The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

EDITORIALS

Generally speaking
Women are a source of strength, not liability

WHEN a former Deputy Chief of Army Staff argues in public that the induction of women in the Army’s officer cadre does not augur well for the force, one cannot but sit up. Lt-Gen Raj Kadyan (retired) has in his article, “Women officers in the Army: Interest of the Force is paramount”, in this newspaper on Monday narrated two instances to suggest that it is a costly proposition to have women officers. In one instance, a woman officer who volunteered for a special training programme got disturbed when she found a man “peering down at her” in her tent one night. Special security arrangements had to be made for her. In the other case, a woman candidate objected to her examination by a male doctor when all other women made no such complaint.

Based on these two isolated cases, General Kadyan argues that women officers will be a liability for the Army, which has to do combat operations and take up peacetime assignments like controlling floods and providing assistance during earthquakes and cyclones. But neither case supports his theory that inducting women will be at the cost of the Army’s efficiency. The man who went to the lady officer’s tent at night and “peered down” at her had no business to be there. If he was a man from the ranks, he should have been summarily dismissed and if he was a civilian, he should have been dealt with under the law of the land. In any case, why should the woman suffer because of the perversity of the man in question?

In the case of the woman candidate, the General himself admits that only one woman among several candidates complained against her medical examination by a male doctor. This means, save that candidate, all others were ready to face the consequences of joining the forces. In fact, the case strengthens the belief that women have overcome their inhibitions and are ready to join the forces. Over the years, women have proved that they can do almost all the work men can do and in some cases, with greater finesse. They have also stolen a march over the men folk in many fields. So, to treat them as a liability and to deny them equal opportunities is against all canons of justice. Even if one forgets Rani Lakshmi Bai, the heroine of the first War of Independence, there are many Kiran Bedis around to remind that given a chance, women will perform as well as men, if not better.

Surly staff
What a welcome we extend to our guests!

YOU have to hand it to the immigration staff. They ill-treat everybody, from the lowly labourer returning from the Gulf to a VVIP. The latest one to partake of their brand of welcome is Mr I.K. Gujral coming back from Pakistan. He was not extended any of the courtesies to which a former Prime Minister is entitled. At least this gave him a chance to know first hand what those returning home to India or coming here to visit the country have to face day in and day out. Nobody seems to have told the immigration staff that those they have to deal with are not all criminals. Nor does polite behaviour come naturally to them. The result is that the visitors have to face a reception which is cold at best and downright hostile at worst. Nobody seems to realise that the first impression is the last impression and by their surly behavior these Johnnies manage to undo all the advertisement campaigns urging people to consider India as a favoured destination. In no time the country gets relegated to the never-again list.

This is not true of any particular border check post, airport or railway station. Things are about the same all over the country. That is understandable, considering that since their brethren in government offices elsewhere treat customers as pests, the immigration officers have no reason to be any different. But since this attitude is doing exceptional harm to the country’s image, can someone please apply some correctives?

And if at all senior officials condescend to do something, would they also look into the complaints of rampant corruption in these offices? Ask any regular traveller and he will have a long list of woes to narrate. Saying that whenever there is a complaint, action is taken won’t serve the purpose. It is so very easy to identify the villains by posting some decoy travellers. If service with a smile is too tall an order, at least service without speed money is what every visitor must get.

Mulayam’s march
Hostile ally and opposition in retreat

THE electoral verdict in Uttar Pradesh has sent out a clear message to the Congress. It must learn to play the role of a responsible ally of the Samajwadi Party. By winning seven out of the 12 assembly seats, the ruling party in UP and its alliance partner, the Rashtriya Lok Dal, can now complete the remaining term on their own. Twelve is not a small number. Had the Bahujan Samaj Party or the Bharatiya Janata Party or even the Congress done half as well as the Samajwadi Party the hostile ally would have continued its attack and the opposition demanded the resignation of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav for having “lost the people’s mandate”.

Of course, the Congress has ceased to be a factor in UP. However, it was expected to show signs of growth after Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s renunciation of power. Instead of making in-roads, the grand old party failed to retain the two seats it had won in 2002. The UP verdict is bound to have a bearing on the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance at the Centre. Mr Amar Singh, the UP Chief Minister’s voice in Delhi, can be expected to operate through his friends in the Left parties for the inclusion of the Samajwadi Party in the ruling alliance. He would want to avenge the humiliation of being kept out of the UPA in spite of the party winning a record 36 seats from UP in the Lok Sabha elections.

The celebrations should not make Mr Yadav lose sight of the fact that UP has many miles to go for emerging out of the years of neglect. The absence of bijli, pani aur sadak in most of the state will need the undivided attention of the Chief Minister. To be fair, the law and order situation too is as bad as has been made by the Gandhi parivar. They made the attack as a political ploy for gaining public sympathy. They failed. Nevertheless, the number of Samajwadi Party members in the Lok Sabha and the Vidhan Sabha with doubtful antecedents is a fact that Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav cannot wish away.

ARTICLE

Musharraf as strong as ever
Splintered Opposition a blessing in disguise
M.B. Naqvi writes from Karachi

PAKISTANI politics is deceptive. The government of the day thinks it is in full control of the situation and there are no serious problems other than the threat from Al-Qaeda and a few other terrorist groups that want to kill President Pervez Musharraf. Those outside his charmed circle seem to think that storm clouds are gathering and the outlook is not bright.

Insofar as the essentially military government is concerned, it does not face any serious threat to its existence. It operates through mainly the security apparatus and the bureaucracy; a sanitised democratic process that does not dilute General Musharraf’s power. The opposition is splintered. There are three notable parties in parliamentary opposition: there is the once largest party, the Pakistan People’s Party of Ms Benazir Bhutto and the Nawaz Sharif faction of the Pakistan Muslim League and the six religious parties’ alliance, the Muttaheda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA). On paper they are a strong opposition that should be able to keep the government on its toes. The government seems to take no notice, and works the way General Musharraf wants.

The parliamentary opposition is seriously divided. On the issue of constitution and democracy the PML (Nawaz) and the PPP are of one mind; both would want to see the constitutional amendments enforced by General Musharraf through a widely suspected secret deal with the MMA because it voted for the draconian constitutional amendments that made the Musharraf regime a legal entity.

One of the constituents of the MMA, the Jamaat-e-Islami, put up a grand political show the other day. Thundered JI leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed that come December and if General Musharraf does not hang up his military uniform “we will agitate in the streets”. Moreover, the General is a security risk for Pakistan, declared the Qazi.

Will General Musharraf lose his sleep? It is doubtful. Observers say that the MMA is basically an alliance of two major religious parties, the JI and the JUI of Maulana Fazlur Rehman. Both can be accused of being in cahoots with the General as they had been with other Generals. The MMA has deftly transformed the parliamentary politics that began by demanding the repeal of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution that gives unlimited power to General Musharraf to sack all the Assemblies and governments in his discretion. Earlier the main plank was the sovereignty of Parliament. Now, they have reduced the political debate to just one issue: he should retire from the Army and appoint another Army Chief.

Formally, after donning civilian clothes General Musharraf would thus be accepted as the constitutional head of the state and would also be the effective head of the government. Other parties are at the receiving end from the General. For the present, they are doing nothing more than issuing occasional statements, and the General is not bothered to harass them much. So, the government has no real worry insofar as parliamentary politics is concerned; it has assembled a narrow majority in the National Assembly, all through defections from the PML (N) and the PPP, and for the rest its strength comes from the Army’s guns.

But on the ground, the situation is vastly different. During the last decade or so any number of armed religious parties-cum-militias have arisen with sometimes hundreds of thousands of members. These are jihadi outfits and they operate under various names, some of which were banned sometime ago. But every banned jihadi group is now operating under different names. The geography of political trouble is interesting and needs to be kept in mind.

The Pakistan Army is carrying on a regular military campaign against the old jihadis of the 1980s, said to have settled in South Waziristan and nearby areas. The Army’s own casualties have gone up beyond 100 while a large number of militants and other civilians have been killed and some captured. Hardly a day goes by when a landmine mishap or a rocket attack on a military or paramilitary check-post is not reported. Many politicians’ assessment is that it is an insurgency that is not amenable to control by military means. But, then, there is the unrelenting pressure from the Americans to “capture or kill” foreign and other militants. The Americans, from the vintage point in Kabul, are growling that Pakistan is not doing enough to contain the Taliban in Afghanistan. Islamabad is accused of being soft on the Taliban, though adequately harsh on the Al-Qaeda-linked militants.

Punjab and Sindh are being rocked by terrorist attacks; a dozen of sectarian attacks were, in fact, suicide bombings. A recent one in Sialkot killed 31 worshippers. Karachi has had the maximum number of such attacks. But, then, Karachi has also seen many terrorist attacks on government-related targets. The government was quick to claim the recent Sialkot incident to be the terrorists’ reply to the government’s killing of one Amjad Farooqui, said to be an important Al-Qaeda operative. This is an on-going problem extending to all the four provinces.

In addition, there are cases of sabotage and frequent attacks on military and paramilitary outposts in Balochistan and the NWFP. The government retaliates strongly. But the civilians suffer the collateral damage while militants generally escape. Pakistan’s internal gas pipelines have been the target of attack many times. The government is also trying to reach out to the nationalist leaders of Balochistan who are alienated from the central authority and demand more autonomy for provincial governments. They accuse the federal government of being under the control of a Punjabi Army and bureaucracy; it is not supposed to be working for the welfare of minority provinces. The sentiment, right or wrong, is strong and is being tackled mainly by the military and paramilitary forces. However, recently the government appointed a large parliamentary committee to investigate the situation in Balochistan with vague terms of reference.

None of these is such a grave problem as cannot be solved by political means. But the manipulation of democratic institutions to uphold what is one-man rule creates hurdles that are hard to overcome. The perceptions of the powers that be are obscure but by inference are seen to be myopic. The aim is merely to perpetuate military rule by hook or by crook. In the meantime, the main opposition parties, the PPP and the PML (N), are being kept out in the cold and are ineffective, primarily because their top leaders are not allowed inside the country. The field is left open for religious parties to promote their kind of politics. The religious sentiment is growing and hardening. Where all this will lead to is hard to contemplate.

MIDDLE

The cobbler
by Inderdeep Thapar

THE ding-dong bell at eleven sharp announces he is here. A tall, dark man in kurta-pyjama, who enquires if there are shoes to be polished or mended. He is different as the only sounds he can emit are gurglings and the only words he can hear are our expressions. Despite that he is pretty expressive. We both chat in sign language.

So when he got married he moved his hand over a part of his face as if to show the ghunghat of the bride. The birth of his child was conveyed through the gesture of hands joined together with arms in the opposite direction as if to show that the arms were holding a child.

When my son was born I wondered how is he going to ask whether it is a boy or a girl. Ingeniously, he asked me drawing with his hands moustaches or plaits. Chuckling I drew moustaches with my hands on my face. Making a gesture of blessing he departed with a smile on his face.

When he lost his child to the electric current I felt his mute suffering even as he pointed at the switch and wrung his hands heavenwards. They say crying is a release but for those who cannot even articulate their grief what is the therapy? Then nature compensates.

A couple of months afterwards he smiled and conveyed to me the birth of another child, a girl. And so this bond was seen many seasons as the pine in my lawn. We have shared the shedding needles, the heavenly birth of new, green leaves, the golden cones when they are tender which ripen to an earthy brown under the benevolent sun.

“How do you understand him,” asked my worker who comes and stands near me whenever I talk to him, “we cannot.” I was surprised. It was not difficult at all. Chewing over this conversation it dawned that it was our muteness that connected us. I became deaf and dumb to reach him and he mustered all types of sound to reach me. An Equal Music. Further, communication is not about words or even sounds, it is about empathy — a uniform platform where a human connects with a human bypassing all societal or even physical handicaps, where one says to the other “speaking in whatever language you can, I am ready to receive”.

OPED

Rising costs of transport
More accidents, pollution and congestion on roads
by Ravinder N. Batta

Road accidents are increasing at a rate of 12 to 15 per cent a year in Himachal Pradesh

WHILE the importance of transport in a growing economy cannot be overstated, there are related costs that need to be kept in view by policy-makers. Such costs are usually external to those who make use of transport and are often unaccounted for.

When individuals decide to travel, when and at what distance to travel and by which mode and route, they take into account only their own costs and benefits. Each additional transport user also generates costs to other transport users and to society in general.

The government can make use of instruments like pricing, regulation and infrastructure to manage traffic. Pricing includes economic instruments such as fuel taxes, taxes on vehicle ownership, insurance pricing and road pricing. Technology or emission standards, traffic rules or rationing of car use are examples of regulatory measures.

The transport costs in Himachal Pradesh include pollution, accidents and congestion. The environmental implications of transport activities are very serious. The environmental costs include the costs imposed by the emission of air pollutants and noise. Pollutant emissions depend on the type of fuel used, and the vehicle’s condition.

Many people, because of their lifestyle and occupation are exposed to harmful emissions. The problem is further aggravated by traffic congestion. Traffic congestion reduces travel speed and increases fuel consumption.

In Himachal Pradesh two factors contribute mainly to the vehicular pollution — a large population of two-wheelers and a rising population of diesel vehicles. Most of the two-wheelers are intrinsically polluting because of their design. The two-stroke engines tend to wear faster than the four-stroke engines and their spark plugs tend to get fouled very frequently. As the diesel sold in India has a higher sulfur content, the diesel engines emit more black smoke full of suspended particulate matter. Poor maintenance and the absence of a life span for vehicles add fuel to the fire.

Besides, the vehicle population is growing fast in the state. The annual growth rate of vehicle population increased substantially after 1998 due to the availability of easy finance and new models being launched in the market.

A large number of vehicles enter the state during the nine months of the tourist season. At present the two-wheelers and cars comprise 82 per cent of the total vehicle population in the state. This raises an important policy issue: to ensure good mobility, should personal vehicles be encouraged by providing adequate road space and right of way or should a greater use of public transport be encouraged?

Though cars and buses have the same pollution effects on a per passenger basis, buses have the advantage of occupying far less road space. On the other hand, two-wheelers not only have a far more damaging effect on the environment than cars and buses, but are also undesirable from the congestion point of view.

Several other transport-related practices, detrimental to the environment, are carried out on roads such as dumping of solid waste and repair of vehicles. The disposal of waste oil in the drainage system often leads to ground water contamination and land degradation.

In Himachal the road accidents are growing at a rate of 12 to 15 per cent per annum. The re are 11 deaths per 10,000 vehicles in the state. There are no estimates of economic losses due to accidents. A fault of the driver, a mechanical failure and bad road conditions account for 83 per cent of the total accidents taking place in the state.

Insurance premia are not assessed as per individual risk probabilities and instead provide a free riding facility for risk-prone individuals. The premium that one has to pay is not related to the number of kilometres travelled by the insured and the driving habits of the individual. A thorough review of the insurance procedures may be warranted to appropriately price the risk. However, in the absence of a differentiated premia, a kilometre tax or road pricing differentiated as per vehicle type could play a major role.

Personal vehicles are growing rapidly and causing problems of traffic congestion and pollution. However, still these vehicles are charged one-time tax at nominal rates while commercial vehicles pay taxes annually.

While effort should be to make travel by public vehicles more popular by making them more comfortable, the tax rates for luxury vehicles are prohibitively high due to which the state does not even have a single luxury or air-conditioned coach.

Finding the existing machinery incapable of handling the situation, the high court of the state recently set up a high-powered committee to recommend steps to solve the problems of traffic congestion.

The economic instruments like emission taxes, tradable permits, congestion charges, parking fees, insurance pricing, subsidies and different kinds of road pricing force the vehicle owners to internalise the costs of their operations, while generating revenue for the governments.

The ill-effects of liberalisation can be countered by the use of taxation policies which put a cost on unwanted technologies and at places with hyper-sensitive environments. However, the Governments continue to live in the colonial hangover of command and control regime and the knowledge base in the application of economic instruments, especially in the transport sector, is very poor.

Transport planning should provide for extensive bicycle tracks and bicycle parking at important places like market areas, railway stations and educational institutions.

The writer is the Secretary, State Transport Authority, Himachal Pradesh, Shimla

Delhi Durbar
Why is Natwar angry?

NATWAR Singh ko gussa kyon aata hai? If someone were to put this question to the External Affairs Minister, he would have pointed a finger at “the irresponsible reporting in the media” with a specific reference to a leading Indian English news magazine. The magazine had reported that serious differences had erupted between Natwar Singh and National Security Adviser J.N. Dixit.

Natwar called up the Editor-in-Chief of the magazine, who, in turn, sent him a brief letter marked “Private/Confidential”. The Editor said his correspondent had got the story from “PMO briefings” and assured Natwar Singh that his magazine was not running any systematic campaign against him.

A new tune in Pakistan

Pakistan Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed created quite a flutter on October 12 when he threatened to take action against the errant scribes under anti-terrorism laws if they failed to fall in line. His warning came close on the heels of media interviews of pro-Al Qaida tribal leader Ahmad Mahsud, who owned responsibility for abducting two Chinese engineers on October 9.

The Indian officials’ amusement can be understood. After all, this is precisely what India had been telling Pakistan for years and Islamabad never paid any heed. Now that Pakistan itself faces a backlash from terrorists, it is singing a different tune.

Naidu and Mahajan

With the BJP-Shiv Sena out of reckoning in Maharashtra, senior leaders are training their guns against M Venkaiah Naidu and Pramod Mahajan. Sushma Swaraj wasted no time in acknowledging the defeat of the BJP in Maharashtra, but went a step further by praising Sonia Gandhi for her leadership.

Quite a turnaround, considering the fact that Sushma Swaraj had vowed to shave off her head and sleep on the ground if Sonia Gandhi became Prime Minister because of her foreign origin. Now she has no qualms in using Sonia Gandhi’s shoulder to attack Naidu, thereby staking her claim the presidentship of the BJP.

Yet others in the higher echelons of the BJP have taken a swipe at Pramod Mahajan that the blame should not be laid at the door of a single leader for the party’s poor showing in the crucial western state.

New envoy to Israel

Arun Kumar Singh is going to be India’s next Ambassador to Israel. He will replace Raminder Jassal. Though no official announcement has been made yet, it is understood that Singh has already been sounded to prepare for the extremely sensitive assignment.

This IFS officer has served for well over three years as Joint Secretary (Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran). The highlight of his tenure as JS (PAI), of course, has been the turbulent Indo-Pak relations.

Spare time for Advani

L.K. Advani has avoided the spotlight in the media after the BJP-led NDA’s debacle in the last general election.

However, recently he threw some light about his post-poll lifestyle. His fondness for movies is well known but he steers clear of theatres because of the inconvience caused to the audience. He watches TV but is not an intense browser of news channels.

Contributed by Rajeev Sharma, S Satyanarayanan, Gaurav Choudhury and R. Suryamurthy