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Iran on a slippery path Needed expansion |
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Sea sentinels
PM wishes Musharraf well, but says “I cannot change borders”
Gypsy song of wine
Tribal culture threatened by RSS-sponsored Kumbh Biocrops growing worldwide Chatterati
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Iran on a slippery path THE Iranian nuclear issue is becoming more serious with Teheran having resumed its uranium enrichment programme after breaking the seals of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on its nuclear facilities. The US and the European Union’s Big Three —- Britain, France and Germany —- have severely criticised Iran for its arrogant behaviour. They have begun making moves for an emergency meeting of the IAEA so that the matter can be quickly referred to the Security Council for sanctions. Russia, which had earlier not been supportive of such a course of action, too, is reportedly not averse to it now. The proponents of taming Teheran with sanctions by the Security Council have to only convince China to agree to their viewpoint. Once China also joins their drive, it will be almost impossible for Iran to escape what the Security Council decides. The Iranians are themselves to blame for most major world players turning against them. First Iran violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is a signatory, by hiding its controversial uranium enrichment activities with a view to realising its unrealistic nuclear ambitions. When its real intentions were exposed, it took the plea that whatever it was doing was only meant for peaceful purposes. It, however, could not satisfy the EU-Three when they tried to sort out the matter through diplomacy. Iran also rejected a Russian proposal, allowing Teheran to pursue its “peaceful” nuclear programme by using Russian territory. This, however, does not mean that the path of diplomacy is no longer available, or should be abandoned. Still the situation can be reversed by convincing Iran that it was in the interest of every party involved, including Teheran, to prevent the issue from reaching the Security Council, which will lead to disastrous consequences. India is sending a Joint Secretary-level official to Teheran to perhaps assess the Iranian mood. India should make an attempt to find out whether it can be of any help. Diplomacy can still be a means to bring about the desired results because most of those involved in the crisis appear to be, in principle, against a confrontationist approach.
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Needed expansion WITH the induction of four new members, the strength of the 10-month-old Haryana Council of Ministers has gone up to 13. That is well within the provisions of the 91st Constitution Amendment which provides that the total number of ministers should not exceed 15 per cent of the total number of members of the House (the Haryana Assembly has a strength of 90). But as they say, the devil lies in details. Soon after the induction of the ministers, there was another swearing-in for one Chief Parliamentary Secretary and seven Parliamentary Secretaries. Technically, they are not ministers, but for all practical purposes, the posts are equally lucrative. The Supreme Court is yet to pronounce its judgement on the matter. To that extent, their appointment may not be illegal, but there is a big question mark on its ethicality. The appointment of a large army of Parliamentary Secretaries is seen as just a roundabout way to get past the ceiling fixed by the Constitution. This was struck down by the Himachal Pradesh High Court some time ago, but Punjab has Parliamentary Secretaries in strength. So, what Haryana has done is only as right or wrong as is the case with its neighbour. Two vacancies in the Hooda ministry arose because of the death of Irrigation Minister Surinder Singh, son of former Chief Minister Bansi Lal, and Power Minister O.P. Jindal in a helicopter crash in March last year. The widows of these senior members, Mrs Kiran Chaudhary and Mrs Savitri Jindal, have now been sworn in. The other two new faces are Mr Harmohinder Singh Chatha and Ms Meena Rani. Mr Chatha had resigned as Haryana Assembly Speaker on January 12 to pave the way for his induction into the Cabinet. On the other hand, Mrs Kiran Chaudhary has been the Deputy Speaker of the Delhi Assembly. Both of them thus have sufficient experience. Women have now been given due representation in the Cabinet. Not only that, Ms Meena Rani happens to be a member of the Scheduled Caste while Mr Chatha belongs to the minority Sikh community. Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda now has a more representative Council of Ministers.
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Sea sentinels WITH the commissioning of the Indian Naval Air Squadron (INAS) 342, the Indian Navy has its first squadron of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Dubbed the “Flying Sentinels” INAS 342, to be based at the Southern Naval Command headquarters at Kochi, it has a complement of 12 Heron and Searcher Mark II UAVs, all made in Israel. UAVs are remotely piloted aircraft which carry a variety of sensors, cameras, radars and laser designators, for reconnaissance, surveillance, and target acquisition. They can be used in both offensive and defensive roles. The Navy, which has a rich history of naval aviation, has been flying UAVs on a trial basis since 2003, and they were also found useful for search and rescue operations after the December 2004 tsunami. UAVs’ size makes them difficult to detect, and since no pilot is required, no human life need be put in danger. Missions are also not dependent on human limits to endurance and survivability. Accurate and real-time information leading to a dominant situational awareness is of increasing importance in the modern battlefield, where the trend is towards precision munitions being delivered from stand-off range. It is also important for a country like India, with a very long coastline, and porous and hostile land borders. While India had expressed its interest in UAVs in the mid-nineties itself, the Kargil war spurred an acquisition spree for both the Army and the Air Force. UAVs are not only getting smaller, their capabilities are also improving. The Heron itself reportedly has a range of 3300 kilometres and can “loiter” in the air for 52 hours. Some can even drop small bombs, and full-fledged Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles (U-CAVs) are in the process of development. India’s import dependence is a worry. DRDO’s attempt at an indigenous UAV, the Nishanth, though it has won some orders, needs drastic improvement. Indian weaknesses in the development of both sensors and flight systems need to be corrected if India is not to be left behind.
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Life would be tolerable but for its amusements. — George Cornewall Lewis
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PM wishes Musharraf well,
PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh has always been effusive and warm whenever I have discussed with him India-Pakistan relations. I have found him this time a bit distressed and disappointed. He is not as optimistic as before because he says he does not know what is in the mind of Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf. The Prime Minister says he was impressed by President Musharraf at their meeting in New York and he may go to Pakistan to meet him. “After all, I have an invitation for a visit,” he adds. But he regrets that despite President Musharraf’s promise, cross-border terrorism has not stopped and the machinery to sustain it has not been dismantled yet. May be, General Musharraf is under pressure from within his own country, the Prime Minister wonders. He is full of praise for President Musharraf for trying to modernise his country. He may well turn out to be another Kamal Ataturk. “I wish him well,” says the Prime Minister. “But he must appreciate my difficulties. I have told him that I could not change the borders, nor could I divide the state on the basis of religion. I have no such mandate from the nation.” The bomb blasts in Delhi a few months ago are uppermost in the Prime Minister’s mind. He says that relations between India and Pakistan were improving at a good pace. People were shedding mistrust. “Then the bomb blasts in Delhi take place,” says the Prime Minister. There is reverse and everything stops. “We reacted to the situation calmly and responsibly.” But where do we go from here? Pakistan has to make sure that there is no cross-border terrorism. The US too has “assured us on this point.” The meeting with the Prime Minister was a day before the Bangalore shootout. I told him that the people-to-people contact on a large scale, in thousands, along with free trade between the two countries would provide the sinews of peace and normalise the situation. In reply, the Prime Minister said that he was already being attacked for opening up points at the LoC. Increasing incidents of terrorism in India were being linked with his liberal policy. As for trade, he said he had proposed “several business packages” but Pakistan had turned them down on the ground that there had to be a settlement on Kashmir before the resumption of trade. The main purpose of my seeking an appointment with the Prime Minister was to know from him what he considered was the most distinctive feature of his one-and-a-half-year rule. Without any hesitation he said: the economy. India was having a growth rate of more than 8 per cent annually and that the prospects of doing still better were good. By the time his government finished its tenure, he said, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme Act would have covered the entire country. More and more opportunity would be available in different fields and different areas, particularly in the countryside. He was confident about India’s bright future and there was glow in his eyes when he said that. Foreign policy was doing well, he said. In the last one and a half years of his government’s tenure, the US, Great Britain, Russia and Europe, all were “very friendly” to India. With China, the Prime Minister said, the discussions were going on the border and Beijing had itself taken up “substantive points” of the problem. Still Mr L.K. Advani said that Dr Manmohan Singh was a “nikamma” (inept) Prime Minister. The remark still rankled the Prime Minister, although he was laughing when he was repeating the words. He did not want to comment on the BJP or the disarray in which the party was. His elegance did not allow him to do that. But he did not think much of the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government’s record. “We are determined to end the role of money in elections,” the Prime Minister said. He mentioned the effort his government was making towards that direction by trying to allocate funds for financing the poll campaign of political parties. “The communists think that you are the World Bank man,” I said. “Where does this remark fit in when everything we are doing is according to the Common Minimum Programme to which we agreed before the formation of the United Progressive Alliance (UPA),” countered the Prime Minister. He was averse to joining issue with the communists but wanted to know where the government had strayed off course. He said none could deny that the US was the most powerful country in the world and that its economy was the strongest. Probably, lest the Prime Minister should be misunderstood, he said: “I am not under the US pressure of any type.” When I touched upon Sri Lanka, I got the impression that India did not want to “get involved”. The Prime Minister recalled what India had gone through in the past. He mentioned the Indian Peace Keeping Force which was made to quit. This conversation, incidentally, took place a day before the arrival of Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajpakse. My impression has turned out to be correct because India has offered all support to the peace process without becoming part of it. All assistance would be available from outside and a tab would be kept of the progress made about the parleys between the Sri Lanka government and the LTTE. The general belief in Colombo, where I was after Mr Rajpakse’s visit to India, was that New Delhi wanted to wait till after the elections in Tamil Nadu. (The ruling UPA has 40 MPs from Tamil Nadu and most of them have a bit of sympathy for the Lankan Tamils.) The Prime Minister was not unduly worried over Bangladesh. He said he held a long talk with Prime Minister Khalida Zia during his visit to Dhaka. He had invited her to visit India and hoped she would come soon. What worried him about India was the “increasing provincial and parochial outlook.” Political parties did not see things “in totality.” They tended to perceive a situation from their own point of view. “Certain issues have to be kept above politics because they relate to the country’s welfare, its growth and progress,” the Prime Minister said. He felt exasperated that parties did not rise above their “petty self”. When Mr Vajpayee was the Prime Minister, I heard him making the same point: certain things had to be kept above politics because they concerned the country’s interests. He too talked about the consensus. Why does the same political party begin to view things differently when it is out of power, I wonder? Why can’t the country’s interests be kept above that of the
parties?
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Gypsy song of wine IN a nation which is not overtly fond of reading for pleasure and relaxation, it was surprising that among the first few public amenities that came up in Chandigarh was the State Library! Opened in 1956, it was temporarily housed in a government building in Sector 23. The founder librarian was a short, stocky and barrel-chested Sikh with an awesome, long list of degrees and diplomas from prestigious establishments in the US. He was quick to spot members who fancied the printed word. No matter how often they visited, B.S. Gujrati always welcomed them to his office to invite opinions on books. His table was invariably a heap of book-trade literature. Mr Gujrati was quietly and assiduously busy placing orders and creating a stock of some five thousand hard-bound books which would fill the shelves when the library opened its permanent building in Sector 17, in 1961. When on a few days’ leave in 1962, I was privileged to be conducted around the spanking new library personally by Mr Gujrati. Among the books that I have read and often remember, some were from this State Library. A few days ago, I was impelled to the library to seek out one such old favourite. The provocation was provided by a few articles on wines and wine-bibbing published in the various supplements of The Tribune, recently. The book was the autobiography of Sir Robert Lockheart, a career diplomat who had had his first assignment in Romania, in the first decade of the 20th century. Lockheart had at once come under the spell of the Romanian Gypsys so completely that he earned a severe reprimand from his superiors for ignoring his primary duty. Of the many charming insights into their culture, Lockheart had recounted this very lively gypsy song of wine: “Fine, fine tastes the red wine, when one is twenty and ready for love. Fine, fine tastes the red wine, when one is thirty and full of love. Fine, fine tastes the red wine, when one is forty and steeped in love. when fifty, one kisses ever the more gladly Because when older and Alas ! a bit colder, All that remains is The Red wine, The Red wine, The Red wine!” I was unable to validate my memory-recall of the Song of Wine against Lockheart’s text as the book is no longer catalogued by the library. Another autobiography lost from the shelves is “The Eye of the wind” by Sir Peter Scot, the man who gave to the Global Nature Conservation movement that loveable logo of the Giant Panda. Persisting with search, there was one moment when my heart skipped in happiness because the catalogue acknowledged the title “Portraits of Greatness” by Karsh of Ottawa. He was perhaps the greatest photo-portrait artist of all times. His portraits of Churchill, Nehru, Hemingway, Margot Fonteyn, Audrey Hepburn and the rest needed not a word of text to introduce the subject. Happiness turned into disappointment and then into silent rage. This book too is untraceable. But never mind, while the memory of the Gypsy song of wine is alive,
still.
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Tribal culture threatened by RSS-sponsored Kumbh Gujarat continues to be the laboratory of Hindutva for the Sangh Parivar as the RSS begins its latest experiment in the tribal district of Dang where a three-day long “Shabri Kumbh” will begin on February 11. The RSS organisations like the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, the Hindu Jagran Manch and the VHP have been active in the tribal belts of Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Gujarat and Rajasthan for some years now, but the Shabri Kumbh is the first major communalisation exercise. Slogans like “Hindu Jago, Christi Bhagao” (Arise Hindus, throw out Christians) are being used to create hatred. A Citizen’s Inquiry Committee, consisting of Editor Jalseva Digant Oza, Anhad representatives Harsh Mander and Shabnam Hashmi, Director of the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism Irfan Engineer, Aman Samudaya convener Lakshmanbhai Rathore, Action Aid Gujarat Regional Director Prasad Chacko, All India Secular Forum Secretary Ram Puniyani, PUCL representative in Vadodara Rohit Prajapati, Dharma Nirpeksh Nagrik Manch Convener Suresh Khairnar and Uttambhai Parmar visited the area and has prepared an interesting and revealing report ‘Untold Story of Hindukaran (proselytisation) of Adivasis in Dang”. The committee observed that “even the pretence of distance between the state apparatus and the Sangh has been abandoned. The local administration, its functionaries, vehicles and funds are openly used for the advancement of the intensively divisive state agenda”. Dang Collector R.M. Jadhav “justified communal mobilisation as religious and cultural awakening, thus unabashedly adopting the rhetoric and idiom of the Hindutva forces”, the report pointed out. “It is a political game to mislead the Adivasis, and divert their anger at pauperisation and dispossession by the state and non-Adivasis outsiders, by cynically creating a pseudo-mythology”. Kumbh Mela is not a religious issue. It is not a battle of Hindus against Christians. Dang became the pet RSS ground after the ascendancy of the BJP to the state government in 1995 and to the Centre in 1996. Anti-Christian propaganda was raised to the boiling point resulting in the burning of three dozen churches on December 25 and 26, 1998. As a matter of fact, the Sangh efforts had become intensive and penetrating after the arrival of VHP functionary from West Bengal Swami Aseemanand in Dang in 1997. “The cultural indoctrination of Adivasis as Hindus is the core focus of the campaign” by the Kumbh organisers as new myths are being created. While Adivasi empowerment is the need of the hour, the RSS, through its Kumbh, is trying to divert the attention from the real issues. Outsiders have as such grabbed Adivasi land. The RSS would not like Tribal people to become conscious of these anomalies. This is one strong reason for the RSS to threaten the education process being run by the Christian missionaries. Kumbh is aimed at alienating the Adivasis from their land and culture, to Hinduise them to build a majority constituency on the basis of religion and to reap the political benefits, and to create grave divisions in the name of religion, changing their eating habits and political affiliations, says the report. One objective is to divert “the growing consciousness of the Dangi Adivasis about their traditional rights and self-rule to communal and anti-tribal and anti-people issues. The Sangh method to achieve its goals are interesting as Shabri, a tribal figure in Ramayana who had fed Lord Ram with berries which had been first tasted by her lest they were bitter, is being used as a vehicle to convert Adivasis to Hinduism. Though the District Gazetteer mentions that there are legends that Ram and Lakshman roamed the forests of Dang and met their Bhil devotee Shabri here. But similar legends prevail in many parts of the country, and the local Adivasis in the past never held Ram and Shabri in any special reverence. Their gods are mainly animistic, and they worshipped the spirits of animals, crops, hills and many other creatures and objects of nature and daily living. The VHP and the Vanvasi Kalyan Ashram, in their zeal to convert tribal people into Hinduism, have found the Shabri legend useful because of her tribal origins and her loyalty to the chosen icon of Hindutva Ram. The legend is being propagated that Ram had visited Dang, which, according to the Sangh, is Dandakaranya of Ramayana. A nearby hill, Chamak Dongar (Shining Mountain), has been touted as the exact place where Ram met Shabri and ate the wild berries tasted by her. It is interesting that the politically driven faith of Sangh followers is as certain of exact location of Ram’s meeting with Shabri as it is of the birthplace of Ram in Ayodhya. A Shabri temple (Shabri Dham) was constructed in 2004 for which land was grabbed by the Assemanand and Kumbh Trust. Initially, a local was forced to donate 1.25 acres of land; later they forced him to part with nine acres, and within a month they felled over 700 trees (natural as well as planted) from that plot of land. With a view to turning the myth into reality, the Sangh activists have also created a small pond called “Pampa sarovar” where Shabri’s Guru Matang Rishi used to bathe. The pond has been created by building check dams on the Purna river by misusing official funds. The Kumbh mela is being held here.
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Biocrops growing worldwide SINCE genetically modified crops were first planted a decade ago, the acreage devoted to them worldwide has been growing at double-digit rates, and it did so again last year, jumping 11 percent to 222 million acres, according to a new report. The crops are gaining popularity in middle-income countries like China, India and Brazil, the report says, with small cotton farmers in particular embracing a technology that allows them to grow more cotton while reducing the use of chemical pesticides. The report notes that the world’s most important food crop, rice, could be on the verge of a transformation. Iran has already commercialised gene-altered rice and China appears nearly ready to do so, the report says. Widespread acceptance of such rice could put crop biotechnology into the hands of the tens of millions of small rice farmers who grow nearly half the calories eaten by the human race. Commercialisation of rice that has been genetically altered to resist insects “has enormous implications for the alleviation of poverty, hunger and malnutrition, not only for the rice-growing and — consuming countries in Asia, but for all biotech crops and their acceptance on a global basis,” says the report, compiled by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications. The group publishes an annual review, funded partly by the Rockefeller Foundation, that is considered the definitive global analysis of trends in crop biotechnology. Proponents of the technology welcomed the findings, saying that the spread of biotech crops demonstrates their usefulness for farmers and society. But two advocacy groups pre-emptively attacked the new report before it was published, putting out reports of their own this week that questioned industry “hype’’ and disputed the impact of gene-altered crops. The Polaris Institute, an anti-globalization group in Ottawa, acknowledged that biotech crop acreage appears to be increasing but noted that the technology is still concentrated in a handful of countries, with the United States, Argentina, Canada and Brazil accounting for 90 percent of the world’s biotech acreage. The group pointed out that the technology is widely used in only a few crops—mainly cotton, corn, soy and canola. Industry claims that the technology would help alleviate poverty in Africa have proven illusory so far, the group said, a point echoed by a report from environmental group Friends of the Earth. And the groups said growing biotech crops can hurt farmers’ export markets in countries that are skeptical of the technology. “Instead of wholesale adoption, we are seeing at most experimentation,” David Macdonald, a Polaris Institute analyst, said in a statement. “Worldwide farmers have good reason to be wary.” It’s clear, in fact, that even after a decade of growth, biotech crops are grown on only a small fraction of the world’s arable land — well under one percent. But the trend is also clear: When they were first commercialized in 1996, biotech crops were planted on 4.3 million acres in six countries, but the report says that by 2005 farmers were planting them on 222 million acres in 21 countries. “Biotech crops deliver substantial agronomic, environmental, economic, health and social benefits to farmers and, increasingly, to society at large,” the report says.
— LA Times-Washington Post
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Chatterati THE latest craze the world over has finally arrived in India too, whether it is behind the curtain or in the open. Tourism Minister Renuka Chowdhry released a book titled “Botox”. Indian doctor Pandey from Mumbai, who is the uncrowned king of plastic surgery in India, has written the book. Till now Botox and fillers were used by glamour world and public faces. It was expensive and not so readily available. But today the middle class also coming into enough money and, thankfully, having the exposure via the media, every girl/woman/grandmother wants to look her best. Botox is considered the quick, easy, non-painful and non-surgical face-lift available. As usual one needs to beware of quacks, who have no knowledge of the treatment and it could backfire and prove disastrous if not handled properly. So we have an easy-to-read book, which guides us on how to use these age-reversal injections. Of course, in the glamour world they are being used even by men. It is, of course, another story that you need to be as bold as Pooja Bedi to own up to having botox or live with lines on your face which after all we have all worked so hard through our lives to get them. But it is people like Pooja and other glamour girls who have actually started having Botox kitty lunches and clubs where everybody admires each other’s fading away of lines by a mere prick of a needle. These ladies are open and confident enough to acknowledge this treatment. Pinning hope on Priyanka As usual for Ms Priyanka Gandhi’s birthday, Congress workers went over-board shouting slogans and planting posters all over town to try and change Priyanka’s mind to join politics. The UP (PCC), while finalising its list of 135 AICC delegates for the Hyderabad preliminary session, has kept two slots vacant. The leaders have approached Priyanka with a request. If Priyanka accepts the request to become an AICC delegate, it will obviously have a political meaning. Priyanka will be technically qualified to be one of the 2,500-odd AICC delegates who will attend the sessions. It is with great enthusiasm that the Congresswalas in UP want Priyanka to come with her magic wand to save them from disaster. In the panchayat elections in the state the Congress was wiped out while Mulayam and Mayawati were winners. The Congresswalas in UP had great expectations from Rahul Gandhi, but Rahul has so far refrained from even touring the state. In fact, Congress workers all over the country feel let down by the revamping of the AICC. It was clearly a damp squib. It was like the old wine in old bottles. Nothing changed. Powerful Friday Friday the 13th got a desi touch this year. Call it a misfit or sheer coincidence, but the ominous Friday and the auspicious Punjabi festival of Lohri fell together this year. According to Western beliefs, Friday the 13th is considered superstitious for more reasons than one, but astrologers believe that Lohri coinciding with it had nothing to do with the Biblical approach. “Friday the 13th is a myth and America loses Rs 4000 crore on this day every year. Astrologically and religiously, today is an auspicious day, but numerologically, the date i.e. 13/01/2006 adds up to number “4” which is an inauspicious number. But all is going to be well as the God of fire would keep evil forces at bay,” said many astrologers. This year incidentally, Friday, which is Daitya Guru Shukracharya’s day, fell on Lohri, thus making the day twice as powerful. This made it even special, but the prayers offered as part of the Lohri tradition could help curb the evil.
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From the pages of Chauri Chaura Case IN no previous politico-criminal case that we remember were so large a number of persons sentenced to the highest punishment which it is in the power of any court to inflict as in the Chauri Chaura Case, One hundred and seventy-two persons sentenced to death — it almost takes one’s breath away to read the mere statement! Such sentences are almost calculated to make men forget the undoubted gravity of the alleged offence of the accused in the sympathy they will evoke and the sensation they will cause. We have no doubt that the higher authorities will not allow so extraordinary a judgement to stand….
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Don’t be so proud and vain remember about the clutches of Time. Who knows when and where shall it kill, whether at home or overseas? —Kabir Only that person who has cleansed himself from all sins, who adheres to the path of truth, who adheres to the path of truth, who is temperate in thought and action; only such a person can wear the yellow robe of an ascetic. —The Buddha “For those do good is ten times that much”. The reward of good is ten times what is merits; this is attributed to the pleasure and grace of God, the epitome of generosity and beneficence. —Islam In mediation one must be absorbed in God. By merely floating on the surface can you reach the gems lying at the bottom of the sea? —Ramakrishna
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