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Monday,
September 1, 2003, Chandigarh, India  
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Terror and talks Blast in Najaf Making the journey safe |
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Pak Ulema singing a new tune
The art of forgetting
When boards err, students suffer
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Terror and talks MR Atal Bihari Vajpayee must be tired of commencing peace initiatives even when Pakistan invariably reciprocates with terror offensives. His anguish can be palpable when he says that no meaningful dialogue is possible unless cross-border terrorism and killing of innocent people were stopped. The irony of it all is that Pakistan tries to misrepresent this frustration as India’s unwillingness to come to the negotiating table. In other words, it wants to drag India to peace parleys by holding a gun to its head. That happens to be its intention on Kashmir also. Its unstated policy is to make things so hot there that Delhi finds it more prudent to part with an integral part of its territory. What this strategy fails to take into account is the emotional and constitutional bonds that India has with Kashmir. It is considered the crown of the country and it will be no exaggeration to say that every Indian would rather die than part with it. That is why the misplaced Pakistani policy has not yielded any gains for it so far. The battle-weariness that it wanted to impose on India is more visible in Pakistan itself. But the army rulers have ridden the tiger so long that they are afraid of dismounting lest more foolhardy persons than them project any sensible course alteration as an abject surrender. The end result is that every move is made by Islamabad without the requisite sincerity and foresight. This mendaciousness was clearly visible during the talks to resume air links too. Islamabad found many excuses to scuttle the negotiations. It even sought unprecedented guarantees that the flights would not be stopped by India in future. The whole aim was to somehow link the resumption of air services to the train restoration. Delhi is wary of the rail link because of the bitter experience of its brazen misuse for smuggling of goods as well as men. The intransigence which is holding India-Pakistan relations to ransom is coming in the way of Samjhauta Express as well. The same holds true of the trade ties between the two. As Mr Vajpayee says, the atmosphere for good neighbourliness is just not there. Unless Pakistan creates it, no meaningful dialogue can be possible. General Pervez Musharraf lost a golden chance by puncturing the bus yatra through his Kargil misadventure. He repeated the same mistake by treating the Agra invitation as a photo opportunity. Here is hoping that he won’t squander away the Srinagar initiative through insensate killings. |
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Blast in Najaf PRIME
Minister Tony Blair looked nervous as he arrived on Thursday for testifying before Lord Hutton, who is investigating weapons scientist David Kelly's death. President George W. Bush is still putting up a brave front in spite of dipping domestic popularity. Yet, the blood-soaked messages that are being delivered from the streets of Iraq almost everyday since the country's occupation by the Anglo-American forces are bound to worry Washington and London. The reverberations of the latest attack on a congregation, that had collected at a mosque in the holy city of Najaf for the Friday prayers, were heard around the globe. It was the most brutal fidayeen action after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. The sense of outrage among the people over the death of Ayatollah Baqir-al-Hakim in the bloodiest attack till date may not necessarily turn the hostile and violent expression of domestic resentment against Iraq's occupation into a sectarian conflict between Shia and Sunni Muslims. The congregation was targeted not because it was made up of Shias, to whom Najaf is sacred because of the tomb of Hazrat Ali. The pro-American position of the Ayatollah invited the attack that claimed the lives of over 100 other worshippers. Herein lies the contradiction in the uneasy relationship between the American administration and the Shia Muslims. President Bush has not given up describing Iran, the only Shia State, as a part of the axis of evil. But since Saddam had banned public display of Shia rituals during his repressive rule, Ayatollah Baqir came out of self-imposed exile in Iran to support the American occupation of Iraq. His death came five days after the attempted assassination in Najaf of Grand Ayatollah Said-al-Hakim. Member of US-appointed Governing Council in Iraq Ahmad Chalabi, an ambitious Shia politician, suggested that internal security should be handed over to the Iraqis. However, Iraq has now become a full blown terrorist-infested State and mere cosmetic changes in the creaky local administrative structure will not be enough to protect Americans and their sympathisers from snipers and suicide-bombers. The UN office in Baghdad was blown up because of the world body's inability to stop the invasion of Iraq on grounds that have now been proved to have been cooked up by the Bush-Blair combine. America and Britain propose to bring a fresh resolution before the Security Council for the deployment of an international force. Few countries would like to join a peacekeeping mission that is not under the UN flag. As of today the world body has decided to reduce its staff strength in Iraq by nearly 90 per cent. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is obviously trying to send a "strong" message to President Bush. But it is likely to fall on deaf ears even if it is so. Americans have a problem in Iraq: They are stuck there and cannot leave. And President Bush has to face Congress now and also get elected again in a little over an year's time. |
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Making the journey safe THE
launching of the 10-year Corporate Safety Plan (2003-13) by the Railway Minister follows Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s announcement in his Independence Day address that his government will set up a technology mission on railway safety. The plan seeks to involve the Departments of Science and Technology and Human Resource Development, IIT-Kanpur, and a consortium of industries for developing technology for achieving higher levels of safety on the track. The need to upgrade the railway safety machinery with the help of the state-of-art technology has been debated for long. It is good that the safety plan envisages a safety blueprint based on technological inputs, managerial focus and the required investments. In addition to earmarking Rs 31,835 crore for safety enhancement, it moots a special safety scheme with the assistance of the Planning Commission and the Union Finance Ministry. While all the policy prescriptions are timely, the launching of the safety plan deserves a qualified welcome and there is no reason for the Railway Minister to go gaga about it. For one thing, though the Indian Railways is the largest network in the world, its safety record is very poor. For another, there seems to be no accountability in the system. The introduction of modern technology, long overdue, is not enough to ensure safety. What about the people manning the system? Human error accounts for almost two-thirds of all train accidents. The Justice Khanna Commission, for instance, observed that the station staff was mainly responsible for most of the accidents. For example, they do not care to check whether the line on which a train is being allowed is clear, or ascertain if a train has arrived without any missing coaches. The anti-collision device is yet to be installed in most sections. Same is the case with track-circuiting with panel-interlocking. While these will, certainly, help check accidents, they are not an end in themselves. The hi-tech safety equipment will not be effective in preventing accidents without removing the element of human error. Consequently, the need of the hour is to sensitise those manning the system at various levels. Improvement in the working conditions of the staff should receive utmost priority. Long and stressful working hours disturb the concentration of the drivers and station masters; they are also a drain on the exchequer. The staff can be made accountable without difficulty if their working conditions are also improved. Unfortunately, the safety plan is silent on this vital question. Thought for the day Errors, like straws, upon the surface flow; He who would search for pearls must dive below. —John Dryden
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Pak Ulema singing a new tune A weeklong visit to India of a four-man team of Muttahida-Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) headed by Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his friendly utterances have baffled many an Indian. For isn’t he a self-confessed fundamentalist, who fathered the Taliban, runs a chain of over 600 madarsas in Pakistan and is alleged to have sponsored the jehadi movement and inspired terrorism in Kashmir? He not only offered bilateral talks, without a third-party mediation, on the basis of the Shimla Accord but also appealed to Mujahideen to give up guns. He was not provoked when solution of the Kashmir problem along the LoC was suggested to him or when the idea of Indo-Pak unification was mooted. What better music Indian ears expected from a Pakistani leader of consequence? That he lost Prime Ministership of his country by just one vote — after all the manoeuvrings by the army rulers — is an eloquent testimony to the fact that he matters in the politics of Pakistan. Further, the fact that he reiterated all the statements he made in India on his return to his country shows that he meant what he said and he is confident of the support of the people. So far moves for Indo-Pak friendship used to come from liberal intellectuals of both countries; who were supposed to be without deep roots. When General Pervez Musharraf captured power in Pakistan in 1999, he was considered India’s best bet. For he called himself a follower of Kamal Ataturk who ruthlessly demolished all vestiges of theocracy in Turkey and completely modernised it . As he became “most reliable ally” of America in its war against international terrorism, the General lost much popular support. After Iraq, when an anti-America wave swept most of the Muslim world, he did not waver in his loyalty. He even offered to consider sending Pakistani forces to Iraq but had to drop the offer when India declined to send her forces which added to the hostility of his own people. As India was also seeking closer relationship with America, General Musharraf had to compete with her for his loyalty to America; with further loss of popular support at home. The people in Pakistan, in particular its Ulema, in line with Muslim sentiments in the world, treat America as a greater threat to them than India. They, therefore, on account of their own interest and compulsions, are seeking to close the anti-India front to concentrate on their main enemy . But why had the Ulema of Pakistan become hostile to India and why the Pashtun community, which is their main ethnic base, was Talibanised? Pashtuns in the NWFP of Pakistan and Afghanistan were the most ardent followers of Gandhi and Abdul Ghaffar Khan. In fact, the Pashtun-dominated Afghanistan regime was the only government in the world which had opposed UN membership of Pakistan. The situation changed when India was one of the few countries which welcomed the entry of the Russian army into Afghanistan in 1980. That was the rudest shock to the Pashtuns from the least expected quarters. The vacuum was filled by Pakistan and the US. In order to counter the threat of communist ideology, a modified version of the Deoband interpretation of Islam was used as a more powerful ideology. Fazlur Rehman’s Jamiat-e-Ulema Islam was a part of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema Hind before Independence which was a close ally of the Congress in the fight for freedom of the country and had opposed the movement for Pakistan. Maulana Rehman’s father, Mufti Mahmood, was one of the prominent freedom fighters of his community. After Partition, the Pakistan part of the party was called Jamiat-e-Ulema Pakistan. It had organised the 134th anniversary of Darul Uloom, Deoband — to which both wings owed their allegiance — in Peshawar two years ago which was attended by an estimated half a million Pashtuns from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Another question that needs to be pondered over is why Deoband, which was in the vanguard of the freedom movement, has been sidelined in free India and has been owned by a section in Pakistan which has no institution of Islamic learning of that calibre. However, by taking the initiative in inviting their counterparts in Pakistan, Indian Ulema of the Deoband school have revived their role and that of their school at the centre-stage of national politics. The Jamiat-e-Ulema Hind, on whose invitation the MMA team had visited India, had offered last minute resistance to the partition of the country. Hence its interest in minimising its evil consequences is most genuine. Going further back, the nationalist movement was faced with a similar dilemma; to choose between the modernised western educated class of leaders like Jinnah and Iqbal on the one hand and the madarsas and Deoband-educated Ulema, on the other. The former proved to be a close ally of British rulers whereas the latter were their sworn enemy. Gandhi befriended the latter. Thus friendship and hostility of a community depends on its role and interests in a particular period. Learning from the past experiences and present realities, India could evolve a rational policy towards Pakistan which suits its national interest, rather than being a prisoner to set prejudices and fixed notions about any community and country. In the present situation, India should open a series of channels with the entire spectrum of Pakistan; not necessarily at the official level and not only in political and ideological spheres. All avenues — academic, cultural and business — should be explored. India, which is a far bigger and powerful country, can realise full potential of being one of the major powers of the world if it gets over its obsessions about and exaggerated fears from Pakistan. As relations between India and Pakistan improve, their dependence on the United States will get diminished to that extent. That is the principal motivation of the Ulema of Pakistan in seeking friendship with India just as the Ulema of undivided India became an ally of the nationalist movement for freedom due to their antipathy against the British. To the extent the perception of the Ulema is shared by liberal elements in Pakistan, it should be recognised and
welcomed. |
The art of forgetting BY all evidence forgetfulness has got no necessary link with old age. We had a nonagenarian grandpa who used to torture us with the memories of his childhood and youth till a day before his demise! And then there is this friend of mine who once went to a petrol bunk to fill petrol in his Hero Honda. His wife who was riding pillion got down and waited. But my friend filled it, shut it, forgot the missus and rode away. Only when his eight-year-old son asked after his mom that he remembered the faux pas. But then it was too late. The livid missus was coming back in a rickshaw and for the next two days she refused to be on talking terms with him! So age and forgetfulness are not necessarily linked. People suffer from it irrespective of whether they are 40 or 90! More than anything else it is an art that stands a lot of people in good stead. The biggest game of forgetfulness is in politics. The politician has almost perfected the art of forgetting. He throws promises at the voters only to forget them as soon as he is voted in. He talks about principles of his party but is only too eager to be in a coalition government that has people from parties having dynamically opposite principles. In the power game memory is a hindrance! The bureaucrats have also learnt this art from their political masters and they keep forgetting things at the drop of a hat! The next in line is the love game. Lovers from time immemorial have believed their beloveds and gone to ruin when the beloveds forget their promises There are very few wise lovers who can say like Asadullah Khan Ghalib, “tere waade par jiye ham, to yeh jaan jhoot jaana/ke khushi se mar na jaate agar aitbaar hota” (Did I trust your promises? What a wrong belief! I sure had died of joy had I trusted your word) Memory is a pain in love and the modern lovers are only too aware of it! There is another man who is a pastmaster at forgetfulness. He has honed this art to finesse. He is the one who takes a loan from you. Give a loan and lose friend — that wisecrack underscores what a great artist of forgetting the loanee is! There was this man who came and cried before me for a loan of ten thousand rupees because his mother was fighting for her life in a hospital. I knew him and respected him as a writer. I didn’t have the money so I got that arranged from a local moneylender at an interest rate of 5 per cent per month. So long as the loan was not arranged this man called me every second hour to decant his sob story into my sympathetic ears. He hounded me everywhere. He knew my telephone number, my cellphone number and even the telephone numbers of my relatives and friends. But no sooner did he pocket the cash than he forgot everything, even me! The loan was to be repaid in one month; it is two years since. He has taken the loan and I am paying interest of Rs 500 every month to the usurer! Such is the power of forgetting to guard your self-interest. People forget even their parents to protect their own interests. No wonder what the Polish writer Shalom Asch had said in his novel, “The Nazarene”, more than 60 years back holds good today: “Not the power to remember but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.” More so in this kaliyug,
right? |
Taj controversy ended BSP-BJP wedlock SITTING at the party headquarters, senior BJP leader Om Prakash Singh pondered loudly as to what prompted Ms Mayawati to sacrifice her government. What has she gained from this hara-kiri, he asked other party leaders sitting in the chamber of state party chief Vinay Katiyar on Thursday. “Betrayed” is the only word BJP leaders are chanting now. The BJP leader in charge of Uttar Pradesh affairs, Mr Kalraj Mishra, told The Tribune that on August 25 (the day Mayawati recommended dissolution of the state assembly and demanded fresh elections in the state) he had rung up Mayawati at 8.15 am. “I specifically asked whether she had any plan to dissolve the state assembly or sever ties with the BJP, Ms Mayawati replied in the negative,” Mishra said. The same day Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani had also telephoned Mayawati in the morning and then too she assured him that the alliance would continue, Mr Mishra said. “She betrayed us. If she had some other plans, she should have told us.” The drama unfurled at the Cabinet meeting the same day which began at 10 am. The BJP ministers claim that initially the meeting went according to the agenda. After the agenda was over, she said that she had decided to dissolve the state assembly. “I protested and questioned how she could take a unilateral decision about dissolving the state assembly when the BJP is a junior partner in this alliance,” Mr Om Prakash Singh said. The BSP, however, painted a different scenario. Swami Prasad Maurya, a senior BSP leader, said that Ms Mayawati offered to resign in the wake of the on-going Taj Heritage Corridor (THC) case. She argued that the investigation in the case might be affected if she remained Chief Minister. She offered that Babu Ram Kushwaha be made the Chief Minister. Mr Kushwaha, a personal secretary of Ms Mayawati, was made a minister in her last Cabinet expansion. On July 30 this year at her party workers’ meeting, she indicated the possibility of mid-term poll in the state and exhorted them to be ready for it. It was just not a political statement for consumption of its workers. It was a well thought-out strategy. Approximately, at the same time, Deputy Prime Minister Advani also gave a statement of holding the state assembly and Lok Sabha elections together. Political pundits say that he had made that statement with Uttar Pradesh in his mind. As per indications, Ms Mayawati had suggested the holding of the state assembly and Lok Sabha elections together. She had even suggested that for the Lok Sabha elections the BJP should contest on majority seats while for the state assembly, the BSP should be given a lion’s share. Both parties could hardly reach an understanding when the Taj Heritage Corridor controversy erupted in which she first levelled allegations against Union Culture and Tourism Minister Jagmohan and demanded his removal and later she was forced to swallow her demand as well as her pride. In fact, it was the THC controversy and subsequent CBI inquiry into it, ordered by the Supreme Court, which took its toll in the form of BSP-BJP alliance. As the CBI noose was tightening around some of the VIPs involved in the THC and CBI officials ‘grilled’ Minister for Transport and Excise Naseemuddin Siddiqi, an important BSP minister and second in command in the party, for four hours at an undisclosed place, Ms Mayawati probably decided to strike back. Ever since the BJP-BSP coalition government was formed in May last year, the alliance has never been smooth. Its very formation was opposed by senior state level leaders in the BJP. Their opposition was overruled by the national leaders and the BJP and the BSP entered into a political wedlock with a promise to contest the next Lok Sabha elections as alliance partners. The day Mayawati was sworn in as Chief Minister on May 24, 2002, senior BJP legislators objected to the shape and size of the Cabinet. The opposition became more vocal in the government’s next expansion in October with some BJP legislators forming a separate group. The majority of those BJP MLAs were Thakurs — the caste to which senior BJP leader and now Agriculture Minister in the Union Government Rajnath Singh belonged. Mayawati’s administration then hounded Independent legislator from Kunda, Raghuraj Pratap Singh, alias Raja Bhaiya, and arrested him, his father Udai Pratap Singh and his cousin Akshay Pratap Singh and booked them under POTA. Despite all the problems and inherent contradictions in the alliance, Ms Mayawati, with just 110 MLAs, ruled the state as if she had a full majority, brushing aside the pleas of BJP workers that they were being ignored by district officials “She has given the Chief Ministership to Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav on a platter. Mr Yadav, who had been out of power for the last eight years, has got an opportunity to strengthen his base in Uttar Pradesh so that he increases his bargaining power at the Centre during the next government formation,” said Dr S.P. Pandey, a political analyst. But it will not be an easy job for Mr Yadav either. He is ruling an alliance having two former Chief Ministers — Kalyan Singh and Ram Naresh Yadav — and at least four aspirants for the coveted post. The alliance is likely to be fragile till Mr Yadav can attain a majority of his own by creating a defection in the BSP legislature party. Fourteen legislators have already supported the government and a few more are likely to join the rebel camp. Mr Yadav, a wrestler-turned-teacher-turned politician, will have to grapple with this situation literally. The million dollar question is: will he come out a winner? |
When boards err, students suffer I do not know how many of you remember the tragic case of 21-year old Fais Mohammad Khan, who killed himself, imagining that he had failed in the second year B.com examination because the Barkatullah university in Bhopal withheld his marks without giving any reason for it. A bright student, Khan had actually secured first division, but when he found his name missing in the list of students who had passed the examination, he came to the only conclusion that he could have in the circumstances—that he had failed. That was last year. This year, Prachi Garg suffered the consequences of a careless mistake made by the CBSE. Her Class X board examination results showed that she had scored 15 in social science, while in all other subjects she had scored 80-92. Prachi, who had done well in social science too, could not understand how she could have got 15 marks. Initially, her parents’ efforts at getting through to the CBSE failed and Prachi was forced to prepare for the compartment examination for which the CBSE even sent her an admit card. Fortunately, just before the examination, the CBSE admitted its mistake and sent her the corrected marks sheet, wherein she had scored 76 in social science! . But the CBSE did not even think it fit to apologise to Prachi and her parents.. These are two reported cases in recent times, but I am sure there are many victims of such carelessness by universities and school boards around the country. In fact if one were to go through some of the cases filed before the consumer courts, one gets an idea of the kind of problems that students face: in one case three students are given the same hall ticket number; in another, the university misplaces the answer papers and so the student’s results are withheld indefinitely. In yet another case, the university takes more than a year to correct the mistakes in the marks sheet. And in almost all these cases, the student suffers the consequences of such negligence by the authorities, while those who are actually responsible for such mistakes are not held accountable at all. Well, all that can change now. Beginning with its landmark order in the case of Bhupesh Khurana vs Vishwa Buddha Parishad, where the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission made it clear that educational institutions could be hauled up before the consumer courts for negligent service.(OP no 168 of 1994) , the National Commission has taken a serious note of such lapses on the part of the examination boards and universities and have come to the aid of students and parents. In the case of S.D. Seth Mathews vs Mahatma Gandhi University, where the student lost two valuable academic years because Kerala University failed to inform him at the outset that the SSLC (compartment) examination of Tamil Nadu was not recognised by it, the consumer court awarded Rs 35,000 as compensation and Rs 5000 as costs .(RP no 406 of 1997, decided on 28-9-2001 So parents should not allow the examination boards as well those individuals who are guilty of such callousness to get away. |
For me, Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity. I acknowledge no other God but the one God of truth and righteousness. — Mahatma Gandhi No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars. — Quintus Ennis Eyes have they, but they see not. — Old Testament We look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal. — New Testament She drinks the honey of her vision. — Mira Bai |
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