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Bush’s new attention Onion woes Roadblock |
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Parties sans democracy
On mere suspicion
An exhibition on ‘Unbearable Lightness of Being’ For health gains, high intensity not necessary Chatterati
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Bush’s new attention US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns’ two-day visit to New Delhi was mainly to prepare the groundwork for President George W. Bush’s scheduled visit to India in February next. Burns’ pre-visit address at the Asia Society in New York in which he declared that India was the new focus of US foreign policy provided the right backdrop for the talks he had in New Delhi. Naturally enough, the government utilised the opportunity to tell the Bush administration that its move to deliver F-16 aircraft to Pakistan, when it still remains a safe haven of terrorists, will vitiate the atmosphere in South Asia. It could not have used harsher words to express its resentment over the US policy in this regard. At the same time, it did not want such irritants to come in the way of the strategic partnership the US and India have begun to forge. The talks, by and large, were confined to the landmark civilian nuclear agreement the two countries signed during Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s visit to the US in July last. The agreement can be taken to its logical conclusion only if the two countries take measures they have themselves committed to take under its provisions. For instance, India has to identify and separate civilian and military nuclear facilities and programmes in a phased manner. Not only that, it also has to subject the civilian facilities to the International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. On its part, the US has to pass legislation to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation between the two countries. Reports from Washington suggest that President Bush is keen to have the necessary legislation passed by the US Congress, before he embarks on his visit to India. These steps will ensure that India-US relations reach a new high bringing a host of scientific and technological advantages to both. With raging criticism about India becoming a “client” state of the US in the light of India’s vote against Iran, it is significant that Mr Burns and Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran have discounted theories that there were many hidden conditions in the nuclear agreement. They specifically mentioned that it would not affect the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline project. Since the proof of the pudding is in the eating, one will have to wait to see how the “new attention” India receives from Washington impacts policy making in both capitals. |
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Onion woes NORMALLY, it is the price of the shares which should be under the magnifying glass of the government, not that of fruit and vegetables. But then, the onion is not just another vegetable. It is the “most political” vegetable in the country. Indira Gandhi had used the issue of onion prices to beat the Janata government in 1980. And the BJP lost the assembly elections in Delhi and Rajasthan in 1998, again, mainly because of its inability to control the price of the pungent bulbs. Small wonder that the spurt in the price has once again forced the government to sit up. Since the price has gone beyond Rs 30 per kg at many places, the Congress is worried that the onions may now bring tears into its eyes. Actually, there is no failure on the part of the government on the onion front. The shortage has occurred mainly because of unseasonal rains in the onion-producing states of Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan and Gujarat. Since this is the festival season, the government is doubly worried. The new crop has started coming into the market but the shortage is not going to end at least till Divali. There has been a demand in some quarters that export of onions should be banned. Because of the high price, there is little export, in any case. Similarly, import is also not economically viable because the landing cost in India from Pakistan or China would be no lesser than the prevailing market price. But when it comes to the onion, the government cannot be all that rational as its decision to import suggests. It is true that the onion is an integral part of Indian cooking, but given the acute shortage, all that needs to be done is to strike it off the menu for just a few days. That will curb artificial shortage due to panic reaction. Surely, the onion can be temporarily replaced by other ingredients for the time being. Last time, it went beyond the reach of the public, restaurants simply started serving radish in salads. |
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Roadblock Bangladesh’s refusal to ratify the inter-governmental agreement on the 32-nation Asian Highway (AH) project is a prime example of its wilful and unfortunate anti-India stance. The reported comments of its communications minister to the effect that Bangladesh did not wish to “give transit to India” suggest an extremely blinkered view of the strategic equations in the region. Its foreign policy makers are evidently operating with a mindset where they see their nation as part of a classic pincer strategy to countervail India. It also suggests that it may be under some pressure from other countries in the region who see an advantage in the perpetuation of such a strategy. The irony is that the highway project will considerably benefit a nation like Bangladesh. The project does not envision the building of new roads, but intends to facilitate the upgradation of existing roads to certain standards. It was conceptualised in 1959, and a lot of progress was achieved during the 1960s and 1970s. It petered out after funding was suspended in 1975. It received a new lease of life in 1992, when the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) endorsed the Asian Land Transport Infrastructure Development Project, which includes the highway project along with a plan to create a trans-Asian railway network. But the turning point came only when the intergovernmental agreement was signed in November 2003 by 32 countries, on 55 AH routes. Most countries have ratified it, and Bangladesh has a December 2005 deadline before which to do so. The project is ambitious in scope, covering a total length of 1,41,204 kilometres. About 11,458 kilometres of highways in India have been identified to become part of the AH network. Similarly, 1,804 kilometres of road in Bangladesh have also been identified. While Bangladesh is comfortable with one proposed section, the AH-41 connecting Dhaka to Yangon, it wants to block the AH-1 route which will be coming into Bangladesh from the Indian side. In the end, though, the road blocks Dhaka seems intent on creating will hurt it the most. |
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Life is first boredom, then fear. — Philip Larkin
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Parties sans democracy Perhaps, it was Khushwant Singh who recently raised in his popular column two pertinent points: one, who will succeed Mr Lal Krishan Advani when he ceases to be BJP president by the end of this year and, secondly, why is it that there is no defiance of Mrs Sonia Gandhi in the Congress party whereas “indiscipline” has become endemic in the BJP which once prided itself on being a party with a difference? The two issues are inter-related. Who will take over from Mr Advani as party president is relatively of limited importance but more basic are the reasons for the evaporation of the BJP’s claim or boast to be a party with a difference. Even more striking is the explosion of the myth of the RSS being, like an intelligence organisation, only felt and not seen or heard. The crux of the matter is that a spell in government changes the outlook and approach of party members and leaders, especially if they had been in the wilderness for long, as the BJP top brass was. But while the Congress had taken over two decades to be reduced to that position, the BJP lost its morale and ethos after just six years in government. Not long ago, the RSS chief, Mr K.S.Sudarshan, did the unthinkable by participating in a dialogue with a newspaper editor on television and criticising the BJP leadership without inhibition. The last time the RSS and the BJP disagreed on policy and tactics was in 1984 in the wake of the assassination of Indira Gandhi. The RSS perceived it as a national crisis transcending party considerations and wanted the country to rally round Rajiv Gandhi, who was nominated his mother’s successor. The BJP disagreed and stuck to its position as an opposition party. There was no public ventilation of the divergence of approach between the two. The upshot was, however, clear when the party ended up with just two seats in the Lok Sabha and Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress had the largest majority the party has ever had even in the heyday of Nehru’s leadership. A more crucial question in this context is whether divergence of opinion in a party is per se unhealthy and so its absence should be celebrated. There was a time when the Indian National Congress was not in the present “happy” position of being a veritable monolithic entity. Hereditary succession of party presidentship was unthinkable then. The reference is to the expulsion from the Congress of the Bose brothers, Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose and his elder brother, Sarat Chandra Bose, in the late 1930’s on a charge of indiscipline. The first contested election for Congress presidentship in 1939 was full of drama and showed how the Congress was not what it has been since the late 1990s, a rubber stamp rather than a live political party. What Gandhiji called the peace of the graveyard in a different context did not prevail in Congress politics in those days. It would also perhaps answer Kushwant Singh’s question about the absence of opposition to Mrs Sonia Gandhi in today’s Congress party, that it is not necessarily a sign of health. Subhash Bose’s election as Congress president at the Haripura session in 1938 electrified the political scene. First, it marked a break with the prevailing practice of the top post being rotated among the veterans. Thus Subhash Bose became “Rashtrapati”, as the Congress president was euphemistically called. At the same time the warts in the party had also come to light. According to an important organisational change effected during Subhash Bose’s presidentship, there was to be annual enrolment of members and regular publication of membership lists with a view to weeding out bogus membership. Further, while the lower Congress committees were directly elected, above the district committee the election was indirect. The district committee also was to elect delegates to the annual session. The indirect election of the delegates was to counter the manipulation of delegates’ election. In other words, “power brokers” - cited by Rajiv Gandhi in his address to the Congress session in Bombay in 1996 —had already scented in the late 1930s the approaching accession to power by the party and were entrenching themselves in it. Now with the party presidentship becoming hereditary, enrolment of members, publication of voters’ lists and “election” of delegates to the annual session are all ornamental. Meanwhile, the fat was in the fire when Subhash Bose wanted a second term as Congress president in 1939. Gandhiji, particularly, was against Bose having a second term because with his “extremist views he did not see eye to eye with Gandhiji; several others, including Nehru, were also opposed to Bose remaining party president for an additional year. So when Maulana Azad declined the honour, Pattabhi Sitaramayya was put up as a candidate. Gandhiji was mainly instrumental for the manoeuvre and honestly owned it as his defeat when Bose defeated Pattabhi at the Tripuri session in 1939. The first contested election of party president and its acrimonious aftermath left party divided. Ultimately, Bose had to leave the Congress after having been expelled with his followers, including his elder brother, and the country had lost the services of a dynamic leader. Gandhiji, too, suffered morally in the unhappy episode. Incidentally, the expression “high command” was coined by the Anglo-Indian Press like The Times of India and The Statesman to describe Gandhiji and the party leadership. It was an allusion to Hitler’s “high command” in the Nazi party, a dig at the absence of internal democracy in the party. By 1945 it was only a matter of time before the country became independent and the Congress formed the government. In the process, as Pattabhi sensed it, the centre of gravity had shifted towards the government and the organisation had to adjust itself to play a supportive role. When J.B.Kripalani as party president failed to realise the objective situation, he had to go. Then in 1948, there was even the more bizarre proxy fight between Nehru and Patel when Pattabhi was pitted against Purshottam Das Tandon for party presidentship. Nehru projected Tandon as the voice of the right-wing and fought against him almost openly. Patel had to eat the humble pie ultimately. After such a variegated and rich experience the Congress party today is the pocket borough of a family. Worse still, its changed character has become infectious. Practically, almost every other party, barring perhaps the two Communist parties and the BJP, are family affairs: those of Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav and Ms Mayawati, regional parties of Mr O.P. Chautala and Mr Ajit Singh, , the Shiromani Akali Dal in Punjab, the A-I ADMK and the DMK in Tamil Nadu, the Telugu Desam in Andhra Pradesh, the PDP and the National Conference in Jammu and Kashmir, the Asom Gana Parishad in the North-East, to cite a few, are all replicas of the Congress pattern. If in such a situation a party struggles to practise internal democracy and periodical change of leadership and suffers a setback in the process, it is not its end. It can be a new beginning, in
fact.
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On mere suspicion
Four decades and more have passed by when as a part of my official assignment, I went to see some of the welfare projects functioning in the rural areas of Sangrur district. Visits to Sangrur were never exciting: the town looked remote, sleepy and in slow motion. However, visits to villages were fascinating. The beaming warmth, the care and concern for each other, sharing problems and difficulties, success and achievements as one people was the hallmark of the rural community — so very different from urban settings. On a prefixed date and time I set out on my journey to a village about 12 to 15 km from Sangrur. The sky was clear, the weather mild, and one felt the comfort of a quiet drive, devoid of deafening horns, indisciplined vehicular traffic and irksome traffic jams. This peace, however, was shortlived. Hardly 2 to 3 km from the village my jeep was stopped by eight to nine persons who had blocked the road. Dressed in white khadi, these strong and burly persons seemed agitated enough to send a chill through my bones. Scared as I was I got out of the vehicle. To my surprise they greeted me and were apologetic for stopping me en route. On my questioning the reason for this dramatic act., the answer was complaints against the female worker in the village and request for her transfer to some other place. I felt a little annoyed and told them that I do not discuss staff complaints in the middle of the road and that they could meet me after I had finished my work relating to the project. This was easier said but within me I was gripped with the fear of the outcome. Anyway I went around the project. The children and the women beneficiaries of the project were happy and appreciative of the work of the worker. Children were busy with their toys and play material. The worker had lined up things out of clay, paper and waste material which was an indication of her creativity and ingenuity. It looked as though there was enough room to express, explore and investigate for the children under her charge. Equally happy were the girls and women who had got together to meet me. After talking and discussing with them I was now ready to face the village elders. I must mention they had waited patiently for me to finish the work. After the usual courtesies, they said that the worker went out of the village frequently. “We are suspicious about her visits and suspect that she is involved with a man and all this is likely to have bad influence on our girls”. After listening to their accusation I asked whether she absented herself from work. The answer was in the negative. Have any one from among you or the women tried to find out the reason for her repeated visits? “It was just a suspicion”, they said. By now I had my wits together and told them: It may be that she goes to see her parents who lived not far from their village; there might be some one sick in the family and she was required to help. To suspect and condemn a person like this was neither fair nor justified. Secondly, if for once it is presumed that she goes to meet her boyfriend — tell me what you would have done if it was your own daughter. “Kill her or counsel her in private”? To meet me in a delegation on the road was disrespectful to her. She is working here and has done a good job. She should be treated as a daughter of the village and if she had done anything wrong, she should have been counselled like your own daughter and not made an issue of. Treat her as one of your own, support her, and share her difficulties if any. They saw reason and regretted their action on mere suspicion. Suspicion can cause havoc and
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An exhibition on ‘Unbearable Lightness of Being’
The spirit dance of Musui and Maiya seems endless and limitless as they romp across the shady glens and hidden nooks and crannies of the sunny winter garden at the India International Centre, New Delhi. Sculptor K.S. Radhakrishnan’s spirit creatures, so fragile and spare, seeming almost non-existent, appear like a mirage. Here Musui, the male spirit, stands mounted on a pole charcoal black and ecstatic; elsewhere, he appears to be doing a back flip in the air. Maia stands coyly in the shade, greenish hued with a leaf shading her body as perhaps Eve did when she walked in the meadows of the paradise. Elsewhere, Maia floats ribbon-like in the breeze, ecstatic and free. Perhaps, the single most poignant feeling that arises on seeing Radhakrishnan’s bronze works is that of immense freedom and unbearable ecstasy. His enraptured spirit couple defies our mundane, petty, fractured existence and points to a much superior and more powerful level of existence than one known to mankind today. Almost, Radhakrishnan has torn beings from a much more evolved spiritual dimension and enshrined them in bronze for us, motley people of a broken world. “I put Musui on the pole, literally enshrined him, so that people would have to look up at him. A perfect being,” says Radhakrishnan as he sits under the shade of a spreading Banyan looking at his work reflectively. “Musui could be a rickshaw-puller, his frail body almost dancing in the breeze. To me even his fingers seem to dance in the wind,” says Radhakrishnan. He further adds, “to me they are like imps, in Kerala we call them ‘jattan’ – an imp in ecstasy, one that can mock on itself and on all of existence.” Radhakrishnan’s romance with Musui really began when he was a youth of 19 studying in Shantiniketan. Musui was a wiry Santhal boy of his own age who was Radhakrishnan’s first male model. He has become the centrepiece of most of the sculptor’s works “and it’s a romance that started some 25 years ago. Musui represents many things for me, he could be Jesus or the devil, Musui the Brahmin, the father of the nation, a quick-witted mullah, the god of dance and destruction, the apostle of peace and compassion,” says Radhakrishnan. He further adds that Musui was the first man he came across, who looked at his own nude body and then smiled. Maiya as such evolved much later and “really to complete the story-telling process.” She could be an ancient Harappan girl walking free and bare under the tropical sun of a summer 5,000 years ago or she could be the earth mother from whom all existence evolved. Geeta Sen, the curator of this exhibition running at the IIC, feels strongly about Maiya. She feels “Maiya is the nature of woman herself – she is the Harappan dancing girl, she is a keen archer bending the bow, she is Durga grappling with an Asura, she is a poised graduate from Shantiniketan.” Musui is really the archetype holding out the miracle of transformation and Maiya is the root of womankind. Radhakrishnan is a rather celebrated sculptor who works mainly in modelling and bronze casting over new mediums. Some time back he exhibited in Kolkata. Again the central feature was Musui as a rickshaw-puller. His works display strong influences of his journey from Kerala to Ram Kinkar Baij’s mentorship at Shantiniketan and they find a permanent place in several private and public collections in India and abroad. His exhibition titled, “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” is currently running at the IIC and will be open till October 26. |
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For health gains, high intensity not necessary Baffled or annoyed by the federal government’s
30-minutes-per-day-of-moderate-exercise-five-days-per-week dictum? A new study suggests that clearing a lower bar offers significant health benefits.
As little as 12 miles of brisk walking per week yields meaningful aerobic fitness gains and reduces risk of cardiovascular disease in at-risk populations, according to a study published in the October issue of Chest, a publication of the American College of Chest Physicians. The study examined 133 overweight men and women, aged 40 to 65, all of whom were sedentary before the study and had high cholesterol. Researchers randomly assigned them to one of four groups: walking 12 miles per week at 40 to 55 percent of VO2 max (roughly the fastest pace each could sustain for about a minute); jogging 12 miles per week at 65 to 80 percent of peak VO2; jogging 20 miles a week at 65 to 80 percent of VO2 max; and a control group that was told not to exercise throughout the nine-month study. Lead study author Brian Duscha, an exercise physiologist at the Duke University Medical Center’s division of cardiology, says the results are the first to specify a minimum exercise level for achieving significant aerobic conditioning gains, and should appeal to aspiring exercisers looking for an accessible, understandable target. “For some people, the government recommendation is overwhelming and (as a result) they do nothing. We scientifically showed that you get benefit at 12 miles a week” at an intensity lower than most people would assume is needed to show gains. Walkers in the study sustained the oft-cited “brisk” pace (Duscha: “more than a stroll ... but at a pace you can maintain for 30 or 40 minutes”), covering about three miles in about an hour, three or four times per week. (Those are ballpark calculations based on some complex data. The details: The 12-mile walkers averaged 203 total minutes per week and 3.6 walks. The 12-mile joggers averaged three runs a week of about 42 minutes each. The 20-mile joggers averaged 3.7 sessions weekly at about 53 minutes per run.) The 12-mile walkers showed absolute VO2 max gains — a key measure of cardiovascular fitness — of about 6 percent over the study; the 12-mile joggers improved by more than 10 percent; and the 20-mile joggers gained about 16 percent. Time-to-exhaustion measurements showed similar escalating benefits. People in all three exercise groups lost weight —an average of about three pounds — but there was no significant difference in pounds dropped among the three groups. More meaningful, Duscha says, is the fact that even those who did not lose weight showed aerobic fitness gains. “That is huge. People stop exercising when they don’t lose weight. This study says, `You will still gain a lot of benefit even in the absence of weight loss.’ ” People ready to step up their exercise regimens could increase either workout time or intensity, Duscha says. “The research showed that (boosting) either helps. ... But knowing Americans, I would never urge people to increase their time commitment.” So ye of hectic schedule, do what you can to boost intensity (without, of course, causing injury). —LA Times-Washington Post
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Chatterati Politicians all over want all their kith and kin in the same business. In UP it’s a family circus in the panchayat elections. Most ministers and legislators in this state have fielded their wives, mothers-in-law etc in the elections to zila panchayats and kshetra panchayats. Criminal-turned politicians have also fielded their cronies in the elections. Panchayat elections are, after all, important for legislatures. So it’s a safe bet to get either a family member or a trusted lieutenant elected to the post. Whether it’s an Akhilesh Yadav in Rae Baraili or Raja Bhayia in Pratapgarh, all are busy making their brothers and sisters win. Politics is a good family business now.
Delhi runs for fun Nothing like a marathon to uncork the nation’s adrenalin and imagination, especially for Indians who are not athletic. Last week it was a carnival of energy, youthfulness, colours and music. Delhi CM Shiela Dixit encouraged a senior citizens’ run organised by Tina Ambani with celebrities like Rishi Kapoor, Jaya Bachchan etc. Sports stars Milkha Singh, PT Usha and Kapil Dev ran and cheered the masses present. Between the puffing and panting, it was clearly a city on the move. The sight was soul-stirring, no doubt. Men and women, pushing ninety and visually impaired, those who otherwise cannot cross a road. The music in the stadium set the pace for the race. Choppers circled the skies and turned out to be an unexpected source of inspiration. Running was fun as it wound through the Lodhi and Mathura roads and then with the Rashtrapati Bhavan as the backdrop. Delhi had a lot to offer — wide clean roads and an enthusiastic populace. The Capital woke up from its slumber to discover the joys of running.
A check on flamboyance Sonia Gandhi’s directive to the Congress to balance flamboyance and acts of indiscretion on the part of its ministers has not come a moment too soon. Some of them behave like maharajas, driving swanky cars, flashing the latest pens and wrist-watches and dining with the rich in the most expensive places. In attendance is, of course, a band of bureaucrats known to make a living in the proximity of pompous ministers and the ever-obliging businessmen. Pandit Nehru was extremely conscious about the work ethics of his ministers. The ministers, in turn, were highly sensitive to the demands of the public. Lal Bahadur Shastri and K.D. Malavia resigned on moral grounds, setting high standards in public life. People like Gulzari Lal Nanda were revered for their honesty and integrity. Now ministers instead of taking moral responsibility and resigning over failures or acts of misconduct, hang on shamelessly to their chairs. The UPA Chairman alone has the moral authority to chastise the Congress ministers. After all, she is the only one in India’s history to have sacrificed the chair of Prime Minister. |
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From the pages of Why is Punjab neglected?
Among those who took part in the deliberations of the Educational Conference there were several non-official and Indian representatives from the various Provinces. But the Punjab was not represented by any non-official. The sole representative of this Province in the Council was the Director of Public Instruction who does not appear to have made any remarks or even taken any part in the discussions. Whilst Nawab Abdul Majid, Rai Bahadur Pandit Sundar Lal and Dr Zia-ud-Din Ahmed represented the United Provinces, Mr Gokhale, Mr Dikhsit and Mr Masani, the Western Presidency, Rai Bahadur R.N. Mudholkar, the Central Provinces, Babu Jogendro Chandra Ghosh, and Syed Shamsul Huda, Bengal, there was no one to represent the Punjab. We think we have the right to ask why was Punjab left out altogether. Was the local Government asked to suggest a representative, and if not, why not? In private enterprise in matters educational and in the progress of commerce and industry, Punjab had done work to which no other Province of India - except perhaps Bombay - can rightly lay claim. |
Our natures incline us towards different things. These inclinations nurture desires which in turn make us crave them while leading us away from the Truth. These inclinations make us dislike the person who tries to show us the truth. Then we try to avoid him. — The Mahabharata Contempt of happiness is usually contempt of other people’s happiness, and is an elegant disguise for hatred of the human race. — Book of quotations on happiness
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