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Courage under fire Get them all |
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Bus to Rawalkot
Himalayan challenge
Life and letters
Document Coalition failures revive Taliban Legal notes
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Courage under fire AS befitting an officer and gentleman, the Army’s vice-chief of staff has finally apologised for the remarks attributed to him about women in the Army. It would have been better if Lt-Gen K. Pattabhiraman had been quicker on the draw, and offered the apology soon after the reported remarks were published. It is welcome nevertheless, and the issue can now be put at rest. Coming from a vice-chief, any suggestion that the Army was not comfortable with its women officers or that it would be better off without them, would have ill-served the morale of its women personnel, besides, of course, discouraging others from joining the service. It would have also remained as a slur on the capabilities of women in general. This is an opportunity for all the services to explore ways of deriving the best from their women personnel. Women currently serve mostly in support roles or work as pilots in helicopter and transport aircraft. The Armed Forces Medical College, after a study, has recommended to the three services that women be also included in the combat arms. This not only means putting them in tanks and fighter planes, but opening up a range of options from ships and submarines to the infantry and special forces. Senior officers have expressed worries on several counts. One is the fear that women could be subjected to brutal treatment in hostile territory. The second is the special demands that may arise in the cramped confines of a bunker or a submarine. The third is to do with marriage and child birth, and women wanting to quit taking away valuable training with them. But all these problems can be dealt with if the right attitudes exist. The increasingly technology and network-centric nature of warfare does widen the range of options, though women can be trained to fight with an assault rifle as well from a console. Conservative attitudes will be harder to change – churlish complaints about women taking away plum peace time postings have been made. Given the scenario of persistent officer shortages, it is time that innovative, gender-based commissions are developed. This is, after all, the land of the Rani of Jhansi, Kannagi, and countless other brave women who have not hesitated to pick up arms to defend their own.
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Get them all THIS was the kind of crime that just should not have taken place in a civilised society. Imagine the who’s who of a state, among them ministers, top policemen and security force officers and businessmen, coercing teenage girls into a sex racket. But today’s public life is anything but idealistic. If at all such an outrage happened, the Jammu and Kashmir government crawling with intelligence officials should have been the first to know of the ugly goings-on and punish the black sheep. Since this was a clear-cut case of the fence eating the crop, even that did not happen. At least the government should have woken up when the scandal was exposed in the media. Yet, a cover-up was launched to save the VVIPs. Only when there was a public outcry and violent protests did the long arm of the law start stirring. Even then, the initial attempt was to get at the relatively lower-ranking persons. Only now have they arrested two former ministers. Nobody takes this as a bold operation; only as a last resort. In the process, the government has lost public sympathy and allowed the separatist organisations to pose as keepers of public morality. Now that the government has at long last bit the bullet, it must ensure that all those accused of the heinous crime are brought to book and are given exemplary punishment in the quickest possible time. None, especially the top-rung leaders, should escape justice. In fact, it is they who deserve the maximum punishment because they have not only outraged the modesty of innocent girls but have also destroyed the faith of the public in the entire official machinery. It is such instances of highhandedness which cause the public to treat the government as an enemy. The most unfortunate aspect is that those in high places tend to save the skin of their colleagues, rather than stem the rot. That gives the clear-cut impression that they are all one in exploiting the downtrodden. Like in every profession, there are some honest persons in politics too. It should be their personal endeavour to fight against such vermin so that the whole system does not get tarred.
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Bus to Rawalkot WITH the inauguration of the Poonch-Rawalkot bus service by Congress chairperson Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday, people on both sides of the divide can now travel by road to meet their relatives and acquaintances in the shortest possible time. Now they will not have to travel by the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus, which meant covering a long distance to reach Rawalkot, just 39 km from Poonch. Incidentally, the maximum number of divided families live in the Poonch-Rajouri area. The new road link between the two halves of Jammu and Kashmir was once the lifeline of the region. The launching of the fortnightly Poonch-Rawalkot bus service after the one linking Srinagar with Muzaffarabad in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir is obviously a big boost to the efforts aimed at promoting people-to-people contacts. The utility of the trans-LoC bus services will increase considerably when these will be allowed to be used for business purposes too, as planned. Such confidence-building measures can go a long way in creating an atmosphere essential for establishing friendly relations between India and Pakistan. Increased interaction among the people on the two sides will help them develop a greater stake in peace. This can also lead to the anti-peace forces —- terrorists and their masterminds —- losing their support base. However, there is need to minimise the paper work required for crossing the Line of Control or the border. The process for obtaining travel documents should be less cumbersome so that more and more people feel encouraged to undertake travels across the divide. Efforts must be made to ensure that the journeys they undertake are memorable. The experience with the Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus service shows that a tedious process deters people from making use of the facility provided to help them meet their near and dear ones.
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One is not a woman: one becomes one. — Simone de Beauvoir
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Himalayan challenge
FOR a nascent democracy that was being repressively trampled under by a Canute-like king, Nepal has risen with remarkable resolve to march ahead for consolidating the gains of the struggle for popular rule. In the weeks since the force of public pressure compelled King Gyanendra to reinstate the dissolved Parliament and make way for a government of the Seven-Party Alliance (SPA), events have moved rapidly and in the right direction, though the road ahead is long and fraught with imponderables. Even the most optimistic did not expect that after the revival of parliament and Mr Girija Prasad Koirala becoming Prime Minister, the momentum of building the basis for a more enduring democracy would proceed with such unflagging zeal. The sustenance of this process is attributable to both public expectations and public pressure. At the slightest sign of the political leadership appearing to slip or slow down, people spill out on the streets and force them back on course. This has had a disciplining effect on the SPA as well as the Maoists to move forward towards institutionalising the larger democratic goals, instead of getting stuck with their differences. The effect of such public pressure driving the SPA and Maoists was evident in more than one recent situation. When Mr Koirala ventured on his first visit abroad — to New Delhi — after taking charge as Prime Minister, the Maoists began fulminating against “foreign powers” and hinted at dark conspiracies. There were few takers for this India-baiting given the greater concern over what Mr Koirala would bring back from Nepal’s biggest neighbour. The business-like wrapping up of a meaningful economic package with a minimum of ceremony and no platitudinous or patronising exchanges deprived critics of any cause for carping. Similarly, when the Maoists sought to stir up a storm over the so-called delay in dissolving the current parliament, government and constitution, Mr Koirala remained unfazed. His refusal to join issue aborted a controversy. In fact, in clamouring for dissolution, the Maoists ended up revealing the urgency of their own desire for joining an interim government and talking peace. It passed off as a breeze with the Maoists dropping the demand. Then came the issue of whether the king should be accorded a ceremonial role under the new constitution or should Nepal declare itself a republican state. Here again, while Mr Koirala made it clear that personally he favoured the former, his government’s roadmap for talks with the rebels, scrapping of anti-terrorist laws and decision to free the Maoists in detention left no room for the other side to rake up the issue. On the contrary, they had to give more slack to Mr Koirala, with Mr Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda saying that the Prime Minister was entitled to his views on an issue that was for the new constituent assembly to decide. It is still early for any spoiler to ruin the party underway given Mr Koirala’s vastly enhanced political and moral stature. Although this does not mean that there would be no obstacles on the path ahead, Mr Koirala is a man driven by compulsions as well as clarity over what cannot be put off. This keeps him focused, free of ideological prejudices and very pragmatic. The Maoists, on their part, know that his political, administrative and organisational abilities, especially in times of crisis and uncertainty, are a critical necessity at this stage. He, as much as the Koirala name, represents promise of continuity and stability, especially with a powerless, stripped-down monarch confined to the palace. In this testing time of transition, Mr Koirala enjoys unrivalled acceptability in Nepal and abroad. The Maoists are all too aware of this. They also know that if any mainstream politician can take them on board and get them accepted as a reformed parliamentary force in the world capitals from New Delhi to Washington, then it is Mr Koirala who can do it. Mr Koirala is 83 and not exactly in the pink of health. The Maoist “People’s War” has reached a point of diminishing returns, or a stage of “strategic balance”, as their ideologue Mr Baburam Bhattarai had put it. They are as much an unelected power as the monarchy, and as Mr Koirala had told Mr Prachanda, they are as guilty as King Gyanendra in undermining parliamentary democracy. Their best bet for an entry into multiparty democracy and government is Mr Koirala, and the most opportune time to negotiate this process is now — before other ambitious leaders surface in the SPA to queer the pitch. So, Mr Koirala lost no time in seizing the moment to hold talks with the Maoists and swiftly seal an eight-point pact for dissolution of both Houses of Parliament and an interim constitution for the election of a new constituent assembly. The pact meets the core demands of the rebels and the Maoists would be part of a new interim government likely to be formed within a month. The tacit understanding is that elections to a constituent assembly would be held before May 2007. The Maoists have expressed their commitment to competitive multiparty politics, human rights and press freedom. Theoretically, these developments should take forward the truce between the Maoists and the government towards permanent peace and an overhaul of the structures of the state, both being prerequisites for political stability and economic development. A five-member committee to draft the interim constitution is already at work. The first big test of the “historic pact” between the government and the Maoists would be free and fair elections to a constituent assembly. Between now and the elections, there are questions that could snowball into contentious issues and stall the progress of Nepal’s biggest political project. The disarming of the Maoists, the role, size and complexion of Nepal’s army, the invitation to the UN to monitor and manage arms and armies of both sides and, above all, the Maoists being a part of government are issues that could puncture the prevalent euphoria. In today’s upbeat mood not much note has been taken of the fact that New Delhi, like Washington, the UK and the EU, has been silent with disapproval of the government’s “giving in” so readily to the Maoists and their core demands. In fact, the negative implications of this have been conveyed to Kathmandu by the foreign capitals concerned. There is also the predictable discomfiture with the UN being invited into Nepal, though privately it is conceded that this may be the least “evil” of the options. For all the apprehensions on these points, the overriding urge to see a vibrant and inclusive politico-economic transformation of a democratic Nepal dictates that these should not be courted as issues for internal or external discord. Nepal’s realities are different and, as demonstratively proved in recent months, it is the force and momentum of public pressure in the country that will decide the future shape of
things.
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Life and letters
LETTERS are half-meetings. This is the beautiful thought of great Asadullh Khan Ghalib, more famous as Mirza Ghalib. Scholars on Ghalib — they are not many — have discovered that his letters to friends and even his long official correspondence with the authorities to restore his pension make most thoughtful, witty as well as humorous reading. When his letters to the authorities remained unacknowledged for long, Mirza Ghalib wrote a lucid sher — “Bare Kushnasib hain woh khat jinke jawab aate hain.” Perhaps he reached the peak of wisdom and frankness when in one of his another most recited sher, he wrote:
“Chand tasvire bootan aur chand hasino ke khatoot, baad marne ke mere ghar se yeh saman nikla”. In simple translation one can say: A few drawings and some love letters from my entire property. No doubt, Ghalib was love and wisdom personified. His love for liquor and mangoes is known to the world. Yes, only a deep and serious scholar of Mirza Ghalib can explain this sher:
“Tum shahr mein to kya gam jo uthenge, lay ayange bazaar se dilon jaan aur.” Some Ghalib lovers are of the opinion that his entire poetry is addressed to allah. Some others say his entire poetry is addressed to his unknown lady love. Still one thing goes without saying that Mirza Ghalib had a large circle of friends and admirers in cities like Agra and Calcutta as well as Delhi, the city he loved the most. Most of his friends were poets and artists, painters to be more precise. They say letters of John Keats to his girlfriend Fanny Brown are more beautiful than his poetry. One does not know how she responded to his letters. The only well-known fact is that about a year before his death at the age of 23, she had decided to say quits for whatever reasons. In a way Keats, part of the trio along with Lord Byron and P.B. Shelley has immortalised Fanny Brown in one of his last poems with a French title La Bella Dame Sans Merci... Remember the lines: “Her hair was long her foot was light and her eyes were wild and I closed her wild eyes with kisses four...” Only a sublime soul like Keats could think and write such lines. Thanks to the Punjab School Education Board, La Bella was prescribed in English reading in class tenth in 1971. Jawaharlal Nehru was also a passionate letter writer and lover of the red roses. His letters to his privileged daughter Priyadarshini Indira Gandhi after her marriage to Feroz Gandhi are lessons in history, art, literature and culture besides philosophy and religions. Nehru was also an ardent reader of classics and including science fiction. Hats off to him for writing three wonderful books — Discovery of India. Glimpses of World History and his autobiography during his 17 long years in different jails of the pre-partition India. He wrote in long hand and without reference to any notes or books. His memory was too good. He was a genius despite whatever is said against him by his envious political rivals. Amusingly yet understandably, Nehru was rather fond of reading his own letters — he used to maintain their carbon copies and during leisure, be would glance through them. Mahatma Gandhi again remained till the end a prolific letter writer. He corresponded with thousands of people all over the world including Leo Tolstoy in Russia during his days in South Africa. Mahatma Gandhi was so inspired by Tolstoy that he named his cooperative farm after the writer-philosopher of Russia. Bapu used to reply to all letters, mostly on postcards. He also used to regularly dictate letters to his two favourite secretaries, Pyare Lal and Mahadevan. He did not have a good handwriting and all his life he kept regretting this drawback. He has written at one place. “A bad hand-writing is a sign of imperfect knowledge.” Strong views
indeed.
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Document Throughout human history, migration has been a courageous expression of the individual’s will to overcome adversity and to live a better life. Today, globalisation, together with advances in communications and transportation, has greatly increased the number of people who have the desire and the capacity to move to other places. This new era has created challenges and opportunities for societies throughout the world. It also has served to underscore the clear linkage between migration and development, as well as the opportunities it provides for co-development, that is, the concerted improvement of economic and social conditions at both origin and destination. Migration is changing as labour markets and society become more global: a foreman from a company in Indiana, United States of America, moves to China to train workers in new production methods; a professor from Johannesburg, South Africa, chooses to live in Sydney, Australia, from where he commutes to a teaching post in Hong Kong, China; a nurse trained in Manila works in Dubai. Meanwhile, research continues to undermine old assumptions about migration, which shows, for example, that women are somewhat more likely than men to migrate to the developed world, that migrants can maintain transnational lives and that remittances can dramatically help local economies. At the same time, innovations in policymaking allow us to manage international migration in new ways. China and the Republic of Korea attract their expatriate researchers back home with state-of the-art science parks; Governments collaborate with migrant associations abroad to improve livelihoods at home; and development programmes help migrant entrepreneurs start small businesses in their communities of origin. In the light of these changes, Governments everywhere have an opportunity, and a good reason, to re-examine their migration policies. The advantages that migration brings, both to migrants and to the societies they join, are not as well understood as they should be. Migration stirs passionate debate. It can deprive countries of its best and brightest, and it can divide families. For all the good it can bring, it can also generate social tensions; for example, issues relating to migrant integration are the focus of intense controversy. Sometimes criminals and terrorists exploit the flow of peoples. Nevertheless, the answers to many of the problems raised by migration may be found through constructive engagement and debate. This will lead to a broader recognition of the enormous benefits and opportunities that migration provides. On 14 and 15 September 2006, high-level representatives of all States Members of the United Nations will gather in the General Assembly to explore one of migration’s most promising aspects: its relationship to development. The potential for migrants to help transform their native countries has captured the imaginations of national and local authorities, international institutions and the private sector. There is an emerging consensus that countries can cooperate to create triple wins, for migrants, for their countries of origin and for the societies that receive them. We are only beginning to learn how to make migration work more consistently for development. Each of us holds a piece of the migration puzzle, but none has the whole picture. It is time to start putting it together. We have a unique opportunity to do this by identifying, assessing and sharing the many experiments in managing migration now being tried around the world. The United Nations is the most valuable venue for this exchange of ideas, experience and lessons learned. And since migration is a global phenomenon, which occurs not only between pairs of countries or within regions but from almost every corner of the world to every other, it requires our collective attention. Sovereign States have the right to decide who is allowed to enter their territory, subject to the international treaty obligations they have assumed. But this right should not prevent us from working together to ensure that international migration helps to meet our development goals. The scale of migration’s potential for good is enormous. To take just the most tangible example, the funds migrants send back to developing countries, at least $167 billion in 2005 alone, now dwarf all forms of international aid combined. We are better positioned than ever before to confront the challenges of migration and seize the opportunities it presents. There has been an extraordinary growth in the interest shown by Governments in issues where migration and development intersect. It is a realm in which true international cooperation can be built. We now understand, better than ever before, that migration is not a zero-sum game. In the best cases, it benefits the receiving country, the country of origin and migrants themselves. It should be no surprise that countries once associated exclusively with emigration, including Ireland, the Republic of Korea, Spain and many others, now boast thriving economies, which themselves attract large numbers of migrants. Emigration has played a decisive role in reinvigorating their economies, as has the eventual return of many of their citizens. It is for Governments to decide whether more or less migration is desirable. Our focus in the international community should be on the quality and safety of the migration experience and on what can be done to maximize its developmental benefits. It is in the interest of all that migration occurs in a legal, safe and fair fashion, in strict adherence to international human rights standards. The above is excerpted from the UN Secretary General’s report on “International Migration and Development” 2006.
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Coalition failures revive Taliban KABUL – The United States and its allies have been forced to launch their biggest military operation of the war here because in the 55 months since ousting the Taliban movement from power, they neglected to establish minimal security or governance in the country’s south. That failure has let the Taliban walk back in through an open door, say Afghan and foreign officials in Kabul and the southern city of Kandahar. Afghan officials estimate thousands of Taliban guerrillas, many recently infiltrated from Pakistan, are in the five southernmost provinces, where their attacks culminated this spring in a spasm of bombings, ambushes and assassinations against scattered government targets. US-led coalition forces have launched a counteroffensive that they said will involve 11,000 Afghan and Western troops, in an effort to stabilize the south this summer before U.S. commanders hand that region over to an arriving NATO force. “If we had made efforts on this scale five years ago, we would be in a much stronger position than we are now,” said James Dobbins, a former U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan who studies post-war rebuilding for think tank RAND. The Taliban have won much of their support by intimidating villagers or buying them off with money gained through the opium trade, said officials and residents interviewed in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city. But critically, the Taliban have been able simply to fill a political vacuum because the United States and its allies failed to do it instead, they said. Under coalition supervision since 2001, what has passed
for government in the south amounts mostly to “corrupt, local warlords who allied themselves with U.S. forces,” said Abdul Qadar Noorzai, the director in Kandahar of Afghanistan’s government human rights commission. These local strongmen have taken control over the weak state bureaucracies and police forces, and much of the opium trade, Noorzai said. As the corruption has spread, local officials “push the people for bribes, and so the people are turning to the Taliban” for protection from the government, said Abdul Ahmed Muhammadyar, publisher of a Pashtu-language cultural magazine in Kandahar. Because of the Taliban’s spread, United Nations’ agencies, which a few years ago operated freely over 60 percent to 70 percent of southernmost Afghanistan, now can work readily in only six of the region’s 50 districts, or counties, said U.N. regional director Talatbek Masadykov. The Taliban have established parallel authorities, including courts, in wide areas of the south – and people are turning to them to solve conflicts, say Afghan press reports and U.N. officials. As in much of Afghanistan, perhaps the most glaring failure of rebuilding is the police. In rural districts (counties) across the south, there are 20 to 50 officers, and in some districts they may be facing hundreds of Taliban, said government officials here and in Kabul who asked not to be identified. Most police, recruited locally and untrained, are not paid regularly, and significant numbers are deserting, officials and Kandahar residents said. “Most police have no uniforms, they act like thugs, demand bribes,’’ said Iqbal Shah Durrani, a Kandahar businessman. “If they don’t like where you parked your car, they will just kick out your taillights or shoot out your tires. People see them as just licensed gangsters.” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Legal notes THE slow paced trial in five fodder scam cases against Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav and others in Ranchi special courts, and the CBI Director’s hesitation to appear before the Jharkhand High Court to explain the reasons for delay in cross-examining the witnesses, has irked the Supreme Court. So much so that it recorded an undertaking from the Union Government’s law officer that the probe agency’s chief would not stand on prestige to appear before the High Court Bench monitoring the progress of the trial in the multi-crore fodder scam. The apex court reminded the Union Government that the CBI, instead of taking steps to expedite the trial on its own, forced the High Court to seek its Director’s presence to know the real reason for the inordinate delay of 13 years in completing it. The apex court made it amply clear to the Government that an impression should not go out to the public that the CBI, the premier investigating agency, was showing slackness in completing a trial against political bigwigs or the high and mighty. Ever since Lalu Prasad became a Minister in the UPA Government, central probe agencies had come under constant attack from the apex court for their tardy approach in dispensing with over half-a-dozen cases against the all powerful RJD supremo. Oberois’ house Bollywood actors Suresh Oberoi and his son Vivek Oberoi got a surprise gift from the Supreme Court as it ordered the eviction of a tenant from their ancestral house at Hyderabad. It was occupied by a tenant for the past 35 years. Kishore Taggarse, who had approached the apex court to seek further extension of his tenancy after eviction decreed by the Andhra Pradesh High Court and the lower courts, instead got a reverse order and was asked to vacate it within nine months. Not only this, the apex court increased the rent from a meagre Rs 1,400 to Rs 5,000 for the remaining nine-month grace period, with a warning that if the house was not vacated, the rent would be doubled. Court News a success Court News - a quarterly newsletter being published by the Supreme Court from January this year has become a great success in the legal fraternity. Demands from bar associations across the country are piling up with the apex court editorial board for supply of the magazine. The magazine aims to provide information about the functioning of the judiciary - a step taken by Chief Justice Y K Sabharwal to bring transparency. Court News provides the latest information to its readers about administrative decisions of the apex court, the gist of some important judicial verdicts, and appointment of judges and their transfers. Besides, it provides information about important changes made in the rules and procedures to improve the administration of justice. The CJI had initiated the move to have a in-house magazine with a view that information is indispensable for proper functioning of any institution in a democratic country, and people must be kept informed about the functioning of all the organs of the State.
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From the pages of Passports for Delhi? Sentiments similar to those which might have worked in the superiority-conscious Romans appear to have been re-incarnated in the mental processes of some Delhiwalas. One of the witnesses who testified before the committee which is inquiring into the recent New Delhi water supply mishap is reported to have argued that, instead of seeking to augment the Capital’s water supply to meet its growing needs, Delhi’s population should be reduced to match its present supply resources. The witness does not seem to have indicated the qualifications which will entitle one to drink the Jamuna water, as supplied by the Delhi Water and Sewage Board. He has, however, no hesitation in demanding a ban on newcomers and designs to relent to this extent that no outsider’s stay in the Capital should exceed a period of seven days! Pressed to be a little more considerate, the personage may perhaps agree to raise this time-limit, provided the visitor arranges to bring the necessary water supplies with himself!
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The desire to demonstrate one’s prowess, be it learning, valour or cunning, is strong indeed. As the warriors square off on combat grounds, the musicians compete on the stage and the learned Brahmins in lecture halls. — The Mahabharata You see a clay jar. I see pine trees and canyons, mountain after mountain and the maker of mountains too. My friend, I tell you the truth: The God whom I loves lives in this clay. — Kabir If a man commits a sin, let him realise. Let him repent. Let him not to do it again. The accumulation of evil can be very painful indeed. — The Buddha
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