Time to look within
HOME Minister L. K. Advani is expected to explain — and not explain away — the worsening of the law and order situation in the country. Jammu and Kashmir is bleeding. Bihar is in the grip of goondas. The politician-criminal nexus in UP and Maharashtra is too stark to escape notice.

Thumbs down to AI-IA merger
WAGES of independent decision-making is an unceremonious sack, if the Union Civil Aviation Ministry is in anyway involved. It has happened in the past and it happened on Friday when the ministry sent the boards of directors of both Air India and Indian Airlines packing.

FLAWS IN NSC STRUCTURE
by Maj-Gen Himmat Singh Gill (retd)
THE recently constituted National Security Council, announced with much fanfare by the Prime Minister, and the harbinger of great expectations for those who have spent the better part of their life defending this vast land, comes as a great let-down and a disappointment in every department of its make-up and being.

Demands of a rising population
by Dhurjati Mukherjee
LED by India’s and China’s teeming millions, the world population is set to cross the six billion mark next year. It has taken the world less than 30 years to double its number.

Ex-dictators: what to do
with them?
by Anupam Gupta
INTERNATIONAL law is in the throes of a controversy. Handing down perhaps its most momentous human rights decision since World War II, the highest English court, the House of Lords has, by a split verdict of 3 to 2, declared that former Heads of State are not entitled to sovereign immunity for grave crimes like torture and hostage-taking outlawed by international law.

Incidents of intolerance galore
by Humra Quraishi
I REALLY don’t know how best to sum up the scene here. On one hand there seems to be seething, or say simmering, discontent all over and, on the other, glamorous events hold sway.

75 Years Ago

Newsprint duty
INTOLERABLY heavy as a 25 per cent import duty on newsprint must be in a poor country like India, it is all the heavier in its incidence because the duty is an ad valorem duty and the price of newsprint has gone up enormously during the last 12 months.

Time to look within

HOME Minister L. K. Advani is expected to explain-- and not explain away — the worsening of the law and order situation in the country. Jammu and Kashmir is bleeding. Bihar is in the grip of goondas. The politician-criminal nexus in UP and Maharashtra is too stark to escape notice. Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are witnessing cauldrons of simmering discontent. Rajasthan has hoisted signals of pervasive social vandalisation. What is left? West Bengal? The North-East? One would have to create a world of disillusionment to say that all is well in those parts of the country. India, the eternal pilgrim at the gates of time, has suffered the evil effects of complacency and the habitual tropical belief that the invisible moving finger writes futuristically and defines destiny or fate. But in a society or a state where the right to life is fundamental, an elected government has to take the responsibility for the security of the borders and the safety of the citizens' life and limb. Tranquillity is a perceivable condition. A glaring lack of it takes civilisation to savagery. When the Home Minister makes a definitive statement about law or lawlessness, he must speak out what he has really known. Mr Advani has blamed all kinds of violent or disruptive activity on Pakistan's ISI. When he talks about terrorists' infiltration, he is correct and analytically proper. But by crediting the ISI with the potential that one did not attribute even to the CIA or the KGB at the height of the Cold War, he appears to be labouring hard for finding a seemingly credible answer.

Now, to say this is not to underestimate or deny the trouble Pakistan is creating worldwide. India, its neighbour, is the easiest victim. The terrorism in Punjab was fuelled by the ISI and the border state did not see a day unstained by blood for a decade. The agony of Jammu and Kashmir seems to be endless. Ask a homeless Pandit or a helpless Bakarwal who has lost his hearth and home, besides members of his family, what he has become because of Pakistan's planned onslaughts. The world knows it; although in their polity founded on the convenient tenets of diplomacy and market forces, many countries are unable to say what they see or feel until they are hit directly. By iterating in Aizwal on Sunday that Pakistan is at the root of the de-estabilising incidents throughout the length and breadth of the country, the Home Minister restated a plain fact. But then is it enough to diagnose a disease and leave it uncured? We have heard a great deal about the unborn pro-active policy of the Union Government in Jammu and Kashmir. Our borders with Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar are porous and these countries are seething with destructive agents of the ISI. We cannot change our geographical situation. But we can answer might with might. Since our problems are genuine, by appealing to the countries or people that do not care to call the deep-digging Pakistani spade a spade, we are merely exhibiting our imaginary helplessness. Let us pull up our socks. Let a bullet be answered by a bullet. Let a peace overture be acknowledged and welcomed deservedly. And let the ISI get the drubbing it needs. In the process , we will lose money and men. But are we not losing both, Mr Home Minister? Let us implement our "proactive policy" fearlessly.

Thumbs down to AI-IA merger

WAGES of independent decision-making is an unceremonious sack, if the Union Civil Aviation Ministry is in anyway involved. It has happened in the past and it happened on Friday when the ministry sent the boards of directors of both Air India and Indian Airlines packing. Two senior bureaucrats have been asked to run the leviathans and join the two others already in place with a hand in the lever of power. It is a cosy arrangement; instead of navigating the airlines sitting in Delhi, why not jump into the cockpit and take charge? Civil Aviation Minister Anantha Kumar claims that the move is designed to bring about synergy in the airlines and keeps repeating synergy again and again, as though disbanding a body is the surest way to ensure it. The two boards earned the punishment last week for deciding to merge, and for powerful reasons. Both the airlines are inexcusably overstaffed; one study found that they employ three times as many employees to service the fleet and passengers as other airlines do. The world over merger is resorted to bring down the overhead expenditure. In fact, a reputed consultancy firm had recommended precisely this course to reconstruct the two undertakings on a scientific and profit-making basis. And the two sacked boards had earlier accepted the suggestions of the consultancy firm, including the one on merger. It is a different matter that the government nominees in the board had voted against it, as the minister had vetoed the same decision in a more angry and abrupt fashion.

The merger controversy is only the latest of several skirmishes the airlines had with the ministry. In October Indian Airlines increased the fare by slightly more than 10 per cent, for the third time in as many years. The bureaucrats protested but to no avail. Depreciation of the rupee had increased the cost of aviation fuel and salary and other expenses too were up. That was the justification for making air travel costly. But the airlines did not gain anything, as passenger traffic dropped by nearly 20 per cent, ironically leading to a loss of revenue.

IA is engaged in a more vexatious battle over the ministry’s proposal to introduce a 50-seater propeller-driven plane to serve the North East. The Minister is keen on this as a political move to widen the BJP’s appeal in that region. But IA points out that the whole scheme is harebrained, will involve a huge subsidy which it cannot afford and hence will be forced to raise airfare by a whopping 150 per cent. In a move unusual for a government-owned unit, it agreed to the proposal but loaded it with impossible conditions. It wanted the government to bear the capital cost of buying the planes, underwrite the whole operation and thus insulate the airlines from any loss. That is the only way it can remain in black, unlike the sister airline which is slated to lose more than Rs 350 crore this year, taking the cumulative loss to nearly Rs 1000 crore in the past three years. There is a laughable aspect to the Ministry’s opposition to the merger. It wants to rapidly privatise Air India and open it to even foreign capital but restrict IA ownership to Indians. If the merged entity is privatised, even IA will come to be controlled by outsiders, it says. The bureaucrats cannot be serious. With Air India in deep financial mess, there is not going to be keen competition for AI shares! Maybe, tagging it to the domestic flag-carrier will sweeten the deal.

FLAWS IN NSC STRUCTURE
A fresh look unavoidable
by Maj-Gen Himmat Singh Gill (retd)

THE recently constituted National Security Council (NSC), announced with much fanfare by the Prime Minister, and the harbinger of great expectations for those who have spent the better part of their life defending this vast land, comes as a great let-down and a disappointment in every department of its make-up and being. The large unwieldy structure, the thoughtless composition of its major policy-making units, and the enhanced stranglehold of the bureaucracy over the Service Chiefs (and through them the armed forces), can only be a matter of grave concern to the men in uniform and their civilian brethren in the country, whom they have been tasked to defend.

In its present form, the NSC can give little cheer to those who expected a change for the better in defence policy planning, and its management and immediate execution in the run up to and during an open war with an adversary. Quite frankly, unless better council prevails, this NSC is doomed to be a still-born organisation, not quite unlike one of the earlier councils constituted during Mr V.P. Singh’s time.

If you asked me what is wrong with the “new” NSC, I would say unhesitatingly that just about everything. The armed forces of India have been tasked by Parliament to safeguard the sovereignty and suzerainty of all its borders. Under the aegis of the MoD, they are expected to accomplish the allotted task. The Defence Minister, who should have been the prime player in the defence of the country, once the Prime Minister had given to the National Directive for War, now is just one of the many ministers in the Strategic Policy Group, which forms the core of the NSC. Likewise, the three Service Chiefs, who are to fight the actual war and carry every soldier, airman and naval man rating with them, have been now relegated to the Strategic Policy Group along with a host of ministers keeping them company, and have no direct access to the Prime Minister, who heads the NSC.

The Ministers of Home, External Affairs and Finance, and the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission comprise the core group, and are expected to ensure inter-ministerial backing and coordination. This clutch of ministers is quite unnecessary. Before and during war they all have another job to do ( that is, run their own ministries), and in any case, you already have the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) around to offer higher direction and a secretariat, respectively. The larger the number of ministers and bureaucrats in the SP Group, the harder and more time-consuming the task would be. There is nothing strategic about this policy group, the way it has been reconstituted. This is where the country’s top military brains, serving or retired, should have been, to render timely sound and honest (though often unpalatable) advice to the Defence Minister, for a final executive decision by the Prime Minister. Too many cooks have joined this kitchen cabinet, and the resultant broth is likely to be quite tasteless.

This reminds me of the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war when I was posted in one of the operational sections of the Military Operations Directorate. A similar unwieldy machinery known as the Cabinet Committee for Political Affairs (CCPA) would descend in hoards into a small briefing room, most of them contributing little in terms of defence value, and only distracting the attention of the Chief of Army Staff as he briefed the Prime Minister.

The next major disability of the NSC is in the role of the JIC and its composition. Nowhere in the world except in India has the nation’s top joint intelligence apparatus been given the dual-task to also provide for the secretariat of a security council. God alone will help us (and our intelligence) when a secrecy-bound and secrecy-sworn organisation is frittered away to execute mundane administrative tasks. The counter-intelligence services of our adversaries will have a field day if this anomaly is not taken care of. Another secretarial-cum-strategic output node, like the existing Defence Planning Staff (manned entirely by the service officers and headed by a Lieut-General or an officer of equivalent rank, was the way out of this problem. We cannot keep on increasing the size of the NSC (what with the PMO, the SP Group, the JIC and the National Security Advisory Board already there, because such large unwieldy bodies often lead to a lack of cohesion in the decision-making process, and a breach of security. I only hope all the gentlemen nominated will be administered the oath of secrecy as and when they start functioning.

There is another brow-raiser. The Chairman of the JIC, a career diplomat, Mr Satish Chandra, our man in Islamabad, is undoubtedly an efficient officer. But, pray, how does an Indian Foreign Service officer qualify to head the country’s conglomeration of intelligence services? This is a specialist’s job, and one fails to understand why the experts in the field of intelligence are required to report to an IFS man.

The next limb of this organisation, which must demand our attention, is the 22-member National Security Advisory Board. First it must be said that its composition leaves a good deal to be desired. We have been suitably informed that the names announced include “ eminent defence strategists, foreign affairs experts and noted economists”. Four IFS senior retired officers, accompanied by a retired Lieut-General have been nominated for their expertise in foreign affairs and external security, and one only hopes the General would be looking after “foreign security” (whatever that means), and the former diplomats foreign affairs, and not the other way round! May one ask, whether (with the IFS man, Mr Brajesh Mishra as the National Security Adviser, and the Chairman of the JIC also being from the IFS) such a top heavy IFS contribution is necessary or even desirable? For a moment one thought that it was not the National Security Council but the Foreign Security Council that had been constituted.

Further. A Defence Secretary and the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister, and a former director of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) have been both nominated to represent the “defence sector” (again whatever that means). Is it not time to give a chance to new faces, with new vision, rather than keep flogging some all the time, especially after they have already given off all their long, long years in the “service to the nation”, having superannuated at rather overripe ages. In any case, there are a hundred other areas of expertise in the so-called “defence sector” where there are equally competent and professional soldier-brains around.

In a similar line-up, three civilians and the director of the IDSA have been selected for their “experience” (as one newspaper put it) in the field of strategic studies. Is it not a travesty of facts that many others who were the top operatives in the Directorate General of Perspective and Strategic Planning, when in uniform at Army Headquarters, are not considered even as good enough as these three civilians, who have been nominated. Another point that the country must know is that it is not only necessary but absolutely essential to the way of thinking of some of us old soldiers that an Army man, and not one from the Air Force or the Navy, would always fit in better as the chairman of any strategic or policy planning group, by virtue of his heading the land battle (which forms the crux of any battlefield) better than his other two colleagues. This observation holds good for the directorship or chairmanship of the IDSA or any other strategic or policy planning facility in the country.

The Advisory Board also comprises a few economists (as if the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission was not enough) and a former “super-cop” (no need to spell that name out) and a former Police Commissioner for their expertise in matters of internal security with the Army really handling internal security for as long as one can remember from the days of Nehru and Nagaland, I do not feel we need very many more superannuated policemen around. This writer has dealt with internal security in the North-East, and knows what he is talking about.

The last in this list before one turns one’s attention to another pressing matter are the names of three former Service Chiefs in the Advisory Board to represent the armed forces category. Whereas one has nothing personally against any of these gentlemen, would it not have been better to induct fresher and younger minds from the Services, who would have had no inhibitions or constraints to speak out their minds about how the younger lot of the Serviceman felt about their respective organisations. No offence meant, but the manner in which our promotion system in the Services is so tightly controlled by the MoD, there is little chance of the former Chiefs, now being suddenly found suitable to render any fresh, unchartered and untrodden advice, being as useful as desired.

A host of other doubts assail one’s mind as one reads of the tasking of the NSC. It is, we are told, going to start working on a strategic defence review, now that it has been set up. Whom are we fooling? There are perfectly viable and efficient Perspective Planning Directorates in all the three Services, which have for years been carrying out strategic reviews etc, based on the anticipated threats and other geopolitical and economic factors. This writer was himself the Deputy Director-General of Perspective Planning at Army Headquarters some years ago. So let us understand that the country’s defence review is an ongoing mechanism in position at all times, and nothing startlingly different is going to be delivered by this NSC.

Second, the terms of the incumbents in the various chains of the NSC, especially the Advisory Board, have not been spelt out. In fact, it is interesting to note that a further expansion is already slated for the board, and the present list is not final! Why? This should not have been done, unless our planners do not know what and who they are really looking for.

Third, all that has changed for the poor man in uniform (and many like us, now out of it but very much concerned about defence) is that the IAS bureaucrat has been replaced by the IFS diplomat, and the Chiefs of the three Services, who at one time had the highest precedence and undivided attention of the Prime Minister have been put in one corner of the SP Group.

Four, instead of reducing the flab and fat in the organisation, from the earlier three tier one, we have now gone into a four-tier system. Why cannot we reduce, instead of expanding all the time.

Five, there is a real danger of the NSC being politicised and bureaucratised to such an extent that soon you will hardly see the olive green, the navy blue or the white of the navy, even where it should matter. Some of them deserve a place within the higher policy planning and executive bodies like the National Security Council and should not be dumped in defence canteens and group insurance schemes and such like organisations, as is the practice at the moment.

Six, we need full-time incumbents, not having any other assignment (unlike Mr Brajesh Mishra, doubling up as the Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary and the National Security Adviser, NSA) who should be exceptionally brilliant men in their fields. They should not hesitate in telling the Prime Minister that a spade actually looks like a spade and not like anything else. In any case, experience has shown that dual-tasking of men and material never works.

Seven, the appointment of a civilian, albeit a career diplomat as the National Security Adviser comes as “a complete surprise.” As it is virtually every organisation in India is swamped by bureaucrats and our street-smart politicians. When will we wake up to the need for putting our retired defence personnel in senior decision-making roles in the defence sector at least. Mark my words, ladies and gentlemen, one day this country will regret its tinkering with the entire defence apparatus, and putting many yes-men in the higher echelons of counselling in some of our ministries and the Services.

Nothing is lost for reconsidering this entire question of the NSC. The PMO is already overworked. The Prime Minister’s Principal Secretary, who heads it, cannot (or should not) be the NSA too. The JIC’s head should be a senior defence officer, and not a civilian. The mess up in Sri Lanka where a rather over-vibrant Chief fell prey to indifferent intelligence inputs from our so-called intelligence experts, the 1962 debacle with China when Mr B. N. Mullick had Prime Minister Nehru’s ears, and the motley kind of intelligence we were getting in the initial stages of the Bangladesh war from our Mukti Bahni and other civilian agencies, should make us take a good look at the working of our intelligence agencies in the neighbouring countries and elsewhere.

It would also have to be seen whether the NSC with all its appendages would be a permanent feature with an assured life-span, or whether it would go as one government bowed out and another took its place.

The rather choppy relationship between the Service Chiefs and the Defence Secretary, as being written about nearly everyday, does not augur well for the country. The down-sizing of the Chiefs within the NSC is not conducive to the happiness and morale of the armed forces. Surely, the change-over of an IAS functionary should be as routine a matter as the switchover of a General from one Command to another, or that of a senior bureaucrat from one ministry to another. Nothing can be more detrimental to the nation’s interest than a disharmonious relationship.

In these troubled times, we would do well to have a full-time, full-fledged Defence Minister (as at present), who would offer sound, unfettered advice on military matters to the Prime Minister. At all times, and not only during times of a crisis. The advice he would offer would be consonant with the professional briefings he would have obtained from the Service Chiefs, and not some civilian arm-chair strategists, as one witnessed personally at close range at the Service headquarters during those memorable days of the 1971 Indo-Pakistan war.

The NSC, as it has been constituted, has only strengthened red-tapism, increased the stranglehold of the bureaucracy over the three Service Chiefs and the fighting forces and brought about no viable changes in the decision-making process. Its tasking, composition, structure, and the overall command and control aspect need another close look.

We must not fail to give the country a durable security. The present NSC does not have the capacity to provide this in any meaningful measure.

(The author is a defence analyst.)

Demands of a rising population
by Dhurjati Mukherjee

LED by India’s and China’s teeming millions, the world population is set to cross the six billion mark next year. It has taken the world less than 30 years to double its number. India alone accounts for a fifth of the population added every year, according to the recently released report of the United Nations Population Fund. In fact, India, with a population of 975.8 million, is still the second most populous country after China (1.2 billion plus another 6.3 million in Hong Kong). But at the rate at which population is growing, India will be the world’s most populous country within another 52 years.

It is significant that the report has pointed to the rapid growth of the young and old “new generations”, which is challenging the societies’ ability to provide education and health care for the young, and social, medical and financial support for the elderly. In India, the elderly are worse off with every passing year. As per the UNFPA report, only 58 per cent of the aged are taken care of in the joint family system while in nuclear families the situation is worse, with only 42 per cent of the elderly looked after there.

Thanks to medical research, life spans are now stretching. As most of the economically advanced countries experienced after World War II, developing nations have now reached a turning point with their senior citizens outnumbering the elderly population in the developed nations to such an extent that by 2000 they will have an increase of more than 77 per cent against only 33 per cent in developed nations. In India also life expectancy has gone up phenomenally over the last 15 years from 51 years in 1981 to 62.5 years in 1996. According to reliable data, the 65 plus will account for over 13 per cent of India’s total population by the turn of the century while the UNFPA report has pointed out that 1.4 per cent of the country’s population would be above 75 years.

Since the elderly have to be cared for, higher allocation for health services will become necessary. In India, since few people worked in formal sector jobs and, therefore, do not have retirement benefits, the government may step in to supplement their meagre savings by building a public support system. Apart from this, more importance should be given to extending “home help services” for the elderly, increasing community involvement in caring for them, having more welfare agencies dedicated to their care in both public and private sectors.

In this connection, it may be pertinent to mention that research on ageing, though not deeply rooted, has started in India. Will longer life expectancy be an enjoyable experience for people? Is longevity a blessing or a curse? These and such other questions are being discussed and debated in symposium and seminars on gerontology. One has to agree that while the country is getting industrialised and urbanised, the social security system is far from adequate.

But if India is greying it is also becoming more youthful. The report has projected that the population in the age group 15-24 years was 16 million in 1991 (18.5 per cent of the total population) and this figure is likely to be 200.3 million by 2001 (19.7 per cent) and 238.1 million by 2011 (20.1 per cent). The largest ever young generation is expected to swell the working age population in many countries over the next two decades. For developing countries like India, the increase in the young population would create further problems as most of these countries are plagued by unemployment and underemployment.

The increasing population of the country is indeed a threat to our very existence. About 50,000 children are born every day and we annually add about 18.8 million people which is slightly more than the total population of Australia or Sri Lanka. Moreover, around 35 per cent of the population is living below the poverty line while another 20 to 25 per cent does not have the means to live a healthy existence. In such a situation, there have to be serious efforts both at the national and state levels to reduce the population growth.

A joint government-NGO approach towards the problem can produce the desired results. For example, in every sub-division of the country, there should be a government-NGO set-up with the responsibility of keeping the population under check. This set-up would also have to spread the message of family planning, and impart social education so that the masses feel the need to keep the population under check.

Thus, only through education and a better social security system will society prosper, as then population can be kept under check while the aged would get proper treatment and respectability. Simultaneously, more job opportunities would have to be created to meet the demands of a growing youth population. — INFA

Ex-dictators: what to do with them?

by Anupam Gupta

INTERNATIONAL law is in the throes of a controversy. Handing down perhaps its most momentous human rights decision since World War II, the highest English court, the House of Lords has, by a split verdict of 3 to 2, declared that former Heads of State are not entitled to sovereign immunity for grave crimes like torture and hostage-taking outlawed by international law. Thus paving the way for the extradition and prosecution of General Augusto Pinochet, the 83-year old former Chilean dictator who arrived in London for medical treatment three months ago, British justice has with a stroke of the pen and with a nobility of intention that cannot be doubted, turned the law of nations upside down.

The judgement represents a “giant leap in the judicial quest for a more humane rule of international law”, India’s top constitutional lawyer Fali Nariman wrote in The Hindustan Times on December 10. The human rights lexicon, he said, celebrating the event, has been enriched with a new admonition to the tyrants of the world: “Remember Pinochet!”. Nariman’s pen is no less eloquent than his orality in court, even though the view that he takes is highly debatable and not shared by all (as he himself acknowledges).

“If dictators cannot be offered amnesty or safety in exile”, the ultra-conservative Chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the US Senate, Jesse Helms wrote recently in The Washington Post, “they will never hand (over) power to democratic movements. The incentive will be for greater repression, not less.” The Pinochet case, he warned, would undermine peaceful transitions to democracy around the world.

The USA, of course, was Pinochet’s great ally and godfather throughout his 17 years of repression, a nightmare for the Chilean people, and voices such as of Jesse Helms must be taken with more than a pinch of salt. President Fidel Castro of Cuba does not quite fit into that category, however. Tireless revolutionary and Pinochet’s most implacable foe in Latin America, Castro spoke cautiously — and maturely — on the subject to journalists during a recent visit to Spain (the country on whose request Pinochet is proposed to be extradited).

“Over the last few days (he said, as reported by The Times of India) I have been meditating on this. The worst would be if the measures taken in London translated later into an image of Pinochet as a virgin and martyr and if, as a consequence of this, the Right were to take power in Chile again, even by the electoral route”.

It is our duty, said Castro, to react to these events with composure and not allow ourselves to be carried away by a natural enthusiasm and joy at the prospect of the dreaded despot finally receiving his retribution.

From the moral point of view, he continued, it is but just that Pinochet be arrested, brought to trial and punished. And with him be arrested, tried and punished as his accomplices all those in the West who inspired, sponsored and participated in the bloody coup that brought him to power in 1973. From the moral point of view, he said, they would all have to be taken to trial in Madrid, in London, or anywhere else.

But there is a second aspect, he pointed out, the legal aspect. “I think that from the legal point of view, this action is questionable.” If inter-national norms are to be transcended, he said, and the British granted the privilege of extra-territoriality today, many other leaders round the world — freedom fighters, not dictators — could also be captured any day by unfriendly regimes and put on trial as the “price for the long struggle for the freedom” of their people. And he referred illustratively, and by name, to the Palestinian President Yasser Arafat whose very struggle leads him to travel all over and ever so frequently.

Back home, columnist Swaminathan Anklesaria Aiyar, trenchant as always, went even further in The Times of India. Most Indians think, he said, that the House of Lords’ verdict is about a nasty Latin American dictator and has no bearing on a democracy like India. They are wrong. “The verdict opens the way for arrest warrants abroad against all Indian Prime Ministers, Chief Ministers, army chiefs and police chiefs. Even if such cases do not succeed, they could be damaging politically.”

Whether Yasser Arafat or Indian Prime Ministers and Chief Ministers, the criticism is a bit overstated. The House of Lords was dealing with a former Head of State, not a serving one and it would, strictly speaking, be incorrect to refer to the example of serving Heads of State (federal or provincial) in order to find fault with the judgement in the Pinochet case.

Incorrect but not unfair. Or unprincipled. For so far as sovereign immunity is concerned, there can, in principle, be no distinction between serving and former Heads of State. The whole purpose of providing sovereign immunity in international law would be defeated if any such distinction were to be drawn or permitted. For all that, then, transitional or international prosecutors would be required to do is to wait — wait till the Head of State retires or is removed, and then proceed post-haste to nab and put him (or her) on trial. Neither law nor international relations can afford to be as brittle and vulnerable as that.

Deposed and abdicated Heads of State, says the latest, 1996 edition of Oppenheim’s great work on international law — edited by the then President of the International Court of Justice, Sir Robert Jennings alongwith Sir Arthur Watts — may be sued (in civil law) in respect of obligations of a private character entered into while Head of State. For their official acts as Heads of State, however, they will, “like any other agent of a state, enjoy continuing immunity”.

It is this continuing immunity which the House of Lords has now virtually destroyed. More on the subject next week.

Incidents of intolerance galore

by Humra Quraishi

I REALLY don’t know how best to sum up the scene here. On one hand there seems to be seething, or say simmering, discontent all over and, on the other, glamorous events hold sway.

This week the centre of raging controversy has been the Shiv Sainiks’ attack on theatres showing Deepa Mehta’s unconventional film ‘Fire’. Some arrests have been made but that wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem, for with lawlessness raging ahead, anybody and everybody seems to be doing their own little thing.

And this trend alone is leaving “thinking” people worried. In fact, last weekend, at the Press Club, former Test cricketer Salim Durrani, spoke not a word about cricket but about the levels of intolerance around us. And the same can be said about the recent utterances of Dilip Kumar, Mahesh Bhatt, Javed Akhtar and the likes.

So much so that talks along similar lines, of apprehension and lack of political will, could be heard at the rallies arranged on December 6 and also amongst those who marched here on Human Rights Day.

Many a frustrated person was even overheard planning to distribute photostat copies of German intellectual Pastor Neimoeller’s famous lines which he’d uttered at the time of Nazi ascendancy — “First they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew. Then they came for the Communists, then I did not speak out because I was not a Communist. They came for the Catholics and I did not speak out because I was not a Catholic. Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

And for some particular reason or perhaps for no reason at all there seemed more than the usual enthusiasm on December 10. Stretching it still further is the Champa Foundation which, for its memorial lecture scheduled for December 12, has invited the founding member of the Bangladesh Anti-Fascist Democratic Alliance, Badruddin Umar and also Mubashir Hasan who, besides being Pakistan’s former Finance Minister, is also founding-member of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission.

Before I move on another important dignitory is visiting us from Jerusalem and he is Sheikh Ikrimah Sabri, Grand Mufti of Al Quds Al Sharief. Our parliamentarians are hosting a special reception in his honour but I have no choice but to miss out reporting to you all that he says or what our men utter for the reception is 24 hours later.

Moving ahead, in the context of intolerance and violence Unifem had launched a “campaign for the elimination of gender based violence” and as a part of that campaign Unnati Features focussed their annual competition for excellence in writing on the relevant theme: Violence Women Face.

It came as both a surprise and shock that the young college going awardees seemed so well aware of the violent ongoings on the woman, both at the home front and out of it. And since the awardees came from as far as Kalimpong to as near as Faridabad and had written similar facts vis-a-vis violence against women, so one can imagine how well spread and unabated this form of violence is. The only ray of hope seems that at least this coming generation is conscious of it and so could bring about some sweeping changes in the very thinking of the men of this country.

A bash with a difference

If you accuse me of wrecking your Monday morning by focusing on just the decay let’s quickly hop over to the lawns of Imperial Hotel where a so-called relaunch lunch reception was hosted midweek. I have been told that this hotel originally designed by one of Edwin Lutyen’s associates, Bromfield, and inaugurated by Viceroy Lord Wellingdon in 1935, had been undergoing extension work for the past few years and now since the restoration activities come to a near-close, hence the celebrations have begun.

And since no big or small celebration in this city can be complete without a fashion show so I wasn’t too surprised to find in the list of the celebrations a fashion show by Rohit Bal on December 15 in aid of the Cancer Foundation.

Before moving ahead I must say that though this is the first time I had actually stepped into this hotel’s premises but its rather quaint and cosy decor did leave a mark. To stretch it to the utmost heights I can pay it this compliment — It didn’t quite look and behave like a typically Delhi hotel... more like a countryside motel or resort!

Moving on the Embassy of Panama is holding its award presentation ceremony of the Rogelio Sinan contest on December 14. And I was really surprised to hear from the ambassador that though the language medium for this year was Urdu yet the number of entries they received was overwhelming. So it means that the language isn’t still dead (let not the politicians hear this!)

Then on December 13 Delhi University, as part of the platinum celebrations of this university, is conferring honorary degrees on several distinguished personalities. The most prominent being Nobel laureate Amartya Sen. And another organisation by the name of understanding and Fraternity gave away awards to people trying to bring about harmony and I have been told that noted writer Kashmiri Lal Zakir got the award for bridging communal gaps through his writings.

And not to miss “wazas’ (cooks) being especially brought here from the Kashmir valley to lay out “wazaa” feats for the Delhiilties at the Intercontinental.

75 YEARS AGO

Newsprint duty

INTOLERABLY heavy as a 25 per cent import duty on newsprint must be in a poor country like India, it is all the heavier in its incidence because the duty is an ad valorem duty and the price of newsprint has gone up enormously during the last 12 months. Both in the case of newsprint in reels and of newsprint in sheets the price has increase from £ 9 to £ 18 or more. That is to say, the price has gone up by 100 per cent and it is generally believed that it will mount still higher.......

The only alternative to the repeal of or a substantial reduction in the duty would be for the more well-to-do newspapers either to reduce their size, or to spend less on their news service and on the performance of other essential functions of a newspaper and the press.

No one who realises the value of an efficient and up-to-date newspapers press under modern conditions is likely to deny that either of those steps would be a disaster to India at the present stage of her political and national evolution. If this disaster is to be averted the Government and the Legislature in India must do what the Government and the Legislature in the more advanced countries have been doing and should forego the whole or the bulk of the revenue from this import duty.