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No Maya this On with demolitions |
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One year after
Changing times
Newspaper—then and now
How not to build a Sikh heritage complex The idea of Haryana Bloggers, money in information war
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No Maya this THE Bahujan Samaj Party leader, Ms Mayawati, needs to be complimented for her decision to expel four controversial party MPs. Three of them were involved in the cash-for-questions scam while the fourth – a member of the Rajya Sabha – is accused of bigamy. She has also threatened action against two others who are allegedly involved in a passport/visa racket. The BSP leader has succeeded in taking the moral high ground when a party like the BJP is still debating whether it had done the right thing in boycotting the expulsion of 10 MPs from the Lok Sabha while supporting the action in the Rajya Sabha. As for the Congress, it prevaricated on the Natwar Singh issue till circumstances forced it to adopt a tougher attitude towards him. In contrast, Ms Mayawati has not only favoured their expulsion from Parliament but has even expelled them from the party. Of more consequence is her decision to act against a party MP who entered into a bigamous relationship. She has justified the action on the ground that a party, which believes in social justice, cannot tolerate acts of injustice perpetrated by a party MP. This should set an example for all political parties, which tend to defend the wrongdoings of their MPs and MLAs in the mistaken belief that, otherwise, they would lose credibility with their cadres. People expect high moral standards from their representatives – whether they belong to an upper caste like in the Volcker case or some backward castes as in the cash-for-question scam. The reason why Ms Mayawati, who is herself involved in the Taj corridor scam, has struck against the MPs in question is not far to seek. She believes that the BSP is in the ascendant in Uttar Pradesh where the party has won some byelections recently. The victory was made possible by the coming together of upper caste Brahmins and Dalits, who provided the backbone for the Congress during its halcyon days. She does not want to fritter away the chances of returning to power by giving patronage to controversial partymen. A refurbished party is what she requires to wrest power in Lucknow. Whatever the reason, she cannot be faulted for expelling from her party the MPs who brought disgrace to Parliament. |
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On with demolitions As if the blatant construction of unauthorised buildings in Delhi by the thousands was not bad enough, the lawbreakers are now ganging up to browbeat the administration to stop the court-ordered demolitions. They have taken recourse to shutting down markets and using other standard pressure tactics to save their patently illegal buildings. Just because they have the numbers and have also mustered the support of those who happen to have legally constructed buildings, they think that they can hold the country to ransom. This is the time for the government to stand firm and give a lie to their strong-arm tactics. Fortunately, it has the full support of the judiciary in this endeavour. The government needs to side with law-abiding citizens instead of being seen in cahoots with the racketeers. The main argument of the violators is that some of the constructions came up quite some time ago and the government has no right to pull these down at this stage. This is preposterous. Just because they managed to buy through influence or otherwise the silence of some inspection officials at the time of construction does not mean that their buildings stand legalised. The builders have been emboldened to break the law only because a message has gone down the line that they can hustle the administration—whatever its political colour — into authorising their misdeeds on pain of not voting for it in the next election. Ironically, ministers like Mr Jagmohan who took up the cudgels against them had to bite the dust, thanks to the opposition from their own parties. Enough is enough. Now is the time for the government to remove the impression that it is willing to prostrate before musclemen, moneybags and the influential at the cost of the law-abiding citizens. If it decides to bite the bullet, as it must, it can win the total support and admiration of the silent majority, which has viewed every instance of tame surrender with dismay. The lead that it takes in Delhi will be followed all over the country. |
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One year after The December 26, 2004, earthquake and the tsunami waves it unleashed killed 2,30,000 people in a dozen countries in the Indian Ocean region, including 15,000 lives in India that were snuffed out by fast moving mountains of water that caught them completely unawares. The quake staggered the earth in its orbit, altered shorelines, and shifted islands. One year later, the continental plates are still shuddering from aftershocks. Though India can be proud of both the initial response to the disaster and the subsequent rehabilitation efforts (the armed forces alone evacuated 6.5 lakh people), affected people are still struggling to put their lives back together. 27,000 families still live in make-shift shelters, income levels have dropped dramatically, and the emotional trauma will take a long time to heal. Various externally funded projects are likely to be completed only in 2008. After the first wave smashed into the Indian Air Force base at Car Nicobar, it took the tsunami, travelling at speeds of several hundred kilometres per hour, around 90 minutes to reach the Tamil Nadu coast. No warnings had gone out – most people didn’t even know what a tsunami was then. This should not happen again, and a multi-nation, Indian Ocean Tsunami Warning and Mitigation System is expected to be in place by July 2006. It will consist of a web of deep ocean sensors, tidal gauge monitors and seismic stations. India is carefully calibrating the levels of real-time sharing of data with others countries, which is understandable given the various, legitimate, security concerns it faces. India itself will be spending Rs 125 crore on the elements of the system. While a warning system is mandatory, other tasks, like modelling of inundation scenarios in vulnerable areas, are also important. Enforcement of regulations is critical. Earthquake data in urban centres is useless unless appropriate building regulations are enforced. The same goes for coastal regulations. Parliament has now passed the Disaster Management Act, but the institutional measures should translate into closing the delivery gap on the ground. When nature’s push comes to shove, preparedness levels and the judicious harnessing of resources will make the difference between life and death. |
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So foul and fair a day I have not seen.
— William Shakespeare |
Changing times What distinguishes true statesmanship from the run- of-the-mill foreign policy practitioners is the ability to recognise critical changes at international level and exploit them to the advantage of one’s own country. Mediocre minds tend to look at international relations as linear extrapolations of the past and thereby allow crucial opportunities to ship by. That the present is an extraordinary time — “one in which the terrain of international politics is shifting beneath our feet and the pace of historical change outstrips even the most vivid imagination” has been recognised in an article by the US Secretary of State, Dr Condoleezza Rice, in the Washington Post of December 11, 2005. Her plea is that “we must transcend the doctrines and debates of the past and transform volatile status quos that no longer serve our interests. What is needed is a realistic statecraft for a transformed world”. This is very sound advice not only to her countrymen but to the Indians as well. Since the end of World War II there have been three occasions when it could be said that periods of critical change like the present one occurred. They are firstly the initiation of the Cold War and the US formulation of the containment strategy. Kissenger’s visit to Beijing and China abandoning the Soviet Union and discarding communism was the second occasion to shake the world. The collapse of the Soviet Union, its dissolution and the end of the Cold War brought the era of bipolarity to an end. 9/11 was the start of the fourth era in international relations. Describing this period, Dr Rice says in her article, “For the first time since the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, the prospect of violent conflict between great powers is becoming ever more unthinkable. Major states are increasingly competing in peace, not preparing for war”. She defines the new international threat as weak and failing states serving as global pathways that facilitate the spread of pandemics, the movement of criminals and terrorists and the proliferation of the world’s most dangerous weapons. How did India react to these major events of unprecedented changes in international relations in the past? India responded to the outbreak of the Cold War and the US policy of containment by adopting nonalignment as its strategy. Though India was a democracy it could not alienate the Communist Soviet Union and China since the Communist Party in India at that time had chosen to resort to insurgency and Nehru felt that winning over the USSR and China through nonalignment would reduce their support to Communist insurgency, as it in fact did. The US went along with the British in supporting Pakistan on the Kashmir issue and bringing Pakistan into the CENTO and SEATO pacts. The nonalignment served India’s national security interests well. Even when China attacked India the Soviet Union proved a more reliable arms supplier than the West. When the US won over China in 1971 and a Pakistan-US-China combine supported Yehya Khan’s genocide and massive ethnic cleansing, expelling 10 million refugees into the Indian soil, the Indian response was the Indo-Soviet treaty to generate adequate deterrence against the Pakistan-China-US axis. According to the writings of Dr Henry Kissinger, the Chinese declined to initials military action against India during the Bangladesh war when instigated by the US, for fear of a possible Soviet move against them. In that sense the Indo-Soviet treaty proved very effective. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the US as the dominant super-power. India under the Prime Ministership of P.V. Narasimha Rao adjusted its foreign policy to the needs of the time. India sent an ambassador to Israel, muted its anti-US rhetoric, opened to the East and, above all, started building its nuclear arsenal and missiles. India also started integrating itself with the international community by launching on economic reforms. This process was taken to its completion by Mr Vajpayee’s NDA government by conducting the nuclear tests, pushing economic reforms further and cultivating the US more intensely which ended in the Clinton visit . The fourth unprecedented change was symbolised by the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the US. The new international situation emerging out of it has been aptly described by Dr Condoleezza Rice as a six- nation balance of power. The new US strategy for this era is cultivation of partnerships of other five actors in the balance of power — the European Union, Russia, Japan and, significantly, China and India. The US, in pursuit of its new strategy, has now decided to help India in its moves to become a world- class power in the 21st century. The July 18, 2005, Bush-Manmohan Singh joint statement is the result of this US strategy and India’s response to it. The opposition to this joint statement and consequent cultivation of the Indo-US partnership came from those who do not recognise that this is a moment of unprecedented change.These people deal with the history of the last 58 years as a linear extrapolation. They do not recognise the astuteness of the Indian statecraft as practised by Jawaharlal Nehru, Indira Gandhi, the P.V. Narasimha Rao-A.B. Vajpayee combine and now Dr Manmohan Singh. Till now, India was not recognised as a major player in the international system. The present recognition of this country’s role as one of the six players in the balance of power system is the clearest indication of India’s independent policy within the present framework in which major powers increasingly compete in peace and are not preparing for war against one another. Further, India’s partnership is solicited in the fight against various forms of international threats such as terrorism, anachronistic ideologies, parochialism of various kinds, pandemics, organised international crime, narcotics traffic, etc. Many of these threats originate from weak and failing states. Therefore, today the international community is prepared to accept the exceptionalisation of India from the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said at the combined commanders’ conference, “India is now reciprocating positively to the overtures of other major players in the global balance of power. No doubt, this involves sophisticated bargaining with each one of them. It is unrealistic to expect them to do anything for altruistic reasons. This balance of power politics in international relations is more sophisticated than the one in the Cold War era. We must learn to deal with this new reality and plan our long-term security based on proper appreciation of these trends.” From the above, it should be obvious the present Indian leadership is well equipped to deal with the unprecedented changes today when the US, the foremost power of the world, itself is adjusting itself to the extraordinary times of change. India is able to formulate its strategy to fit in with those of other great powers from a position of strength and advantage which the earlier leaderships did not
possess.
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Newspaper—then and now
Seven ages of newspaper reading” — that, I believe, was the caption of a cartoon-strip that I remember since my student days. As soon as a newspaper touches the doorstep, several hands grab its different pages. Imagine the cartoon-page in the hands of an eight-year old, sports page with a boy of 15, a young-man marking the “situations vacant”, a whit older one scrutinising matrimonial columns, a middle-aged man lost in the editorial page, an old man pouring over the business news, and a great-grandpa looking vacantly at the “Obituaries”! The other day, apropos a seminar, I recalled this cartoon and started mulling over the situation today. None in our family waits outside for the delivery boy: we know what to expect—courtesy TV. The youngest member is the first to open it: before rushing to school, she spends a minute to see her favourite cartoon. I am the last one to use it for bed-time reading. In between, it sort of rotates—at the breakfast table, in the kitchen, during afternoon tea, on return from work in the evening, and so on. My father rarely touches it although I remember that, in his own days, he used to spend hours on it. Finding it full of trivia and porn, he believes that it deserves to go direct to its destined end—the heap of raddi! “In our times, we used to read it for its educative value—for general knowledge, for thought-provoking articles, for imparting samskar. Now it is bullshit — no longer for decent people. It used to be pure ghee; now it is junk food.” My 40-year-old son, a lecturer, keeps complaining about the magazine section and the editorial page. “Nothing serious to read any more — only sensual, titillating stuff: glamour, violence, sex! Nothing on art and culture — all politics. Once the pride of the paper, the editorial page is the least read now.” He is always having a kind of debate with his younger brother, a computer-man in his mid-thirties, who is all praise for the new looks. “How much neater, cleaner, more colourful are the pages that used to be so dull and drab. What lovely package of the news and the views! In this age of technology, it would be most idiotic to stick to the old smudgy, grey format. It is good those comprehensive articles are gone: who has the time for long harangues and sermons? Brevity is the soul of wit and variety the spice of life. And how useful, pragmatic these pieces are — how to live, how to keep fit, how to succeed in life. Three cheers for the new avatar!” My grandson, in college, likes the new format for the glossy pictures of ads, fashions, lifestyle — and for juicy pieces about models, filmstars, sportsmen, singers. He finds the newspaper as exciting as life itself. His 15-year-old brother finds the paper “O K” — good-enough pastime through quiz-games, crossword puzzles, etc. In his little sister, the elders have an ally, as it were: she sees the cartoons but doesn’t find them half as funny as the animated, colourful versions on TV. Perhaps no one misses the old format as I do. I keep cursing: “Damn it, what is there to read? Bulkier, thanks to ads, but no substance. News is the raison d’etre of a newspaper, but there is nothing new or newsy here. So stale — the leftovers of the TV yesterday. To score some point, they keep whipping the dead horse — overdoing the media-trials. No wonder the press today has no credibility. Instead, there are tales involving bribing, bullying, blackmailing. Once revered as the Fourth Estate that looked after social values, political sanity, the press today is handmaiden of the big business houses. Worse, it is run on purely business lines — market-oriented. To “catch them young”, they are playing all kinds of tricks: instead of imbuing the young minds with ideas and ideals, they pander to their sensual demands. What a fall, my
countrymen!” |
How not to build a Sikh heritage complex
The Khalsa Heritage Memorial Complex coming up near Anandpur Sahib is the idea of a few at the helm of power in Punjab. It can be a great step towards the spiritual understanding and development of a particular section of the society of mankind, if it could have avoided being a political drama. Each and every historical moment exists in time and space as well as in the memories of people, scholars and historians. These events should not get buried in time, as have other great spiritual happenings since the Vedic era. We now call those as mythologies. The heritage and culture of Khalsa must be preserved with a scholastic mind. Since the birth of Khalsa, Sikhs have made their mark in every field. One such field is architecture. Examples abound, like the Golden Temple, the Quila Gobindgarh, Khalsa College at Amritsar, the five Takhats, and other historical Gurudwaras, Sarais and Bungas at various places in India. The Sikh monarchies of Patiala, Nabha, and Kapurthala had contributed to it. The Sikh style of art and architecture have been adopted and developed out of two great styles of Indian architecture in such a way that they reflect Sikh values and spirituality. The architectural design concept of the Khalsa Heritage Memorial Complex has ignored all such principles. It has many whimsical elements. A great leisure valley with an artificial lake and an arched foot bridge juxtaposes the past spiritual history of the Sikhs with the present day world of “Fun Cities,” drama and showmanship. The form and planning of the building does not suit the kind of environment that needs to be created for the purposes of heritage. The Khanda – the sign of bravery and strength of the Sikhs – is to come up in a remote corner of the complex. It is out of proportion, and lacks certain significant details and features. Its location and relation to the historical background and the dynamic natural environment as a whole is inappropriate. It is also pertinent to question how this project came into being, who framed the requirements of the heritage complex, what purpose it will serve to enlighten the future generations, and finally, why the character of this building has evolved out of contemporary industrial architecture. Sufficient harm has already been done to the surroundings and environment of the Anandpur Sahib, the birthplace of the Khalsa. The buildings and structures of various magnitudes, functions and styles are coming up in and around the vicinities of the Gurudwara Shri Keshgarh Sahib. There is the museum, the guest house, the residence of Singh Sahib – the head priest, diwan and langar hall, tourists huts, boundary wall and an over head water tank. Even the selection of plants and landscaping do not reflect the place where the great Guru created the great moment in history. The welcome gates on the road leading to Anandpur Sahib were built to mark ceremonies of the birth of Khalsa; they are merely the replica of gates already built by the various Panchayat Samitis of the villages in Punjab. The location is improper and the design and form of these gates do not reflect the pride of the Khalsa and the actions of a great warrior, saint and scholar. Architects with commercial inclinations should not be allowed to pollute a great history. It is, therefore, important for the Sikhs to develop their own research cells that could lead to innovative ideas in architecture and urban design, appropriate to their part of the world. In Arab countries, there are Ministries of Justice and Awqaf which keep a watch on new design concepts, particularly for religious and heritage buildings. It is important for Sikhs to take timely advice from scholars of history and the faith and complete a comprehensive master plan for Anandpur Sahib and its surroundings. The interrelation of all historical locations and events, with modern scientific technologies and new educational concepts, should form the nucleus of the project during the planning stage. The Khalsa heritage is a very vast subject that touches upon every aspect of human life. In designing a complex to reflect it, one must have a harmonious, conservative approach, integrating pride in the past with the interdependent, present-day system of various lifestyles. It should add to the education system and enhance the socio-economic set-up, and be a guiding spirit for future
generations.
The writer is a Chandigarh based architect.
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The idea of Haryana Haryana is now officially the most prosperous state in the country with the highest per capita income. But the Haryanvi elites are still not happy. They are uncomfortable with the fact that the state does not have a sufficiently vibrant art and culture scene. The feeling surfaced in the recently concluded Assembly session. “Haryana needs a separate capital”, thundered the Finance Minister, Mr Birender Singh. “The art and culture of a state cannot flourish if it does not have its own capital”, the minister said moving his clenched fists up and down as he spoke. Mr Shamsher Singh Surjewala, MLA from Kaithal and former Haryana Congress chief, who spoke before Mr Birender Singh, also echoed similar sentiments. Later, talking to this reporter, Mr Surjewala said he was personally of the view that Chandigarh could be transferred to Punjab if Haryana was sufficiently compensated by the Centre and the Punjab government for setting up its own capital. “In no field — be it arts, science or culture — a state can go ahead if it does not have its own capital”, said the Congress leader. Mr Naresh Yadav, Independent MLA and relatively junior to the two leaders already quoted, says people living in the countryside of Haryana hesitate if they have to come to Chandigarh for any work. “They cannot think of Chandigarh as the capital of their state”, he says. The idea is that formation of a separate capital for the state is one way to go about the project of drawing up its cultural contours. Chandigarh is dominated by Punjabis and is considered unsuitable for the promotion of Haryanvi culture. The yearning brings to the fore the Haryanvi elites’ quest for a distinct cultural identity. This is strange for a state that is literally strewn with a large number of ancient historical sites, including the Kurukshetra. But, these cultures are, perhaps, too old to leave any tangible imprint on the Haryanvis. Haryana apparently lost out during the Muslim rule because it did not have any worthwhile local prince to promote cultural or literary activities. It remained in the backwaters during the British period as well when the introduction of English triggered of an intellectual and cultural revolution in some other parts of the country. While states like Jharkhand and Meghalaya were carved out from larger states due to popular demands raised by the Jharkhandis and Khasis, no such agitation preceded the formation of Haryana. In the absence of any popular movement for Haryana, hardly any initiative has ever been taken in the academic arena to justify the creation of the state carved out from Punjab in 1966. Figures obtained from the Panjab University library sometime ago showed only 174 assorted items on Haryana as against a staggering 1005 entries related to Punjab. Mr Surjewala, Mr Birender Singh and Mr Naresh Yadav are among those who want to set the process in motion from the top by moving the Haryana capital away from Chandigarh. |
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Bloggers, money in information war Retired soldier Bill Roggio was a computer technician living in New Jersey less than two months ago when a US Marine officer half a world away made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Frustrated by the media coverage of the Iraq war, the Marines invited Roggio, 35, who writes a popular Web log about the military called “The Fourth Rail” (www.billroggio.com), to cover the war from the front lines. He raised more than $30,000 from his online readers to pay for airfare, technical equipment and body armor. A few weeks later, he was posting dispatches from a remote outpost in western Anbar province, a hotbed of Iraq’s insurgency. “I was disenchanted with the reporting on the war in Iraq and the greater war on terror and felt there was much to the conflict that was missed,” Roggio, who is currently stationed with Marines along the Syrian border, wrote in an e-mail response to written questions. ``What is often seen as an attempt at balanced reporting results in underreporting of the military’s success and strategy and an overemphasis on the strategically minor success of the jihadists or insurgents.’’ Roggio’s arrival in Iraq comes amid what military commanders and analysts say is an increasingly aggressive battle for control over information about the conflict. Scrutiny of what the Pentagon calls information operations heightened late last month, when news reports revealed that the U.S. military was paying Iraqi journalists and news organizations to publish favorable stories written by soldiers, sometimes without disclosing the military’s role in producing them. In addition, the military has paid money to try to place favorable coverage on television stations in three Iraqi cities, according to an Army spokesman, Maj. Dan Blanton. The military, said Blanton, has given one of the stations about $35,000 in equipment, is building a new facility for $300,000 and pays $600 a week for a weekly program that focuses positively on U.S. efforts in Iraq. The names of the city and the television station are being withheld because the producer of the show said he and his staff would be seen as collaborators and endangered if identified. A local U.S. Army National Guard commander acknowledged that his officers “suggest” stories to the station and review the content of the program in a weekly meeting before it is aired. Though the commander denied that payments were made to the station, the Iraqi television producer said his staff got $1,000 a month from the military. It does not disclose any financial relationship to viewers. There was no explanation of the discrepancy between that amount and the figure of $600 per week provided by Blanton. Military officials say they have stepped up their responses to insurgent groups’ attempts to influence news coverage – including attacks aimed at media organizations, such as a pair of recent bombings at Baghdad hotels where journalists stay, attacks that officers and analysts said were designed to generate large-scale coverage. Marine officer Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool praised the work of Michael Yon (michaelyon.blogspot.com), an independent author and blogger who embedded for almost a year with a U.S. Army unit in the northern city of Mosul. “His reporting was objective, credible and compelling. But most of all, it was independent,’’ Pool said. “He didn’t have to worry about alterations to what he wrote, and he had no competition from other news sources to churn out a ‘marketable’ product on a day-to-day
basis.”
— LA Times-Washington Post
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From the pages of What is caste today?
Mr Gandhi has given, unconsciously, the same definition of caste as it is to-day, which others, including Swami Vivekananda, have given consciously before him. Inter-drinking, inter-dining and inter-marrying, he says, are not essential for the promotion of the spirit of democracy. Does not this mean, in other words, that these are what caste has been reduced to to-day? And this is literally true Caste, as it exists to-day, consists only in the prohibition of inter-drinking, inter dining and inter-marrying. So far at any rate, as the higher castes are concerned, not only is there no rigid line of division as regards either work or intelligence and character, but even the sense of superiority and inferiority has largely, if not solely, disappeared. No Kshatriya or Vaisya to-day regards a Brahmin by birth as his superior, nor does a Brahmin by birth regard either of these as his inferior. |
The angry one who barks and abuses, suffers humiliation in consequence. Education in the understanding of citizenship is a short-term affair if we are honest and earnest. A donkey anointed with sandal-paste will still roll in dust. A dog remains a dog, even if anointed with sandal-paste. Only when man has his fall of material objects, does he care to raise his eyes upwards. Today you say, that you will pray to God tomorrow and tomorrow you will again delay it to the next day. By repeatedly things you lose all opportunities in this life. Literary education should follow the education of the hand—the one gift that visibly distinguishes man from beast. Let us deck ourselves with the silks of merits and embellishments of virtue. Let us adopt our arena (i.e. field of duty) and stick to our ideal steadfastly. Priya (pleasure) is sought for sensual gratification.
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