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Message from St Petersburg Humble pie |
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Enlightened Buddha
Enacting farce and tragedy
A wish unfulfilled
Massacre in Lebanon More dairy, vegetable farms needed DEFENCE NOTES
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Message from St Petersburg THE
joint statement by the world’s most influential leaders, who came to St Petersburg (Russia) to participate in the G-8 summit there on Monday, has rightly condemned the Mumbai train blasts and acts of terrorism elsewhere in India. The world leaders did not name Pakistan, which they could have, but their statement was quite forthright in telling Islamabad that the international community could no longer tolerate the sponsorship of terrorism in India on any pretext. Their collective stand was that terrorism “constitutes a threat to each of our countries as well as to international peace and security”. It is time for President Pervez Musharraf and other generals to understand that they cannot escape being held responsible for promoting terrorism in India. If they find Pakistan getting increasingly isolated, they themselves are to blame. The expression “threat to international peace and security” used in the joint statement can help in getting the involvement of the UN Security Council at a later stage if Pakistan refuses to mend its ways. There is need to persuade the world community to have a mechanism to keep a close watch on the sponsors of terrorism. This is necessary to force Pakistan to dismantle the training camps and communication networks serving various terrorist outfits, which have been functioning under different names to fool the world. This cannot be allowed by the world community. It is a well-known fact that whatever Pakistan has been doing in the name of fighting international terrorism has been confined to dealing with Al-Qaida and the Taliban. It has not cared to stop the India-bound terrorists from operating from its soil. If Pakistan had taken its commitment given to India in January 2004 seriously the situation would not have come to such a pass. Islamabad chose to be careless perhaps on the belief that the world would look the other way on what it did or did not do. The terrorist monster can be finally laid to rest only when the world asserts by prescribing punishment that it cannot tolerate terrorism of any hue and under any pretext. Mere statements by world leaders meeting once in a while will not be enough.
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Humble pie THAT Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss’ stand in the All-India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS) agitation case was not only ethically but also legally wrong is being proved time and again. After coming in for criticism from almost all quarters on his high-handedness, he has also got a rap from the Supreme Court which has now ordered his ministry to pay the doctors 15-day wages up to May 30, a day after the order for ending the agitation was passed. That is what the government should have done in the first place because it had given a clear assurance before the court that no “punitive action” would be taken against the doctors if they went back to work. Instead, the Health Ministry conveniently forgot about its assurances, forcing the apex court to step in, on the appeal of the affected doctors. What has been underlined is the fact that the court is not giving up the “no work, no pay” principle, which is being considered sacrosanct, lately. It is just that an exception is being made in this particular case because the government had itself given a commitment that no “punitive action” would be taken against the doctors if they joined their duty. What is highly significant is that the court has not extended the benefit beyond May 30 when the doctors were supposed to get back to work. In other words, they are not getting salary for four days because they returned to work only on June 3. Quite blatantly, Dr Ramadoss was not out to negotiate with doctors but to teach them a bitter lesson. That is why he not only held back their pay but also extended the internship of junior doctors for as many days as they were absent from duty due to the strike. The aim was to make them ineligible to sit in the postgraduate entrance examination and thus spoil their career. Incidentally, this order too was struck down by the court on July 5. It remains to be seen whether the chastened minister learns a lesson from this fiasco or whether he goes in search of other ways to twist their tail, as he tried to do in the case of AIIMS chief Dr Venugopal. If he follows the latter approach, it will be a sad day for the AIIMS.
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Enlightened Buddha THE good thing — forget the evils, which are many and many-splendoured — about capitalism is its convertibility. It allows not just conversion of currency but also people, politics and ideas. Absolute capitalism converts absolutely, could well be the mantra now that Comrade Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, West Bengal Chief Minister, has delivered himself of the heretic pronouncement that “Capitalism is what we need”. Giving this year’s Pramod Dasgupta Memorial Lecture in Kolkata last week, Mr Bhattacharjee admitted that the CPM “has committed a mistake” in understanding capitalism. Is Mr Bhattacharjee to be applauded or assailed for acknowledging that the party was a bit off the mark in assessing the theories of capitalism? For those who love to flay the communists, he can be damned on both counts: For being a communist and for deviating from dogma to discover potential in capitalism. Admirers would point out that theoretical deviationism is part of the party’s neo-pragmatism dictated by the overwhelming tides of neo-liberalism. Those who perceive the CPM as India’s most successful social democratic party in communist garb would dismiss it as being of no consequence; their banner, like their salaam, may be red, but in perspective they have always been a shade of acceptable pink. That may be new dialectics, made in Kolkata, compatible with the new malls. The Dengist dictum of the colour of the cat being irrelevant as long as it catches mice is equally valid for the colour of a political party. As long as a party delivers the promised goods, the voters couldn’t care whether it comes in communist or capitalist colours. The CPM’s arch ideological foe, the BJP, recently conceded as much when its leader wanted partymen to learn from the communists how the Left Front managed to get elected in election after election in West Bengal since 1977. The communist parties, not only in India but the world over, have shown a remarkable ability to reinvent, reform, recast and redirect themselves and their politics to meet change and challenges. Wags would say that these ideological cartwheels being performed by CPM stars are simply to entertain the public so that communists are not seen as a dour, funless lot who cannot compete with the antics of the bourgeois parties. Enterprising, isn’t it?
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It is necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph. — Edmund Burke |
Enacting farce and tragedy
PAKISTAN’S Foreign Minister, Mr Khurshid Kasuri, glibly assumed (and then denied) vicarious responsibility for the savage and mindless
Mumbai-Srinagar (Gulmarg) bomb blasts that killed and maimed so many innocents last week in once again linking jihadi anger with “lack of progress” in the resolution of the J&K question to Islamabad’s satisfaction. In a sense, the mentor was acknowledging his pupil’s labours. The Government of India responded by stating that it found this vicious linkage “appalling” while the Prime Minister firmly asserted that India would kneel before none. General Musharraf too recently formally urged Delhi to demilitarise Srinagar, Baramulla and Kupwara in exchange for which he would guarantee peace. Jinnah had made a somewhat similar offer in 1947 when he said he would “call off the whole thing” if India acknowledged a “dispute” in J&K. The world must note this threat of blackmail through terror and act to bring a self-confessed rogue state to heel and dismantle the terrorist infrastructure on its soil. Pakistan has time and again piously pledged that it will not allow use of its territory (nor, implicitly, extend its patronage) for terrorist attacks against India. It has been reluctant or unable to do so, beyond indulging in a charade, as was amply evidenced by the fact that “banned” jihadi formations not merely surfaced along the Line of Control in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir after the October 2005 earthquake under different names, but took the lead in rescue and relief operations. They were involuntarily embraced by international aid and donor agencies and, more readily, by Pakistan’s military and civil authorities who have thereby invested them with a new respectability. There have been two different strands of domestic criticism. The first, and more easily disposed of, is the BJP charge that the government has turned soft on terror through “consistent signals that the initiative against terrorism can be traded for votes”. This is a new low for a party that has made divisive politics its principal plank in the face of internal disarray and the absence of a constructive platform. The second is the argument, shed of all verbiage, that the government should abandon the peace process in favour of firmer steps, a euphemism for reprisals or even hot pursuit. Nothing would please the jihadis and Pakistan more than that India rise to the bait and gift it a “cause”, a plausible alibi for righteous self-justification and reason yet once more to cry wolf over an impending nuclear holocaust. There would be international pressure to avert such an eventuality and to pull back from the brink. Pakistan would have exacted its pound of flesh and the India-Pakistan hyphen would have been restored. Vigilance should, of course, be stepped up in J&K and elsewhere. Tourists must be encouraged to keep visiting the valley during the coming autumn season and developmental efforts must continue. The new rail and road links from Jammu to Srinagar-Baramulla and improved power transmission to the valley will transform the situation within the next couple of years. These must be seen as clear terrorist targets. Meanwhile, the five task forces set up by the Prime Minister must carry the J&K dialogue forward by defining practical deliverables. If the Hurriyat joins and makes a useful contribution, that must be welcomed. Otherwise, it will be held accountable. The Hizb has reportedly been arm-twisting the Hurriyat to fall in line with Geelani’s openly pro-Pakistan stance. Should it do so its irrelevance will be confirmed. The jihadis fear development, normalcy and even talk of greater autonomy in J&K and will use every trick in their book to subvert the peace process. This should not throw us off stride. Striking at soft targets is not difficult and should not evoke knee-jerk protests that detract attention from the main task. There is mounting unrest in PoK, which is neither “Azad” nor Kashmir (being ethnically Punjabi and Hazara). The Northern Areas in turn is a straightforward colony of Pakistan, though depicted in a map of J&K recently brought out by the Pakistan High Commission in the UK as an integral part of Pakistan, but lacking in parliamentary representation or constitutional rights. How General Musharraf blandly talks of “self-rule” in J&K in the circumstances is for him to explain. The just concluded general elections in PoK represents another farce, with the disqualification of some 81 candidates unwilling to swear by “the ideology of accession to Pakistan”, including those belonging to Amanullah Khan’s JKLF. Were this not enough, 12 members of the 41- member legislature — which, like the PoK government, was totally supine when the earthquake devastated PoK — are “elected from the so-called J&K diaspora (refugees) in Pakistan, a pocket borough of the ISI. With six women elected by the House, there is always a safe majority to root for Pakistan while the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs and the Northern Areas rules the roost. In the midst of all this, General Musharraf is engaged in manoeuvres refining strategies to retain his uniform and the
Presidency in 2007.
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A wish unfulfilled
IT was an unusual sight: a brand new cycle-rickshaw inside the complex of a five-star hotel. It could be noticed the moment one entered the area where food was served. But why is this rickshaw kept here? I addressed the query to a local journalist, who replied with a counter-question. “Don’t you know you are in the City of Cycle-Rickshaws?” As we went out in accordance with our programme, we could see colourful rickshaws moving along with cars, buses, etc, on the city’s roads. It was not difficult to realise that Dhaka had got the sobriquet it deserved. You can’t imagine life in the Bangladesh capital without the rickshaws. They help people reach their destination without spending much. It is the ideal mode of transport for low-budget travellers, or those who have to cover a short distance. It must also be a cause for happiness for the environment-conscious people. Yet most people consider it a nuisance in a city bustling with activity. The rickshaws are responsible for dreaded traffic jams, which can happen anytime and anywhere. Think of a person rushing to the airport to catch his flight getting caught in a traffic jam, which shows no sign of coming to an end soon. There is no data available, but the rickshaws must be a major factor for many road accidents in Dhaka. All efforts to confine the rickshaws to the areas where they are needed the most have failed so far. The rickshaw-pullers have enormous clout, which prevents any government from forcing them to keep off the road in most areas. They can proudly ply their vehicles on at least 80 per cent of the city’s roads. They can paralyse life if they so desire. Dhaka-walas have, therefore, no alternative but to learn to live with these slow-moving three-wheelers. Whatever the problems of the motorists, Dhaka without its rickshaws is unthinkable, at least at this stage. No government can muster courage to get rid of them. And why should it take such an action when the rickshaws are so popular with the people? I wanted to spend a few hours on a Dhaka cycle-rickshaw, but time constraint came in the way. I wish I
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Massacre in Lebanon IT will be called the massacre of Marwaheen. All the civilians killed by the Israelis had first been ordered to abandon their homes in the border village by loudspeaker; and leave they did, 20 of them in a convoy of civilian cars. That’s when the Israeli jets arrived to bomb them, killing 20 Lebanese, at least nine of them children. The local fire brigade could not put out the fires as they all burned alive in the inferno. Another “terrorist” target had been eliminated. Later, the Israelis produced more “terrorist” targets — petrol stations in the Bekaa Valley all the way up to the frontier city of Hermel in northern Lebanon and another series of bridges on one of the few escape routes to Damascus, this time between Chtaura and the border village of Masnaa. On day two, Israeli jets came first to the little village of Dweir near Nabatiya in southern Lebanon, where an Israeli plane dropped a bomb on the home of a Shia Muslim cleric. He was killed. So was his wife. So were eight of his children. One was decapitated. All they could find of a baby was its head and torso which a young villager brandished in fury in front of the cameras. Then the planes visited another home in Dweir and disposed of a family of seven. Lebanon, as usual, was paying the price for the Hizbollah-Israeli conflict — as Hizbollah no doubt calculated they would when they crossed the Israeli frontier on Wednesday and captured two Israeli soldiers close to Marwaheen. But who is really winning the war? Not Lebanon, you may say, with its more than 130 civilian dead and its infrastructure steadily destroyed in hundreds of Israeli air raids. But is Israel winning? Last week’s missile attack on an Israeli warship off the coast of Lebanon suggests otherwise. Four Israeli sailors were killed, two of them hurled into the sea when a tele-guided Iranian-made missile smashed into their Hetz-class gunboat just off Beirut at dusk. Those Lebanese who had endured the fire of Israeli gunboats on the coastal highway over many years were elated. They may not have liked Hizbollah - but they hated the Israelis. Only now, however, is a truer picture emerging of the battle for southern Lebanon and it is a fascinating, frightening tale. The original border crossing, the capture of the two soldiers and the killing of three others was planned, according to Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader who escaped assassination by the Israelis last week, more than five months ago. And the missile attack on the Israeli gunboat was not the last-minute inspiration of a Hizbollah member who just happened to see the warship. It now appears clear that the Hizbollah leadership — Nasrallah used to be the organisation's military commander in southern Lebanon — thought carefully through the effects of their border crossing, relying on the cruelty of Israel’s response to quell any criticism of their action within Lebanon. They were right in their planning. The Israeli retaliation was even crueller than some Hizbollah leaders imagined, and the Lebanese quickly silenced all criticism of the guerrilla movement. Hizbollah had presumed the Israelis would cross into Lebanon after the capture of the two soldiers and they blew up the first Israeli Merkava tank when it was only 35 feet inside the country. All four Israeli crewmen were killed and the Israeli army moved no further forward. The long-range Iranian-made missiles which later exploded on Haifa had been preceded only a few weeks ago by a pilotless Hizbollah drone aircraft which surveyed northern Israel and then returned to land in eastern Lebanon after taking photographs during its flight. These pictures not only suggested a flight path for Hizbollah's rockets to Haifa; they also identified Israel’s top-secret military air traffic control centre in Miron. The next attack — concealed by Israel’s censors — was directed at this facility. Codenamed “Apollo”, Israeli military scientists work deep inside mountain caves and bunkers at Miron, guarded by watchtowers, guard-dogs and barbed wire, watching all air traffic moving in and out of Beirut, Damascus, Amman and other Arab cities. The mountain is surmounted by clusters of antennae which Hizbollah quickly identified as a military tracking centre. Before they fired rockets at Haifa, they therefore sent a cluster of missiles towards Miron. The caves are untouchable but the targeting of such a secret location by Hizbollah deeply shocked Israel’s military planners. The “centre of world terror” — or whatever they imagine Lebanon to be — could not only breach their frontier and capture their soldiers but attack the nerve-centre of the Israeli northern military command. Then came the Haifa missiles and the attack on the gunboat. It is now clear that this successful military operation - so contemptuous of their enemy were the Israelis that although their warship was equipped with cannon and a Vulcan machine gun, they didn’t even provide the vessel with an anti-missile capability — was also planned months ago. Once the Hetz-class boats appeared, Hizbollah positioned a missile crew on the coast of west Beirut not far from Jnah, a crew trained over many weeks for just such an attack. It took less than 30 seconds for the Iranian-made missile to leave Beirut and hit the vessel square amidships, setting it on fire and killing the sailors. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizballah leader, told the Israelis that “if you do not want to play by rules, we can do the same.” It was a grim little threat that was obviously meant to counter Ehud Olmert's equally grim little threat that there would be “far-reaching consequences” for the missile attack on Haifa. — By arrangement with The Independent
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More dairy, vegetable farms needed IN order to revive agriculture in Punjab there is a need to shift away from the present cropping pattern to an Activity Intensive Farming System, so as to increase the income as well as to provide enough work for all members of the farming family. Adoption of dairy farming along with organic vegetable growing can provide a suitable substitute to rice-wheat crop rotation. Punjab has the advantage of irrigation facilities essential for growing fodder crops and vegetables. Farm yard manure is a good source of bio-gas as well as nutrients for the soil, which is a must for organic growing of vegetables. Milk is an important part of Punjabi diet. There is a need to develop dairy as a viable economic enterprise based on technology. Dairy farming provides farm families the triple benefits of nutritive food, supplementary income and productive employment. The same is true for vegetable farming. Dairy and vegetable farming should be developed on the cluster farm model. This will facilitate marketing, input supplies and technical guidance. Success will depend upon the availability of quality breeds of animals and high yielding, disease-resistance varieties of vegetables. Although Punjab is an agricultural state, sufficient quantity of green fodder is not available, even for the existing number of cattle. Green fodder requirement of the state is about 90 million tons, where as only 32 million tons of green fodder is produced in the state. There is a need to at least double the area under green fodder. Non-availability of seed is one of the reasons for non-expansion of area under fodder crops. The same is true of vegetables. Seeds of the recommended vegetable varieties are not available in the state. There is a need to pay special attention to produce fodder and vegetable seeds. The State Seeds Corporation can play a significant role in this direction. The State Department of Animal Husbandry also has to take up projects of breeding high yielding cattle. Marketing is an other important hurdle. The gap between the producer’s price and the consumer’s price is very high. This is almost double. An efficient marketing system will not only reduce this gap but both producers and consumers will get relief. The margin of profit of the producers can increase by increasing the yields as well as giving remunerative prices. Milk yield can be improved through improved animal breeds, better health cover and quality feeding. The cost of milk production can be reduced through scientific farm management and farmers’ education programmes. This is also applicable for vegetable cultivation. Milk and vegetables are a major source of protective food in human nutrition, being rich in proteins, minerals and vitamins. Farmers hesitate to grow vegetables as they lack knowledge of post-harvest management. Secondly, market forces always let them down when they grow bumper crops. In order to encourage farmers to grow vegetables, their exploitation at the hands of the market forces will have to be discouraged and post-harvest technology will also have to be provided to make the farmers realise long term gains. Adoption of dairy farming and vegetable-growing will diversify the agricultural production pattern significantly, improve the income of the farmers, and will create considerable gainful employment opportunities in the rural areas. It is the right time to make sincere and practical efforts for diversification in Punjab, to save farming and the farmers of the state. The writer is a former Dean of the College of Agriculture, PAU, Ludhiana.
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DEFENCE NOTES THE Ministry of Defence has estimated an infusion of 10 billion dollars as accruals from offsets in defence contracts in the next five years. Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee has asked the public sector defence undertakings to pull up their socks to gain maximum benefit from offset arrangements. The new offset policy announced by the government a year ago makes it mandatory for foreign companies to invest 30 per cent of the contract amount in India for procurement of various parts, for deals valued at Rs 300 crore or more. At a series of meetings with the chief executives of the defence PSUs held earlier in the month, the Defence Minister asked them to get their act together to profit from these investments. He also asked them to draw up complete plans for effectively absorbing transfer of technologies for frontline weapons. Effective co-ordination Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee has called for adopting a "collegium approach" for solving inter-disciplinary issues, a move aimed at synergised development of advanced weapons systems and platforms in the country. As per his new instructions, the officials of various departments under the ministry, defence scientists, and officers from armed forces would sit together and deliberate upon major new weapons system projects, especially those undertaken by the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). Many DRDO projects have been delayed for years and the armed forces have also complained that they have not been consulted on these projects. Peacekeepers for Congo Ahead of the first ever general elections in the strife-torn Congo, India has sent additional troops to the country. The troops will provide security cover for the internationally-supervised polls, which are scheduled for July 31. A battalion-strong contingent from the 2nd Rajputana Rifles has been sent to the country. India already has a brigade strength peacekeeping presence in the central African Country, with an Air Force compliment of helicopter gunships and ferry helicopters to quell radical Islamic groups opposed to elections. Indo-Korean exercises Responding adequately to the challenge of marine pollution was one of the major issues, amongst several others, which figured during the five-day joint exercise between Indian and Korean Coast Guard Ships off the coast of Chennai. Pollution control equipment of several types were demonstrated. The Indian Coast Guard and its Korean counterpart have recently signed an MoU to foster cooperation in the fields of search and rescue, pollution control, anti piracy, disaster management and maritime law enforcement.
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From the pages of Lavish living by Ministers An indiscriminate indictment of Ministers' lavish living goes a little off the mark usually. What the people should be concerned with is not the standard of living of a Minister but the extent of the contribution that the State exchequer has to make to that standard. The assessment of the fact whether a lavish living is a living beyond one's known means can be made only if data of a Minister's income from all sources is known. The late Prime Minister, Mr Nehru's personal income was so large that he had to pay a major portion of his salary towards income-tax. Even by insinuation his "lavish" living could not be construed to be undesirable. While economy is needed in all aspects of administrative expenditure, we cannot expect a Minister to forsake the basic amenities like housing and transport on which the Government has to spend a certain amount keeping in view the standard of living of upper strata of society. The only way of reducing expenditure would, therefore, be to have small-sized ministries and small-sized offices. Vigilance on Ministers and their relations is also necessary to check them from collecting wealth through unfair means.
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