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Strike unwarranted
Dhaka’s ways |
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Comic opera
Shaking hands with China
Visiting
Frontier Gandhi’s country
Writers
trapped in a culture of non-dialogue From the pages
of The Tribune (March 5, 1881) The evolution of
the neocons
From
Pakistan
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Strike unwarranted
Since the employees of the Punjab State Electricity Board had already made known to the government their opposition to its proposed unbundling, their frequently going on strike is unwarranted. The PSEB management is, therefore, quite justified in penalising the striking employees, who not only hurt the organisation that provides them livelihood, but also the consumer, who pays for their salaries and, in return, gets irregular power supply. Any professionally run institution, to shore up its finances, would have got rid of the surplus staff, specially when they behaved so irresponsibly. The PSEB, estimated to make a Rs 1,100 crore loss after a marginal profit last year, is weighed down, among other factors, by a high cost per employee. Partly to blame for the discontent is the ruling political leadership of the state that sends contradictory signals, encouraging the employees to believe that their pressure tactics were yielding the desired results. While Chief Minister Amarinder Singh has been reported as saying that only power generation will be privatised, retaining transmission and distribution work in the public sector, Power Minister Lal Singh ruled out any PSEB privatisation on Tuesday. Making a statement in the Assembly, he said there would be no retrenchment of employees, while admitting at the same time that power generation would be open to private investment as the government had no funds. Does he expect private investment under public control? Punjab’s industrial and agricultural growth cannot be held hostage to the perpetual shortage of power. Currently, the state is short of 2,000 MW. Last summer the government spent Rs 1,600 crore to buy extra power. Already, the PSEB is nearly bankrupt due to low tariffs, high transmission and distribution losses and overstaffing. Unless some commercial discipline is introduced — ensuring accountability, making defaulters pay, checking pilferage of power and getting rid of rampant corruption and political interference— the PSEB losses cannot be contained. For this privatisation and competition are must in the state’s power sector. The consumer must have a choice. |
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Dhaka’s ways Bangladesh’s belated apologies over the savage torture and killing of Border Security Force Assistant Commandant Jeevan Kumar and the ordering of a probe into the incident, cannot be taken at face value by India. The fact that a strong reaction from New Delhi itself took a few days in coming is also a matter of concern. Notwithstanding Bangladesh’s protestations of good relations with India, more bonhomie was shown during the signing of an agreement on nuclear energy with the visiting Chinese premier. Even if some token arrests have been made, New Delhi needs to do some hard thinking about Dhaka’s attitude. We otherwise risk Bangladesh taking India for granted. Several serious problems ranging from large-scale influx of migrants, illegal settlements across the border and water disputes to smuggling, repeated border firing, intrusions and the aiding of terrorism have brought the relations to the present state. The BSF has just submitted a list of 190 terrorist camps that India wants to be dismantled and another list of 161 terrorists it would like to see nabbed and handed over to it. All Bangladesh has done in response is to give another list of supposed criminals, who turned out to be businessmen and traders in Kolkata! Arrested ULFA militant Anup Chetia has not been handed over. Bangladesh has even raised objections to the proposed inter-linking of rivers projects, and consistently refused to cooperate on the ground in the fencing and patrolling project on the border. Bangladesh has now figured in the secretary-level talks with the US Asst. Secretary of State Christina Rocca. Ms Rocca has reportedly characterised the country as the next worry in the region after Nepal, and suggested consultations, but New Delhi needs to evaluate its policy towards Dhaka afresh. Bangladesh pursues a strategy of nipping at India’s heels, because the costs of doing so are low. A re-evaluation of the rules of engagement on the border, perhaps even a change in the level of restraint being exercised, might well be called for, besides other ways New Delhi may think of. |
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Comic opera Respect for elders and retaining their relevance in the scheme of affairs of a joint Hindu family is a time-honoured tradition in our culture. However, in the first family of Hindutva, run by the RSS of which the BJP is but the parliamentary facade, this practice is being kicked over in favour of a brave, new lot. The chief of this so-called cultural organisation, Mr K. S. Sudarshan, asking former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and BJP President L. K. Advani to make way for younger leaders has, expectedly, stirred a hornet’s nest. Mr Vajpayee has “welcomed” Mr Sudarshan’s “good suggestion” saying that, in any case, he is not doing any (party) work. As important as what Mr Vajpayee has said is what he has left unsaid. He has not said that Mr Advani should bow out, but only pointed out that this is for Mr Advani and the party to decide. Thus, he has politely put Mr Advani in a spot, where he has to either defy the RSS chief or to carry out his wishes, which in the outfit amounts to command. Now, Mr Vajpayee has taken care not to draw attention to the fact that Mr Sudarshan himself is no stripling. That does not mean Mr Sudarshan’s own age or conduct would escape attention in the controversy. It is an irony that the RSS, opposed as it is to the policies of the UPA, has chosen to embrace the concept of “grandfathering” mooted by Union Finance Minister P. Chidambaram. The idea was that savings options, such as Public Provident Fund and post office schemes should be grandfathered (meaning, to be continued for those already in it, but not for new investors) with a view to safeguarding the interests and income of senior citizens. Now, it looks like the RSS has taken a leaf out of the UPA’s economic book for political reform of the Parivar. Regardless of the merits and motivations of Mr Sudarshan’s suggestion, the unfolding family drama would be watched by the country with interest, possibly with amusement. The members of the Parivar have meanwhile to continue to suffer the embarrassment the pearls of wisdom dropped by Mr. Sudharshan have caused them. |
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Measure your health by your sympathy with morning and spring.
— Thoreau |
Shaking hands with China
In July 1949 India’s Political Officer in Sikkim, Hugh Richardson, warned the then Secretary-General of the Ministry of External affairs, Girija Shanker Bajpai, of the possible adverse military consequences of Mao’s communists assuming power in Beijing and extending their power to Tibet. Commenting on Richardson’s warnings, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru observed: “Whatever the ultimate fate of Tibet in relation to China, I think there is practically no chance of any military danger arising from any possible change in Tibet… I do not feel that there is any necessity at present for our Defence Ministry, or any part of it, to consider military repercussions on the Indo-Tibetan Frontier”. Following its assertion of authority over Tibet, the Mao regime assured the world in a 17-point agreement in1951 that it would respect the “religious beliefs, customs and habits of the Tibetan people” and would not “alter the existing political system in Tibet. The central authorities will also not alter the established status, functions and powers of the Dalai Lama”. Needless to say, China has consistently violated this solemn undertaking. India, in turn, has lacked the military power to challenge the Chinese move in Tibet. Sensing that the hard-headed realism of the Chinese could result in their laying territorial claims on India, Nehru decided by 1954 to make it clear that as far as India was concerned, there was no doubt about where the border was located and that its location was “not open to discussion with anybody”. We were soon faced with a situation wherein we claimed that there was a well-defined, customary and traditional boundary with China, while the Chinese claimed that they would need to negotiate new boundaries with all neighbours. We bolstered our claims with references to agreements or treaties, evidence of historical control and geographical features. The Chinese argued, not without basis, that the boundaries had never been formally demarcated. They backed their claims with military muscle and well-built roads. We presented our case by putting forward legalistic arguments to back our claims about the Sino-Indian boundary. The Chinese spoke of a “package deal” in which it was hinted that they would accept the realities of the McMahon Line and our sovereignty in Arunachal Pradesh in return for our agreeing not to challenge their claims over the Aksai Chin area linking Xingjian and Tibet. To keep us uneasy, the Chinese also periodically insisted on adjustments in the eastern sector. When we challenged their claims with forward deployments, we suffered severe military setbacks while confronting a well-planned military assault backed by overwhelming firepower, in October-November 1962. China’s supreme leader Deng Xiaoping proudly proclaimed in 1979 that India had been taught a “lesson” in 1962. The recent visit of Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to India has been as trumpeted as a great success with claims of a “breakthrough”on the border issue. The Agreement that National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan inked with his Chinese counterpart speaks of a “package settlement” to the boundary issue after “mutual adjustments to their respective positions”. The boundary is to be “along easily identifiable natural geographical features”. It has also been agreed that the two sides “shall safeguard due interests of their settled populations in their border areas”. This provision bolsters our claim to the monastery border town of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh. (China has laid claim to Tawang in bilateral discussions.) In agreeing to
a "package settlement” of the boundary question we have, in effect, accepted the approach put forward by Chou en Lai to Nehru and by Deng Xiaoping to Rajiv Gandhi. This is a realistic approach. The Sino-Indian border on the western sector was after all never formally delineated. The only proposal that the British-ruled India put forward on this issue to the Chinese was the Macartney-Mcdonald proposal submitted in Beijing in 1899. Under this proposal the boundary in the western sector moves along and beyond the Karakoram Range and constitutes a viable defence frontier for India. What we need are strategically defensible frontiers like those proposed in 1899. Quite obviously, India should not make any concessions especially when it comes to populated areas in the eastern sector where the McMahon Line meets all the criteria for defining the boundary in the recent agreement signed in New Delhi. India can be satisfied about the progress that has been made by successive governments in addressing the boundary question with China, ever since the December 1988 visit of then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. But one does find the hype, euphoria and reversion to slogans like “Hindi Chini Bhai-Bhai” both immature and disconcerting. China remains the foremost power practising a policy of “containment” of India by its continuing nuclear and missile proliferation and supply of conventional arms to Pakistan. Just on the eve of the visit of Premier Wen to Pakistan, China agreed to supply Pakistan four modern F-22 frigates. At the same time General Musharraf inaugurated a plant in Pakistan for the production of over one hundred Chinese origin JF-17 fighter aircraft. China is now set to deepen the Gwadar Port at the mouth of the Persian Gulf. General Musharraf announced in 2001 that he was prepared to make Gwadar Port available for use by the Chinese navy in the event of Pakistan facing a security threat. China continues to supply Pakistan with capabilities for producing its medium-range Shaheen-1 and intermediate range Shaheen-11missiles. It has announced its readiness to provide further assistance for nuclear power plants in Chashma. It is well known that the so-called assistance of China for nuclear power plants in Chashma is really a cover for Chinese assistance for Pakistan’s nuclear and missile complexes in nearby Fatehjang or Khushab. Significantly, Pakistan and China signed a “Friendship Treaty” during Premier Wen’s visit. While the provisions of the treaty have significantly not been made public, Pakistan’s Ambassador to China Salman Bashir asserted that it contained a “clear, unambiguous and categorical assurance by China to defend Pakistan’s sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity”. While we need not be inhibited in our efforts to promote bilateral relations with China because of the Pakistan factor, we should stop pretending that China is our “strategic partner”. We make a mockery of our credibility when we do so. We also lack credibility when we appear to be taken in by stray comments by the Chinese Prime Minister that his country positively views our aspirations to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council. China’s Ambassador to the UN Wang Guangya made it clear on April 4 that “it is essential that an agreement on enlarging the Council should be reached by a unanimous vote of the 191 members of the UN General Assembly”. China is determined to prevent Japan from becoming a permanent member and appears all set to quietly back efforts by countries like Italy, South Korea, Pakistan, Mexico and Argentina that are opposed to one or the other of the four main contenders for permanent membership — Japan, Germany, Brazil and India. China has not backed our candidature for the membership of forums like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization or the ASEAN-East Asia Dialogue. While we may share common interests with China in maintaining peace and tranquillity along our borders and in forums like the WTO, we should stop pretending that the Middle Kingdom is ready to welcome us on the high tables where it
dines. |
Visiting Frontier Gandhi’s country
I was visiting my childhood land after five decades. In Peshawar, I collected the permit to visit the Khyber Pass and a gunman escort was provided for personal safety. I visited the Afghan refugee camps, and reached the historic pass — the passage of invaders to Bharat — the Gateway to the sub-continent, which Alexander took. Two teenage boys offered me bundles of thousands of Taliban Afgani currency for one-dollar baksheesh! They don’t go to school, and had been orphaned during the tragic civil war. Mother and sister had disappeared during the Islamic Taliban revolution. Three local Pathans were enjoying mid-day meal, sitting crossleg on a clean duree. “Our Indian guest must break the roti with us”. Being a vegetarian, I politely excused. But “Tumko kaun bola gosht khane ko?’ the friendly Pathan roared and I floored to eat “ Chane ki daal, muli and Peshawri nans”. They were openly angry with Musharraf’s friendship with Bush and equally opposed to the Talibanisation of the region. Not too distant was an international gun market where you can openly purchase high-powered guns and missiles made in US, Russia and China. Returning to Peshawar, I visited “Wali Bagh” — the country residence of Dr Wali Khan, the illustrious son of the late Frontier Gandhi, Abdul Gaffar Khan. “India had abandoned us”, wailed the Khan. He listed Pakhtoon families who under the Frontier Gandhi’s call gave up guns, becoming “Unarmed Red Guard” and marched for Indian Independence under the command of Mahatma Gandhi. The 15,000 khudai-khidmadgar (volunteers) went to prison and carried the tourch of freedom in the mountains of North-West Frontier region against the British Raj. The Congress Working Committee led by Jawaharlal Nehru accepted the Partition. They did not consider the future of the Pakhtoon people. They did not consult the Frontier Gandhi. No reward or recognition was given to the sacrifices of the Pakhtoon people. Tagore’s Kabuliwalah notwithstanding, the New Delhi government had thrown the Pakhtoons to the wolves, he lamented. Dr and Mrs Wali Khan narrated atrocities committed by the Pakistani military dictators upon the helpless Pakhtoon nationals of the North West Frontier. Cries for freedom in Bangladesh were heeded by India but the struggle of the Pakhtoons was lost in the cold-war strategy of the western powers (US and UK) who used Islamabad to crush aspiration of the Pakhtoon nationalism. The British imprisoned the Frontier Gandhi for eight years. But military rulers of Islamabad incarcerated Abdul Gaffar Khan for 18 years. Dr Wali Khan had spent three years in jail during British rule but Pakistani dictators kept him in prison for eight years. In the residence of Wali Khan, the walls, tables and cupboards were covered with thousands of volumes and photographs belonging to the 1942 Quit India years of our last Battle of Independence led by Mahatma and the Frontier Gandhi. With a heavy heart as I rose to leave the Khan’s residence, I wondered: “Have we betrayed the Pakhtoons?” If Musharraf can fight for the Kashmiris’ rights, why should not India stand by the Pakhtoons’ right to
self-determination?
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Writers trapped in a culture of non-dialogue Encapsulated in the niches of their local language politics and harping on small groups serving their individual motives, they pursue petty interests, selling themselves and their works for peanuts. Consequently, far from taking their rightful place in the public arena, they have not been able to establish a direct contact between their product, the book, and the reader even, to foster a socio-cultural partnership. Such a partnership is of tremendous importance in the functioning of a secular democracy. It provides writers and intellectuals with cultural freedom and engagement necessary towards raising the consciousness and intellectual ability of the people, and helps carve out a thinking, democratic, coherent civic society. Moreover, in a functioning democracy it cannot be the destiny of writers to be deprived of self-organisation and self-control needed to keep themselves free of party politics and regionalism. Otherwise their very scope of having an independent identity as writers would vanish altogether. After all the onus of cultural well-being and mental upliftment of people in secular democracies rests with independent thinkers which writers and intellectuals are, not with the state. The root cause of cultural inertia among India's writers and intellectuals is not a calculated deprival or state suppression, which in many countries is the case, but the fact that they have utterly failed to recognise the potentials of their intellectual power to perceive themselves as the fourth pillar of society with rights and duties towards it. Consequently, they are non-existent as a secular think tank, though otherwise capable of preparing people to face challenges emanating from an ever-increasing complexity of economic, social and technological change. This inertia has left the socio-cultural field onto forces detrimental to secularism and democracy, endangering thereby the fundamental setup of our giant multiethnic, multilingual and multicultural edifice we love as our nation. These forces are cast-dividing political gurus intermingling with criminals and/or metaphysical gurus running their trades. Their monologues create a dumb society, countering thereby an otherwise needed nationwide culture of dialogue. Day by day the world is becoming a less decent place. We must join our hands and minds to halt this ongoing socio-cultural and socio-ethical decline among people. An informed nationwide debate on the provisions and possibilities of gross intellectual engagement in the day-to-day working of the society is imminent. Therefore, a collective, dialogic fervour has to be ignited among writers. There is no alternative for writers to rise above their lingual and individual niches and indulge in an incessant dialogue aimed at creating a coherent India. The recent emergence of India as an economic power has changed the socio-politico-economic scenario altogether, deepening the vertical divide among its population. It is a professional duty of writers to act as a corrective, watch the plight and help safeguard the rights of the common people so that they are not crushed under the speedy wheels of an economic boom. No economic development in a society can sustain itself without a supportive, equally important, cultural development walking in pace with it. Literature, more than any other feature of culture, is thought to be responsible for engaging wider public in dialogue to raise their vision and imagination, and offer emotional and intellectual pleasures as well. Hence, the need has never been grave and urgent as now towards a closer co-operation among writers of India to bundle together their energies nationwide, and bring about an intellectual synthesis to serve peace and harmony among various human walks in India. There is another important dimension to that. Writers need not have any "false" selflessness and forget themselves as a deprived lot. In a country of more than a billion souls writers do not have any nationwide lobby whatsoever. They should step forward and incorporate their visions and voices to serve scholarship, but also demand their due. Instead of throwing banana peels on each other's path, they should join hands and minds to develop a culture of dialogue and engagement, promote goodwill among themselves through intellectual exchanges throughout the country and get organised in a nationwide forum of writers constituting chapters of each Indian language. At the same time they should stop expecting petty favours from the authorities. Rather they should get into dialogue with the authorities, ascertain their constitutional rights and form a lobby. That would also help ensure that the works they produce do not lag behind in quality and vitality to the works produced elsewhere in the world. —
The writer is a poet and a member of PEN International's German chapter engaged in dialogue of cultures |
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From the pages of The Tribune
(March 5, 1881)
One of the fundamental principles of the Punjab University College was to orientalise education. The friends of the Punjab University College advocate the great advisability of imparting high education to the people of these provinces through the medium of their vernacular languages. Their opponents argue that the time is far off yet when European science and European learning may be efficiently tough to our students in their own vernacular. The first question that arises is whether the vernaculars of the Punjab are, in their present condition, fit media for conveying University education. There is in the vernacular language a lamentable dearth of text-books for the higher courses. The few text-books that exist are almost wholly worthless. And even if a given number of proper text-books could be produced in a given period, they alone would be far from enough to convey to our graduates a sound University education. |
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The evolution of the neocons
The term “neoconservative” started out as an insult, and it is still used that way. When people say that the selection of Paul Wolfowitz to head the World Bank marks the triumph of neocons in Bush administration foreign policy, they are generally not indicating pleasure. Some cynics even say the “neocon” label is anti-Semitic: Doesn’t it just refer to a Jewish intellectual you disagree with? That’s way too harsh. But what does neoconservative actually mean? Rich Lowry, a conservative of the non-neo variety writing in the current issue of the National Interest, defines a neocon as someone with a “messianic vision” of using American power to spread democracy, an indifference to the crucial distinction between what would be nice and what is essential to national security, and excessive optimism that we can arrange things according to our own values in strange and faraway lands. Wow. It was not always thus. When the word first surfaced in the 1970s, its sting was in calling people conservatives five or 10 minutes before they were prepared to admit it. The core group had famously been Trotskyites at City College in the 1930s. By the 1950s and 1960s, they had become anti-Communist liberals and supporters of the Vietnam War. The antiwar movement and the ’60s counterculture alienated them and pushed them even further to the right. Affirmative action was another sore point. Finally, Irving Kristol, dubbed the neocon godfather, decided to take the name as a compliment. He defined a neoconservative as “a liberal mugged by reality.” (That phrase also summarizes the plot of the Great Neocon Novel, “Mr. Sammler’s Planet,” by Saul Bellow. Bellow’s last novel, “Ravelstein,” actually has a character modeled after Wolfowitz.) The great neocon theme throughout this period was tough-minded pragmatism in the face of liberal naivete. Liberals were sentimental. They believed that people were basically good or could easily be made so. Domestically, liberal social programs were no match for the intractable underclass or even made the situation worse. Internationally, liberals were too hung up on democracy and human rights, refusing to recognize that the only important question about other countries is: friend or foe. Somewhere I still have a souvenir of neoconservatism’s previous high point. It’s a baseball cap from the 1988 Republican convention that says, “Jeane Kirkpatrick for vice president.” This was serious. Kirkpatrick, an austere academic with a crooked scowl, was about as unlikely a politician as you can imagine. But give the Republican Party credit: It does sometimes swoon over ideas. (When was the last time the Democrats did that?) Ronald Reagan had swooned over a 1979 article by Kirkpatrick in Commentary, the neocon house organ, and he made her his U.N. ambassador when he became president. She gave the big speech at the 1984 GOP convention, leading the massed Republicans in a chant of: “They always blame America first.” Now we have an administration that — wisely or foolishly, sincerely or cynically — claims to have the aggressive pursuit of democracy everywhere as the focal point of its foreign policy. And the Bush Doctrine is said to have the fingerprints of neoconservatives all over it. This is quite a reversal by the most influential group of American intellectuals, yet it has received surprisingly little comment or explanation. The chief theoretician of the new neoconservatism is political scientist Robert Kagan. Writing in Commentary (where else?) in 1997, Kagan noted the difference between his notions and Kirkpatrick’s, and had some fun at the expense of opponents who had been all for a high-minded foreign policy until the neocons started calling for one. But he had little to say about the reversal of the neocons themselves. Plenty of explanations are available. The collapse of the Soviet Union (which the neocons did not predict — their theme had been that the Soviet Union was getting stronger and stronger while the United States diddled) surely changed the calculus. The seemingly easy spread of democracy over the last couple of decades may have disproved Kirkpatrick’s pessimism. But all these explanations require an admission of error, something the neocons are not very good at. They are selling certainty. — LA
Times-Washington Post
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From
Pakistan On the geopolitical front, the two sides agreed that terrorism would not be allowed to derail the peace process, and they pledged to resolve the Sir Creek and Siachen issues. However, in spite of these agreements and CBMs, the two parties have not failed to realize that lasting peace between Pakistan and India is not possible without a resolution of the Kashmir dispute. As President Musharraf told a breakfast meeting of the Editors’ Guild of India, the Kashmir issue could erupt again in the future if it was not resolved. In emphatic terms he said, “If you don’t resolve it (the Kashmir issue), don't blame me for what happens after 10 or 15 years.” — Editorial, The Dawn The peace process
With President Musharraf's visit to India over, the next major challenge as far as the future of India-Pakistan relations is concerned relates to four important issues which await final settlement. First, the rights of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, second, the structuring of economic, trade, cultural and security relations between India and Pakistan, third, conventional and nuclear arms building of the two countries and finally the possibility of a peace treaty outlining a step-by-step plan for normal relations at all levels. President Musharraf's assertion during his visit to Delhi that the time has come to move from “conflict management” to “conflict resolution” is the key to the future of the peace process. From 2001-2003, the world saw how the Indo-Pakistani conflict which escalated after the attack on the Indian Parliament on December 13, 2001, was managed. — An article in The News by Dr Moonis Ahmar, Director, Program on Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution, Department of International Relations, University of Karachi. Onwards to
normalisation!
The joint statement issued at the end of General Musharraf's visit to New Delhi where he held talks with Dr Manmohan Singh clearly points to one conclusion: the Pakistani leadership has succumbed to the pressure to proceed with the normalisation of relations with India and put the core dispute of Kashmir on the backburner. There can be no other explanation when the statement attributes to the two leaders having “expressed satisfaction on the progress of the peace process” in the face of Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran telling a news conference that his Prime Minister had made it clear to the President that 'the redrawing of the boundaries' was not possible. — Editorial,
The Nation |
He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own. — Confucius A rich man shall hardly enter the kingdom of heaven. It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. — Jesus Christ A true Muslim is thankful to God in prosperity and is resigned to His Will in his adversity. — Prophet Muhammad The Devas are ever pure and in harmony with each other. — The Vedas The name of God is the only remedy for the suffering humanity. — Guru Nanak Be sincere in your practice, words and deed. You will feel blessed! — Sarada Devi  |
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Freedom of a nation strictly means political as well as cultural freedom. Not in the context of India, though. After 58 years of Independence writers and intellectuals, vanguards of culture, still roam about in disarray.