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Watchdog
can’t sleep No end to
terrorism |
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RBI
turns cautious
Gas
pipelines or balloons?
The holy
cow
News
analysis Prisoners
in their own land Chatterati
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Watchdog can’t sleep
In blessed Punjab, things have to degenerate completely before someone wakes up to the hopeless reality. After holding as few as 16 and even 14 sittings in a year, the Punjab Vidhan Sabha is reported to have at long last decided to make amends. It will hold a minimum of 40 sittings and three sessions in a year (so far, it was making do with just two sessions). The elected representatives will now, hopefully, do a spot of honest work, instead of being overburdened with more pressing pursuits like going abroad for studying sundry sinecure subjects. Vidhan Sabha sessions had become something of a joke, with some of them running into no more than a solitary day. Even when they were of longer duration, one day would be invariably devoted exclusively to obituary references and precious little work would be discharged even on the other days. It is the Chief Minister who sets the tone in such matters. But since Capt Amarinder Singh is on record to have said that the government has no business to be present before the House, things just had to deteriorate to such a level. Many sittings witnessed only unseemly sparring between him and the Akali leader, Mr Parkash Singh Badal. When the Congress took over in 2002, the Assembly had 16 sittings. The number fell to 14 next year, to inch back to 16 in 2004. To be fair, the record of the state had not been much better in the past during Mr Badal’s regime either. In 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001, there were a mere 19, 15, 20 and 17 sittings, respectively. But two wrongs hardly make a right. In any case, we are more concerned with the present situation than history. If at all precedents are to be cited, they should be in matters of glorious parliamentary traditions, not dereliction of legislative duty. The damage caused by the elected representatives’ lack of interest has had tremendous trickle-down effect. Since they failed to perform a watchdog’s role, the bureaucracy too went into hibernation with precious little development work taking place. The sufferer was the common man who was deprived of all avenues of redressal of his grievances. One just hopes that the new rules regarding the mandatory sittings and sessions scripted by a committee appointed by the Punjab Vidhan Sabha earlier this year will ensure that the legislative proceedings become a more serious affair instead of remaining a mere “time pass”. The Punjab Vidhan Sabha must keep an eye on the functioning of the executive branch and make it accountable to it.
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No end to terrorism
There is no end to terrorist killings in Jammu and Kashmir. While terrorists continue to strike at security forces, their primary target, as Friday’s incident in Srinagar shows, the motivated killers and their mentors seem to be working overtime to destroy the secular character of the valley. That may be the reason why five Hindu villagers in Rajouri district were done to death on the night of July 28. The incident comes in the wake the attempts to bring Pandits back to the valley to infuse a new life into Kashmiriyat. In the process, the terrorist outfits have, perhaps, sent out the message that they remain capable of striking at will. It’s a real challenge to the security agencies. The increase in terrorist killings is being witnessed despite the claim of the Pakistan government to have launched a drive against those preaching violence. The two things cannot happen together. Experts are unanimous that terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir cannot survive once the Pakistan government stops giving all kinds of support to it. This line of thinking makes one believe that the Kashmir-centric terrorists continue to get a different kind of treatment than that being meted out to others by Pakistan. This is so despite Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s declaration that no government in India can sustain the composite dialogue process if terrorist killings do not come to an end. There is a clear contradiction in Pakistan’s policy. The ISI continues to be overactive in using the porous India-Nepal border to supply arms and ammunition to its contacts in India. There are indications that the explosive material that caused a blast at Shramjeevi Express near Jaunpur in UP had come from the ISI sources in Nepal for striking terror around Independence Day. The Pakistan government will have to reign in the ISI if it wants the peace process to succeed.
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RBI turns cautious
In its first quarterly review of the monetary policy, the RBI has mostly opted to maintain the status quo except in two key areas — real estate and capital markets— where it has pointed to the increased risk of parking excessive bank funds. As the risk weights in these two sectors have been raised from 100 to 125 per cent, the banks will now have to set apart more capital in their books as a cover for their present level of lendings. Last year the RBI had hiked the risk weights for the housing sector from 50 to 75 per cent. There is a boom in construction activity and a lot of money is flowing in this sector. To avoid a possible bubble, it has told the banks to be cautious. The government banks normally limit their exposure to the capital markets to the prescribed level of 5 per cent, but private banks tend to be more adventurous. The rising sensex has started causing worries. The RBI has left untouched the key financial parameters: the bank rate (the rate at which the RBI lends to the banks), the reverse repo rate (the rate at which banks keep their funds with the RBI overnight; it was raised last April) and the cash reserve ratio (the money the banks keep as a cover for their lendings). Had the RBI upped the reverse repo rate as banks had wanted, this would have given the banks a handle to push up interest rates. The last time when some banks raised the interest rates, Finance Minister P. Chidambaram had criticised their action as motivated by “profiteering”. The government and the RBI are trying to keep the interest rates and inflation at their present levels despite the rising oil prices. The third important aspect of the latest review of the monetary policy is the RBI is upbeat on the GDP growth touching 7 per cent. It is betting on the monsoon, which got initially delayed, but has subsequently turned normal. To maintain the present growth momentum, the government has to absorb the excess money in the system by pushing infrastructure building projects and prod the states also to get proactive.
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History (is) a distillation of rumour. — Thomas Carlyle
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Gas pipelines or balloons?
IF our energetic Petroleum Minister has his way, India should soon find itself tied up — not in knots, one hopes — in a welter of gas pipelines from all possible directions. At least three such pipelines — one from the west all the way from Iran’s South Pars, another across the Afghan mountains linking India to Turkmenistan’s abundant gas reserves and a third from the east to ferry Myanmar’s new offshore finds — are being pursued vigorously and concurrently. Despite the hectic diplomatic parleys, at least two of the three gas balloons seem to be floating up and away, possibly out of India’s reach. The Turkmenistan pipeline will probably remain a pipedream. The country’s unpredictable President Sapurmurat Niyazov had signed a deal with Russia late last year, to supply a staggering quantity of gas and followed it up with arm-twisting tactics like shutting off the supply to haggle the prices up. Again this year, he has just gone and signed a deal with Ukraine to supply substantial quantities of gas at hugely discounted prices. While some of it is meant for Ukraine’s domestic market, the rest will go to Europe transiting through Ukrainian pipelines. Although it is a short duration contact. Niyazov might well be testing the European waters. Moreover, just as the Americans have managed to bypass Russian transit routes by building the expensive and elaborate Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline to ferry Caspian oil to western markets, Niyazov has cocked a snook at Russia, edging Gazprom out of the Ukraine deal. These initiatives seem to be purposive and strategic aimed at gaining a direct toe-hold on the lucrative European markets. With these deals — assuming they are stable — Turkmenistan may well have contracted out all the gas it can produce, leaving little for the proposed trans-Afghan pipeline to Pakistan and India. The Ukrainian deal perhaps demonstrates the Turkmen regime’s preference for European markets over South Asian customers. Besides, India might worry less about the security problems associated with a pipeline through unstable regions of Afghanistan and Pakistan and more about how to deal with a fickle regime that seems to have honed the fine art of stringing along gas hopefuls for years - remember Bridas of Argentina and Unocal — only to dump them unceremoniously. Worse than being dumped would be to be caught up in a deal where the rules of the game are changed at whim. The Myanmar-Bangladesh-India pipeline is also rapidly turning out to be a now-on, now-off teaser. After the three energy ministers met in Yangon in January this year and agreed in principle to construct a pipeline through Bangladesh — possibly via Chittagong — into India’s northeast, the deal seems to be unravelling rapidly and is now hanging tenuously by three slender threads, in the form of demands made by Bangladesh. Our eastern neighbour wants us to provide a trade corridor with Nepal through Indian territory, transit for hydroelectric power from Bhutan and a reduction in the huge trade deficit it has run up with India — conditions that the Indian government finds difficult to accede to. The Bangladesh government’s propensity to play dog in the manger and procrastinate endless is nothing new. Unocal has been left hanging for so many years after it struck gas at Bibiyana, because Bangladesh can neither afford to buy this gas nor will it agree to let Unocal pipe it to India. Of course, things might take an unexpected and perhaps interesting turn if China’s CNOOC (China National Overseas Oil Corporation) succeeds in acquiring Unocal. Only the 2600-kilometre Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project seems to be making some headway. India and Pakistan have signed an MoU and a working group comprising representatives from both countries will meet in August to take the discussions further. But even here, we would do well to concentrate on the fine-print. Of foremost concern is the price of gas at the well-head. Since there is little leeway in reducing the cost of transportation — the pipelines will have to be built at today’s costs of an estimated $ 4 billion — the price of gas may have to be worked backwards from the consumer end. An affordable consumer price minus the cost of transportation and transit fee to be paid to Pakistan will have to be the well-head price for the Iranian producer. This is standard practice in pipeline contracts and long-term LNG deals all over the world. In industry parlance, it is called net-back pricing. But there are reports that Iran wants a linkage to LNG price which itself is linked to Brent, although by a small margin. This means, the piped gas price will fluctuate with global crude prices, a scary scenario in today’s world of spiraling oil prices. South Pars is an offshore elephant field. But it is a geological extension of the same gas field which extends to Qatar on the other side of the Persian Gulf. Together, the two may contain well over a 1000 trillion cubic feet. These deposits were formed millions of years ago, long before nation-states came into being and, as such, are no respecters of national boundaries or territorial waters. Qatar is way ahead of Iran in exploiting North Fields — its side of the gas deposits. It has LNG projects up and running supplying to Japan, South Korea and India; it is also setting up petrochemical plants. Unless Iran gets its act together fast, it might end up losing substantially to the enterprising Qataris, who have been ramping up production at an alarming rate. Gas is essentially a regional resource best transported through pipelines to neighbourhood markets. Distant and desperate markets — like the US west coast and Japan — have made LNG imports a reality, but where geography permits, pipelines remain the economical and preferred option, especially for price-sensitive markets in developing countries. Incidentally, pipelines avoid the 30 per cent heat loss resulting from liquefaction and regassification. Unlike Qatar, Iran is not constrained by geography and, therefore, India and Pakistan — and possibly China — present attractive pipeline destinations. If Iran is too sticky on pricing, piped gas will lose its competitive edge over LNG. Although India has already signed up LNG deals to import 12.5 million tonnes per year, the two main downstream gas consumers — power and fertilizer - continue to remain unviable, putting a huge question mark over offtake. More LNG terminals are unlikely to be built unless the pricing is going to be right. If Iran does agree to price the gas right, there are still scores of issues to be sorted out, the most intractable among them being the security of pipelines through Balochistan where a militant population has repeatedly targeted gas infrastructure. Pakistan, for its part, can undertake to plough back the transit fees it will charge into the development of Balochistan, creating a stake for the local communities. Even so, India should not only insist on sovereign guarantees from Pakistan for a disruption-free supply, but also demand back-up measures such as LNG trains and gas storage to take care of potential supply
disruptions. The writer is associated with the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.
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The holy cow
December 13, 1982, was a normal day at the UN General Assembly. I was elated that morning as my boss, Ambassador Natarajan Krishnan, who normally exercises Brahminical reticence over the quality of the work of his colleagues, had lavished some praise on a draft speech I had given him on Christopher Columbus to be delivered later in the day on a proposal to declare 1992 as “Year of the Fifth Centennial of the Discovery of America.” He particularly liked my characterisation of the discovery as a consequence of miscalculation of the distance of the western route to India. It was the fragrance of the herbs and spices of Malabar rather than the attractions of Amazon that enticed Columbus to undertake the hazardous voyage, I had written in the draft. Except that this was the first time that the US and Cuba had co-sponsored a UN resolution, the agenda item had no novelty and we presumed that another “Year” in the UN calendar would make no difference to the world. I settled in comfortably in the sparsely populated General Assembly hall after having inscribed India in the speakers’ list. I had told Ambassador Krishnan that I would let him know when his turn would come. Most North and South American states had inscribed their names already and there was no hurry for us to speak. The resolution, which praised the courage and spirit of adventure of Christopher Columbus was presented and speaker after speaker from Latin America declared their allegiance to his legacy. Diplomats in the UN need to train their ears to ignore repetition, but not to miss anything extraordinary or new. Having acquired that skill, I had switched myself off and had begun to polish the Indian speech, when I heard the Irish Ambassador saying that it was the Irish monks, led by Saint Brendan, who made the dangerous North Atlantic crossing before the seventh century. He was followed by the Iceland Ambassador, who argued that Leif Ericson, an Icelander of Norwegian origin had discovered America in A.D.1000 and that the year 2000 should be celebrated appropriately! Spain promptly claimed credit for its role in developing America. I was amused to see how a routine agenda item was getting enmeshed in a dispute, but thought nothing much of it except to think of a formulation about other claimants for the credit for discovering America in my Ambassador’s speech. Suddenly and unexpectedly, all hell broke loose when the Chairman of the African Group began to speak. He said that Africa hated colonialism and everything associated with it. Africa would not, therefore, acknowledge any benefits arising from it. Therefore, even the process of establishing colonialism like the voyage of Christopher Columbus to America should not be glorified. Did not that “discovery” violate the fundamental rights of the indigenous people? What right did the descendants of colonialists have to praise their ancestors, who imposed colonialism on America? Like me, most delegates were stunned. Most of us had not anticipated such a strong African reaction. I hastily contacted Ambassador Krishnan and quietly took off his name from the speakers’ list. Within minutes, the co-sponsors held a meeting and decided to “postpone” the consideration of the item and nothing was heard of it ever since. The first joint US-Cuba initiative was aborted and the Fifth Centennial of the Discovery of America went unnoticed by the UN. Christopher Columbus may have been an unwitting collaborator of colonialism and America may have remained a dark continent if he had not landed there. But the memory of the atrocities of colonialism is too fresh to be set aside. The time for a clinical and impartial analysis of its evils and blessings, like the one that our Prime Minister attempted in his Oxford speech, has not yet come. If Africans and Native American Indians, who may have had a different existence without the west, have been so allergic to counting the blessings of colonialism, the reaction in India, which already was a civilized nation when the British arrived, was understandable. Anti-colonialism is still a holy cow.
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News analysis
The normal chill in the relationship between the Congress and its ally, the Nationalist Congress Party, in Maharashtra is plunging southward and dropping after Shiv Sena rebel Narayan Rane joined the former. Both parties are eyeing each other suspiciously, especially since the Congress snatched away Rane from the NCP virtually at the last minute. One usually does not win against the NCP chief, Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar in Maharashtra, and the Maratha strongman is known to bounce back with a nasty surprise. The NCP’s initial response to Rane’s entry into the Congress was knee-jerk. The party demanded that it be given the post of Maharashtra’s Chief Minister. After all it had 71 MLAs in the state legislature as against the Congress’ 68 and had opted for the second place only after bagging plum portfolios in exchange. The NCP leaders in the state subsequently went into deep introspection as realisation dawned that their ambitions in the state could be thwarted by the Congress. The NCP, which has been locked in an eyeball-to-eyeball contest with the Shiv Sena in the Konkan region for the past several years, is finding a foe gaining ground. As the man who built the Shiv Sena in the region, Rane led his boys from the front in their battle with the NCP. After he simply moved bag and baggage into the Congress, the NCP has to worry about Rane beefing up his street-fighting muscle with executive power. Rane displayed the potency of the cocktail on Sunday last when the Mumbai police force descended on the streets in strength to back his mob. Demolishing the myth of the Shiv Sena’s invincibility, Rane held his public meeting outside the offices of Saamna, the party mouthpiece. The thousands of Shiv Sena activists who were called into thwart Rane’s meeting were brutally beaten by the police. Women activists of the party were especially targeted. To add insult to injury, Rane called Shiv Sena leader Uddhav Thackeray a coward for remaining inside the offices of the newspaper while the police caned the party workers. With police support assured, Rane has now threatened to hold more meetings in the strongholds of the Shiv Sena. Sunday’s incident only showed the extent of the Congress party’s hold in the administration. Though technically the Mumbai police under the state Home Ministry comes under Deputy Chief Minister R.R. Patil, the city’s Police Commissioner A N Roy is known to bypass him and take orders directly from Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, a Congressman. The NCP might well replace Patil with a more assertive leader as Deputy Chief Minister to prevent Deshmukh from marauding into its base. Shortly after the Congress-NCP combine in Maharashtra bounced back to power last year, the Congress party replaced then incumbent Chief Minister Sushilkumar Shinde with Deshmukh in order to checkmate the NCP. Under the leadership of Pawar, the NCP in Maharashtra had emerged as the state’s foremost political grouping for the powerful Maratha community, traditionally the vote-bank of the Congress. Deshmukh’s brief was to arrest the drift and bring back the Marathas into the fold of the Congress. Splitting the Shiv Sena was a test case for both Deshmukh and Pawar. The latter had been prising away at the Shiv Sena’s edifice for the past several months ever since word spread that Rane was unhappy in his party. For a while it appeared that Rane might walk away with the entire Shiv Sena legislative party and stake claim for Maharashtra’s Chief Ministership. But damage control by the Shiv Sena ensured the failure of Rane’s rebellion. Left with just a rump of the Shiv Sena in his control, he was forced to quit is seat. Even the nine MLAs left with him have chosen to stay in the party rather than face the electorate. As the NCP dilly-dallied over taking on board a damaged Rane, the Congress swung into action. Senior leaders at the state and central level cajoled him to switch over with the promise of executive assistance to break the Shiv Sena. A Cabinet berth too has been thrown in as a sweetener. Rane is expected to return to the hustings as Maharashtra’s Revenue Minister. The Congress party is wooing a handful of Shiv Sena MLAs from the Konkan to quit their seats and contest afresh as its candidates in a bid to increase its tally and best the NCP. The party is also eyeing the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation, which goes to the polls in early 2007. After a good showing in the Lok Sabha and assembly elections in Mumbai, the Congress hopes to use Rane to bag the BMC. Rane, who began his political career as a corporator in the civic body, enjoys considerable clout with several elected representatives of the Shiv Sena owing allegiance to him. All said, the Congress and the NCP are in contest to grab the Maratha vote from a crumbling Shiv Sena. Whoever gets the bigger chunk will have a greater say in Maharashtra politics in the years to come.
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Prisoners in their
own land
I spent eight hours at Gaza’s Erez border crossing with Israel last month, waiting for Israeli approval to attend a reception in the West Bank, only to be denied entry based on dubious “security reasons.” I’m a Palestinian mother of a stir-crazy 16-month-old boy, a journalist and a Harvard graduate. I’m not sure exactly what’s threatening about me, though my son might disagree, if he could sit still long enough to do so. Being Palestinian is enough, an Israeli army spokesperson told me. “As a Palestinian from Gaza, you are considered a security threat first, a journalist second.” And that equation is not set to change anytime soon, not even after disengagement. Under the plan, Israel will start evacuating the 21 Gaza settlements and four small settlements in the northern West Bank next month. But it will also maintain control of Gaza’s air, sea and borders, and will reserve the right to reenter the Strip at any time, effectively making Gaza the world’s largest open-air prison, with 1.5 million Palestinian inmates. The Gaza disengagement will simply restructure Israel’s occupation. Instead of controlling our lives from within, Israel will control Gaza from without. Ariel Sharon’s plan, in his own words, is strategic in nature. It is a politico-strategic maneuver intended to stop a negotiated peace in its tracks. In withdrawing from Gaza, Sharon intends to consolidate his grip on the West Bank by holding on to the four main West Bank settlement blocs, a move that has been publicly endorsed by President Bush in a reversal of the U.S. position since 1967. That position had labeled the settlements “an obstacle to peace.” The withdrawal aims to minimize military casualties in Gaza, ensuring Israel’s security according to a shortsighted equation that will render a contiguous Palestinian state impossible, derailing the negotiated peace deal envisioned in the “road map.” Palestinians in the West Bank are reminded of this reality every day. Israel’s barrier, whose route was ruled illegal by the International Court of Justice last year, continues to snake its way around their villages and towns, annexing their land and livelihoods in the process. In the West Bank village of Bil’in, where nonviolent demonstrations are held weekly to protest the wall’s encroachment, 60 percent of the village farmland is being annexed to make room for settlement expansion. And earlier this month, the Israeli cabinet approved a new route for its West Bank barrier that will isolate 55,000 Palestinians, more than a quarter of the Palestinian population of occupied East Jerusalem, from the rest of the city. They will be forced to endure the daily uncertainty of checkpoints to attend schools or work or receive medical care. The barrier will also complete the isolation of East Jerusalem, the Palestinian capital, from 3.8 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. And another generation of young Palestinians, including my son, Yousuf, will grow up prisoners in their own land, with only their imaginations left free to wander.
— LA Times-Washing Post
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Chatterati It was a devastating monsoon onslaught. Olympic-sized swimming pools choked the commercial capital of India. On the other hand, thanks to the ONGC rig fire, the insurance companies are bracing themselves for claims they are going to face. But the capital had a virtually rain of Bollywoodwalas. First, it was lyricist Javed Akhtar with Shabana in a new blunt hair-do. All those who say Delhiwale do not know poetry should think again. When Javed unleashed his magic, politicians, actors and bureaucrats converged to applaud. Right from I.K. Gujral, who actually asked the poet to recite his father-in-law’s nazm. Rajiv Shukla, Abhishekh Singhvi, Nandita Das with husband and Shanker Prasad. An evening well appreciated and the audience hovering on the edge of laughter and tears. Stars shine in Capital Rahul Bose with loads of attitude was here for the screening of his movie “Maal Purush”. He was happily rocking at the nightclub Aura with the designer crowd of Rohit Bal. Mahima Chowdhry was in town for the special screening of her new film for a select gathering. Here Shivraj Patil was the chief guest, who looked relaxed even after so much commotion happening around him. For the ongoing Osian cine fans film festival, Sarika and Poonam Dhillon tried to make a presence. But everyone looks for fresh talent and faces. Sharmila Tagore, no doubt, stole the show here as the chief guest. Jimmy Shergill was a hit with the Delhi gals. Provogue man Fardeen Khan of many controversies was here for a fantastic female party night Whew! Did the girls swoon when this dishy guy walked in. It was supposed to be a rocky night but just did not take off. Sorry gals. The one who stole the show was Asha Bhosle, dressed in a cream saree with roses in her hair. Clearly a week of too much star shine. The Gurgaon episode How could the Dilliwalas not give their views on the “Dandewala Bagh” as they have nick-named the Honda episode. It may have been a ham-handed operation by an untrained police not used to such situations. A lot of people joined the agitation to extract political advantage. Some political activists of other parties were seen inciting the crowd at the civil hospital. Several outsiders were a part of the agitation. The media never reported the cops’ injuries nor did anyone express concern which had nothing to do with workers’ grievances. A straightforward dispute of management and workers was complicated by the outside parties dragging the name of the government. Ultimately, who suffered? The common man, the MNC city of Gurgaon and India as an FDI destination.
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May 26, 1897
If any one had the hardihood to say that the present system of land revenue in India, with the exception of the tract under Permanent Settlement, is a sort of rackrent, he would at once be accused of exciting the peasant population against the Government. Agricultural indebtedness is admitted, but the cause is never sought in the revenue he has to pay. But Sir William Wedderburn, not beloved of the official community in India, deliberately speaks of the ryot and his rackrent and proves what he says. In different parts of India different theories are current to account for the distressed condition of agriculturists. It is not often admitted that they are poor, for how could it then be said in administration reports, despatches and speeches that the country is growing more prosperous and richer? The Permanent Settlement is the great eyesore everywhere, for even Punjab Civilians speak of it and the men it has enriched with ill-disguised hatred. Elsewhere the indignation is directed mainly against money-lenders, the bloodsuckers who ruin the agricultural classes. In the Punjab, for instance, this feeling leads to a fine distinction between Hindu money-lenders and Mahomedan peasants. But in other places both the prayers and those preyed upon are Hindus, so that sympathy or antipathy must be independent of religious beliefs.
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By obeying Him, man achieves communication with God and helps all those who follow him. — Guru Nanak When your mind is calm like a mirror, you will see the spirit reflected in it. — The
Upanishadas By obeying Him, man has not to go from door to door to seek his salvation. — Guru Nanak
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