The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Mother earth as killer

NATURE has two faces. For most of the time it shows the most benign one. But when it turns the malevolent side it becomes a mass killer. Science can accurately predict floods and cyclones but earthquake is still the mysterious force that strikes unexpectedly and flattens life itself. As it happened in Gujarat on Republic Day. There are piles of rubble where buildings once stood, trapping underneath thousands of people. Television visuals are terrifying. Even newspaper photographs are benumbing. All types of communication have been totally disrupted. It will take weeks before the full extent of death and destruction is available. And years before life gets into even tenor. Several villages near Bhuj have just disappeared as it happened near Latur in 1993. Nobody has ventured to go there and even Home Minister Advani could not since the airstrip has developed cracks. Hence casualty figures are so much guesswork. Ahmedabad has had its share of destruction. As have many cities and towns. Electric supply stands suspended in most of the affected areas and telecommunication has gone dead. This has added to the woes of relief workers. Hospitals are overcrowded and doctors are treating the injured in the open, even conducting operations. It is all too grim to imagine. One thing is all too obvious. The authorities who were busy with the Republic Day celebrations wasted precious hours before organising help. Even so, as one report says, they did not know where bulldozers were and how many firefighting vehicles were available. The only civilian force which can minimise the havoc of building collapse is the firefighting group and it joined the rescue operations very late for a calamity of this scale. As the most industrialised state in India, there were initial fears that those units in the Kutch region could have taken a severe hit. It is not so and an early analysis shows that the asset loss will be a manageable Rs 1000 crore with another few hundred crores in lost production during the next two weeks.

This is the fourth major earthquake in the past decade. Still there is no disaster management system. What passes off in that name is a telephone directory to find the number of the local Army commander to ask him to take over the work of helping the people to cope with their tragedy. One senior officer bitterly complained that a team of officers set up to draw up a plan to meet the after-effects of a calamity spent much labour and came up with a note and marked it secret. It merely said, “Call the Army.” That is what has been done now. As the most experienced force, it has rushed men and material to the earthquake-hit zone. It is offering even medical assistance. It has to cancel a training exercise in Rajasthan to concentrate on Gujarat work. The Air Force and the Navy have also pitched in. Not putting together a well-designed mechanism to take over relief work within minutes is a serious lapse, particularly since as many as 24 states have been identified as disaster-prone. The only exception is Maharashtra. It has learnt from its Latur experience. It has built a rich data base with a reliable wireless network. The firefighting equipment, medical facilities, including private clinics, roads and temporary shelters are neatly catalogued. There is a command centre in Pune with small district-level coordinating teams which will come together at very short notice. Maharashtra has offered to help Gujarat organise a similar setup. Gujarat should accept this and weave the rehabilitation part with this long-term need. Not only Gujarat. The Centre should take an initiative and ask all states to go in for this. Another thing the Centre should do is to massively increase the relief fund. A mere Rs 10 crore is too little.

Listen to the President

PRESIDENT K. R. Narayanan's Republic Day eve address to the nation deserves more than routine attention. It was a forceful reiteration of his known position on the current exercise of a review of the Constitution. He used the occasion to remind the people that there was no need to lose faith in the democratic spirit enshrined in the Constitution. As the First Citizen of India he did well to exercise the right to add his voice to the on-going debate on the review of the Constitution and a fixed term for the legislatures. On both the issues his views are at variance with those of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. The fact that the sharp differences of opinion between the two has only added substance to the debate at the ground level rather than generate bitterness or controversy should itself be seen as a triumph of the spirit of democracy. Mr Vajpayee holds the view that the Constitution in its present form has outlived its utility and, therefore, needs to be replaced rather than amended for it to regain its credibility. It ignores the position taken by respected authorities and legal luminaries, and articulated in the President's address, that the fault is not with the Constitution, but with those who are expected to work it. Without referring to the setting up of the National Commission to Review the Constitution and the controversial set of "consultation papers", Mr Narayanan stuck to the position which may ultimately prove to be the right one. It is clear that both the President and the Prime Minister have evidently agreed to disagree on the need for a review of the Constitution as also a fixed term for the legislatures for ensuring what is being touted as "stability". It would be a pity if the issues are decided this way or that without a more meaningful participation of the people in the on-going debate.

To be fair the debate should evoke a sharper response from the people since it is this section which may ultimately have to pay the price for allowing the Constitution to be changed and the term of the legislatures fixed. Mr Narayanan did well to remind the people that the provision of the "right of the universal adult suffrage" was for the founding fathers of the Constitution an "act of faith" in the wisdom of all sections of the people to work to their collective advantage a system of governance put in place in their names. There was broad agreement among the founding fathers that "the governance of this vast country cannot be left in the hands of an elite class" as opposed to the current arrangement in which every adult Indian has a right to vote. Since the on-going exercise to somehow justify the replacement of the Constitution indirectly questions the "farsightedness" of the original authors, Mr Narayanan thought it necessary, and rightly so, to remind the nation that "the founding fathers had the wisdom and foresight not to overemphasise the importance of stability and uniformity in the political system... they preferred more responsibility to stability". Since the name of Mahatma Gandhi was being invoked to explain the need for removing some of the basic elements from the Constitution, the President did well to remind the nation that "in Pakistan Field Marshal Ayub Khan had introduced an indirect system of elections and experimented with what he called basic democracy. It would be an irony of history if we invoke today in the name of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, the shades of the political ideas of Field Marshal Ayub Khan, the father of military rule in Pakistan". It is not just a good debating point which he has made. It lends strength to the argument to let the Constitution be.

India’s National Food Security
Food Corporation of India is a non-performing asset
by M. G. Devasahayam

FOR long years the Food Corporation of India (FCI), has been touted as the saviour of India’s farmers and the guardian of national food security. This premise is under challenge now and the relevance and capacity of the FCI to provide food security to India’s teeming millions, most of whom live below the poverty line, is being increasingly questioned. It is time, therefore, to delve into the functioning of the FCI vis-a-vis the basic requirements of safeguarding the farmers and providing food security to India’s poor. In India, wherein live one-sixth of the human race, food security is largely determined by Central and State Government’s whims, policies and mechanism with respect to pricing of farm products, procurement and storage of foodgrains and supply/delivery of the same through the public distribution system (PDS).

While the farm price policy directly affects the performance of agriculture, both production and productivity, food security policy impacts the society at large. Present agricultural pricing and marketing policies in India have, however, become obsolete, as they do not bear any scrutiny in the context of the current Indian agricultural situation. These policies have their roots in the shortages of World War-II though they were conceived and implemented in the present form 35 years ago, when the country was faced with acute shortages and was dependent on import of foodgrains for its survival. In those days, the open market prices of farm products were very high, and it was the consumer who needed protection. The dice has now been turned. It is the producer i.e. the farmer who needs protection now. Moreover, these policies do not take into account the vast potential of Indian agriculture, which has lately become evident. It does not require much imagination to say that policies and programmes required to meet a potentially surplus situation have to be sharply different from those that were evolved during the days of shortages and the accompanying scarcity-syndrome.

Herein lies the incongruity and untenability of the present situation. The Food Corporation of India was setup under the Food Corporations Act, 1964, in order to fulfil the following objectives of the food policy:

l Effective price support operations for safeguarding the interests of the farmers.

l Distribution of foodgrains throughout the country for PDS.

l Maintaining satisfactory level of operational and buffer stocks of foodgrains to ensure national food security.

Sitting in their cocoons, government mandarins and FCI top brass are in an applauding and backslapping mood. But facts on the ground are vastly different and terribly dismal. The FCI is being perceived as the enemy of food security and the agency responsible for huge quantities of foodgrains to rot while one-third of India’s population remains hungry and under-nourished. Stories of corruption, inefficiency and wastage in the FCI have become folklore and legends. It is not now that this is happening. Way back in 1990, the ‘High Powered Committee on Agricultural Policies and Programmes’ (headed by a former Union Agriculture Minister Bhanu Partap Singh) constituted by the Government of India made an indepth review of “FCI and food security” and came out with the following categorical observations:

“The working of the Food Corporation of India (FCI) can neither be improved nor its costs reduced. Various committees, at different times, have gone into the working of the FCI, and suggested ways and means to reduce its costs. But nothing has come out of their deliberations; costs instead of coming down have steadily gone up. Subsidy to the FC1 increased from Rs 650 crore in 1980-81 to Rs 2,476 crore in 1989-90, that is, by 3.81 times while the increase in quantity of foodgrains distributed through the Public Distribution System (PDS) has been only marginally higher between those two years. The reason is that the system itself is defective and any amount of tightening its administration is not going to yield any tangible result. High cost of the FCI arises mainly from its impersonal working. It has become a huge, overcentralised establishment, which in India is always accompanied with a proliferating bureaucracy, and a powerful trade union, both of which make increasing demands on the establishment”.

The situation is truer today than it was a decade ago. Vast subsidies have flown down the FCI drain since then and the present position is far worse and alarming. Subsidies to FCI have assumed astronomical figures, as the following table would reveal:

Year Subsidy

1994-95 Rs. 5,100 crore

1995-96 Rs. 5377 cr

1996-97 Rs. 6066 cr

1997-98 RS. 7500 cr

1998-99 Rs. 8700 cr

1999-2000 (likely to be over Rs 10,000 crore)

In 20 years the subsidy bill to the FCI has gone up by 15 times. The moot question is whether this enormous amount of taxpayer money is subsidising the toiling farmer and the famished urban poor? The answer is a clear no if investigative report by India Today (January 1,2001) and other sources are to be believed:

l Because of grossly inefficient procurement, storage, delivery mechanism and rampant corruption, FCI godowns are overflowing with 45.5 million tonnes of foodgrains (wheat and rice) out of which at least one million tonnes are believed to be rotten and two lakh tonnes classified as damaged. The cost of holding such a huge inventory of excess grain is a massive Rs 15,000 crore!

l Though FCI’s cost of procurement and handling is twice as high compared to private traders, the foodgrains procured and supplied are generally sub-standard and low quality;

l In Punjab, commission agents purchased paddy from farmers this year at Rs 250-475 a quintal, and made a killing by selling the same to the FCI at Rs 510-540. FCI’s army of officials also made a fortune in the process;

l Foodgrains worth Rs 500 crore is lost in transit every year and the 2,00,000 “workers” in the FCI costs the exchequer Rs 875 crore by way of salaries and perks;

l In 1998-99 the FCI spent Rs 808 on every quintal of wheat and Rs 980 on every quintal of rice it procured whereas the market price itself was much lower;

l With subsidies to the FCI crossing Rs 10,000 crore, citizens of this country are doling out Rs 5,00,000 per worker in a year! At Rs 20,000 per month of average earnings, these workers are among the highest paid “public servants” in the country. Ordinary citizens and honest taxpayers, most of whom lead subsistence living, are picking up this hefty bill.

l In contrast the productivity and performance level of FCI workers is among the lowest in the country with an average handling of 10 bags per worker per day. Besides, the FCI is reeking with political and bureaucratic rent seeking. Most of its godowns are more of “Mafia” dens than foodgrain stores.

Over the past several years the FCI has miserably failed to satisfactorily carry out any of the objectives for which it was founded whether it is to “protect the farmer”; facilitate an “efficient and cost effective Public Distribution System” or ensuring “national food security”. Therefore, the reported statement of Mr Shanta Kumar that, “We will need the FCI for food security and to ensure farmers are not exploited” flies in the face of factual realities on the ground. So is his meek suggestion that the “FCI need to be restructured and we have set up a committee to look into that”. Given the fate of committees in the past this contention is at best laughable.

The fact of the matter is that the FCI has become a burdensome non-performing asset (NPA) that is beyond recovery and redemption. Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha does not miss an occasion to condemn NPAs vowing to liquidate them come what may. Most of the NPAs he is talking about are bad debts to banks, which more often than not are caused by the folly of the banks or circumstances beyond the control of the borrowers. He is also a warrior against subsidy in any form even to the hapless farmer and the poor slum-dweller. Why is he deafeningly silent on this leviathan of inefficiency and corruption called FCI, the biggest NPA and the largest guzzler of subsidy in the country paid out of taxes collected from the toils of the common man? Why are the Members of Parliament and state legislatures who scream and shout on small things stalling the Houses for days, mute and meek in the face of such wanton perfidy against the poor of this country? Why is the media, fond of blowing up trivial things to Himalayan heights, choosing to be an indifferent spectator to this scandal that is crippling the country’s socio-economic fabric? There are questions that need to be asked and answered truthfully and faithfully.

In the cacophony of noises heralding the new millennium and serenading IT cyberspace, the agony and anguish of the stunted farmer and the groaning city dweller is not being heard. The Prime Minister, the Finance Minister and the ruling elite are drawing inspirations from the hi-tech presentations in five-star summits and seminars wherein these “miserables” have no chance of participating. Yet it is their “silent and suppressed” voice that will have the final say whether through the instrument of democracy or the process of mobocracy. If the powers that be care to listen to this “sound of silence” it is loud and clear — dismantle the leviathan and give the poor a chance by opting for an alternative food security system that is practical, pragmatic and in tune with ground realities. Given the “second generation reforms” and “good governance” on which the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister are both “musing” and harping these days, should not a new food security and a reformed public distribution system be on top of their agenda for action?

In the past over 50 years the political and the ruling class have been governing the country through ruses, diversions, red herrings, bluff and bluster. The intellectual elite and the media, who really are the conscience keepers of the nation, have been taken in by these ploys spending reams of paper writing and countless hours debating these “burning issues” which are grossly exaggerated and overblown. In the process real, serious and genuine issues that affect the vitals of the nation and its people are ignored and given the go by. Take just one instance. How much time and space the “Kashmir issue” that affect the “physical security” of a small part of the country with a tiny population, has taken in the print and electronic media and compare it with the infinitely small attention given to national food security that impacts on the entire country and its 100 crore population? This, in fact, is one major reason why India continues to be a “never-never” land mired in poverty, malnutrition, disease and hunger. This can go on only at the peril of India’s present and future.

(To be continued)

Amateurish amusings
by Abha Sharma

THE Prime Minister deserves compliments for looking forward to the past during his millennium-end musings at his southern sojourn. A true tribute indeed to T.S. Eliot who wrote:

Time present and time past

Are both perhaps present in time future

And time future contained in time past.

Close on the heels came the near heretical harangue of Amartya Sen who in his inaugural address to the Indian History Congress held in the City of Joy, Kolkata, pontificated that history was more or less bunk. He appeared to agree with Henry Ford who felt that we did not need tradition and should live in the present and, the only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today. But the select few seem to have the privilege of making statements in the past tense, if only to make the present, tense!

It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can, and He tolerates them perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect. If history repeats itself, some historians too repeat one another, rendering the former a nightmare from which the latter would do well to recover at the earliest opportunity. It is as much beguiling to banish the past from our lives as it is invidious to imitate it. Someone rhetorically remarked that all reactionaries suffered from constipation and all revolutionaries from diarrhoea. We have in our midst a fair share of those crying for cure of secular diarrhoea and communal constipation!

A long dispute means that both parties are wrong, be it Ayodhya or Kashmir. Most of the controversies and conflicts would soon be ended if those engaged in them would first accurately define their terms and then adhere to their definitions.

It is an amusing to muse over Gandhi’s dream of establishing Ram Rajya as it is to lengthen the logic of “natural sentiment” to bracket the proposed construction of the Ram temple at Ayodhya with the reconstruction of the Somnath temple. It is stretching not just credibility but sanity as well. Hail our syncretic national culture!

If we are to be judged by how many legacy problems inherited from the past we have solved and how strong a foundation we have laid for future development of the nation, we must muse with the unknown poet who wrote:

I watched them tearing a building down,

a gang of men in a busy town.

With a ho-heave-ho and a lusty yell

they swung a beam and the sidewall fell.

I asked the foreman, “Are those men skilled

and the men you’d hire if you had to build?”

He gave a laugh, said” No, indeed;

just common labour is all I need.

I can easily wreck in a day or two

what builders have taken a year to do.”

I thought to myself as I went my way,

“which of these roles have I tried to play?

Am I a builder who works with care,

measuring life by the rule and sqare?

Am I shaping my deeds to a well-made plan,

patiently doing the best I can?

Or I am a wrecker, who walks the town.

Content with the labour of tearing down?”

Those who swear by, or at, Gandhi would do well to remember that from August 15, 1947, to January 30, 1948, Gandhi thought, spoke and acted as if he belonged to both the nations. He thought of Pakistanis too as “my people”. At this juncture, A.B. Vajpayee too can take courage to change the political climate, as Gandhi did in 1932 when he signed a pact with Ambedkar and saved Hindu-Dalit relationship. We expect from him a benevolent blend of vision and action.

Alternatively, life is a horizontal fall, for

“The world is weary of the past,

Oh, might it die or rest at last.”

Focus on earthquake at President’s reception
by Humra Quraishi

THANKFULLY you and I survived this earthquake otherwise from under the rubble one couldn’t have even quaked to you. The uncertainty of life or rather the near-certainty of death couldn’t have been felt more intensely, than on the morning of January 26. Even in New Delhi people were subjected to bizarre sights of fans swaying, paintings falling, brass pieces tumbling down. In fact those living in high rise buildings have turned cynical overnight. Worried silly, what with poor to substandard construction material being inevitably used, these buildings have the potential of tumbling down like a pack of cards. If I am not mistaken there has never been any survey conducted on the number of earthquake proof buildings. In fact it has taken years to install fire safety bandobast, what to talk of earthquake related safety measures. In fact at the reception hosted by the President of India and First Lady Usha Narayanan, conversation for most people centred around the earthquake. Almost ironical in the sense that most of the guests were either politicians or bureaucrats — that is men who man the country or are at least supposed to do so — so instead of mere talks along apprehensive lines its high time to chalk out long terms safety measures, which should move beyond the realms of paper. And along with the earthquake disaster were talks of unprecedented security — frisked not just once but twice, the invite checked at three points, made to go under the metal detectors twice over and the cars checked at the bonnet, seat and dickey ends. In fact, from the afternoon till the evening at least, the roads leading from India Gate roundabout to Rashtrapati Bhavan were more or less deserted (save for vehicles heading to the Rashtrapati Bhavan with entry cards displayed at the car window). Nothing really offbeat noteworthy to report on this reception except what Bina Ramani’s daughter had failed to do, Jamia Millia’s Vice Chancellor Shahid Mehndi’s spouse managed to do — from head to toe wore clothes and accessories matching with the tricolour.

Other events

THOUGH with the disaster of this earthquake still around, everything seems pushed in the background yet one cannot overlook some of the ongoing events — for instance the ongoing Tenth Triennale. In fact before I go on to talk about its varying aspects I must mention that perhaps we are the fortunate ones to have the oldest living artist in our midst — Professor B.C. Sanyal, who turns a hundred years old this year and it is not just that he turns hundred but an active hundred. Lalit Kala Akademi, the organisers of this Triennale, has honoured Prof B.C. Sanyal — with a special section containing his select works. And though a series of lectures and talks have been arranged during the Triennale days (January 24 to February 18), but Sanyal’s name does not figure in it — A pity for though I have heard him speak only on two occasions but each time was left impressed. He talks sense and unlike the men of today he doesn’t hesitate in blasting some of the who’s who lurking around. In fact the other speakers, barring Austria’s Christy Astuy, France’s Michele Blondal, Britain’s Catherine Yass, Sweden’s Gesch and Klingberg, the rest are all from India. To be nearer precision from New Delhi. Haven’t we heard them on so many occasions so surely some change was required. In fact not even one speaker from any of the Gulf countries participating in the Triennale and this when so little is known about the art scene in those countries. To my surprise several artists are participating from Iran, Egypt, UAE, Oman, Qatar yet one single speaker from their midst. Strange. What do the organisers have to say to this?

Countdown for Women’s Day

International Women’s day is more than five weeks away yet the countdown seems to have begun. Received an invite from several organisations (Joint Women’s Programme, All-India Democratic Women’s Association, Indian Social Institute, YWCA, Muslim Women’s Front) for a jointly arranged two-day public convention — March 1 and 2 — on ‘Hindutva vs Women’s Rights .’

“As part of the ongoing struggles against the saffronisation of various social spheres enabled by state patronage we are organising a two-day public convention”. Even as the Indian people prepare for an intensification of resistance against the globalised assaults on their lives and livelihood, come the ominous developments on the mandir-masjid issue. Experience of the ruling Central regime also shows that the attempts to subvert constitutional processes and influence public thinking is deep and multi-layered. The approaches towards gender issues for example are reflected in retrograde official policies, statements as also actions, which go against the minimum constitutional guidelines of equality and dignity for women.

Lebanese food festival

To end on a better note let me add that last week the ambassador of Lebanon together with the chairman of the new hotel in town — Metropolitan Hotel Nikko — hosted the Lebanese food festival and one should have seen people going absolutely berserk over shewarma kebabs, tabouleh, kibbeh and other Lebanese dishes. The ambience of the afternoon was very relaxed and enjoyable with most going back for seconds.

Kumbh — reviving heterodoxy
by Abu Abraham

I SUPPOSE one could say that the Kumbh Mela, in a symbolic way, represents what Nehru said about India in 1946. “Four hundred million separate individual men and women, each differing from the other, each living in a private universe of thought and feeling.”

Kumbh Melas are always peaceful. They are never disturbed by fanatics and hooligans, though there are plenty of them around. All individual aggressions are submerged in the holy waters of the Jamuna and the Ganga. What beliefs or superstitions drive millions of people to the confluence nobody but themselves know. The Kumbh Mela has no netas, no spiritual leaders, no brokers for heaven.

Christians or Muslims are not stopped from joining in, though their rituals and beliefs may be different. The spirit of liberty pervades the scene. Upstart politicians and self-appointed cultural netas and Hindutva historians would love to harness this potential for their philistine programmes, but this is one occasion when the common people want to be left alone.

The Kumbh Mela represents the fusions of Indian history, from the nightmares of past history into a living evocation of our past and present culture, a continuous cultural mixing, or what Nehru described as “an ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed.”

The diversity of Indian culture and life comes from the spirit of individuality that is so much part of every Indian’s make-up. It is their feeling for liberty that has kept our society going even under defeat and foreign domination. Despite evidence in history to the contrary, the liberal spirit has dominated Indian society.

As at the Sangam in Allahabad, many cultures have mingled in India, merging one with the other, creating an amalgam and a tapestry which we can own as our heritage, so that a man like Rabindranath Tagore could claim without reservation that his background was “a confluence of three cultures, Hindu, Mohammadan and British”.

It is this heterodoxy of Indian history and culture that Dr Amartya Sen took great pains to emphasise in his lectures at Kolkata and Thiruvananthapuram during his recent Indian visit. He warned against ignoring what he called “India’s capacious heterodoxy” in favour of a “constricted sectarian identity.”

A nation’s, identity, as that of an individual’s is strongly influenced by its understanding of the past. But this use of history is not only a matter of historical discovery but also, to a significant extent, matters of selection and choice. “It would be a serious loss to deny the role of reasoned choice,” Dr Sen argued, “irrespective of one’s own religious background, so that one can take pride at the historical achievements of Ashoka or Akbar, Kalidasa or Kabir, Aryabhata or Bhaskara. The incursion of sectarian orthodoxy in Indian history involves to distinct problems, narrow sectarianism and unreasoned orthodoxy. The enterprise of knowledge is threatened by both.”

Dr Sen pointed out that heterodoxy is important for scientific advance because new ideas and discoveries have to emerge initially as heterodox views, at variance with established understanding. The history of science, he said, is integrally linked with heterodoxy, as we know from the experiences of Galileo, Newton or Darwin.

The effort of the Hindu right in India today to project our past culture as exclusively Hindu is as pernicious as that of some British historians (like James Mill) to present Indian culture and scientific achievements as worthless. Amartya Sen pointed out to his audience at the Indian History Congress in Kolkata that our ancestors were great believers in intellectual heterodoxy. “Indeed, the openness of approach that allowed Indian mathematicians and scientists to learn about the state of these professions in Babylon, Greece and Rome which are cited in early Indian astronomy, can also be seen as part of this heterodoxy.”

The rewriting of history, cultural, scientific or merely historical, all in the name of Ram Rajya, has become the chief occupation of our ruling orthodoxy. These people don’t even seem to know their past properly. The flowering of Indian science and mathematics that occurred in and around the Gupta period (beginning particularly with Aryabhata and Varshamihira) can be intellectually associated with persistent expressions of heterodoxies which pre-existed these contributions, according to Amartya Sen. “In fact, Sanskrit and Pali have a larger literature in defence of atheism, agnosticism and theological skepticism than any other classical language.”

Thank you, Dr Sen, for telling us that our past culture was far more glorious than what our captains of culture would have us believe.

Missing seriousness about peaceful solution
by Syed Nooruzzaman

GOING by the reaction of Pakistan's thinking people — keeping aside the official line — to the continuing suspension of combat operations by India against Kashmir militants, one is forced to believe that the Pakistanis are not serious about finding a peaceful settlement of the crisis in the valley. What comes to their mind is that "Indian forces are tired of fighting" against the militants and that the day is not very far when "New Delhi will decide to wash its hand off Kashmir". There can be no better example of wishful thinking.

If India's Army Chief says that the Kashmir question demands a political answer, this does not mean that the armed forces have lost their will to tame the militants trained in Pakistan or Afghanistan. It would be foolish to see in the statement any sign of weakness. India is a democracy where every citizen has a right to have his own independent views. But many political analysts in Pakistan refuse to look at suggestions from various quarters in India from this angle. Or, perhaps, they are not in a position to visualise things in this manner because of living in a non-democratic atmosphere.

It seems most Pakistanis, including those controlling the levers of power, are unprepared for any kind of comprise on Kashmir. Then what is the fun in trying to hold talks on the issue though for civilised people this is the best course available to settle their differences. What for does Pakistan say that it is willing to re-start parleys with India and the "core issue" — which means Kashmir — must be taken up first? Dialogue requires the willingness to give and take, accommodating some of the adversary's viewpoints. Such a spirit is, unfortunately, missing in the observations made from the other side. There is a lack of basic understanding of India's case. Even the intentions of the Indian intellectuals involved in track-II diplomacy are doubted. A fair idea of this gloomy scenario can be had by going through some of the recent commentaries on the Kashmir imbroglio. Here are a few samples:

"Independent analysts believe that on an average 8 to 10 Indian security personnel are being killed or wounded in Jammu and Kashmir every day. These include the casualties suffered in operations against the Mujahideen and those killed and wounded by the Indian soldiers themselves firing on their colleagues and superiors in fear and frustration. This prompted Indian Army Chief General Ved Prakash Malik to say in Chandigarh on September 11, 2000, that the only solution to the 'revolt' in Kashmir was to find a political solution. On this Indian analysts said that the (Indian) Army had started showing signs of fatigue.

"The new Indian Army Chief General Sunderrajan Padmanabhan, who took over command on September 30, 2000, initially vowed to defeat the freedom movement and crush the freedom-fighters. After a four-day trip to visit the troops deployed in the state, he seems to have changed his mind and come to the same conclusion as his predecessor had done, that only a political solution will solve the dispute. These straightforward and categorical statements made by two Army Chiefs within a span of two months leave the Indian Government in New Delhi with dwindling military options." — Lieut-Gen Sardar F.S. Lodi in an article carried in The Nation on January 18.

"Tactical impediments to gain political advantage for a limited period cannot stop the historical process. Whereas the APHC visit to Pakistan is bound to materialise, India is unnecessarily trying to twist and distort the basic issues pertaining to the resolution of the core issue. Pakistan is a party to the dispute and accepted as such by the UN resolutions. By calling the Kashmiri Mujahideen and the APHC as 'our own people' New Delhi is attempting to eliminate Pakistan as a party to the dispute and paint the picture of the Kashmiri struggle as India's internal matter".

—Journalist Ikram Ullah in a news analysis.

In its January 16 editorial Karachi's Urdu daily Jang says, "If India is expressing its willingness for dialogue, it is not an obligation on anyone. What is really needed is that some meaningful method should be found to enable the people of Kashmir to secure their basic rights. Otherwise they will be forced to continue their fight for the purpose". The whole tenor of the editorial shows that Pakistan has nothing to give up. The paper wants only India to sacrifice. Is it not being unrealistic?

It is time Pakistan realised that only a pacifist approach could help untie the Kashmir knot. Belligerence is destructive. Cross-border terrorism cannot be continued for a long time, specially when the economic condition of those providing it sustenance — that is Pakistan — is getting more and more unstable day by day. But few people in our neighbourhood think on these lines!