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Modi on the wane Hesitant
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Flying
Buddha Feel-good factor hits Kolkata With the Left parties agreeing to help the Congress sit at the head of the table for the United Progressive Alliance, enterprising business folks in Kolkata have literally gone to town to let Comrade Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee know what they feel. After all extending even outside support to the Congress is an epoch-making event.
Looking back on
Kargil war
The essential
Dateline
London Teen
bullying in schools
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Modi on the wane What Opposition uproar and repeated court strictures could not achieve may happen soon enough because of strong dissidence in the Gujarat BJP against Chief Minister Narendra Modi. More than half of the 127 MLAs met at a birthday party recently and openly asked for his head. The number of detractors seems to be growing fast. These MLAs and 10-odd MPs besides many other former MLAs and MPs are baying for his blood ostensibly for his dictatorial attitude and inaccessibility, but actually, the rebellion call has more to do with the embarrassing defeat that the party has suffered in the recent Lok Sabha elections. The man who was till recently the star campaigner of the BJP finds himself friendless today. That serves him right, considering that he had sown communal hatred in the state and outside. Trouble was brewing against him all along but has suddenly flared up under the patronage of former Chief Minister Keshubhai Patel. The only thing going for Mr Modi was his supposed ability to garner votes, not only in Gujarat but also elsewhere. That is why he was being treated with kid-gloves by party bigwigs. The bubble has burst. The BJP has fared pathetically. The party's assessment is that the Gujarat riots marred its poll prospects. This has given his opponents the chance they were looking for. The Central leadership of the party has asked them to hold fire till the assembly session is over, but after that the remove-Modi chorus may grow louder. A beleaguered Mr Modi has tried to mend fences with his estranged colleagues by meeting them individually and in groups. Even the carrots of lucrative ministries have been hung before them. But it may be already too late for that. He is falling from grace and may find it difficult to retain his clout in the party for too long. |
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Hesitant approach In its Common Minimum Programme, formally released
on Thursday, the United Progressive Alliance government has made it quite clear what it will not do: it will not privatise “generally” profit-making public sector units; it will not unbundle the state electricity boards as required by the Electricity Act; and it will not amend labour laws to facilitate “automatic hire and fire”. The Leftist slant is obvious. While in opposition, the Congress had opposed the selloff of oil PSUs only. Now it talks of granting managerial autonomy to state enterprises. Disinvestment policy stays, privatisation is out. It had backed the passing of the Electricity Act and Congress governments in states have been pursuing power reforms in accordance with the party’s economic agenda. There is an about-turn in Andhra Pradesh where the Congress government has announced free power for farmers. The Punjab Government too is keenly awaiting the green signal. The party’s political compulsions are understandable. The previous BJP-led NDA government had imposed a surcharge on petroleum products to generate cash for building national highways. The new UPA government at the Centre wants to impose a cess on all central taxes to fund universal education. A 2 per cent cess on Central taxes will yield about Rs 5,000 crore. If every child is not in school in India, it is not for lack of funds only. Factors responsible for the high illiteracy rate need to be studied as also the fact why parents prefer private schools to government institutions for their wards. While the move on increased spending on health, infrastructure building and agriculture are all commendable, the question everyone wants to ask is: where is the money to come from? If the government decides not to raise the oil prices immediately to avoid its negative political fallout, the burden will have to be borne by the oil companies. Otherwise, the fiscal deficit will go out of control. The move to discourage cheaper imports may prove
counter-productive. The stock markets are already feeling somewhat jittery. Protectionism can come back in circulation. The government has to face a problem in going ahead on the reforms track retaining a “human face”, and please the Left. To meet the conflicting demands of coalition politics would require considerable adroitness on the part of the new government. |
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Flying Buddha With the Left parties agreeing to help the Congress sit at the head of the table for the United Progressive Alliance, enterprising business folks in Kolkata have literally gone to town to let Comrade Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee know what they feel. After all extending even outside support to the Congress is an epoch-making event. Business houses have put up massive hoardings showing the amiable West Bengal Chief Minister as Superman flying apparently to Delhi with a glittering crown. The decision in Delhi and the visual in Kolkata would easily qualify as modern India's historical wonder. The painter apparently did not want to risk losing business by drawing the sponsors' attention to the irony of the symbols and the captions. It is quite likely that they deliberately wanted to equate Buddhadeb Babu with the comic book creation of the imperialists. Uncle Sam would be very pleased too. The most effective way to bring down any Comrade is to make him fly around the globe like an American super hero. Uncle Sam, though, might have frowned upon using a crown as a symbol of power for the ruler in Delhi. It militates against the spirit of democracy. Of course, it would have been dismissed as permissible error had the crown been for Dubya. However, the painter still deserves a word of praise for injecting some political correctness in the visual. He placed the crown in Buddhadeb Babu's left hand. The slogan on the billboard, perhaps, reflects the Left parties' secret dream. In Delhi Mr L. K. Advani was lamenting the use of the "feel good" slogan as an expression of the NDA's achievements. In Kolkata, the amused literati woke up to a strange message staring at them at every intersection. It read, "Feel Good Factor/ for King-makers … May the Left make it Right at the Centre". |
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The achievement of your goal is assured the moment you commit yourself to it.
— Mack R. Douglas |
Looking back on Kargil war Five
years downstream is a good time to look back on Kargil war. What were our major lessons? Have we overcome the shortcomings? In this article, I will confine myself to some macro level observations. Kargil war made it obvious to the political and military authorities that although nuclear weapons tests had made all-out conventional wars between India and Pakistan less likely, this development had not made them redundant. As long as there were territory-related disputes, the adversary could indulge in irregular war, proxy war leading to a conventional war, border war or a limited war. A peculiar strategic problem that the Indian military faces is that it cannot trade any space for major offensive manoeuvre elsewhere. Every inch of territory has to be defended. Loss of territory is not acceptable to the public or political authority. This is a strategic handicap and a risk in a conventional war setting, which increases in a limited war scenario. It implies greater attention to surveillance and close defence of the borders or lines of controls. In Kargil war, Pakistan had made use of “Stability/ Instability Syndrome” (A stable nuclear balance may permit offensive action to take place with impunity), exploited large gaps in our defences and used regular troops in irregulars’ facade. On account of active and prolonged proxy war in the Valley, the Corps Commander in Srinagar had to pay greater attention to that area. He was left with inadequate reserves in Ladakh. This was already in my mind when we ordered return of HQ 70 Infantry Brigade from the Valley to Ladakh in October, 1998. The command and control of Srinagar Corps, having to look after nearly 1490 km of Line of Control with Pakistan and China, and active anti-terrorist operations, was over-extended. The long and short-term strategic requirements called for raising a separate Corps Headquarters re-inducting a division (in place of 28 Infantry Division which was raised for Siachen Sector but moved to the Valley in 1991), and improving border/lines of control surveillance and overall combat capability in Ladakh. For this purpose, we raised HQ 14 Corps and retained 8 Mountain Division in the sector. With additional forces, including Ladakh Scouts, better command and control, and improved surveillance capability, this shortcoming of Kargil war has been overcome. The new strategic environment calls for speedier, more versatile and more flexible combat organisations along the non-mountainous Western border also. There is a general agreement in the Army on this but the opinion gets divided whenever a suggestion is made to split any large, unwieldy “strike” corps into more effective and usable battle groups. With induction of new tanks, medium artillery (on the way) and improved night fighting capability, I hope this aspect will be reviewed. Meanwhile, some additional Special Forces units have been raised. Equipped with the state-of-art weapons and equipment, all of them are combat effective. Kargil highlighted the gross inadequacies in the nation’s surveillance capability. We sought satellite imagery from two friendly countries but received a most unsatisfactory response. Steps have now been taken to acquire this capability indigenously. Some progress has been made already. Aerial imagery, except from the Aviation Research Centre, was non-existent. Our system of interpretation and delivery was slow. On a couple of occasions, I carried air photos personally from Operations Room in Delhi to Headquarters 8 Mountain Division in Dras. By setting up Defence Image Processing and Analysis Centre and establishing direct communications to Corps Centres, there has been substantial improvement in this field. We have also acquired effective Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, upgraded helicopter capability for day and night surveillance, and most importantly, acquired hand held thermal imagers, surveillance radars and ground sensors. It is heartening to hear young officers speak well about these new force multipliers. Intelligence, both at the strategic and tactical levels, was our major failure. There were a few reports of Mujahideen camps miles away from the Line of Control. Our intelligence agencies kept harping on Mujahideen intrusion till the end of the war without any evidence other than Pak deception-planned radio intercepts. There were absolutely no intelligence reports of a planned armed intrusion by Pak Army before or during the early stages of war. Obviously, there were major deficiencies in our system of collection, reporting, collation and assessment of intelligence. This happened primarily because over the years the Joint Intelligence Committee had been devalued. For many years it had only a double-hatter Chairman. All intelligence agencies tended to work vertically. There was little lateral coordination or working to a plan. With the setting up of the National Security Council Secretariat, this aspect has improved to some extent. An integrated Defence Intelligence Agency has also been established. Its technological, coordination, and assessment making capabilities need to be further strengthened to make it more effective. This can take place only when we have a Chief of Defence Staff. There is a great deal yet to be done in reforming and making Intelligence Agencies accountable at the national level. Due to continuous lack of budgetary support, new raisings of regular units and Rashtriya Rifles, and an extremely tedious procurement system, many of our bottom line holdings and reserves were in a depleted state at the time of Kargil war. We had shortages of weapons, equipment, even clothing required for high altitude warfare. I remember spending a whole day in Srinagar ascertaining the state of controlled stores in the theatre. At the end of the day, we ordered transfer of some MMGs, mortars and radio equipment from Rashtriya Rifles to units of 3 and 8 Mountain Divisions. There was no surveillance equipment and hardly any other force multipliers. I had to cater for a full-scale war on the rest of the Western Front. Despite acute shortages in weapons and ammunition, we took the risk in allotting extra Bofors regiments and artillery ammunition to Northern Command. The Cabinet Committee of Security was persuaded to lift the outdated ban on the erstwhile Bofors Company to enable purchase of urgently needed spares for Bofors guns and other weapons purchased from it. And yet, some people complained to the Prime Minister about my remarks to the media that “we will fight with whatever we have”!! The state of arms, ammunition and equipment has started to improve lately: not because of additional budget but on account of overdue streamlining of procurement system and procedures. Only last year the government agreed to create a reserve fund-after surrendering defence funds year after year something that we had proposed in 1999. There is still an urgent need to streamline and establish accountability in the DRDO. In the past, very often, it not only failed to deliver but also stymied efforts to improve our capabilities like Weapons Locating Radars. Kargil was not the first time when Pakistan initiated a war; and we must not assume that it would be the last time. Every good military would like to be pro-active. However, it has also to develop the will and capability to react. The essence of military leadership lies in the manner in which we react to restore a situation, however, adverse the circumstances of the
battle. The writer, a former Chief of Army Staff, is President, ORF Institute of Security Studies. |
The essential A
sculptor once said that if out of a burning house, he had to choose between saving a Michelangelo and a cat, he would save the cat. The artist's statement suggests that he valued life above art, or maybe he had a fondness for cats. In his diary, “My name escapes me”, British actor Alec Guinness writes of one Googie Withers whose house was threatened during the great bush fire on the outskirts of Sydney some years ago. She was told to pack whatever was needed the most and make a dash for safety. She loaded the car not with essentials, but with the irreplaceable — old photograph albums and family pictures. Of course, she did not have to choose between saving a life and a work of art. For her, the most important things after life were those nostalgic images. Fortunately, her house survived the fire. My mother narrates a tale from the Partition days, when her family had to run from Pakistan at a very short notice. All family members gathered at a nearby camp, leaving everything behind. Just then my grandmother remembered that she had also forgotten to fetch the keys of their ancestral home in Kandolan Kalan in Indian Punjab, to which they hoped to reach safely. So she instructed her 15-year-old daughter (my aunt) and 10-year-old son to go back to the house and get the keys. The young ones rushed back, passing through silent lanes, surreptitiously jumping over walls and roofs of other houses before finally reaching their own house. They took not only the keys but also a holy book
(gutka), a metallic vessel (gadwi) and perhaps a blanket. Remarkably, the holy book had great value for the young minds in those troubled times. To this day, we wonder how could our grandmother send her two children into danger like that. Was it a blunder under stress or was her faith so strong? Call it good luck, but my aunt and uncle escaped from the evil jaws of violence, salvaging things which they thought simply could not be
replaced.
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Dateline
London
If
one goes by newspaper and TV analyses during the past one month, the first likely casualty of the Iraq war, on this side of the Atlantic, will be the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair. Newspapers screamed ‘He is a liability….We need someone else', 'All Prime Ministers get above themselves. Blair should take look at Mrs Thatcher. She went mad…We need a break'. One headline says 'Pressure grows for Blair to go'. Newspapers, radio and TV commentators have been busy discussing causes of the Prime Minister's plummeting reputation. Besides his unpopularity with the hardcore Labour supporters due top-up student fees and foundation hospitals, the main reason for an itch to change the party leader, most commentators believe, is Blair's ‘fatal' attraction to US President Bush and his ill-advised venture in Iraq. As the American and British body count rises, and photo images of American and British soldiers atrocities on Iraqi prisoners are discussed in US Congress and British Parliament, Blair detractors are getting restless to change the leader in good time before he can bring the party down in the next election. The question most often asked by party workers is will: Blair become the victim of a friendly fire. His rating in polls is falling and the Labour is now three to four percentage points behind the Tories. A recent poll indicated that if Blair remained Prime Minister at the next general election in about a year's time, the Tories would defeat the Labour. However, if there was a change in leadership and Chancellor Gordon Brown becomes the leader before the next elections, the Labour would win, though with a reduced majority. There was speculation last year that Gordon Brown was annoyed with Blair because he had not honoured his promise to hand over the leadership of the party to Mr Brown, as was envisaged by an agreement between Mr Blair and Mr Brown, before the first general election. Last year, it was reported that Mr Brown was annoyed with the Prime Minister as the latter gave indications to his close advisers that he had no intention of stepping own and intended to serve a full third term. At that time, Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott brokered a peace between the two leaders at a meeting where Blair renewed his pledge to relinquish his leadership in favour of Mr Brown at an appropriate time.. Recently reports reappeared in the Press that the party rank and file were disillusioned with Blair's leadership. They apprehended a humiliating defeat for the Labour in the European Parliament, the council and London elections due on June 10 and apprehended a similar fate at the next general election. Not all party faithful, however, believe that Blair is likely to stand down soon. He will most probably wait till the alliance's fortune turns in its favour in Iraq so that he can honourably retire without damaging the party. That will be good for his successor to, who is most likely to be Brown. Most political commentators agree that the chances of fortune favouring the coalition partners in Iraq, are bleak. The Labour's popular London Mayor, Ken Livingstone, recently wrote in a daily newspaper that " When you are in a hole, stop digging. That should be the maxim that should be applied to the war in Iraq. The Bush-Blair duo, instead of planning an exit plan are thinking of sending more troops to Iraq, that is dig a deeper hole”. According to Mr Livingstone "All of my life I have watched as Britain and America have become embroiled in conflicts, only to find that a purely military solution is rarely available. But the situation in Iraq is turning into something more unpleasant than anything since the war in Vietnam," A former Deputy leader of the Labour Party, Mr Roy Hattersley, pleaded in a recent article that for the sake of the party Mr Blair must quit now or else he must be dumped before he did more damage to the party prospects in the next elections. Another party faithful wrote that Iraq had become the Labour's poll tax, the reference was to the infamous tax which eventually became a major cause for the downfall of Mrs Margaret Thatcher. Most voters now believe that Blair misled Parliament and the country on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, and he recklessly went along the US President by sending the British forces into Iraq. Neither he nor Bush formulated a well thought-out exit policy or a political solution of Iraq after Saddam. The coalition forces are now considered by most Iraqis as an occupying force., which must be opposed to free their country. The ally's strategy of using more military power to break resistance has only made them more unpopular. The world is shocked by the havoc caused in Fallujah and Najaf and high casualties of civilian population. The worldwide circulation of pictures and videos of US atrocities on Iraqi prisoners of war have further shocked world opinion. The poll ratings of both Bush and Blair have been adversely affected. The Bush-Blair endorsement of Israel's unilateral plan of withdrawal from the Gaza and partial withdrawal from the West Bank have also infuriated the Palestinians and the Arab world. It has thrown overboard the UN resolutions and dismayed the UN, Europeans and the Third World generally. Saddened by these developments, 52 former British diplomats took an unprecedented step in writing to the British Prime Minister against the unilateral commitment by the US to one-sided policy in the Israel-Palestine conflict, the heavy price the US-led coalition is paying for having no effective post-Saddam Iraq policy and Britain exerting no pressure on the US to redress these dangerous policies. Encouraged by their example, even some senior former US diplomats protested against the US Iraq policy. |
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I
Can still remember the whispers and knowing looks, the hot flush of shame when no one picked you for games, or your best friend ‘forgot' to save you a place at lunch. High school is one of the most emotionally raw periods of our lives — where we are judged by our peers and often found wanting. No wonder cinema is so obsessed by teen bullying. Bullying can take many forms — physical, verbal or social (ie deliberately keeping someone out of a group). We assume it's perpetrated by a cruel outsider, but Andrew Mellor of the Anti-Bullying Network says: ‘Children are often bullied by people they would like to be friends with, or who they feel are their friends.' Much bullying happens in places it is impossible to observe, so the secondary school — with its network of classrooms, locker bays, libraries and canteens — is a landscape of volatile emotions. It can also make for brilliant cinema. But why would those of us who had a rocky adolescence want to revisit the misery of puberty? Maybe it's something about going back in time and trying to work out where it all went wrong. Certainly the best examples of the genre communicate with teen audiences in a special language only they can understand, while also reminding adults what it was really like. The movie Mean Girls is based on Rosalind Wiseman's non-fiction bestseller, Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends and other Realities of Adolescence. Written as a self-help guide for anxious parents, the book infiltrates ‘Girl World', analysing teasing and gossip, boys and sex, drugs and alcohol. It also poses the daring idea that your darling daughter could be the bully. Mean Girls is an antidote to Catherine Hardwicke's masterly teen shocker Thirteen, which caused such a furore last year. For a start, Mean Girls is a certificate 12a, which means teens and their parents can see it together — and hopefully emerge debating the topics it raises. The film follows 15-year-old Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan). Raised in Africa by her zoologist parents, she thinks she knows everything about survival of the fittest, but entering an American high school for the first time she falls prey to the psychological warfare and unwritten rules that govern teenage girls' lives. Mean Girls has become a phenomenon in the US. Chat show hosts are queuing up to run teen bullying stories and invite feuding girl groups on to their shows. Part of the excitement around the movie is that it proves that teenage girls are a growing demographic. It also shows that young women are hungry for films that are sexy and savvy. Tellingly, teen audiences have resisted wishy-washy romances like The Prince and Me and Ella Enchanted in favour of more robust fare like Mean Girls and Freaky Friday. The game-playing of teen girls could put many adult politicians to shame. In Heathers, about a triad of vicious Queen Bees who get their comeuppance, Winona Ryder's character utters the immortal line: ‘I don't really like my friends. It's just like they're people I work with, and our job is being popular.’ Michele Elliot of the charity Kidscape, which advises parents on bullying, says: ‘A lot of young women are misinterpreting that in-your-face “girls are great'' maxim promoted by the Spice Girls. They're turning assertiveness into aggression.'
— The Guardian |
Truth knows neither birth nor death; it has no beginning and no end. Welcome the truth. The truth is the immortal part of mind. — The Buddha Truthfulness is the abode of austerity, self-restraint and all other virtues. Indeed, truthfulness is the source of all noble qualities as the ocean is that of fish. — Lord Mahavir God does and would do what pleases Him. None can say what He should do. — Guru Nanak It has been said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But I say, do not resist evil: but whosoever smites you on your right cheek, turn to him the other also. — Jesus Christ Purity of speech and hospitality is Islam. — Prophet Muhammad |
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