 |
|
Road to autonomy Code for misconduct Cavalry of the clouds |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Time to liberate rivers
Nehru, 42 years on
“They can help change the world” Time to get serious about China’s rising military
|
Road to autonomy AS is their wont, terrorists went on an overdrive prior to the Srinagar round-table conference to dissuade the Prime Minister from going ahead with it. There were killings, but Dr Manmohan Singh chose to ignore these depredations and kept his date with Kashmiris at a considerable security risk. What has been all the more creditable for him is that he also ignored the boycott by the Hurriyat as well. By staying away, the grouping has exposed its utter lack of seriousness in tackling the Kashmir imbroglio. The progress made at the conference has shown once again that the Hurriyat leaders are not the sole representatives of Kashmiri hopes and aspirations. True, the conference is not exactly going to usher in an era of peace and calm but it did take some measured, small steps in that direction that could be of help if built upon. An encouraging development is the decision to form five working groups which will hold comprehensive, focussed discussions on various aspects of the Kashmir imbroglio. The most important, of course, is the group which will have a look at the Centre-State relations but the others like the ones which are to oversee confidence-building measures across segments of society in the state and another to strengthen relations across the line of control can help bring about a positive change in the troubled state. But there are certain grey areas which need to be addressed soon. For instance, it has not been clarified who will be the convenors of these high-power groups. Taking care of the nitty-gritty at the earliest is the need of the hour so that the benefits of the new initiative do not get lost along the way. The ultimate aim is greater autonomy for the citizens of Jammu and Kashmir. That will not only meet some of their essential demands but also deprive Pakistan of room to mislead people and play mischief. The neighbour cannot be expected to stop its terror export in a hurry. But in the absence of a fertile ground, the seeds of violence are not likely to have as rich a growth rate as they are having at present.
|
|
Code for misconduct THE ban on the screening of The Da Vinci Code in Punjab is totally uncalled for and no circumstances exist to warrant the extreme action of the state government. The reasons cited by Chief Minister Amarinder Singh and officials fly in the face of reality. Hence, the ban on the film is nothing but brazen misuse of political power for partisan ends. It is a western film, made by a Christian and based on a novel by a Christian author; and on the day of its release in the Christian world, it broke all records to rake in close to $ 240 million. Mindful of the religious sentiments, of not only minorities but all right-thinking sections, the Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) tagged it “Adults” and stipulated a disclaimer that the film is a work of fiction. Once this civilised compromise was reached, the controversy died down. Now the Punjab Government has clamped down on the film citing reasons of law and order. There is not a shred of evidence to suggest a breakdown of law and order if the film is released, as it was scheduled to be on Friday. Therefore, the grounds stated are not just specious, but fabrication constructed on falsehood. First, this is a blatant violation of the right to freedom of expression and the ban order does not pass the test of being a “reasonable restriction” envisaged in the Constitution. Second, once the CBFC certifies a film to be fit for public exhibition, no state government should take the law into its own hands and issue diktats against the right of the public to view the film. The action is constitutionally and legally questionable as it undermines, if not nullifies, the CBFC’s clearance. It is the duty of the state government to uphold the authority of the CBFC and ensure that its writ prevails. The Punjab Government must lift the ban on the film forthwith. Unless, of course, the real motive in proclaiming a ban is to ensure that The Da Vinci Code attracts an even larger audience, including for DVDs and CDs. After all, more people would flock to see a forbidden film. Regardless of the ostensible reasons given for the ban, the decision is a clear case of gross misconduct as well as extreme stupidity.
|
|
Cavalry of the clouds AS the fourth largest air force in the world, the IAF should upgrade its technology to fight the battles of the future. Instead, it is struggling with a depleting squadron strength that will see it touch 29 squadrons next year, the lowest in three decades. That figure is well below the sanctioned strength of nearly 40 squadrons and the ideal of 44 squadrons. Aircraft are being retired faster than new aircraft can be inducted, and a parliamentary committee report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday has now urged the government to intensify its efforts to ensure that the authorised strength is achieved during the eleventh and twelfth plans i.e. by 2017. That 10-year period may well turn out to be a crucial one for the IAF, determining whether it will languish as a force just carrying on, barely able to defend the country when challenges arise, or be a deterrent strike force that is among the best. Between 500 and 600 aircraft will be retired by 2015. The bulk would be the Mig-21, which constitute almost 16 squadrons (a squadron comprises roughly 20 aircraft). Other variants like the Mig-23 and the Mig-27 will be out of commission as well. We will be left mainly with six squadrons of the Mig-21 Bis (upgraded), two squadrons of the Su-30 MKI, a couple of squadrons of the Mirage, the Jaguar fleet, which sorely requires more upgradation, and the 140 indigenously assembled Su-30 MKIs, the deadline for which has been advanced to 2014. In all, about 350 new aircraft are envisioned on current plans. For a start, the government has to act fast on the proposed 125 aircraft acquisition plan, for which both American F-16s and F-18s are among the contenders. The parliamentary committee has also rapped the Tejas LCA project, and the time has come now for a massive technological and financial boost to the Tejas, to ensure that we are not forever dependent on imported machines. Let us not forget pilot training either. India cannot afford to be deficient in air power. When the stall warning sounds in the cockpit, corrective action has to be speedy and decisive. The IAF has to train more pilots for future.
|
|
You know you are on the road to success if you would do your job, and not be paid for it. — Oprah Winfrey
|
Time to liberate rivers ON assignment from a national daily to survey the high floods in Bengal and Orissa in 1959, I found people in the Damodar valley bitter about the big dams they had just seen erected on the river. They complained that the dams had made the monsoon floods more unpredictable and far more extensive than before. The multipurpose dams, promising flood prevention besides electricity and irrigation, themselves needed protection in years of heavy rainfall. Panicky dam managers suddenly, without notice, released huge volumes of impounded waters, creating havoc downstream. In official circles in those days there was still some worshipfulness around the massive dams Jawaharlal Nehru had hailed as the “temples of modern India”. Nehru did some rethinking later but found his memorable phrase indelible. A researcher in a hydrological institute in Calcutta told me of his conclusion that the huge multipurpose walls were being built across rivers on insufficient data and might have to be torn down after some years. In 1998, President Clinton’s Interior Secretary, Bruce Babbitt, went round America with a sledgehammer in his hands, striking the first few blows for breaking down some of the many dams experts had decided their country would be happier without. Six hundred or more dams have been dismantled in the US in the last seven years. Admittedly, some were old and at the end of their assumed life span. But more importantly, America had made an about turn — from being a world leader in the construction of dams to decommissioning them. The accent is now on liberating rivers. France removed several dams from the Loire river. Sweden barred by law building of dams on its undimmed rivers. Peoples’ discontent with dams is now a global fact. Yes, dams do bring benefits: bigger harvests in some areas, lighting up dark homes: but at what price? The lesson articulated by the World Commission on Dams has sunk in: “The poor, other vulnerable groups and future generations are likely to bear a disproportionate share of the social and environmental costs of large dam projects without gaining a commensurate share of the economic benefits.” A more sensitive pen rued the dam builders’ going in for a Faustian bargain - bartering souls for brief extensions of lives. Independent India’s initial enthusiasm for massive multipurpose river projects was an import from outside. What is still called the Nehruvian idea of development of water resources grew from admiration for giant schemes like the Tennessee Valley and the Hoover dam in the US and Dneprostroi in the erstwhile Soviet Union. The mega-project at Bratsk in Siberia helped in countering doubts a few decades later. When I saw it soon after its commissioning in 1964, Bratsk on the Angara river was producing, I was told, more hydel power than the total of all that was being generated in the river valleys in India. But Bratsk is in the sparsely-populated Siberian vastness Nehru did realise, when he had still some years to go, that imitating whatever was being done by giants abroad might sound great but was not necessarily good for India. In one of his not so well publicised speeches, Nehru warned the Central Board of Irrigation, in 1958, against a “dangerous outlook developing in India — the disease of gigantism”. He had revised his thinking on water resources development and come to the conclusion that small irrigation projects and small plants for electric power would be better means to change the face of the country than a dozen big projects in half a dozen places. He foresaw how people might be forced in future into agitations like the Narmada Bachao Andolan. He worried about “upsets of the people moving out” and the problems of their rehabilitation. And he recommended smaller schemes, enabling the government to enlist “a good deal of what is called public cooperation.” That is the preferred option in much of the world today after many experiences of conflicts with affected peoples and environments. The objections to damming big rivers are too many. Displacement of people, most of whom are never satisfactorily resettled, is only one of them. The ecological balance is disturbed over large areas, forests destroyed, fertility of acres of land degraded, salinity enhanced, fish stocks depleted. risks from waterborne diseases added to and, experts now say, new sources of greenhouses gases created by organic deposits in impounded waters. At the same time the big dams never deliver what they promise; the planners either overstate expected benefits or are just unable to make their calculations right. Confident critics assert that no dam in India delivers more than 40 per cent of the promise on paper and with passing years the performance slides downward. In the case of the Narmada, now the eye of the dam controversy, not more than 60 per cent is expected. Why the Government of India has still not thought it necessary to make a thorough probe of the performances of the many multipurpose dams erected with public money, is a mystery. An aggressive dam lobby is at work. Various business interests like Indian cement manufacturers and foreign machinery suppliers, corrupt bureaucrats and politicians are its major partners. A few journalists too work for it - consciously or unconsciously. Their thrust is mainly against the Narmada Bachao Andolan. One chose to see Medha Patkar as an incurable romantic crying for the irretrievable yesterday; another dismissed her as a hysteric. They see no incompatibility between the slogan “Sardar Sarovar - lifeline of Gujarat” (based on the urgent need for watering Saurashtra and Kutch) and the possibility of Narmada water reaching Kutch only in 2021! One article was headlined Quiet flows the Narmada, with a loan from the Soviet Russian Nobel laureate Mikhail Sholokov’s Quiet flows the Don. Sholokov’s Don continued to flow through the Cossacks’ heroism and tragedies after the Bolshevik Revolution. The Reva (or Narmada) described by Kalidasa as “flowing impeded by rose-apple brakes and spreading dishevelled at the Vindhyas’ uneven rocky foothills” would be unrecognisable to his meghdoot today. The mighty river is no longer really flowing and has turned into a chain of lakes thanks to the Narmada project. This is not only a loss to poetic nostalgia but is also a great worry to life — present and future — along the 1312-km-long course of the Narmada that
was.
|
Nehru, 42 years on I had seen Jawaharlal Nehru when I was studying in the third standard. He came to Ludhiana for an election rally sometime in February ’62 and it seemed that the entire city was out to see or welcome him. Standing amidst a vast sea of humanity along the G.T. Road, as his cavalcade slowly neared us, one of my uncles whom I was accompanying lifted me to have a better glimpse of Nehru. The only glance of him I can recollect now is that he was reddish fair in complexion and had a lower lip pouch. Standing in an open jeep and wearing a maroon sherwani with a red rose in the buttonhole he waved and threw flowers on the crowds. This narrative might seem incredible from today’s perspective. There were no NSGs or black commandos and unlike his successors, the then Prime Minister seemed to be a free man. Though Nehru carried an aristocratic aura, he was a man of the masses. Pictures of him standing amidst crowds and that too without any security used to appear in the press or were shown in the newsreels in cinema. I as a child was mesmerised seeing him in person. As I grew from childhood to youth, Nehru continued to inspire and obsess me more than any other political leader after Mahatma Gandhi. His erudition, charm and vision are rarely equalled in the modern political history of the world, leave alone India. He is also seen as a leader of the freedom movement, the founding father of institutional democracy, the ideologue of a secular India, a proponent of free judiciary and media and as an architect of country’s future role at the world stage. Nehru had a vision that for an allround development and progress, the maturity and the civilisational wisdom of the Indian people should be supported by a scientific temperament. It is said that with death and passing of time, great personalities undergo a process of demystification. But I am astonished to observe that most of younger generation nowadays views Nehru as a hyped young man who accidentally acquired national leadership due to the influence of his father and the favouritism of Mahatma Gandhi. Rightly or wrongly the imbroglio of Kashmir and the ignominy of the China war also continue to be attached to him as a stigma. Despite many shortcomings that anybody or everybody carry, Nehru was the most popular and beloved leader of the masses in post-Independent India. I remember the sultry afternoon when while playing with friends, a neighbour told me that Jawaharlal Nehru had died. I rushed home to burst the news to my father. A staunch erstwhile Jansanghi, who religiously criticised Nehru, he broke down. That was 42 years ago on 27th of
May.
|
“They can help change the world”
TWENTY Indian students, part of the joint programme between SSN School of Advanced Software Engineering in Chennai and the Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburg, USA, were on top of the world recently. One by one, as their names were called, they walked up proudly in their graduation dress to receive their Master’s degrees in software engineering from CMU’s School of Computer Science (SCC) Dean, Prof. Randal E. Bryant. The graduation ceremony was held in Pittsbrug’s ‘Carnegie Music Hall’. The day was surprisingly cold. It was cloudy, wet and a rather depressing day for summer. So what! It was a historic day for hundreds of students who passed through the receiving lines, shaking hands with the Deans of various departments, receiving their coveted degrees. But in the SCC, many eyes were fixed on these 20 visitors from India, who completed their first year courses in Chennai and the balance of the 2-year term in Pittsburgh. In most cases it was their first visit outside the country, first interaction with teachers from a distant land, and the first opportunity for them to sit with students from diverse backgrounds. But it didn’t take much time for these Indian students to prove their intellect. Indian students are brilliant, was the opinion of most teachers. “There are lots of people who can be engineers but they can’t talk to another person to explain what he’s doing. We can develop such engineers by the hundreds. The mission at CMU is to develop engineers to change the world,” noted Dr. Mel Rosso-Llopart of the SCC. He placed Indian students in that category as “there’s no task that they don’t do as a challenge and as a zeal. Sometimes it is hard to keep up with them.” These comments, Llopart said, “come from staff all the way through the faculty.” Now that they have their professional engineering degrees, like dozens of others, these 20 young Indians (between 23 to 25 years of age) are entering the real world. According to this writer’s survey, 15 of them have opted to work in the US as most of them already have 2-3 job offers from giants like Microsoft, Google, and a whole lot of IT consulting firms in California’s Bay area. Five of them have opted to go back: “By choice, I have a job in Chennai, India, as Process Analyst for an Indian firm,” says Shini Menon, 23. Priyanka Raghavan, 24, has a job in the US: “I would like to gain some international experience and then go back to India.” Chandni Jain has specialized in software architecture and quality assurance. She starts working from next week as ‘Software Quality Engineer’ for a company in the Bay Area. She worked as a teaching assistant during the spring semester at the CMU “for one of its most prestigious software architecture courses.” For her, software architecture is “like a central wheel around which everything (for software development) moves. It is the foundation, which, if strong, can make your software achieve what it sets out to achieve in the first place.” While you deal with the whole product, “along the way, with the details, you understand the big picture too.” Dr. Lyn Robert Carter, Professor at the CMU Computer School, calls the accomplishments of these 20 students “truly world class”. He adds: “They have earned the respect of the faculty and other students.” No wonder his colleague Rosso-Llopart earlier commented “their students are setting out to change the companies, help the world.” Flipping through the 64-page SCC graduation ceremony booklet, you are wonder struck by the achievements of young Indians: Twenty-six people received their PhDs in Comptuer Science – three of them were Indians: Srinvasa Aditya Akella, Sagar Jyoti Chaki and Shuchi Chawla’ and two received their PhDs in robotics – Siddhartha Srinivasa and Sanjiv Kumar. One of the graduating students, who was hesitating about giving out his name, said, when asked, that the salary he would be getting in his first ever full time job, would be “$ 80,000 plus, and my company will throw in a 10 percent bonus. To earn $ 80,000 — $100,000 annually is not so difficult with a bit of negotiating skill.” These are boys and girls who have been in the US for barely nine to ten months. Videepkumar Rajendiran will also be working in the Bay Area but “my plan is to start a company providing consulting for Architecture and Software Engineering practices.” Chandni says that six years ago, she didn’t get admission in a medical school in India, which was then her first preference. “But that disappointment has now proved to be a blessing in disguise. There is a whole new world in front of me. I am now free of the bounds that Indian society has made, especially for girls.” But she confesses to being “a little nervous because I am moving on to the next phase in my life.” There was almost unanimity amongst these brilliant young Indian students of the class of 2006, that after gaining some international experience they will go back to India: “Definitely I want to settle down in India but I have not decided when I will go back,” said one of these young Indian graduates. That is where they have to be careful. It invariably remains a big question mark as to when is the right time to go back and serve India? Money remains the attraction and all that goes with it. Not that there is any dearth of jobs in India for qualified professionals now, when the economy is booming and India is shining!
|
|
Time to get serious about China’s rising military THE Pentagon’s annual report to Congress on China’s military power, released this week, reveals that Beijing’s buildup has advanced well beyond what most analysts considered likely just 10 years ago. Some highlights: The new arsenal of the People’s Liberation Army includes more than 700 missiles deployed opposite Taiwan, a fleet of sophisticated diesel electric submarines, a growing nuclear submarine capability and advanced destroyers armed with lethal anti-ship cruise missiles. By making the potential cost of any U.S. intervention in the Taiwan Strait extraordinarily high, Beijing has accomplished its decade-long goal of establishing a credible military threat to Taiwan — as well as a deterrent to the United States. The question is, what next? The report points to some answers. With a growing dependence on oil imported from the Middle East and Africa, Chinese strategists are talking about creating a blue-water navy to secure Beijing’s energy supply lines. The military may be reconsidering its nuclear “no-first-use policy” and examining ways to secure China’s territorial claims in the South China and East China seas. Simply stated, as China’s military power has grown, so too, it appears, have the strategic tasks that it may be assigned. This shouldn’t be surprising. US history teaches that as a nation’s power grows so do its ambitions. As if to underscore this point, an official Chinese military journal recently published an article arguing that Beijing should develop a military “commensurate with its international status.” Since Beijing’s economic and diplomatic interests span the globe, such strategic thinking can take the People’s Liberation Army in some troubling directions. For example, Beijing may conclude that relying on the U.S. Navy for the safety of its energy supplies is too risky, and decide to increase its naval presence along the expanse between the Persian Gulf and East Asia. This would make the Chinese navy the first since the Cold War to compete for sea control with the United States. In addition, there are numerous disputed territorial claims in the East China and South China seas that China could settle by military means. Japan and China already have come close to skirmishing over energy resources in nearby disputed waters. Of course, given the opaque character of Chinese military planning and government decision making, analysts can only speculate as to what turns the Chinese military buildup will take. It would help if China were to open up its political system so that we and other regional powers could get a better handle on the country’s long-term ambitions. But this seems unlikely, at least anytime soon. Indeed, the Pentagon report notes that secrecy, deception and surprise remain key components of Chinese strategic practice. China has already changed Asia’s balance of power. It is past time for America to get serious about deterring the potentially worst sorts of Chinese behavior and to provide allies in the region with reason for renewed confidence in the U.S. security umbrella. Unfortunately, we are only just beginning to grapple with this daunting strategic task. The latest Quadrennial Defense Review states that China “has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States. The Pentagon seeks to “shape (China’s) strategic choices” and to “dissuade any military competitor from developing disruptive or other capabilities that could enable regional hegemony.” The Bush administration has taken some concrete action toward these ends. An upgraded alliance with Japan will improve our deterrent posture. The opening of a strategic relationship with India reflects in part an American desire to ensure that China does not gain hegemony over South or Central Asia. An increase in the size of the U.S. Navy’s attack submarine fleet in Guam also brings more American capability into the Pacific. A nascent defense relationship with Vietnam may over time provide the American military with what it needs most in Asia — more bases. But US China policy leaves us a day late and a dollar short when it comes to the challenge posed by the speed of Beijing’s military buildup. There are still restrictions on relations with Taiwan dating to the Carter era that make the island more difficult to defend. A stronger commitment by the Pentagon to developing long-range surveillance and strike capabilities would make Beijing less confident that it could use its vast territory as a sanctuary for its missile and other “disruptive” forces. Upgrading US undersea warfare capabilities will improve regional freedom of action. (The writer, a resident fellow in Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, was formerly senior country director for China and Taiwan in the Office of the Secretary of Defense.) By arrangement with
LA Times – Washington Post
|
|
From the pages of Nizam’s case in United Nations
When the Security Council heard the Hyderabad case on September 20, India’s representative said that the Nizam had ordered the Hyderabad delegation to withdraw its complaint from the Security Council. The Indian delegation tried to communicate this order to the Hyderabad representative but without success. The Hyderabad representative, on the other hand, said that he had received no instructions direct from the Nizam. Thereafter the Nizam addressed a direct communication to Mr Trygve Lie, Secretary-General to the U.N., clearly stating that his delegation to the Security Council had “ceased to have any authority to represent me or my State.” Meanwhile the Hyderabad contingent has gone underground and all efforts to communicate with them have so far failed. This game of hide-and-seek is evidently being played, not without assistance, in order to preserve for the Hyderabad “Foreign Secretary” his representative character until such time as the Security Council is free to resume consideration of the Hyderabad question.
|
All relatives friends and lovers salute a man who has been long away and has returned safe. So do man’s good deeds receive him when the time comes to depart this world. —The Buddha If one were to get of one’s own choice, all would become rich. But our fortune is determined by our actions, not wishes; However, much anyone, may desire to the contrary. — Guru Nanak
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
