Kathmandu, January 21
Over 500 political activists, including prominent leaders of Nepal's pro-democracy seven party alliance, were today arrested as police swooped down on anti-king protests in various parts of the capital firing tear gas and baton-charging demonstrators.

The agitators carrying party flags clashed with policemen at several places in the city resulting in injuries to many people. Several activists were rounded by riot policemen.

Those arrested include former Foreign Minister Ramsharan Mahat, former Finance Minister Mahesh Acharya, both from the Nepali Congress, Standing Committee member of Nepal Communist Party-UML Yuvraj Gyawali, United Left Front Leader Prabhunarayan Chaudhari, former Nepali Congress MP Eknath Bhat and CPN-UML leaders Bimala Khanal and Ratna Guruna, party sources said.

The police baton-charged agitators even after arresting them as they chanted slogans like "King Gyanendra Quit Power", "Restore Multiparty Democracy", "Boycott Deceptive Municipal Polls", "End State Terrorism", "Nepalese People will not bow down", "Democracy is Ours".

More than 400 were arrested yesterday and day before by the security forces.

''The state expressed its cowardly nature by arresting the fundamental rights of people,'' Madhav Nepal said.

Meanwhile, Maoists triggered a series of bomb explosions across Nepal killing at least six policemen and injuring several others amidst a mounting face off between the seven-party Opposition alliance and the Royal Government which clamped daytime curfew to suppress pro-democracy protests. — Agencies

London, January 21
The Government of India granted dual citizenship to non-resident Indians/people of Indian origin, who left India after 1950 and whose adopted countries allowed them to acquire citizenship of another country.

It also announced its intention to grant voting rights to non-resident Indians living in the Gulf countries.

Print and electronic media carried headlines about the pronouncements of the Prime Minister and other senior government officials about the bounty to these categories of ‘Indogenic’ people. No one has cared to use the exact terminology for what the government has actually granted.

.The government cannot ‘grant’ dual citizenship to NRIs. These people are Indian nationals and full citizens of India. They, therefore, do not need reassertion of their rights as nationals of India. In case any one of them ceases to be Indian national/citizen, he or she becomes a foreign national and, therefore is no longer an NRI( the Indian Income tax Department’s description of Indians who are not taxable in India as they are liable to paying tax in another country).

Had the government decided that in case the NRIs acquired citizenship of another country, he or she would/could retain Indian passport and citizenship, one could have said that the government had given dual citizenship.

This has been done by several countries, such as Australia, Canada, and the Pilipinnes. Let’s make no mistake. The Government of India has not granted dual citizenship to NRIs.

The government has created a new category of visitors called overseas citizens - a category which can visit India without visa and there would be no restrictions on their duration of stay in India.

Their right to work, however, would be restricted and they would neither be able to vote nor contest elections or hold certain offices of the state.

In the USA they call them green cardholders and in the UK they are called residents who can stay there indefinitely. In the USA green cardholders are not entitled to vote but in the UK they have the right to vote.

The government’s intention to allow Gulf Indians to vote in Indian elections is purely based on political expediency. A large number are from Kerala, and thus the Congress will be the biggest gainer of this votebank.

Increased political mobilisation by Indian politicians in these countries, on the other hand, could create greater awareness of political rights among the Gulf citizens, which may not be to the liking of these governments. It could have serious repercussions for the Indian workforce.

In any case, the government will not be able to restrict voting rights to those living in Gulf countries alone. NRIs living in other countries would also demand a similar right to vote. The NDA government, which started the whole process of granting overseas ‘citizenship’ first, restricted this right to PIOs living in eight countries.

Later, it extended to those living in 16 countries. The UPA government, there after extended this right to PIOs living in any country. The criteria were that his/her country allowed dual citizenship and that the applicant fulfilled other requirements laid down by law.

Besides requiring elaborate arrangements for several million workers to cast their vote from foreign lands and prevent vote rigging, how would the government circumvent the current provision in the law that voters can exercise this right from an area where they ordinarily reside?

The government should also consider holding diaspora jamboree once in two years instead of holding it every year. The numbers of those who attend this annual function has been declining every year. The Hyderabad function this year was attended by not more than 500 PIOs/ NRIs. This is in spite of the fact that a large number of Indian parvasis visit India during the winter.

The number of those from Andhra Pradesh in the US is very large. Most of them are well- heeled. Even then not many came to the function. The largest contingent was from Malaysia. Constraints of time, distance and travel costs probably restricted the numbers from the US.

If the main purpose of holding this annual function or the grant of overseas ‘citizenship’ is to attract PIOs/ NRIs to invest in India, I wonder how many from Malaysia or Mauritius can invest in India.

The Indian community in Malaysia is not very affluent. Much of the investment from Mauritius is only routed through that country because of certain concession granted to that country.

My own sense is that investment from PIOs/NRIs and other foreign entities would increase if the Government of India and states can finetune their laws and regulations and generally improve governance.

Lack of adequate infrastructure, tortuous process of putting up any small or big industry and more than anything else, the corruption at central and state levels, hinders investment in India.

International organisations and multinationals put India high on the list of corrupt administrations.

The governance is also poor. At the macro level, India took some decisions of economic liberalisation, though under international pressure, which greatly benefited India.

The advantages have been cancelled by continued inspector raj and corruption from the highest to the lowest level. The bureaucratic attitude has also hindered the country’s progress.

Once these hurdles are minimised, businesses and industry from far and wide would come to India. PIOs and NRIs would be in the forefront.

Houston, January 21
An Indian American Professor of physics at MIT, Deepto Chakrabarty, has won the 2006 Bruno Rossi Prize along with two others for his pioneering study on neutron stars.

Chakraborty shares the $ 1500 award given each year by the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), with Tod Strohmayer of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Rudy Wijnands of the University of Amsterdam.

The prize is named after the late Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Professor Emeritus Bruno Rossi.The prize is awarded “for a significant contribution to High Energy Astrophysics, with particular emphasis on recent, original work”.

The prize includes an engraved certificate. “Bruno Rossi was a giant at MIT, and as an MIT professor, I am humbled to receive an award named in his honour,” Chakrabarty said.

Their work, done both independently and in collaboration, has been described as a breakthrough in interpreting the complex signals emitted as X-ray light from millisecond pulsars.

A millisecond pulsar is a type of fast-spinning neutron star in a binary system with an ordinary star. Gas pulled away from the surface of the companion star crashes onto the neutron star, spinning it up to rotation rates of hundreds of revolutions per second.

The trio found that oscillations in the emitted X-ray light can be used to measure the pulsar’s spin rate and other key parameters. — PTI

Washington, January 21
American companies are mounting a multimillion-dollar campaign to sell to Congress a landmark civilian nuclear deal with India which promises a “bounty of opportunity” for US business and strategic interests.

The lobbying drive is the most expensive ever mounted by business community, president of the US-India Business Council of the US Chamber of Commerce Ron Somers said yesterday. He did not specify the campaign’s budget.

He said retired Army Lt-Gen Daniel Christman, a former superintendent of the US Military Academy at West Point now working for the US Chamber of Commerce, will coordinate a broad effort as the Coalition for Partnership with India that groups businesses, think tanks and academics supporting the deal.

The high-powered campaign reflects both the importance of the nuclear agreement and the high hurdles it faces in Congress, Somers said.

Somers said the agreement could open the door for US companies to billions of dollars in non-nuclear as well as civilian nuclear-related contracts.

For 30 years, the USA led the effort to deny India nuclear technology because it tested and developed nuclear weapons in contravention of international norms. Both India and its neighbour and nuclear-armed rival Pakistan have refused to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. — Reuters

United Nations, January 21
Apparently afraid that she might steal the thunder from Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Pakistan forced the United Nations to block Mukhtar Mai from speaking at the world body headquarters around the time Aziz held a press conference.

Mai, whose defiant response to being gang-raped on the orders of a village council in Pakistan has made her a champion of women’s causes, was scheduled several days ago to speak at the UN yesterday.

But as Aziz’s press conference was around the same time, Pakistani officials sought postponement of her appearance in the programme called "An Interview With Mukhtar Mai: The Bravest Women On Earth" in UN television studio.

On Thursday night, the UN informed the sponsor NGOs — the Virtue Foundation and the Asian-American Network Against Abuse of Human Rights — that the programme would have to be postponed, New York Times reported today.

Since she is leaving today, it effectively means cancellation.

Confronted with the development at his press conference, Aziz flatly denied any knowledge about it and told reporters that he had come to know about it only from them.

Asked why the UN bowed to the Pakistani protest, Shashi Tharoor, under-secretary general for communications, said he could not comment on this specific case.

"As a general principle, indeed there are written instructions guiding the holding of any event on United Nations premises in which we are obliged to take into account views formally expressed by member states. This is a building and an organisation that belongs to the member states," said Tharoor, who was asked the question during Aziz's press conference which he was moderating.

In an interview with Times, Mai said, "I feel disappointed. I was not going to say anything bad about Pakistan. I was just going to talk about my work and what people are doing."

Recounting the 11th-hour nature of the decision, Joseph Salim, the executive director of the Virtue Foundation, a New York-based human rights charity, told the paper that "Yesterday, as we were going about a walk-through, getting our ID badges, they suddenly told us that because this event was considered by the Pakistan government as embarrassing to them, they were going to block it." — PTI

Washington, January 21
CIA analysts have concluded that the voice on an audio tape posted on an Islamic website is that of Al-Qaida number two Ayman Al-Zawahiri.

The 18-minute tape paid homage to Islamist “martyrs” in Afghanistan but gave no indication of when it was made.

A US counter-terrorism official said the tape was believed to be “something that someone pulled off the shelf and decided to post.”

“There is no reason to believe it was done recently,” he said.

The audio recording was posted the day after Al Jazeera television aired an audio tape of Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden threatening new attacks on the USA.

The messages followed reports from Pakistan that four or five top Al-Qaida figures were killed in a US air strike last week in a tribal area near Afghanistan.

An armed CIA Predator drone launched missiles at a compound where the Al-Qaida militants, including Zawahiri, were believed to be gathering for a feast, according to Pakistani officials.

Pakistani officials subsequently concluded Zawahiri was not at the meeting but US officials have said his fate remains unknown. — AFP