that is also expected.

 

EU member governments will hold their noses and help out, if only because it is in their own interest. European banks hold 85 percent of Greek sovereign debt; France and Germany alone have about 40 percent. The default that would follow from Athens' inability to turn over maturing bonds would hurt their balance sheets and their own economies.

 

Moreover, there are signs of fear of contagion in the market — Germany was unable to sell all of a $4 billion issue of 30-year bonds in an auction last week, while Poland failed to sell about $200 million in five-year bonds.

 

More important is the prospect that a default would shatter the foundation of the European economic community and the cornerstone of the EU itself. By accepting the euro and joining the single currency, Greece gave up many of the tools governments traditionally use to manage crises. Normally, a government would devalue its currency at a moment like this; Athens no longer has that option. On top of that, the austerity measures that are required to get its house in order are even more painful when global demand is shrinking.

 

While EU governments are forbidden to bail out member governments in tough times, a failure to do so could permanently divide the union as governments with less solid economies worry about what would happen if they face a crisis. Yet the prospect of a bailout could diminish the readiness to take the hard measures needed to get weaker economies in shape.

 

Greek officials are confident they will get their aid by mid-May. They are probably right. The prospect of a

default is sobering for Greece, the EU and the world. As the IMF warned in its most recent World Economic Outlook, released last week, "if unchecked, market concerns about sovereign liquidity and solvency in Greece could turn into a full-blown sovereign-debt crisis, leading to some contagion." That is how economists warn of another dip in the global economy.

 

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THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

U.K. OVERDOSES ON CHANGE

BY DAVID HOWELL

 

British politics has been turned upside down by recent events. The traditional two-party battle between Labour and Conservatives has been thrown into confusion by a big surge in support for a third party, the Liberal Democrats. The likely result could be a "hung parliament," with the Conservatives being denied the overall majority of seats in the House of Commons they need to form a firm one-party government — although of course nothing is ever certain on the political stage.

 

Hitherto, or at least in recent decades, this third party has been regarded as a marginal player in British national politics, with only a small percentage of seats in Parliament and with an appeal confined mostly to the fringe areas of Britain.

 

But an agreement to stage a series of tripartite television debates among the three parties, in American presidential style, has given the fresh young Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, his chance. He has seized it by depicting the two bigger parties as giants from the past and his own small band as the new wave of warriors for radical change in British society and for the overthrow of the British political establishment.

 

So to every expert's surprise the familiar two-horse race has become a three-horse race. How has this come about and where will it lead?

 

First, the TV events have enabled Clegg to appear as an equal alongside the two bigger party figures, Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Conservative leader David Cameron, and to exploit the undeniable feeling of distrust and disillusion among the general public toward politicians and party political machines.

 

As has been often observed in this column over the past years, the age of Internet empowerment, bringing unparalleled transparency to the political process and access for tens of millions to policy procedures was always bound to make governance and complex decision-making much harder, and to elevate sound bites and slogans in place of serious analysis and wise handling of difficult issues.

 

Small wonder that a kind of mob electronic politics has developed, in which the instant pleasing of voters becomes paramount, and indeed can now be traced minute by minute.

 

But there is a second and still deeper reason why Clegg has been able to present himself so successfully as the honest small guy challenging the giants, the David against the Goliaths.

 

This is that the big parties have been curiously slow to understand, and show they understand, how the role of politicians and governments has become more constrained in the modern age of global networks.

 

The political parties are all campaigning for change, but it seems that none of them has recalled the old adage, best expressed by the great British historian G.M. Trevelyan, that "politics are the outcome, not the cause, of social change."

 

In other words it is not more politically inspired change that people want, or even expect, from their political leaders and governments, but the wisdom and capacity to control and administer the huge forces of change already at work — in today's global conditions more so than ever.

 

At every level of life the individual today is experiencing the impact of waves of change, some very uncomfortable and frightening. They want their leaders to manage and tame them, not to add to them.

 

Electoral experts and pollsters are fond of telling us that international and world factors are of no interest to voters and irrelevant at election times. But the electors know better, especially nowadays.

 

They know that distant and hard-to-understand factors and influences, like the behavior of Wall Street banks, or the export policies of Chinese industrialists, or the feuds and faiths of Islam and Mideast potentates and oil sheiks, are impacting on their daily lives and family concerns.

 

They know that remote events on the other side of the world are determining the price of their house loans, the prices of goods in the shops, the availability of products, the flow of information into their homes, their job opportunities, what their children are taught in school, and even their leisure pursuits, such as the composition and ownership of their local football teams. They have learned through bitter experience that international capital can (and often does) sweep in overnight and change the ownership of local businesses and shatter whole communities.

 

And they know perfectly well what the politicians are not prepared to admit: that global power and money are shifting to Asia, that Europe and the West are weakening and that immense energies and agility will be needed in the older countries like Britain to escape sinking into ineffectiveness, deeper debt and stagnation.

 

If the major parties are not prepared to be frank about the global challenges facing the nation, if they harp instead on smaller domestic issues or internal European squabbles, if they claim powers to change the course of events that they do not possess at national level, then they must not be surprised when they come under assault.

 

The need for all a nation's citizens to be given a sense of purpose and mission, to be rallied as a united team to face these bewildering and dangerous conditions in the shifting global network, has never been greater. For the British, with their long history and their unique experience and talents, this is especially so.

 

This is not to say that an upstart third party has necessarily got better answers to these issues, but it does mean that the appeal of the major parties needs to reach much deeper into the minds, fears and longings of the electorate. Their analyses and arguments are just too introverted and shallow. And when a storm comes, it is the tall trees with shallow roots that are in greatest danger of being blown over.

 

David Howell, a former British Cabinet minister, is a member of the House of Lords.

 

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THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

WHY CHINA HAS GOT IT RIGHT ON THE RENMINBI

BY BARRY EICHENGREEN

 

BERKELEY — After a period of high tension between the United States and China, culminating earlier this month in rumblings of an all-out trade war, it is now evident that a change in Chinese exchange-rate policy is coming. China is finally prepared to let the renminbi resume its slow but steady upward march. We can now expect the renminbi to begin appreciating again, very gradually, against the dollar, as it did between 2005 and 2007.

 

Some observers, including those most fearful of a trade war, will be relieved. Others, who see a substantially undervalued renminbi as a significant factor in U.S. unemployment, will be disappointed by gradual adjustment. They would have preferred a sharp revaluation of perhaps 20 percent in order to make a noticeable dent in the U.S. unemployment rate.

 

Still others dismiss the change in Chinese exchange-rate policy as beside the point. For them, the Chinese current-account surplus and its mirror image, the U.S. current-account deficit, are the central problem. They argue that current-account balances reflect national savings and investment rates. China is running external surpluses because its saving exceeds its investment. The U.S. is running external deficits because of a national savings shortfall, which once reflected spendthrift households but now is the fault of a feckless government.

 

There is no reason, they conclude, why a change in the renminbi-dollar exchange rate should have a first-order impact on savings or investment in China, much less in the U.S. There is no reason, therefore, why it should have a first-order impact on the bilateral current-account balance, or, for that matter, on unemployment, which depends on the same saving and investment behavior.

 

In fact, both sets of critics have it wrong. China was right to wait in adjusting its exchange rate, and it is now right to move gradually rather than discontinuously. The Chinese economy is growing at potential: Forecasts put the prospective rate for 2010 at 10 percent. The first-quarter flash numbers, at 11.9 percent, show it expanding as fast as any economy can safely grow.

 

China navigated the crisis, avoiding a significant slowdown, by ramping up public spending. But, as a result, it now has no further scope for increasing public consumption or investment.

 

To be sure, building a social safety net, developing financial markets, and strengthening corporate governance to encourage state enterprises to pay out more of what they earn would encourage Chinese households to consume. But such reforms take years to complete. In the meantime, the rate of spending growth in China will not change dramatically.

 

As a result, Chinese policymakers have been waiting to see whether the recovery in the U.S. is real. If it is, China's exports will grow more rapidly. And if its exports grow more rapidly, they can allow the renminbi to rise.

 

Without that exchange-rate adjustment, faster export growth would expose the Chinese economy to the risk of overheating. But, with the adjustment, Chinese consumers will spend more on imports and less on domestic goods. Overheating having been avoided, the Chinese economy can keep motoring ahead at its customary 10 percent annual pace.

 

Evidence that the U.S. recovery will be sustained is mounting. The latest data on sales of light vehicles, as well as the Institute of Supply Management's manufacturing index and the Bureau of Labor Statistics employment report, all point in this direction.

 

Because the increase in U.S. spending on Chinese exports will be gradual, it also is appropriate for the adjustment in the renminbi-dollar exchange rate to be gradual. If China recklessly revalued its exchange rate by 20 percent, as certain foreigners recommend, the result could be a sharp fall in spending on its goods, which would undermine growth.

 

Moreover, gradual adjustment in the bilateral exchange rate is needed to prevent global imbalances from blowing out. U.S. growth will be driven by the recovery of investment, which fell precipitously during the crisis. But, as investment now rises relative to saving, there is a danger that the U.S. current-account deficit, which fell from 6 percent of GDP in 2006 to barely 2.5 percent of GDP last year, will widen again.

 

Renminbi appreciation that switches Chinese spending toward foreign goods, including U.S. exports, will work against this tendency. By giving American firms more earnings, it will increase corporate savings in the U.S. And it will reconcile recovery in the U.S. with the need to prevent global imbalances from again threatening financial stability.

 

Chinese officials have been on the receiving end of a lot of gratuitous advice. They have been wise to disregard it. In managing their exchange rate, they have gotten it exactly right.

 

Barry Eichengreen is a professor of economics and political science at U.C. Berkeley. © 2010 Project Syndicate

 

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THE JAPAN TIMES

EDITORIAL

ETHICS OF CITIZENSHIP TESTS

BY JAN-WERNER MUELLER

 

PRINCETON, N.J. — Can citizenship really be tested? An increasing number of countries — especially, but not only, in Europe — seem to think so.

 

Over the last decade, tests and exams for immigrants have proliferated — but so have controversies about what they may legitimately ask. Recently, the revelation that the "Life in the U.K." test tries to instill respect for the practice of queuing — standing in line, that is — caused as much ridicule as indignation.

 

The British minister responsible for the test justified the idea by claiming that "the simple act of taking one's turn is one of the things that holds our country together. It is very important that newcomers take their place in queues whether it is for a bus or a cup of tea."

 

While this might sound like an excerpt from a Monty Python sketch, it raises an important issue: Should there be limits as to what prospective citizens are tested for? Can testing become counterproductive?

 

Critics of the spreading practice of citizenship testing certainly think so; in fact, they go so far as to lament the rise of a new "repressive liberalism" — Western states' efforts to achieve democratic and liberal ends with increasingly illiberal means. Making "integration courses" and language instruction compulsory, prohibiting head scarves in schools, as in France, or restricting the rights of immigrants to marry foreigners, as in Denmark, are just some instances of coercive measures adopted in the name of supposedly universal liberal values.

 

Such measures have the appearance of a (seemingly self-contradictory) program to force men and women to be free. Citizenship tests are an integral part of this program; and, in the eyes of critics, they resemble "loyalty oaths" and other intolerant measures traditionally associated with the anticommunist witch hunts of McCarthyism in 1950s America.

 

But do countries somehow automatically turn illiberal just because they make certain measures mandatory? If that were true, "progressive legislation" would inevitably be a contradiction in terms. The real question is whether states purposefully target or even exclude certain groups — while ostensibly applying universal standards.

 

Think, for example, of a German (oral) test that was to apply only to immigrants from states belonging to the Organization of the Islamic Conference (the test in question was later withdrawn), and which asked, among other things, the applicant's opinion about the fact that in Germany homosexuals hold high public office.

 

Similar tendencies appeared in the Netherlands, which was once committed to multiculturalism, but more recently has sought to confront would-be citizens with images of men kissing and of bare-breasted women emerging from the North Sea — presumably all to get across the point that a true Dutch citizen had better be tolerant.

 

It is clearly helpful for immigrants to get hints about how to navigate daily life practically — such as norms about standing in line. But this kind of local knowledge should not be subject to testing. Most people acquire survival skills — if not more sophisticated forms of savoir-faire — informally, as a quick glance at the immigration experience in the United States demonstrates. They will also come to get the point of more informal social norms — against homophobia, for instance.

 

The lesson is that national governments should not test the attitudes of immigrants to moral and cultural questions that remain controversial even among established members of the host country. It would be hypocritical, for example, to pretend that everyone in Western liberal democracies is enthusiastic about gay people or nudists — what matters is that their rights be respected, not that everyone like them. Tests should communicate lessons about rights and democracy, that is, politics — not about lifestyles or the supposed core content of a "national culture" (on which established members of a host country themselves would probably be hard pressed to reach consensus).

 

Of course, it is true that birthright citizens live their lives — and retain their citizenship — without ever being tested on the basics of their political systems. But it is a reasonable expectation — often legitimately reinforced through civic education for all children — that citizens know how to participate in public affairs, and especially that they know what their and others' rights are.

 

So, citizenship tests — rather than being repressive — can actually be empowering, if they make immigrants aware of rights and possibilities for participation. They are akin to language requirements — except that the language here is a civic, not a national one, which in the best case allows new citizens to voice their concerns with perfect political grammar. Tests might also make the passage to citizenship meaningful, a ritual similar to the solemn swearing of an oath of allegiance, which can be integrated as a major event into the story of one's life (some will always dismiss such ceremonies as political kitsch).

 

What these kinds of exams cannot do — and should not attempt to do — is test people's political convictions. For one thing, such convictions can always be faked by those determined to dissimulate. At the same time, most would-be citizens will probably feel alienated from a state that suspects political danger emanating from newcomers and consistently sends a message of distrust.

 

In the end, citizenship exams, rather than really being "tests" in any meaningful sense at all, are tools for communication. And every country should think very carefully about what it wishes to communicate about itself.

 

Jan-Werner Mueller teaches in the Politics Department at Princeton University. His most recent book is "Constitutional Patriotism." © 2010 Project Syndicate

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

OFF THE RAILS

 

A quiet tragedy occurred on the weekend — the end of an almost 40-year-old icon, the Parahyangan train plying the Bandung-Jakarta route.

 

On one hand it was a sad development for regular passengers, including students and employees based in either Jakarta or Bandung, the capital of West Java.

 

The train had been operating since July 1971, and passengers would rush to the station each weekend, bringing oleh-oleh (souvenirs) — either traditional snacks for the family in Jakarta, or doughnuts from Gambir station when Bandung didn't have a Dunkin Donuts.

 

One passenger and his family came all the way from Batam in Riau Islands to watch the send off of the last Parahyangan.

 

On the other hand, a train plying the same route is still there — the Parahyangan has been replaced by the Argo Parahyangan, incorporating the former brand into executive Argo carriages, retaining fewer economy-class seats. So it doesn't seem like such a big deal.

 

But a closer look reveals that the last Parahyangan departure on Tuesday was a national tragedy, as the cited reason for its end was business losses resulting from the people using the turnpike connecting the two cities instead.

 

The development thus reflects the national, misguided penchant for sacrificing mass transportation for private transport, leaving fewer options for those seeking to save on transport costs.

 

The toll road, officially opened in 2005, in conjunction with the Golden Jubilee of the Non-Alignment Movement hosted in Bandung, has provided a shorter alternative for commuters and holidaygoers, reducing the journey to two hours instead of three on the train.

 

The state railways operator PT Kereta Api Indonesia says the 41-kilometer Cipularang turnpike was responsible for last year's loss of Rp 36 billion, that was behind the decision to stop the Parahyangan: Perfect business logic — only it doesn't consider the expense in terms of the loss of public service and a mode of transportation — greener than all the SUVs on the turnpike that end up clogging Bandung streets every weekend, much to the annoyance of local residents.

 

Without the government stepping in to either subsidize or privatize train routes, other inter-city railway routes are exposed to a similar fate. The political need of a populist image for those in power may be partially responsible for unclear follow-up measures on plans to at least privatize management of the tracks, if not the entire railway system.

 

Letting PT KAI bleed on its own also shows a government that doesn't really care about the vital need to end our legacy of a transportation policy that has, since the early years of the New Order, been biased towards gas-guzzling, privately owned land transport vehicles.

 

Under a president who pledged "prosperity, democracy and justice" the government still has little to show in terms of transportation improvements, while passengers deal with crowded filthy trains, wait in eternity for TransJakarta buses, or go back to using air-conditioned cars.

 

It is taking forever for our politicians to learn that feeling part of a modern nation means being able, in part, to be a dignified public transport passenger.

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

ACFTA AND THE THREAT OF INTERNAL TRADE BARRIERS

PALMIRA PERMATA BACHTIAR

 

Early this month, the governments of Indonesia and China decided to proceed with the full implementation of the ACFTA. Renegotiation was considered much more costly because in addition to compensation, Indonesia will have to renegotiate with China and also with other ASEAN countries.

 

Instead, China offers technical assistance in improving competitiveness of Indonesia's SMEs in terms of machinery, logistics, and promotion (The Jakarta Post, April 13, 2010).

 

Without underestimating that effort, this article intends to discuss the already weak competitiveness of Indonesian products. The reason is straightforward: trade barriers imposed by local governments.

 

The weird phenomenon is that government liberalizes trade with other countries at the national level, yet the opposite happens at the regional level where trade barriers are still imposed to our local producers.

 

Although no regional governments deny the importance of trade and investment on employment generation and poverty reduction, very few would set aside the distraction of local revenue at the cost of the long-term business climate.

 

Coupled with the decentralized authority, most local government would end up exercising their power by issuing regional regulations (Perdas) to extract tax and levies. Trade barriers are applied to regulated (read: restricted) commodities, particularly agricultural and forestry products.

 

As an example, one truck of tamarind from Kabupaten (regency) Timor Tengah Utara (TTU) will have to complete the so-called certificate of origin that lasts only for 2 days.

 

The certificate charges certain prices to pay for each kilogram of tamarind exported out of the district.

 

Tamarind is assumed, either to be collected in government forest or be the harvest of government distributed seeds. Heaven knows who invented this logic!

 

To add to the complication, the certificate is issued only after verification by the Forestry Agency. With this transportation document in hand, a trader has to rush to reach Kupang Port before the certificate expires.

 

Else, they must complete the whole process again in TTU.

 

Meanwhile bad road condition delays the transportation time twice as much.

 

Worse, along the long and winding road, it has to pass 10 posts, each costs it not less than Rp 15.000 (US$1.6). Thus, even with the complete transportation document, the trader just cannot avoid the illegal fees.

 

Once arrives in Kupang, the certificate has to be replaced with the one issued by Agriculture Agency in Kupang.

 

Everything has to hasten to ensure the goods do not miss the ship to Java.

 

In theory, exchange of TTU certificate to Kupang's cost zero, but in reality nothing seems to be a free lunch

when one has to be proceeded hastily.

 

In general, this illustrates what happens to agricultural and forestry commodities in Indonesia: trade barriers — be it tariff and non-tariff barriers (which practically also cost money) or legal and illegal ones – which massively inflate the cost and time of transportation.

 

This is understandable if consumers in Java would choose cheaper imported agricultural products than local ones. If the local producers could not win the game in their own field, how could we expect them to compete in international market?

 

Historically, regional regulations on trade (and investment) barriers, the so-called problematic perdas, have been repressively eliminated through Law No. 18/1999 as the implementation of the Letter of Intent with the IMF in 1998. Its amendment (Law No. 34/2000), however, terminated the deregulation process allowing the problematic perdas to mushroom again.

 

The newly passed Law No. 28/2009 will be the only hope in putting the free internal trade back to track.

 

Theoretically, under the "close system", the legalization of such perdas will be out of question.

 

There are two things that arise concerning this expectation. First, SMERU (2009) found that the anti-trade element might not be stipulated in the perdas, but in the lower bylaws, for example the decree of the governor, mayor or district head.

 

Second, under a 2009 law, the Home Ministry no longer has the power to cancel the problematic perdas. They can only be annulled by a Presidential Regulation, which will take ages, on the account of already piling up burdern of the president.

 

Meanwhile, the barrier to cancel perdas is rooted in the legal framework that divides the interpretation into two groups.

 

One group has the opinion that perda is part of national policy framework and therefore the central government has the authority to annul perdas that are against the higher laws.

 

The other group believes that perda is the product of autonomous regional parliament. Hence, it can only be invalidated by the regional court.

 

In both cancellation cases — be it through the presidential regulation or the local court — uncertainty increases and business climate deteriorates.

 

One breakthrough might be to consider inter-regional trade as one of the national affairs (Hadi Soesastro, 2001). He argued that this had been the case in many other countries where distribution of goods and services was kept free and becomes part of the national economic management.

 

Only then the gains from trade can be captured by both national and regional governments.

 

Back to the issue of the ACFTA implementation. The Chinese government promised technical assistance to improve our competitiveness. Yet, we cannot expect fruitful outcomes without fixing those problematic perdas.

 

The government has to do something, at least not let the local producers fight alone and struggle to survive against the red tape.

 

To end, many would consider the ACFTA a threat. The real threat, however, is the internal trade barrier as it violates the principle of Indonesia as one unity of the free economic zone (Hadi Susastro, 2001).

 

Trade barriers weaken our product competitiveness, but more dangerously it threatens our national integrity.
 
We cannot expect fruitful outcomes without fixing those problematic perdas.

The writer is a SMERU researcher. This article expresses her personal opinion.

 

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

LOOKING AT BOTH SIDES OF THE NATIONAL CINEMA

NOVA CHAIRI

 

The 30th of March marks the birth of Indonesian cinema.  It was on this date, in the year 1950, that the first Indonesian film, Darah dan Doa (Blood and Prayers) was directed by an Indonesian native, produced by an Indonesian production house and shot in Indonesia. Consequently, ever since 2007, the 30th of March has been proclaimed by the Indonesian film industry as National Cinema Day, to celebrate the highs and lows and the triumphs and turbulence that the country's cinematic industry has endured.

 

During its 60 years of existence, the nation's film industry can be compared to a fruitful tree.  Starting out as a single seedling, Indonesia's cinematic business is still growing, producing more and more movies as it matures.  The industry has consistently been more productive in producing films. In 2004, the industry only released 21 titles.  

 

However, in the span of three years, that number has grown 152 percent when in 2007, the industry successfully released 53 titles.  In 2008, it produced 87 titles, and in 2009, the industry successfully reached a new landmark, releasing more than 100 movies in a single year. Things are looking bright for the industry's future. According to a publication released by the Culture and Tourism Ministry, there are more than 1,025 active local production houses as of 2009.

 

The industry's productivity and size is still relatively smaller if compared to the likes of India, Korea or Thailand. But, despite this fact, it has made a respectful contribution to the growth of the nation's economy. In 2009, it is estimated that Indonesian theaters have sold 15-20 million tickets.

 

Calculating the average price of a single ticket is around Rp 20,000 (US$2.2), then you would find that the cinemas contribute Rp 400 billion to Indonesia's economy.

 

It doesn't stop there. The government's regulation that mandates a minimal 60 percent of theater's to be allocated to domestic films give screenwriters, producers, directors, and production houses an added incentive to keep generating more movies. The development of the film industry will no doubt ensure more greater, positive contributions from the creative industry for the growth of the national economy. It also promises more jobs.

 

Amid the potential of the film industry, there are still certain issues that need to be addressed. Ever since the resignation of president Soeharto, the country has gone through significant reform spanning many industries including the media. Freedom of expression has vociferously been exercised during the reformation, not excluding the film industry.

 

Nowadays, many movies have exercised that right. However, one may think that several movies have pushed some limits. One issue related to that right is many movies are filled with scenes deemed vulgar by many.

 

Some producers have taken advantage of the right of freedom of expression to make films that have no inherent moral message.

 

Rather, they see the right as a means of increasing movie profit through rather shallow movies, selling themselves through improper scenes depicting sexual content not in line with Indonesian values.  Much controversy has stemmed ever since these types of movies have been released.  

 

However, some producers actually thrive on this controversy, because the media publicity provides them with a cheap way to promote their film, rather than having to spend lots of money through conventional ways of promotion.

 

The message that these movies send in turn change the public perception of what is and is not accepted as "appropriate".  Some viewers might end up thinking that what is portrayed in the films reflects reality and what is deemed acceptable by society.  Scenes such as kissing in public or even mild sexual scenes no doubt has an effect on teenagers.  

 

In the long-term, there may be a change of values and morals, as many of the more liberal Western values are acculturated into the Indonesian public. Some have worried that the long-term effect of such negative movies may ensue in a younger generation not aware of their national identity.

 

The issue needs to be addressed clearly.  Not only are the producers of films responsible, but all elements in the film industry need to be more proactive in handling this problem. The rules published, enacted and reinforced by the Film Censorship Institute need to be reviewed again.

 

If not, then local films will continually be associated with shallow films, selling sex rather than a genuinely good storyline. All parties must think about how to use their abundant creativity to make a quality movie with a different theme without having to use vulgarity as a selling point.

 

National Film Day should be used as a day to re-evaluate the entire film industry that is currently tarnished by overly pragmatic values.  It's not good enough to improve the quantity of films, the quality of the films produced and released also needs to improve. Only through that can the film industry reflect the identity of the nation. Long live Indonesian cinema.

The writer is a student at the Faculty of Economics, the University of Indonesia and co-producer of  movie Children of Dream.

 

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THE JAKARTA POST

EDITORIAL

DEMOCRACY, COMPASSION FOR INDONESIA

JENNIE S. BEV

 

Barack Obama has not confirmed when he'll be visiting Indonesia, thus it is not too late to remind ourselves that Indonesia is interested in promoting liberal democracy alongside the United States.

 

 

It is good timing for Indonesia to end its ambiguity in world politics by supporting Obama's cause. Especially with recent persecutions against minorities – LGBTQ, non-Muslim and Chinese-Indonesian – and the continued condonation of violent acts performed by Islamic-fascists, the Indonesian government needs to express repentance and utmost support toward minorities and its people. By the time Obama arrives in Indonesia, we should be prepared to present that we are ready to change.

 

Yes, change is the name of the game. To initiate change, we need to be aware of the people's power in influencing policies assisted by external forces and be aware of the harmful and coercive effects of "quasi secular" or "pseudo theocracy" under the beautiful name of "Pancasila".

 

First of all, Indonesia is (or isn't?) a secular state, though Pancasila (Five Principles), the UUD 1945 Constitution and a myriad of laws and regulations clearly state that Indonesia is a country based on belief in God. One obvious example is the goal of national education according to Article 3 of the National Education Law No.

 

20/2003, which is "to develop students' potentials related to creating faithful and pious individuals under God as well as noble, healthy, learned, skillful, creative, independent, responsible and democratic persons."

 

It is quite mind-boggling that students in Indonesia are expected to go to school so that they can be "faithful and pious" individuals, not to become "smarter", "skillful", or "more intelligent" individuals with strong skills and knowledge to compete in 21st century globalized world. This alone makes us think pretty hard.

 

Indonesia is a country created on an agreement that God is what the people should strive for. Everything must be directed at God, including our children's education. What if we don't want that? Because religion and religiosity are a private matter, thus no one has the right to coerce us into it. Perhaps we simply want to have smart, positive and disciplined children because we can teach the notion of "God" and faithfulness at home.

 

It is evidently implied in the "introductory" section of most Indonesian laws that there is no place for an atheist - even a child must have a religion. Apparently, in this "undecided" and somewhat blurred notion of democracy, harm and coercion have been the name of the game played solely by the powerful state under the pretext of "being faithful and pious to God".

 

John Stuart Mill in On Liberty stated that a state has no right to coerce an individual's choices unless it is required to eliminate or reduce harm. In Indonesia, it is common knowledge that most laws contain "rubbery clauses", including the above National Education Law. Such "rubbery clauses" can be easily manipulated to serve specific agendas, including a political party's agenda, most of which prioritize – what else – faithfulness and piousness under God.

 

Consequently, extremist groups have been growing exponentially in the last few years. This is an indirect result of such "pseudo theocracy-ness" and "quasi democracy-ness".

 

Concerned citizens should be aware of the narrowing "moral sphere", in which people are free to choose whatever they believe to be moral, regardless of the state's coercion veiled as "Pancasila-based laws". Mill argued that such a sphere must protect individuals from harmful and coercive powers of the state and other entities. With "rubbery clauses and laws", the government possesses a great – if not unlimited – power to trample upon and entrap the people.

 

What we need for Indonesia is a liberal democracy and all laws must be based on the Rules of Law and lie under the umbrella of compassion, in which non-killing policies must be placed as the underlying principle. It is simply irrational and unfair for the state to hide behind the notion of "godliness" in everything we do from the cradle to the grave. Morality and choices of religiosity and spirituality should be placed within an individual's discretion without any coerciveness from any entity, including the state.

 

Such "pseudo theocracy-ness" will eventually breed more extremism and fascism, as this notion can be easily bent and manipulated for their benefit. When a state hides behind the notion of "God", anyone – most likely extremists and fascists – with a strong case that would add "value" to such a notion, - the people are the ones who will suffer the most.

 

Indonesia might have the so-called "pride of being unique" for having Pancasila and being the most populous Muslim country, hence being "secular". Yet the very first principle of Pancasila, "There is only One God", itself a fallacy as even the official religions are not limited to monotheism, such as Buddhism. Thus, such an explicit referral to monotheism in Pancasila is an implicit endorsement of political and politicizes monotheism, in which Islamic-fascism is a strong case.

 

Let's promote liberal democracy and compassion, just like Obama. And let's have our voices be heard worldwide.


The writer is an Indonesian-born author and columnist based in northern California.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

TARGET HOUSING BUBBLES

China's red-hot property market is showing signs of cooling as the volume in property trading in cities such as Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Guangzhou plunged after the government introduced new regulations early this month. But don't get comfortable yet: The new policies are just the beginning to restrain the housing bubbles that are emerging in many cities. If the latest campaign to cool the property market succeeds, policymakers must come up with more targeted measures to effectively curb property speculation. Without them, the country may risk another disastrous surge in property prices.

 

Since the central government has made it clear that it will apply the most Draconian measures to cool the property market, local governments and authorities should do their best to help alleviate the property bubbles.

 

Given the massive ramifications of the property market on the economy and society, policymakers need to rein in speculative buyers to avoid causing panic in the market. A sudden collapse of the property market is simply too expensive for the country to afford and can also force the government to stop its ongoing campaign. Worse still, some local departments are recklessly intervening in the central government's plan.

 

One department in particular is trying to correct its mismanagement of affordable housing in the middle of the campaign, but this move will likely attract attention away from the focus on housing speculation. Some are arbitrarily annulling bidding results at land auctions without considering the impact of an uncertain land supply on future property price expectations.

 

To cool the property market in a safe manner, policymakers need to prioritize their tasks on hand.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

THE VIRTUE OF HONEST LABOR

 

We congratulate the 3,000 or so men and women who will be honored during the Labor Day celebrations as national model workers.

 

Each of them is the epitome of outstanding service, hard work and devotion. But we also want to extend our thanks to everyone who has contributed honest labor for this country.

 

The celebration of labor, manual work in particular, may appear a bit out of sync in this time of opportunism. Our ears are full of proud boasts of speculative gains and ways of bringing fortune out of nothing. Diligence seems to have no longer qualified as a fine virtue of the nation.

 

Yet as was true when the crippling financial crisis gestated on Wall Street, there is no such free lunch as costless gains. As all the bubbles of artificial derivatives evaporate, it is the throngs of ordinary workers who are propping up the economies.

 

The economy rests on honest labor. That explains the fact that model laborers have been cited at the labor festival for the 14th time since 1950.

 

Today, however, our snobbish society should learn to rethink the way it sees and treats the working class. The de facto marginalization of honest laborers, in the distribution of income and various other social measures, is shameful and unsustainable. Shameful because it substantially undervalues the contribution of ordinary citizens, and subjects them to naked exploitation. It's unsustainable because it sows seeds of tension that have the potential to render all pursuits of stability into wishful thinking.

 

It does not matter whether or not the working class retains the nominal leadership role it once had. Equity is more meaningful. The current imperative is to stop, if not reverse, the lethal trend where those contributing the essential building blocks for our economy are reduced to society's underdogs.

 

This country must learn to value honesty and honest labor.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

RARE VISITORS FROM EUROPE

 

New chapters are about to be written in China's relationships with France and with the European Union.

 

Leaders from France and the EU are expected on separate official visits this week and are preludes to a series of high-profile meetings related to Shanghai Expo 2010. French President Nicolas Sarkozy's three-day visit shows how each side has let bygones be bygones. It could be seen as a formal announcement to the world that the China-France relationship is now back to normal. Sarkozy's trip to Beijing will also expand cooperation and broaden their relationship.

 

Sino-French ties hit an unprecedented low in 2008 when the Beijing Olympic torch relay in Paris was disrupted under police eyes and when Sarkozy met with the Dalai Lama. Last year, the two countries made efforts to make amends through high-level official visits.

 

China and France hope to revive bilateral trade that encountered negative growth last year due to the global financial crisis. The two also reportedly wish to expand cooperation in science and technology, culture and education into such new areas as low carbon and green technology. We have reasons to believe that the French leader's visit will be fruitful.

 

The visit by European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, from April 29 to May 1, is expected to inject new vitality into the China-EU relationship.

 

It is our wish that Barroso's visit will chart a bright future for bilateral ties. China and the EU share common ground on a wide range of issues. Closer cooperation will allow both sides to better understand where each stands on major global issues such as climate change and reform of the global financial system. This will in turn allow each to have a greater role in international affairs.

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

DEATH TO THE DEATH SENTENCE

BY LIN WEI (CHINA DAILY)

 

With death sentences handed down recently in corruption cases, an old issue is once again a hot topic for debate: Should capital punishment be abolished in economic, nonviolent crimes?

 

On one side of the debate are the jurists, who for the most part are leaning toward abolishing capital punishment. The majority of them believe that depriving an individual of his or her life for a nonviolent offence is near useless in preventing new economic crimes.

 

On the other side is the general public, who are overwhelmingly in support of capital punishment for corrupt officials and infamous smugglers, according to many recent online surveys.

 

According to the surveys, many people are disgusted with corrupt officials. In the surveys, they insisted that capital punishment be used as a tool to fight graft.

 

Deciding on what side to take is tricky. In China, like in many countries, the public is extremely hostile to corruption, but unlike many countries the public in China has an emotional, growing voice, especially in the online realm. And the sentiment of the public is essential for a just society.

 

Though it's difficult for scholars and jurists to win the support of the public, and though there is a massive gap on what to do about corrupt officials, capital punishment should be limited and eventually abolished. Capital punishment is a measure that is simply not strong enough to deter corrupt officials such as Wen Qiang, the former deputy police chief of Chongqing municipality. Jurists and the government, though they respect public opinion in pursuing justice, should not be swayed by irrational public emotions and use capital punishment without restraint.

 

Without a doubt, it should be carved in the heart of every jurist that, to be really effective, the law must align with the values of the people and reflect their opinions. Without a majority of the public on their side, it is almost impossible for jurists to implement the law.

 

Therefore jurists should no longer dwell in their academic arguments: It's time to communicate more with the public. Only through such discourse can the argument against capital punishment win public support.

 

To win more support, jurists in favor of limiting and eventually abolishing the death sentence should explain at least the following three points to the public:

 

First, corruption cases are only one of many economic crimes. Jurists are also considering such nonviolent crimes as financial fraud, smuggling and larceny when they advocate limiting, even abolishing, the death sentence. Second, facts and results from investigations have shown that the death sentence does little to prevent economic crimes. It is the chief reason why many jurists hope to abolish it. Last but not least, capital punishment should first be abolished for economic crimes, but the ultimate goal is to abolish the sentence completely.

 

Convincing the public that capital punishment is of little use will be a tough task for jurists. Many in the public believe that the death sentence deters crimes and many people want to see corrupt officials pay with their lives for their grave offences.

 

And with the widening gap between the rich and the poor, this longing for the death sentence is often magnified with many people equating the death of corrupt officials with social justice. Their hostility toward injustice in society and their lack of confidence in the fight against corruption are demonstrated in their celebration of the executions of corrupt officials.

 

The problem I want to emphasize is that the death sentence is an illusory fulfillment of the public's sense of justice since there is no evidence that proves that corruption cases have fallen in number because of the threat of capital punishment.

 

Instead, a vicious circle has formed: The death sentence to nonviolent corrupt officials has only disappointed the public for being powerless in preventing more cases of corruption, but the disappointed public expects more ramifications from the execution of officials.

 

But another way for jurists and the central government to win public support is by taking stricter measures in fighting corruption, instead of simply resorting to capital punishment. Relying on capital punishment leads to a neglect of other important measures. Sentencing a corrupt official to death is often taken as a giant victory in fighting corruption, but repeated death sentences have also indicated systematic deficiencies in preventing corruption.

 

Let's be reminded that allowing one official to continue his corrupt ways instead of stopping him before it gets too late is definitely a major failure in our efforts to prevent corruption. What is in dire need are social mechanisms to effectively nab corruption at its initial, small stages.

 

Progress is needed in the supervision of officials in order to be more effective and efficient in preventing corruption. This is the root of our solution and at the core of how to satisfy the public's expectations of justice. Only through such progress can a bridge be established between the public and scholars. Only then will justice be done.

 

The author is professor and director of the Department of Law in China Youth University for Political Sciences. The story first appeared in Nanfang Weekly

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

GIVE NGOS A CHANCE TO REBUILD QINGHAI

BY BRANDON B. BLACKBURN-DWYER (CHINA DAILY)

 

If a friend offered to buy us dinner, we would say yes. If a neighbor offered to fix the front steps to our house, we would say yes. We say yes for the simple reason that it saves us money, allowing our limited resources to be used on other needs. But when a disaster strikes, as it did in Qinghai, the offer of help in rebuilding homes and communities is too often greeted by no.

 

The Qinghai earthquake has destroyed or damaged tens of thousands of houses and left more than 100,000 people homeless. The loss of life and property has been devastating, and the long rebuilding process can be equally devastating because of the huge cost involved.

 

Qinghai residents rely on agriculture but the province does not have the necessary economic power to rebuild the agricultural community. The economic power has to come from outside. It's true that the central government has provided every possible help to Qinghai, and fast. But the province needs more than that to recover.

 

The challenge now is to rebuild Qinghai into a better province. This will need huge amounts of money, master skills and gargantuan efforts. And for all this there can be no better ally than NGOs. Just like a person benefits from the economic input of a friend who pays for his dinner, countries, provinces and regions gain from NGOs' financial help. Besides, NGOs bring a variety of helpful tools to disaster zones.

 

First and most obvious, they spend money pooled from their own resources and/or collected from global donors. To ensure the flow of donations, NGOs bring consistent global focus, too.

 

Though unfortunate, it is true that we struggle to maintain our focus and all too often tend to move on to the next crisis. In the crucial battle of attention, NGOs are a potent ally in rebuilding efforts. Compared to a government that has many priorities, NGOs have much less to focus on and keep their donor base motivated for a longer time. Without extended attention, relief donations for most disaster-hit areas drop significantly after the first month, and in comparative terms to almost zero after six months.

 

NGOs bring crucial skills and experience, too. Governments obviously have highly dedicated teams of skilled workers but an NGO that spends all its time on a specific aspect of rebuilding has the advantage that very few multipurpose governments can match. Regional NGOs provide an increased level of localization to long-term relief efforts.

 

Furthermore, NGOs provide employment to the most needy - local people - something that is urgently needed in agriculture-reliant Qinghai. Local NGOs can work with their national or international counterparts to build the skills of Qinghai residents, an incredibly valuable aspect that could have long-term implications on the province's overall development and workforce.

 

NGOs that put in strong efforts should not be seen as competitors to governments. Rather, they should be considered strong allies. And if governments do so, they and the public could benefit hugely from NGOs' work.

 

Allowing NGO donations to flow from global donors would ease the economic burden of the government and

thus limit the amount of nationwide tax money that needs to be re-directed toward rebuilding efforts. This benefits not just the region in crisis, but also the whole country by limiting the impact on government funds. Plus, the government and the people would benefit from better role identification

 

While distributing aid, it is important to ensure that those receiving it are comfortable and secure. As such, a military or armed police presence is necessary. The problem, as the US military learned in Haiti, is that there can be significant and often dangerous role confusion if armed groups charged with security are also the distributors of aid. Unforeseen consequences and tension between those trying to help and those in need of help can arise - and did arise in Haiti. Allowing NGOs to be an ally in distribution and execution of aid projects reduces the burden on armed forces and the chances of raising tension.

 

Finally, as auditors, governments can play a crucial financial role for donors and NGOs. By doing so, a government would ensure new funds reach the intended and advertised targets smoothly, minimum resources are wasted and a certain level of transparency is maintained - all crucial for the long-term engagement of donors.

 

Being just an auditor would also lift the pressure of playing multiple roles that a government has to play now. For example, at present a government has to play the roles of central donation collector, distributor and executor. This mixed roleplay creates inherent confusion and blurs the roles and functions.

 

If a government acts primarily as the auditor it can ensure supervision of NGOs' finances and start a new era of transparent donations and unprecedented domestic and international charity.

 

Qinghai has survived and will rebuild. But the question is how well and how fast. Many options are available to

the government and the people of Qinghai. But if they say "yes" to a friend's offer to buy them dinner, they should stick to the same logic when international and domestic NGOs offer to rebuild the houses devastated by the earthquake.

 

The author is group president of Grasshopper Group Inc

 

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CHINA DAILY

EDITORIAL

CAN ASIANS THINK? THEY'VE STARTED TO

BY ANDREW SHENG (CHINA DAILY)

In the testimonial defense of his low interest rate policies at the US Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, said: "By 2002 and 2003 it had become apparent that, as a consequence of global arbitrage, individual country's 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 policymaking that Lim and Lim have pointed out. As early as 1983, Californian physicist Fritjof Capra had already identified that the segmentation and fragmentation of academic disciplines and government bureaucracy meant that no one was responsible or accountable for the state of world affairs. It had become 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 ask the right questions in their book, but do not answer them fully. You can actually find several answers in the foreword to the book by Venu Reddy, former governor of Reserve Bank of India (RBI). Reddy was vilified by investment bankers for not being willing to open up India's financial system fast enough when he was RBI governor. But after the crisis, it was clear that his steadfast and prudent approach shielded India from the worst shocks of the financial shenanigans and large capital flows.

 

Reddy has argued that post-crisis growth in Asia will remain strong. And along with the growing workforce, education and upgrading of skills would be major challenges. Asia can become a global financial hub because of its large pool of capital human skills, he has said, but a major challenge will be the question of leadership in thought and innovation.

 

Providing the environment for that leadership will require good governance. Reddy foresees growing intra-regional cooperation but warns that major shifts in world economic power take place over long periods and may not be smooth. Wise words indeed.

 

If Asia is to take its rightful place - equal to the West - in the world there has to be more original Asian thinking, not about parochial Asian values but about values and practices that apply universally. The book by Lim and Lim shed light in that direction.

 

The author is adjunct professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, and the University of Malaya, Malaysia.

 

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DAILY MIRROR

EDITORIAL

-

 

 

EGOS OF MINISTERS EGOS OF MINISTERS

 

Politicians, in their most egoist and self-important moments believe themselves as tools of country's destiny even when they lack the intellect or the drive to be so.

 

As such they are often tempted to exaggerate their achievements, both past and present, and play down mistakes.

 

People in this country have over the years got used to this reality and each government would have at least handful of overly ambitious but ineffective ministers.

 

Such a case was reported from some hitherto unsuspected quarters a few days ago. A senior minister who was given a not-so-high profile subject after he bungled up the powerful ministry was seen making attempts to inject an inflated value to the new ministry to cover up the embarrassment.

 

Drawing parallels from the days of the kings this minister tried to portray himself as second-in-command of the government in a bid to save face.

 

In a sense one feels sorry for the SLFP senior who may still find it difficult to come to terms with the downgrading. However his slip has only helped make his disappointment all too obvious.

 

It is human to think that one always deserves better than what one gets in life.

 

While a disabled person or beggar child would remind one that one should really start counting one's blessings, it takes only a few seconds for that thought disappear and one is back with the old egoist self.

 

However despite having ambitious thoughts, people with common sense prudently play themselves down and there are fortunate ones who always command respect for being incredibly modest.

 

In politics the second breed is a rarity today and this is partly attributed to the preferential voting system.

 

It was only when the Central Bank issued its latest report that the informed people got to know that an overwhelming majority of talkers in the last Cabinet had fared miserably at their respective ministries. In fact it turned out to be that ones to speak incessantly had also been the ones to incur the biggest losses to the economy.

 

The reshuffle saw quite a few of those weak performers being demoted.

 

Ideally the government  should have a  system of promotions based on meritocracy so that the weak ones are exposed. Unfortunately it is the loyalty factor that supersedes everything else today.

 

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DAILY MIRROR

EDITORIAL

 

 

WHY IS INDIA SCARED OF PRABHAKARAN'S MOTHER ?

 

Although the biggest threat to India's national security had been posed by the LTTE via the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, and Tamil Tiger leader Prabhakaran was held responsible for it, the Indian Government  permitted the parents of Prabhakaran to stay in Tamil Nadu. Even when Prabhakaran was engaged in a fierce war in the North and East of Sri Lanka and was winning , India took no measures to deport them from India on the grounds that they were a threat to its national security.

 

After the ceasefire agreement was signed in 2002, the parents of Prabhakaran left for Sri Lanka  on   their own accord.

 

Today, Prabhakaran is no more; the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam is also decapitated.

 

In these circumstances, India trying to convey the view that Prabhakaran's mother is a threat to its National

security is a matter of great shock and surprise. Prabhakaran's mother who left for Malaysia from Sri Lanka went to India from there for medical treatment.

 

But, at the Tamil Nadu airport she was sent back for the reason that  she was a threat to India's national security .

 

After the war was over, when the parents of Prabhakaran surrendered to the Army, the Tamil Nadu politicians and the Tamil Nadu media began criticizing against them being kept in the Army camps.

 

It is also reported that the Tamil Nadu politicians who came to Sri Lanka  to inspect the refugee camps had even questioned as to why the custody of Prabhakaran's parents were not handed over to India.

 

Initially , the Sri Lanka Government  stated that the  parents of Prabhakaran  were  held in the Army camp because they were believed to be a threat to the Sri Lankan  National security .

 

But, after the death of Prabhakaran's father, the Sri Lankan  Govt. agreed to entrust the custody of Prabhakaran's mother to the former Tamil National Alliance (TNA)  MP Sivajilingam. Perhaps, the Sri Lankan  Government took this decision after it nursed the belief that she was  no longer a threat to Sri Lanka's national security.

 

The Sri Lanka  Government  truly understood that Prabhakaran's parents were not a threat to national security and  they were neither LTTE members nor sympathizers when they were in the Army camps.

 

The Government realized this  after it received the report on them from the counter terrorism unit, that they were opposed to terrorism, and the link, if any they had with them was because they were the  parents of Prabhakaran .

 

After Prabhakaran's parents surrendered to the Army, only two or three officers of the counter terrorism unit of Sri Lanka  had access to them in order to get a clear picture of the final days of Prabhakaran.

 

During the final  days of the war when Prabhakaran told his parents to move to refugee camps along with the other civilians, Prabhakaran's father, it is reported has viewed Prabhakaran with bitter disappointment and dismay.

 

Earlier, when Prabhakaran fled leaving his parents, there had existed no cordial relationship between him and his father.

After the ceasefire agreement in 2002, even though he got down the parents so as to be close to him, there had hardly been any exchange of words between him and his father. This is attributed to the fact that, while his father desired and dreamed that his son should become a top rung  officer in the civil service, Prabhakaran  on the contrary, chose to become the deadliest terrorist leader in the world. After  he  fled from his home , there had been no communication whatsoever between him and his father, not even  regarding Prabhakaran's  armed or political campaign .

 

Prabhakaran and his father were both aware that if they discussed and subject  a stormy dispute would erupt.

 

Yet, when Prabhakaran told his parents to leave during the last days of the war, his father understood, that his son was  confronted with imminent defeat, and he would be  in a state of uncertainty during  the next few days .

 

He perceived that as his son could not  face his aged parents in  that situation,  he is   giving these instructions.

 

It was at this juncture, Prabhakaran's father had occasion for the first time to question Prabhakaran on his politics and terrorism. It is stated that he had questioned, "What went wrong ? Didn't you realize earlier that this will be the inevitable final result ?" It is reported that, Prabahakaran has given evasive answers, because he had not expected  such questions from his father "this is not the time to discuss these issues of the past. Now, it is time to think of what is to be done  ahead," he had replied.  Prabhakaran answered this way as he  had no time to spend on arguing and answering questions. What Prabhakaran's father truly  implied in his questioning was that  he had foreseen this result from the very beginning. Prabhakaran too was aware that his father  was going to tell him this.

 

Not only in the final phase of the war, but even from the very outset, Prabhakaran's parents had been opposed  to Prabhakaran's terrorism and armed campaign.

 

India is fully aware of this.

 

This was precisely why India allowed them to stay t even when Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated. Now, India being seized by a monumental fear for Prabhakaran's mother who is an invalid in a wheel chair, stating that she is a threat to India's national security is only an indication that India is frightened of a dead Prabhakaran more than of a living Prabhakaran.

 

It is worthy of note that in my earlier articles , I had pointed this out. In the event of Prabhakaran dying suddenly in  the final days of the war,  a dead Prabhakaran will be a greater threat to Tamil Nadu than a living Prabhakaran, I emphasized.

 

I further foretold, after the war , the political ghost of dead Prabhakaran will be haunting India, and the next threat will be via a political force originating in Tamil Nadu.

 

Given the extreme fears and jitters manifested by India on account of Prabhakaran's mother who is in a wheel chair , it is evident that India is in mortal fear and possibly facing grave threats posed by the LTTE to Tamil Nadu.

 

These threats are being viewed by the Indian Congress Central  Government and Karunanidhi's State Government  as  more against the political security of the Indian Congress Government rather than against the National security of India. It was on account of this that  Prabhakaran's mother was sent back,  citing National security threats . The Congress Party as well as Karunanidhi are frightened that the Opposition may have Prabhakaran's mother on  their stage at the forthcoming Tamil Nadu elections.

 

It is becoming increasingly clear, as the Tamil Nadu elections are closing in, that  the Congress party and Karunanidhi are being increasingly haunted   by Prabhakaran's ghost.

 

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DAILY MIRROR

EDITORIAL

REHABILITATION OF PRISONERS

Exemplary and Dedicated Service to Inmates in Prisons

BY Mr. A.K. de Silva

 

In recent times the problems affecting the administration of prisons, the constraints under which the authorities have to perform their primary functions have been the subject of controversies and acute debate. Due to the overcrowding in prisons and consequent inadequacies of the basic facilities, the prison authorities have an unenviable task in caring and maintaining the large number or prisoners. This problem is also interwoven with the inadequacy of funds and resources for prisons officers to pursue their duties satisfactory.

 

A prison is defined as a "place of captivity or confinement and a prisoner a person who is confined of kept in prison". While a person is sent to prison as a punishment for a crime committed, the objective is to Prevent him/her from offending again.Be a deterrent to potential offenders.Rehabilitate such person and make him give up his errant or criminal ways and make him/her law abiding.

 

Conscious of the constrains on the prison authorities in the pursuance of their objectives a few reputed social service organizations have helped the authorities in numerous ways, enthusiastically initiating and pursuing humanitarian projects. One assocition which has made a significant contribution over the years is the Prisoners Welfare Association. This Association has worked in an exemplary manner but unobtrusively.

 

Prisoners Welfare Association
Conscious of the need to support and assist the prison authorities in the pursuance of their efforts to adequately provide the basic amenities to the prisoners the Prisoners Welfare Association was established in 1918. The Prisoners Welfare Association is essentially concerned with the welfare of prisoners. It helps to rehabilitate the prisoners uplift their religious, cultural, health and living standards especially follow up these programs after their release. The members over whelmed with a sense of compassion attempt to help the marginalized in our society. The Association during the formative period was encouraged by the spontaneous support of leading and eminent professionals and philanthropists.

 

Objectives
The objective of this article is to create a greater awareness so that the public too can effectively contribute their mite and secondly to set out the dedicated and exemplary service of the Prisoners Welfare Association, Colombo. The prisoners Welfare Association, Colombo has been working in close association with Department of Prisons as a voluntary and committed organization for the past 92 years. The Association firmly believes that prisoners can be rehabilitated and set out to society to live once again as law abiding citizens.  While the Association has initiated many welfare and humanitarian projects it has given much attention to the rehabilitation project.

 

REHABILITATION

 

The importance of rehabilitation of prisoners cannot be over emphasized. Its importance was emphatically conveyed by the Hon. Rathnasiri Wickramanayake - in 1975 - as Deputy Minister of Justice - "The purpose and justification of a sentence of imprisonment is ultimately to protect society from the criminal this can only be achieved if the period of imprisonment is availed of to ensure, as far as possible that upon his return to society the offender is enabled with the Prisoners Welfare Association to lead a law abiding and self supporting life."

 

Concept
The concept of rehabilitation of prisoners convicted of crimes has been foremost in the minds of the members of the Association.While rehabilitation is an essential  aspect in a prisoners stay in prison, regrettably rehabilitation cannot be effectively done due to the following  constraints: In adequacy of funds: Non availability of suitably qualified specialists to undertake the rehabilitation programmes: Lack of empathy and genuine effort to understand the human problems.

 

The rehabilitation projects undertaken by the Association have  been  successfully pursued .These include the following;

 

Counselling Service
A set of rooms has been built at the cost of Rs. 60,000.00 to conduct counseling programs.  Due to the untiring efforts of the members of the Association have obtained the service of suitable counsellors particularly these with a sense of empathy and genuine concern for the prisoners.

 

Professional Training
The inmates are given a professional training according to their aptitudes and capabilities.  Their  hidden talents surface consequent to the initiation of this project providing satisfaction to the participants.Two residents who were released were donated with sewing machines as well as other equipment for cutting cloth etc. It is encouraging to know that these two women are now gainfully employed.

 

Barber Saloon
The Rotary Club of Colombo North helped with resources to initiate a Barber Training, Masons Training and Computer Training projects. When  the barber trainees leave they are given a basic requirements to setup Barber Shop in their  village, ensuring gainful employment on release.

 

Training as Masons
A six months training programme for training in masonary was initiated .To date more than 500 persons have received this training. It is to the satisfaction of the association to note that these persons are gainfully occupied and consequently  their life styles have changed.

 

With the invaluable assistance of the Rotary Club of Colombo North a Computer Training Centre was established. Many prisoners have benefited from the training. An art exhibition organized  was a resounding success of discovering the creative talents of inmates. The exhibition was held at the Art Gallery.

 

Religious activities to enhance their spirituality and programmes with a view to improve the living conditions of the inmates, through various humanitarian projects were  pursued. A large statue of  Lord Buddha was installed in the shrine room in the Ladies ward  . While a small chapel  was put up for the Catholics for their worship and to help in spiritual development. Bhavana programmes  have   also  been arranged with the help of the Sarvodaya  Movements' and the participation is encouraging.

 

Medical Facilities
The need for medical treatment is a recurring feature. The hospital in the female section was provided with beds, mattresses, medicines, mosquito nets, bed sheets etc.Arrangements are made for doctors to regularly conduct eye-camps in the women's wards and the men's  and spectacles are given to those who need them.

 

To help the residents to find relaxation in a very tense and hostile environment Sing Song Sessions, Magic Shows and other recreational activities have been arranged with the help of various NGOs.

 

Scholarship to Children

Scholarships have been given for the children of those imprisoned so that their education will not be disrupted because their parents are in prison. This project is actively supported and successfully pursued by the "Friends of Prisoners Children" Association.A nursery school for the children has been established. Equipment, books etc, have been provided and a qualified teacher is employed to teach them.This  project was initially sponsored by a couple from Holland.

 

Female Prisoners

One of most intricate problems that the prison authorities have to encounter are the problems facing   female prisoners.some of them  are pregnant mothers, whose children  are born in prison and in other instances some women prisoners have  children below five years of age.  For the first time in a Sri Lanka Prison a separate building was put up to house the children and their mothers, as well as the pregnant mothers. To look after their needs a retired matron has been employed paying a monthly salary

Elders Ward

The ward accommodating elders over 60 years was renovated and provided with mattresses and pillows, a plate, cup and a bucket for their personal use. Life in the Prison

Life in prison is a harrowing experience . While the prison sentence is consequent to some crime, should a criminal be permitted to remain a criminal for the rest of his! her life.? Do we ever give any thought to the plight of the prisoner? Can we do somethin gto alleviate the sufferings by being a part of their rehabilitation in some way? Have these people committed crimes that you would not have done, given the circumstances as Marcus Aurelis has stated "poverty is the mother of crimes". Often they are victims of circumstances, but the law calls them criminals. We all have a moral obligation to help in some way in rehabilitation process. While the prisoners Association has a cluster of Regional Committees covering the entire island; it desperately need more and more committed and dedicated volunteers pursue its humanitarian projects. What is required most is more and more dedicated volunteers, than finance and resources. Also we need to create a greater awareness to this national humanitarian problem. Consider how you can be of help, particularly in the rehabilitation endeavours of the Association.

 

The writer is President, Prisoners Association - Colombo Regional Committee.

 

 

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DAILY MIRROR

EDITORIAL

THE EMERGING WORLD: INNOVATION IN MARKETS

BY ADRIAN WOOLDRIDGE

 

IN 1980 American car executives were so shaken to find that Japan had replaced the United States as the world's leading carmaker that they began to visit Japan to find out what was going on. How could the Japanese beat the Americans on both price and reliability? And how did they manage to produce new models so quickly? The visitors discovered that the answer was not industrial policy or state subsidies, as they had expected, but business innovation. The Japanese had invented a new system of making things that was quickly dubbed "lean manufacturing".

 

This special report will argue that something comparable is now happening in the emerging world. Developing countries are becoming hotbeds of business innovation in much the same way as Japan did from the 1950s onwards. They are coming up with new products and services that are dramatically cheaper than their Western equivalents: $3,000 cars, $300 computers and $30 mobile phones that provide nationwide service for just 2 cents a minute. They are reinventing systems of production and distribution, and they are experimenting with entirely new business models. All the elements of modern business, from supply-chain management to recruitment and retention, are being rejigged or reinvented in one emerging market or another.

 

Why are countries that were until recently associated with cheap hands now becoming leaders in innovation? The most obvious reason is that the local companies are dreaming bigger dreams. Driven by a mixture of ambition and fear—ambition to bestride the world stage and fear of even cheaper competitors in, say, Vietnam or Cambodia—they are relentlessly climbing up the value chain. Emerging-market champions have not only proved highly competitive in their own backyards, they are also going global themselves.

 

The United Nations World Investment Report calculates that there are now around 21,500 multinationals based in the emerging world. The best of these, such as India's Bharat Forge in forging, China's BYD in batteries and Brazil's Embraer in jet aircraft, are as good as anybody in the world. The number of companies from Brazil, India, China or Russia on the Financial Times 500 list more than quadrupled in 2006-08, from 15 to 62. Brazilian top 20 multinationals more than doubled their foreign assets in a single year, 2006.

 

At the same time Western multinationals are investing ever bigger hopes in emerging markets. They regard them as sources of economic growth and high-quality brainpower, both of which they desperately need. Multinationals expect about 70% of the world's growth over the next few years to come from emerging markets, with 40% coming from just two countries, China and India. They have also noted that China and to a lesser extent India have been pouring resources into education over the past couple of decades. China produces 75,000 people with higher degrees in engineering or computer science and India 60,000 every year.

 

The world's biggest multinationals are becoming increasingly happy to do their research and development in emerging markets. Companies in the Fortune 500 list have 98 R&D facilities in China and 63 in India. Some have more than one. General Electric's health-care arm has spent more than $50m in the past few years to build a vast R&D centre in India's Bangalore, its biggest anywhere in the world. Cisco is splashing out more than $1 billion on a second global headquarters—Cisco East—in Bangalore, now nearing completion. Microsoft's R&D centre in Beijing is its largest outside its American headquarters in Redmond. Knowledge-intensive companies such as IT specialists and consultancies have hugely stepped up the number of people they employ in developing countries. For example, a quarter of Accenture's workforce is in India.

 

Both Western and emerging-country companies have also realised that they need to try harder if they are to prosper in these booming markets. It is not enough to concentrate on the Gucci and Mercedes crowd; they have to learn how to appeal to the billions of people who live outside Shanghai and Bangalore, from the rising middle classes in second-tier cities to the farmers in isolated villages. That means rethinking everything from products to distribution systems.

 

Anil Gupta, of the University of Maryland at College Park, points out that these markets are among the toughest in the world. Distribution systems can be hopeless. Income streams can be unpredictable. Pollution can be lung-searing. Governments can be infuriating, sometimes meddling and sometimes failing to provide basic services. Pirating can squeeze profit margins. And poverty is ubiquitous. The islands of success are surrounded by a sea of problems, which have defeated some doughty companies. Yahoo! and eBay retreated from China, and Google too has recently backed out from there and moved to Hong Kong. Black & Decker, America's biggest toolmaker, is almost invisible in India and China, the world's two biggest construction sites.

 

But the opportunities are equally extraordinary. The potential market is huge: populations are already much bigger than in the developed world and growing much faster (see chart 1), and in both China and India hundreds of millions of people will enter the middle class in the coming decades. The economies are set to grow faster too (see chart 2). Few companies suffer from the costly "legacy systems" that are common in the West. Brainpower is relatively cheap and abundant: in China over 5m people graduate every year and in India about 3m, respectively four times and three times the numbers a decade ago.

 

This combination of challenges and opportunities is producing a fizzing cocktail of creativity. Because so many consumers are poor, companies have to go for volume. But because piracy is so commonplace, they also have to keep upgrading their products. Again the similarities with Japan in the 1980s are striking. Toyota and Honda took to "just-in-time" inventories and quality management because land and raw materials were expensive. In the same way emerging-market companies are turning problems into advantages.

 

Until now it had been widely assumed that globalisation was driven by the West and imposed on the rest. Bosses in New York, London and Paris would control the process from their glass towers, and Western consumers would reap most of the benefits. This is changing fast. Muscular emerging-market champions such as India's ArcelorMittal in steel and Mexico's Cemex in cement are gobbling up Western companies. Brainy ones such as Infosys and Wipro are taking over office work. And consumers in developing countries are getting richer faster than their equivalents in the West. In some cases the traditional global supply chain is even being reversed: Embraer buys many of its component parts from the West and does the assembly work in Brazil.

 

Old assumptions about innovation are also being challenged. People in the West like to believe that their companies cook up new ideas in their laboratories at home and then export them to the developing world, which makes it easier to accept job losses i manufacturing. But this is proving less true by the day. Western companies are embracing "polycentric innovation" as they spread their R&D centres around the world. And non-Western companies are becoming powerhouses of innovation in everything from telecoms to computers.

 

Rethinking innovation
The very nature of innovation is having to be rethought. Most people in the West equate it with technological breakthroughs, embodied in revolutionary new products that are taken up by the elites and eventually trickle down to the masses. But many of the most important innovations consist of incremental improvements to products and processes aimed at the middle or the bottom of the income pyramid: look at Wal-Mart's exemplary supply system or Dell's application of just-in-time production to personal computers.The emerging world will undoubtedly make a growing contribution to breakthrough innovations. It has already leapfrogged ahead of the West in areas such as mobile money (using mobile phones to make payments) and online games. Microsoft's research laboratory in Beijing has produced clever programs that allow computers to recognise handwriting or turn photographs into cartoons. Huawei, a Chinese telecoms giant, has become the world's fourth-largest patent applicant. But the most exciting innovations—and the ones this report will concentrate on—are of the Wal-Mart and Dell variety: smarter ways of designing products and organising processes to reach the billions of consumers who are just entering the global market. No visitor to the emerging world can fail to be struck by its prevailing optimism, particularly if his starting point is the recession-racked West. The 2009 Pew Global Attitudes Project confirms this impression. Some 94% of Indians, 87% of Brazilians and 85% of Chinese say that they are satisfied with their lives. Large majorities of people in China and India say their country's current economic situation is good (see chart 3), expect conditions to improve further and think their children will be better off than they are. This is a region that, to echo Churchill's phrase, sees opportunities in every difficulty rather than difficulties in every opportunity.This special report will conclude by asking what all this means for the rich world and for the balance of economic power. In the past, emerging economic leviathans have tended to embrace new management systems as they tried to consolidate their progress.  Japan invented lean production and almost destroyed the American car and electronics industries. Now the emerging markets are developing their own distinctive management ideas, and Western companies will increasingly find themselves learning from their rivals. People who used to think of the emerging world as a source of cheap labour must now recognise that it can be a source of disruptive innovation as well. 

 

Courtesy: The Economist print edition

 

 

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THE MOSCOW TIMES

EDITORIAL

BUREAUCRATS ARE MORE HARMFUL THAN VOLCANOES

BY YULIA LATYNINA

 

During the height of the Eyjafjallajokull volcano crisis last week, air traffic over Europe was paralyzed, and losses to the air travel industry reached $200 million per day. European leaders and the U.S. president did not dare to fly to the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski.

 

And moralists made the expected banal statements about man's insignificance before nature. But the more important issue is the idiocy of bureaucrats than the power of Mother Nature.

 

President Dmitry Medvedev calmly flew to Poland to attend the funeral of Polish President Lech Kaczynski. Medvedev's security staff is very strict and conservative and would not have gambled with the president's life if there were a real danger of flying through the volcanic ash. In addition, Lufthansa, KLM and British Airways all conducted test flights in the volcanic "danger zone" without experiencing a single mishap or malfunction.   

The volcano erupted a month ago, but since air safety bureaucrats did not pay any attention to the explosion at first, no flights were canceled.

 

My goal here is not to discuss the technical details of exactly how high the concentration of volcanic ash is over Europe or how dangerous it is to fly. My point is that nobody knows these details. During the first week of the crisis, not a single specialized aircraft flew through the ash cloud, nor was a single weather balloon launched. Whenever we read the news about billion-dollar decisions, we naturally assume that they are made by a group of highly trained and experienced volcanic experts working with a huge amount of scientific data.

 

In reality, however, the decision to ground flights over Europe was not based on scientific data but on bureaucratic logic, which is really very simple: The more damage you do, the more important you are. Placing a ban on flights ensures that the problem will receive enormous attention — and, most important, billions of dollars in government grants for future study.

 

It took more than $1 billion in losses to the airline industry before the European Union transportation ministers held a video conference call to start discussing the problem. They then decided to open one-third of European air space, despite the fact that the volcano had just started erupting with four times greater force than before.

 

The hysteria over Eyjafjallajokull is by no means an isolated case. Recall the dire predictions from so-called "specialists" about the Y2K problem in the months leading up to Jan. 1, 2000. Or recall the "specialists" from the World Health Organization who created hysteria over the avian and swine flus — and before that, the Atypical Pneumonia scare.

 

And don't forget the most powerful international bureaucracy— the millions of individuals and agencies dedicated to fighting global warming. They are trying for the second decade now to gain control over the entire global economy by scaring us to death with the increase of carbon dioxide, or greenhouse gases, in the atmosphere. But in so doing, they forget to mention that the burning of fossil fuels only releases carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere that had already been there millions of years ago.

 

I suspect that problems such as swine flu and volcanic ash will only increase with time. If religion is the opiate of the masses, then science is the opiate of the bureaucrats.

 

Yulia Latynina hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy radio.

 

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THE MOSCOW TIMES

EDITORIAL

A NEW CHANCE TO BUILD KYRGYZ DEMOCRACY

BY ANDERS ASLUND

 

Kyrgyzstan is one of the most attractive post-Soviet countries and the only country in Central Asia that is free. The population is warm and well-educated, civil society and openness have been thriving as nowhere else in the former Soviet Union, and the natural beauty with the snow-capped mountains is astounding.

 

In the early post-Communist transition, Kyrgyzstan surprised observers when it emerged as an early reformer thanks to Askar Akayev, who served as president fr om 1990 to 2005. Far-reaching deregulation and simplified taxation made small-scale business take off. An early land reform and low, fixed taxes for small peasants boosted agriculture. Moreover, Kyrgyzstan was the first country in the Commonwealth of Independent States to enter the World Trade Organization in 1998, which has facilitated extensive trade with China. Health care reform has been excellent, and male life expectancy is surprisingly four years longer than in much richer Kazakhstan. Naturally, Kyrgyzstan has a low and flat income tax system and a profit tax of 10 percent.

 

Nonetheless, Kyrgyzstan remains very poor, and economic growth has been frail because corruption is horrendous even by post-Soviet standards. For the past five years, the dominant problem has been former President Kurmanbek Bakiyev and his family, which has monopolized big state-owned and private enterprises, devastating the economy (although the Akayev family did the same thing during its reign).

 

The enlightened Kyrgyz people have had enough of corruption and nepotism. The Tulip Revolution in March 2005 was a protest against the Akayev family. The 2010 revolution is directed against Bakiyev, his family and clan.

 

The bloodshed was appalling, but the determined action of the Kyrgyz people is to be welcomed. They had more than sufficient reasons to revolt. Today, it is vital that the violence stops, and the next question is how another repetition of presidential family outrage can be hindered.  

 

Kyrgyzstan's key problems are its mildly authoritarian presidential rule and massive, top-level corruption, which kills most big investments and enterprises. With its many and good reforms and educated, democratic population, Kyrgyzstan is a place where a few silver bullets can work wonders. The simple prescription is full-fledged democracy, a parliamentary system and honest privatization of the large enterprises.

 

The country consists of high mountains, and it is geographically divided into two equally large parts. Regionalism is reinforced by strong clans. Akayev came from the north, Bakiyev from the south. The new group is mixed but predominantly northern. Interim leader Roza Otunbayeva was born in the south, but she comes from a northern family. President Dmitry Medvedev has talked about the danger of a division of Kyrgyzstan between north and south and the risk of a civil war. Yet, the differences should not be exaggerated. The Kyrgyz are all one ethnic group with one language and one religion.

 

Power needs to be shared and decentralized. This is the essence of democracy. And the country needs democracy to survive; otherwise one half of the country will always revolt against the ruling half. Decentralization should lead to real regional self-governance. Kyrgyzstan looks a lot like Switzerland and should be ruled like Switzerland by powerful communes.

 

Kyrgyzstan needs to become a fully parliamentary republic to escape excessive presidential powers. Interim deputy leader Omurbek Tekebayev has produced such a new draft constitution that will be put to a referendum on June 27. Next, the new rulers promise to hold both presidential and parliamentary elections on Oct. 10, exactly as needed. This time, international bodies such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe need to intervene forcefully to make sure that the elections are free and fair.

 

When the Akayev family left, its net wealth was estimated at from $500 million to $1 billion. The Bakiyev family has probably accumulated even more, and it reportedly transferred $200 million when departing. These families sat on the big state companies and tapped them dry. Such corruption is cured through privatization and democracy.

 

The popular view in Bishkek is that Aidar Akayev and later Maxim Bakiyev, the presidential sons, made fortunes by selling fuel and other supplies through affiliated companies to Manas air base at exorbitant prices. Apparently, the Pentagon has not objected to bankrolling both presidential sons in schemes that it knew fueled corruption. This business should be subject to an audit by the U.S. Government Accountability Office. Transparent and open bidding are vital in state procurement. It cannot be in the U.S. interest that the United States is perceived as a major source of corruption in Kyrgyzstan.

 

Most of the new rulers are a promising group of liberal professionals. They received their education in Moscow and Leningrad in the 1970s and 1980s and surged with Akayev 20 years ago, but today they are in their late 50s. There are quite a few well-educated young Kyrgyz, but they prefer to stay abroad because they are appalled by corruption. They are alien to the clan system, and there is no demand for them at home. Yet a few work at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, which is supported by George Soros and USAID. This is the time to recruit a new elite of young Kyrgyz to return to their home country and help build a democracy and free-market economy. President Mikheil Saakashvili was able to do this in Georgia.

 

The new government should learn another lesson from Georgia: how to fight corruption through radical deregulation and government reform. The population is ready for this. Akayev actually made many attempts to accomplish this, simplifying regulation and taxation for small enterprises, abolishing inspections and minimizing police checks on the roads, but then his family interfered.

 

A new honest and democratic Kyrgyz government should be given substantial assistance, and many young Kyrgyz should obtain scholarships abroad. Russia immediately recognized the new democratic provisional government and committed $50 million in emergency help. The West must follow, but it has been slow to do so. Kyrgyzstan, the only country wh ere both Russia and the United States have air bases, could become the stage of unique cooperation.

 

All of Kyrgyzstan's authoritarian neighbors, including China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, hate to see a corrupt authoritarian regime being toppled and replaced by budding democrats. Kyrgyzstan must be congratulated on its democratic endeavors and fight against corruption, but this can be a make-or-break time for Kyrgyzstan. Therefore, democrats must offer the nation timely support.

 

Anders Aslund, who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, worked as an economic advisor to Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev from 1998 to 2004.

 

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THE MOSCOW TIMES

EDITORIAL

A CLOUD OVER AIRPLANE SAFETY

BY PETER SINGER

 

When airports across Europe reopened after the closure caused by the eruption of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano, it was not because the amount of ash in the atmosphere had dropped, but because the risk that the ash posed to airplane safety had been reassessed. Was it new scientific information that led to the lifting of the flight ban, or was it a reflection of the hardship — both personal and economic — that the ban was causing?

 

Over six days, about 95,000 flights were canceled at a cost to airlines of more than $1 billion. An estimated 5 million people were stranded or delayed. The British economy lost £1.5 billion ($2.3 billion), and others were similarly affected. Flower growers in Kenya, who depend on air transport to take their short-lived product to Europe, suddenly had no income. Sixteen cancer patients in critical need of bone marrow for transplants were put at risk because the matching marrow could not be flown in fr om the United States or Canada.

 

In the past, jets flying into ash fr om volcanoes in the United States, Indonesia, the Philippines and Mexico have temporarily lost engine power, and in one case, dropped thousands of feet, although all managed to land safely. But there was no evidence that the more widely dispersed ash blowing over Europe from Iceland would cause similar problems. The decision to ground flights was based on the view that any level of ash in the atmosphere posed some risk to aircraft, and that no matter how slight that risk might be, the government's job was, as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown put it, "to make sure that safety was paramount."

 

Indeed, in closing their skies, European governments seem to have given safety absolute priority over everything else. Yet none of them act on that principle in other areas. Some 3,000 people die on the world's roads every day. Cutting speed lim its to, say, 10 kilometers per hour would prevent most accidents and save many lives. We don't do it, because we give safety a lower priority than our desire to spend less time driving.

 

The price we are willing to pay for safety cannot be infinite. It is distasteful to put a price on human life, but the more we spend on safety the less we will have for our other goals. The British government uses a figure of a little more than £1 million ($1.5 million) as a general lim it to the amount it is prepared to pay to save a statistical life — for example, by improving road safety. In the United States, the Department of Transportation is prepared to go up to $5.8 million — nearly four times as much, at current exchange rates — for the same purpose. Does that mean that safety is paramount in the United States, but not in Britain?

 

Giovanni Bisignani, head of the International Air Transport Association, criticized the shutdown, saying that no risk assessment had been undertaken. On the whole, though, the public seemed to support the decision. Stranded travelers who were interviewed at airports typically said they would rather be stuck at an airport than in a plane falling out of the sky.

 

But what if some travelers have a higher tolerance of risk or just a more urgent need to travel than others? In his classic "On Liberty," John Stuart Mill considered a situation in which a man sets out to cross a bridge that we know is unsafe. In Mill's view, we are justified in stopping him only to make sure that he is aware of the danger. Once he knows of it, the decision is his to make, because only he can judge the importance of his journey and balance that against the risk he is taking.

 

Air safety is slightly different because a crashing plane can kill people on the ground, but the greatest risks by far are borne by the passengers and crew. If they are fully informed of the risks and are still willing to fly — perhaps the crew has been offered more money, as workers in dangerous occupations often are — should we prevent them from making the decision to fly?

 

In the end, after test flights with no passengers aboard had shown no engine damage and after aircraft engine manufacturers told aviation authorities that their engines could operate safely with a low level of ash in the atmosphere, Europe's skies were reopened. The International Civil Aviation Authority has announced that it will convene a group of experts to help it provide guidance for the industry to decide what level of ash in the atmosphere makes it unsafe to fly.

 

Now that we have seen the costs of giving absolute priority to safety, we know that this is not only a technical question. I trust that among the experts will be some who have pondered the underlying ethical question: How safe should we aim to be?

 

Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include "Practical Ethics," "One World," and most recently, "The Life You Can Save." © Project Syndicate

 

 

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THE HIMALAYAN

EDITORIAL

LOSING NERVES

The psyche of the Nepalese people in general has come under a lot of hammering in recent times with the latest threat of the indefinite strike announced by the UCPN (M) to begin the day after the May Day celebrations if the talks that they expect for consensus turns a failure. This is but one instance of how the main opposition that has great responsibility on its shoulders to act in unison with the other political parties is doing things that only benefit it. It is true that the Nepali Congress and CPN (UML) leaders do not seem to see eye to eye with the Maoist leaders all because of two contrary stances. That has led to meetings between the leaders of the three big parties always ending inconclusively. All these show the inflexibility that has been exhibited. Foremost, in the latest meeting, the Maoist leaders put their condition that only the resignation of the incumbent prime minister, they say, would pave the way for retracting the indefinite strike. On this score, both NC and UML are not willing for that mileage because with a mere month remaining for the most historic of deadlines to be met, the change of government will be further wasting of valuable time. Moreover, the conditions to be met by the Maoists before a national unity government could materialize. But, for this UCPN (M) has to allay fears by dismantling the para-military structure of its youth wing Young Communist League and assist the peace process by talking of the integration and rehabilitation of the verified Maoist combatants in the cantonments. If the needful is done in this regard, the drafting of the constitution would move ahead towards completion, though it may not be possible the meet the stipulated date.

At this moment, another drive has intensified as regards the forcible closure of the private schools all over the country by the All Nepal National Independent Students' Union-Revolutionary (ANNISU-R). The row is related to the fee hike that the private schools have imposed from this academic session. The matter is clearly meant to disturb the studies of the students. For this, the Ministry of Education needs to do some brainstorming and sit for negotiations with the agitating ANNISU-R. This is an urgent issue to tackle in view of the ramifications that it will have for the students have to remain idle losing out valuable time in their academic calendar. This may also have connection with the Maoist plan for the indefinite strike beginning May 2 if no agreement is struck with the coalition partners.

The need to exhibit restraint and at the same time to show sagacity is necessary for both the parties in these simmering times. A straight but biting confrontational attitude may benefit the parties concerned in its own way, but the people who they are claiming to be working for will be furthermore in deep trouble burdened as they are already by scarcities, insecurity and uncertainties. The question that remains to be answered is why the Big 3 do not want to arrive at a agreement out of their flexible stance for the mission that already is overdue. But, no, the UCPN (M) has its own axe to grind and the weapon is now the indefinite strike threat.

 

NASTY POTHOLES

There is no doubt that the funds made available to maintain and repair the roads in the capital city are woefully inadequate, that is, out of the Rs 490 million annually needed for the purpose the government provided only Rs. 140 million. However, there is general discontentment with the Department of Roads' way of utilizing the money allocated for the upkeep of roads. It is found that even after the roads are "repaired" they develop potholes pretty soon giving rise to doubts as to whether substandard materials are being used for repairing and maintaining them. However, the roads in the valley see heavy traffic which might be a reason why they are in a state of disrepair soon after they have been repaired.

Accusations that the contractors and government agencies are misappropriating the funds supposed to be used to repair and maintain the roads should be taken seriously. In any case, most of the valley roads are in a very pitiable condition, and many of them could do with repair and maintenance. Only slipshod works of filling up potholes will not do. The roads have to be repaired and taken care of and maintained not to talk about the necessity of building more roads to accommodate the increasing traffic.

 

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THE HIMALAYAN

EDITORIAL

LOGICAL CONCLUSION OF PEACE PROCESS IS POWER OR PEACE THE ULTIMATE END?

PROF. BIRENDRA P. MISHRA

Nowadays, ' the logical conclusion of the peace process' is the most talked about topic not only in high political circles but also in common discussions. Perhaps, they talk about it without realising the meaning of the process of logical conclusion. In deduction, conclusions are drawn on the basis of truthfulness of the premises already assumed. It is concerned with the formal truth that comes compulsorily to avoid logical fallacy and not with the material truth. In induction, conclusions are materially true as they are drawn on the formal basis of the law of uniformity of nature and the law of causation and on material ground of observation and experiment.

It is now almost certain that the new constitution may not be adopted by May28, 2010 and so appears the fate of about nineteen thousand combatants, which will hang in the balance for some time more.

It is imperative in this context to examine as to what is meant by logical conclusion and also to ascertain whether the peace process, which was kick started with the signing of the twelve-point Understanding by the seven-party alliance (SPA) and the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) on November 22, 2005, is really a peace process at all. It is obvious that the CPN-M took up arms against the state to capture state power overthrowing the government with a toll of more than thirteen thousand lives. Other political parties, which were hitherto faouring the continuity of constitutional monarchy, were thrown out of power, and took to the streets to protest first against the direct rule of the king and then launched the People"s Movement-2 in cooperation with the CPN-M on the basis of the 12-point Understanding.

When we take a look at some points of the 12-point Understanding, we find that it starts with the assumption that the long struggle between absolute monarchy and democracy had reached a grave and new turn with the 10-year old armed conflict necessitated to establish peace through a forward looking political outlet. The first point clearly states that they clearly viewed that the peace, prosperity and democracy were not possible until full democracy was established by bringing the absolute monarchy to an end through democratic movement participated in by all as democracy was being usurped by the autocratic monarchy time and again .The second point centres around the method of dislodging the king. The Maoists favoured convening a national political conference and forming an interim government to hold Constituent Assembly (CA) election, whereas the SPA demanded restoration of the dissolved parliament and to form a powerful government to hold the CA election. They accepted the people"s movement being the only alternative to achieve the goal. It was further agreed upon to keep the Maoist armed force and the Nepal Army under the United Nations or a reliable international supervision during the CA election.

In this context, for concluding deductively, 'The Nepalese absolute monarchy is responsible for Nepal not being peaceful, prosperous, and democratic', it has to be assumed that all absolute monarchies in the world are responsible for such conditions of their countries. In contrast, for reaching the same conclusion inductively, several cases of monarchies in the world have to be observed to prove the truth materially on the basis of the law of nature and the cause and effect relation. In the case Nepal, during the last six decades of political struggle, leaders have been colluding with monarchy in dismissing democratically elected governments and never hesitated in cooperating with the monarchy when democratic exercises were crushed. They also fought for power among themselves strengthening monarchy indirectly. They are also responsible for
the present crisis. In doing away with the monarchy by the duly elected CA, the main objective of the
political struggle has been accomplished completing the process.

The second point of Understanding, which clusters round the attainment of power either through a national political conference or through restoration of the dissolved parliament, has been fulfilled by the restoration of parliament which was converted into a Legislative Parliament with the inclusion of members from the Maoists and their participation in the interim government conducting the CA election.. Since the new constitution is related to the political strategy and ideals of the parties, they are not reaching any consensus.

The issue of the adjustment and rehabilitation of the Maoist combatants is also related to the political survival and strategy of the Maoists. Consensus is awaited, as others are not accepting Maoist"s proposals. Monarchy has been replaced by the republic. But adoption of the new constitution and adjustment and rehabilitation of the combatants are the two issues, which are related to the power politics, that remain unresolved. Hence, it can be logically concluded that it is almost a power acquiring process and not a peace process.Prof. Mishra is currently associated with Civil

Campaign for Democracy

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THE HIMALAYAN

EDITORIAL

FAILING AND FALLING

RISAV KARNA

I was trying to cuddle up in my bed and in my sleep I sought for a momentary refuge from the world. I had not experienced a setback of such large proportions and had never known that the pain with such falls is excruciating enough to send me into delirium. I could see images and shadows around me. One among the many was that of my mentor looking down on me and instead of providing me a hand to get back up, keeping it folded - away from my rescue - and saying in resounding words, "The biggest failure is a fall from which you cannot get back up."

The otherwise beautiful moonlit night seemed to silhouette the ghostly figures around me. I do not clearly remember if my eyes were open, but I remember seeing shadows of a child pedaling a distance only to fall off the bicycle, a kite taking off only to fizzle back to the ground, and, the most vivid but different of all, a motherly figure sitting next to me and her hand reaching towards my forehead. She could have been a real world audience of my disquiet or just another shadowy ghost from those earliest memories of my failures.

Today I know that it was my sister sitting beside my bed all the while and that the night had the most defining moments of my afterlife. My sister's hand had not reached my forehead; instead it had touched my eyes - to feel whether they were wet, whether I was in tears.

It was her faith in me that I would not submit to my failure so much so that I would be unable to hold back my tears. Her soothing touch on my eyes made me able to see clearly again. My loved ones were counting on me to fight back, not go into tears. Fortunately, I was not in tears back then. Nevertheless, that night, my tears had taken the form of an extreme headache and eventually, a series of hallucinations.

I was holding my sister's hand with both hands forming a Namaste, thankful for her bringing me back to clarity when moments later, my Mom turned on the light and I could see her and my sister both smiling at me. They must have seen in my eyes a promise that I would not cry in the face of my failures. Failures may disorient me for a moment but with the love of my loved ones and the strength they have given me; I would always rise back up.

 

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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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