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Stop it
now President’s
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Doctors
or butchers?
Civilians
suffer in Lebanon
Our
world and theirs
Women in
uniform North
Korea’s missile men Delhi Durbar
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Stop it now
THE attack on a building in Qana, Lebanon, which killed some three dozen children and a score of adult civilians, has shocked the world by the magnitude of the tragedy. But this was only the worst of a disproportionate and reckless Israeli offensive that has in just 19 days seen more than 500 Lebanese die. Some 50-odd Israelis, too, have lost their lives. Under worldwide pressure and condemnation, Israel has agreed to stop air strikes for a 48-hour period. But ground operations are continuing, and Israel has indicated that it will resume aerial attacks if the Hezbollah continue to fire rockets at them. Persisting with an offensive will only result in continued carnage. Israel must be prevailed upon for a complete and immediate ceasefire. The United States has so far desisted from calling for a ceasefire, but it is now incumbent upon them and the United Nations to press for it. UN Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was in the region and was scheduled to go to Beirut as well. All talk of “root causes” and “framework agreements” and mere expressions of concern about civilian casualties seem desperately inadequate after Qana. The prospects for an end to violence are not good. Before Qana, Israeli Prime Minster Ehud Olmert was telling Rice that Israel still needs 10 to 14 days to complete operations. Even after the tragedy, Israel’s Ambassador to the UN, Dan Gillerman, while expressing sorrow over the civilian deaths, said that though they were killed by Israeli fire, “they were victims of the Hezbollah.” What is more, he was urging UN members “not to play into the hands of the Hezbollah” by pressing for a ceasefire. Qana was the scene of an Israeli attack on a UN compound in 1996, which killed around a hundred people. Israel believes that the village is being used by the Hezbollah to fire rockets at them. Whether Israel is succeeding in its military objectives is difficult to tell, but the costs are clearly too high. As UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has indicated, commanders on both sides may be guilty of war crimes. When that happens no one wins. The killing must stop now. |
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President’s mind
WHAT President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam said during his address to the joint session of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly on Friday highlighted the role of socio-economic development in bringing about normalcy in the troubled border state. No one can doubt that his nine-point “prosperity mission” can be of great help in persuading the people to reject militancy forever. Once they develop a greater stake in economic growth, they will provide wholehearted support to the counter-terrorism measures. But there is a major roadblock to be crossed over. The state must have political and social peace for the economy to grow at a fast pace. Besides Pakistan’s abetment of militancy, there are several internal factors coming in the way of establishing peace in Jammu and Kashmir. Rising unemployment tops the list. It has been the primary cause of frustration among the youth, helping the terrorist masterminds to find local recruits for their destructive designs. But, unfortunately, the need for generating sufficient job opportunities has not been given the priority it deserves. The state requires a new approach to handle the internal factors. That is, perhaps, one of the ideas behind the setting up of the five working groups after the second Round-Table Conference last May. These groups, headed by eminent non-political personalities, must do their work urgently. Another cause for frustration among people may be the delay in settling terrorism-related cases. President Kalam rightly pointed out on Saturday the need for a fast judicial process for the disposal of such cases so that no innocent soul suffers in the fight against terrorism. He used the occasion of the diamond jubilee celebrations of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court to impress upon the judiciary that it, too, could play a major role in normalising the situation in the troubled state. The High Court already has fixed the target of “zero pendency” of cases by 2008. Hopefully, this marks the beginning of the much-needed judicial reforms in the state. |
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Doctors
or butchers?
Doctors are supposed to give life and hope to patients. Nobody can even imagine that they can also maim completely healthy persons on demand, so that the latter could use their amputated bodies to gain sympathy and beg for alms. The three persons caught on the camera by a private TV channel taking money for amputating healthy limbs cannot be called doctors. Unfortunately, they have all the professional degrees to prove that they are. One thing is certain. They took their Hippocratic oath in vain. Laws of the land are such that they cannot be prosecuted merely on the basis of what they said on the TV. But there is nothing that stops the administration from conducting a thorough inquiry against them and punish them for their grisly crime. The matter-of fact way that they were speaking to the decoy customer made it obvious that amputating the healthy limbs of persons for a few wads of notes was a routine affair for them. Such inhuman deeds cannot be done by lone rangers. Apparently they were hands in glove with a beggar mafia out to cash in on the public sympathy for those who have their limbs missing. There is also need to find out whether the activity was confined to one or two places around Delhi or it has spread to other areas. The increase in the number of maimed beggars everywhere points to the latter possibility. The doctors happen to be well connected. The family members of some of them are in senior positions in the administration. That should not be their ticket for exoneration. Here is a test case for the government as well as society. If true, there could not be a more horrible crime. No civilised society can afford to have such beasts roaming free and unpunished. |
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He who is filled with love is filled with God himself.
— Saint Augustine |
Civilians suffer in Lebanon
NOT infrequently, one incident in a war or war-like situation transforms its outcome. So it was in Bosnia where a market massacre tilted the scales against the Bosnian Serbs. So it promises to be in the case of Qana in south Lebanon, a place already made infamous by the 1996 massacre by Israeli fire of over 100 refugees seeking shelter in a United Nations compound. An Israeli air strike killed some 50 civilians — half of them children — sheltering in a building last Sunday. Civilian deaths in Lebanon are approaching the 600 mark in Israeli offensives and the Hezbollah movement is continuing to rain down rather inaccurate rockets on neighbouring Israeli towns as an act of defiance. The American-supplied Israeli military machine has displayed its traditional ruthless efficiency in destroying Lebanese infrastructure, making rubble of apartment blocks and killing practically anything that moved. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s diplomatic foray to Jerusalem and Beirut, her Rome meeting with a wider circle of countries and her return visit to Israel were all in aid of a central American purpose: to provide Israelis with a diplomatic cover to permit them to continue their murderous campaign. Her mantra was that the region could not revert to the status quo ante and Israelis talked of changing the rules of the game. The code language signified that Israel would take several more weeks to reduce what was left of Lebanon to rubble and demolish the fighting strength of the Hezbollah. There is a measure of irony here. It was the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982 meant to decimate Yasser Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organisation sheltering there that gave birth to the Hezbollah. And after the Israelis had carved out a security zone inside Lebanon to stay, the Hezbollah made sure that they realised they were unwelcome. Finally, harried and losing soldiers, Israelis decided to call it a day. They left six years ago. The Hezbollah meanwhile grew and its military wing was replenished by Iran and helped by Syria. The movement also became legitimate by securing seats in the National Assembly and two Cabinet posts in the Lebanese government. After the murder of former Prime Minister, Rafiq Hariri, Syrian forces were forced to leave Lebanon through Western pressure and popular sentiment in Lebanon. Against this background, the Hezbollah made a foray into Israel to ambush and kill a few Israeli soldiers and take two of them hostage. Apparently, this act was to show solidarity with Palestinians after Israelis had their guns blazing in the Gaza Strip following the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier just inside Israel. A second Hezbollah objective was to swap the kidnapped Israelis with imprisoned Lebanese and Palestinians. Presumably, the Palestinians had a similar objective because some 10,000 Palestinians are languishing in Israeli jails. Hiding behind American diplomatic cover, Israelis were merrily bombing Lebanese roads, bridges, airports, naval ports and multitudes of apartment blocks. They made ground incursions into southern Lebanon with the objective of taking out Hezbollah infrastructure. Israeli troops met greater resistance than they had expected. Indeed, the movement proved resilient and fought a guerrilla war while keeping up their rocket barrage. Overnight, they became heroes on the Arab street for giving battle to Israeli forces longer than any Arab army has been able to withstand Israel’s might. The Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, frequently appeared on television to reassure his people. That was the situation till the early morning of last Sunday. Then came the massacre of the innocents in Qana. The dam of Lebanese resentment against Israel and the United States burst. A crowd broke into and vandalised a United Nations building in central Beirut, apparently because it symbolised an unfeeling world seemingly oblivious to weeks of punishing Israeli air strikes, bombardment from the sea and artillery rounds on the ground. The Lebanese Prime Minister, Mr Siniora, described the massacre as a crime and called off Ms Rice’s visit to Lebanon. His call, echoed by many around the world, was for an immediate unconditional ceasefire. The same call he had made in vain to Ms Rice and others at the Rome conference. Caught on the wrong foot in Jerusalem, Ms Rice temporised. She was working very hard to put in place a set of conditions that would lead to a cessation of hostilities, she said. The two sides had differences on the conditions required for a ceasefire. Even as she spoke, it was becoming clear that Israelis had days, not weeks, to accomplish their tasks in Lebanon. And if they wanted to destroy the military muscle of the Hezbollah, they would have to leave that task unfinished. There will be some horse-trading, as usual, before the United Nations Security Council gives the call for a ceasefire. It remains unclear what the US and Israelis can salvage out of several weeks of Israeli military campaign. Israelis have suddenly taken to chanting Resolution 1559 passed two years ago under which militias were to be disbanded and the Lebanese Army was to police its border with Israel. A country notorious for defying UN resolutions concerning its own occupation of Palestine and contemptuous of the UN now seeks the implementation of a UN resolution. Israel and the world know that the Lebanese government has been too weak to control the border and Israel provided an alibi for the Hezbollah by retaining the enclave of Sheba farms demanded by it. The longer-term picture remains murky. More than Israel, the United States has lost face and is almost universally blamed by the Arab world for what the Israelis have done to an Arab country yet again. The Hezbollah’s popularity in Lebanon has increased although the nature of the country’s sectarian politics makes predictions difficult. Iran and Syria can, of course, bask in the glow of American and Israeli humiliation. Hundreds of lives have been lost, thousands have been wounded - the overwhelming number being Lebanese civilians - and the region remains a powder keg. If the United States has been banking upon the so-called moderate states such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan to pull its chestnuts out of the fire, it will receive little solace because the American-aided Israeli action has weakened their position vis-à-vis the Arab
street.
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Our world and theirs
WE can’t live without them, we can’t live with them. They clean us, “cook us”, rear our children, press our tired or ageing limbs, polish our shoes, wash our innocent unstained bedsheets, walk our dogs, stand, stare and serve at our cocktails and dinners. The majority of “them” are tribals or dalits, even poor Brahmins relegated across this land to their own reservations in slums, neglected villages, unauthorised tenement clusters, their own scheduled social position. They are potters, laundrymen, leather-workers, sanitary workers, peasants, forest-dwellers, artisans, artists, foresters and agriculturists, born ecologists, environmentalists, nature-lovers. Their only fault, they cannot speak a brahmanical sanskritised language or public schoolish conventish English. They have not been educated in expensive fee-paying schools, or, indeed, they have hardly been to school at all. There are millions of them, at least one third of this country’s total population. This particular story, real to life, runs something like this. A severely handicapped son churns, turns my life around. An absent, itinerant mother busy with a rat-racing career throws two children and me into total dependency on an alternative support system. As there is no such remedy available with the maternal or paternal families, a certain improvisation is called for. For our two toddlers, there are no class or caste divides, no hassles or hang-ups. They have still not been educated into prejudice, ego, snobbery... what have you. They are a good example of the noble savage. In the middle of the difficult triangle that father and two babes-in-arms find themselves. Our “godsend” gift of good fortune arrives in the form of two young adivasi women looking for work. There is something different about these two women. A deep brownish-black complexion, they are quite Africanishly beautiful. They have a swingy natural gait. They smile and laugh uninhibitedly. Our two babes take to them like fish do water. And so do I. Over the years, these two adivasi women merge into the family as no other domestics had done. As do others of their kind-Oraon, Munda, Kharia, Santhal. The children, they and I... we cavort, we play, we shout at each other. We share stories of dukh and sukh; ... when “memsahib” is away, we sit together in the living room, break bread at the dining table. Even partake of a glass of wine, feel cool, swing to music ... forget that we are living in a strange world where we are supposed to maintain our respective social boundaries, social position... low or high. Our girl grows into a unique woman. Conventional education stretches, swings her values between upper class snobbish behaviour shaped by her peers by her mother’s upwardly mobile, social mores and style and our alternative new world at home. Whereas our “handicapped” son still remains the noble savage that he is. More than the mainstream society, his adivasi minders become my social non-civilisational benchmark. It is with them that I discover my finest of quality time. I visit their village homes, only to discover an India I did not know existed. Not in my Doon School textbooks, not in my university textbooks, not even within the pages of the national Constitution, except as unexplained, undigested S.T.S. without a word of recognition of their race, languages, religion, culture. Thanks to our “handicapped” son who recognises no class-caste divide, our home remains uncontaminated by an improbable education, an impossible revolution for a paradise aborted by the demands of education, ego, pride, wealth, social career and
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Women in uniform Women have been inducted into the Indian armed forces since 1992-93 only as short service commissioned officers. Whereas the Navy and the Air Force have reasonably integrated them into their cadres, the Army still seems to be having certain teething problems. There are 918 lady officers in the army in the support units of Engineers, Signals, Army Service Corps, Ordnance, EME, Education, Intelligence and Judge Advocate General’s branch. This issue has come into sharp focus in the wake of the unfortunate suicide of Lieutenant Susmita Chakraborty and the subsequent remarks of the Army Vice Chief about the low comfort level with lady officers in the Army units and that the Army "could do without them" in certain roles. Beleaguered by women organisations, the Army did some quick fire-fighting by making some politically correct statements. This may save the day for the Army for the present, but it will not do so in the long run unless it takes substantial remedial measures without any further loss of time. Unfortunately, instead of tracing the root cause of women’s problems, the focus is being shifted to "the suitability or otherwise of women for combat arms." Dismal scenarios of women soldiers suffering brutal indignities at the hands of enemy are being painted to scare away women from joining the Army. This is disservice to the Army and the nation as a whole. The problems of lady officers in the Army are essentially human resource development (HRD) and management problems. Women are psychologically and physically different from men and, therefore, have peculiar problems. The US, the UK and other NATO armies, who have extensive experience of employing women in combat as well as non-combat roles, take care of them adequately by assigning them only those jobs in the units which are considered suitable for them. For example in combat units, they are not employed on the positions where they are required to "close in with the enemy and kill him in direct firing or hand-to-hand combat." In the British Army Royal Artillery, more women are employed in signaling and command post work than on gun lines. "Allowable discretion" in the employment of women in the interest of enhancing the combat effectiveness is another concept in practice. No such positions have been identified in our Army. Had it been done, Lt. Susmita Chakraborty, a postgraduate in chemistry with gold medal, would not have been tasked to lead a Motor Transport (MT) convoy from Udhampur to Srinagar and back. Every seasoned Army Supply Corps (ASC) officer knows that leading an MT convoy is the toughest job in an ASC battalion and is always assigned to an experienced young officer. This assignment, naturally, led to work-related depression in her. Let these positions be now identified by the Military Secretary’s branch. Assigning jobs as per one’s capabilities and aptitude leads to increased job satisfaction. When the lady officers were first inducted 14 years ago, Army Headquarters simply issued a set of guidelines on how to treat the lady officers in the units without organising any sensitisation training or making any provisions for basic amenities for them at the unit level. The thrust of these guidelines was on "no favour to be shown to lady officers." These guidelines though proved very useful in the units, but in the absence of sensitisation training or amplifying provisions regarding jobs to be assigned to women, threw the concept of chivalry out of the window and gave rise to petty grudging rivalries and jealousies between the male and female officers in the units. As regards the basic amenities to the lady officers, the lesser said the better. In this regard the first lady officer commissioned in the Army, Major Priya Jhingan had this to say in an article published in a leading newspaper a few years back, "In my first posting at Ahmedabad, there was only one toilet and I had to share it with other male officers, but that didn’t bother me ." The situation is no different in certain units in the Army even today. Marriage, pregnancy and motherhood are great events to look forward to in a woman’s life. But, the army considers them problems. In an interview to The Hindustan Times, the Vice Chief said the tendency among women officers to plan marriage soon after getting commissioned was causing problems. These events being predictable should not cause problems. The American and British armies have kept adequate manning margins to cater to these events. In those armies when a woman becomes pregnant she is placed into particular medical category so that she does not have to attend morning physical training exercises and evening games or parades. We have no such provisions. It is only left to the compassionate nature of the senior officers to grant excuse from such parades. Even our own Navy looks after maternity and motherhood generously. This is what one of the naval lady officers has to say, "For my confinement I got six months leave. It was so comfortable for me and my child. In fact I delivered on duty and took leave after discharge. Raising children is no problem." No wonder almost every one in the Navy is completing 14 years. In case of the Army, some of the senior officers are reluctant to grant six months leave, a combination of two months of maternity, two months of annual and two months of furlough leave. There is a need for the issue of necessary guidelines in this regard. Fortunately, the cases of sexual harassment in our Army are few and far between, thanks to the ethos and value system of our society. Nevertheless, stringent systems must be in place to deal with the cases of sexual harassment.
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North Korea’s missile
men When North Korea first test-launched a missile capable of reaching Japan, the son of the country’s leader lavished praise and gifts on the researchers who had labored away on the project behind locked doors. "You deserve to be sitting on pile of gold for what you’ve done for our nation," Kim Jong II told the scientists shortly after the May 1994 launch, according to a former employee of a Pyongyang-based institute that had worked on the project. Kim, who would become leader himself after his father’s death a few months later, was even more excited when the scientists began work on a multi-stage missile that could hit the United States. "We’ll be able to reach any place in the US, and the Americans won’t be able to do anything to stop us," Kim told the scientists, said the former employee, Kim Gil Sun. With his visits, Kim Jong II conferred on the scientists and their work prestige, praise and prizes. There was no pile of gold, but there were watches with inscriptions from the leadership, color televisions, refrigerators and electric fans – all luxuries here. The personal attention bestowed by the upper echelons of the North Korean regime goes a long way toward explaining how a failed state like North Korea could have a military that threatens the world’s superpowers. North Korea test-launched seven missiles earlier this month, and despite the failure of the multi-stage Taepodong, short- and mid-range missiles were believed to show surprising sophistication. "They appeared to be accurate, validating the readiness of the North’s significant theater missile ballistic capability," said Gen. B.B. Bell, commander of U.S. troops in South Korea, in Seoul last week. Although at one point the North Korean army became so poorly equipped that soldiers lacked socks, funding for the development of weapons of mass destruction – particularly for Kim’s pet projects, the missiles and nuclear weapons – has only increased. Cho Myong Chul, an economist from Pyongyang’s Kim II Sung University who defected in 1994, said the regime’s ability to draft its most talented scientists for research into weapons allowed North Korea to achieve what no other country could with such limited finances. "North Korea is one of the cheapest countries for scientists." After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the North Koreans were also able to hire researchers from former Soviet republics, and in some cases to procure parts and technology, according to the defectors. The missiles were given especially high priority because they were not just for self-defense but for making money. Until recently, North Korean was believed to be bringing in as much as $500 million annually from sales of short- and mid-range missiles to Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, and others. North Korean defectors say that Kim Jong II sees his missiles not only as marketable items, but as tools for extorting money from the international community. In 1994, when the Clinton administration agreed to provide North Korea with light-water reactors and other energy assistance in return for denuclearization, Kim Jong Il sent a congratulatory message to missile researchers at Kim Gil Sun’s institute. In the message, he credited a successful test the previous year of a medium-range missile for forcing the United States to make concessions, according to Kim Gil Sun, who wrote up reports of the message. — By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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Delhi Durbar Being a vociferous critic of Union Finance Minister P Chidambaram, CPI leader and trade unionist Gurudas Dasgupta does not leave any opportunity in Parliament or outside to criticise him. The issues cover Public Sector disinvestment, and insurance, labour and banking reforms. The other day, while responding to a calling attention motion on outsourcing banking services moved by Dasgupta in the Lok Sabha, Chidambaram got support from the BJP members. "What is wrong with outsourcing," asked one of the BJP members, irked by Dasgupta’s long speech. Immediately Dasgupta remarked "I know many friends on the other side are eager to lend Chidambaram support." Speaker Somnath Chatterjee wondered aloud "I suppose you are not his enemy. The much embarrassed Dasgupta remarked "Sir, I am his critic and not an enemy." Army or not? The recent statement of Home Minister Shivraj Patil in the Rajya Sabha on the arrest of army soldiers in Jammu and Kashmir, for their alleged links with the LeT, had the Army officials in a spin. The minister had said that the arrested men were not from the Army but the Indian Reserve Battalion. However, army officials pointed out that of the arrested men, three were from the Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry and one from RR, both of which come under the operational control of the Army. The men forming these forces are actually army men. But no correction was issued as "the boss is always right." No Indian papers? Senior BJP leader Jaswant Singh, who has held the portfolios of Defence, Finance and External Affairs in the Vajpayee government, admitted to lady reporters last week that he was sorry for not having followed their writings in their respective newspapers, as he does not read any Indian newspapers but has time only to go through the International Herald Tribune. This has annoyed the Sangh Parivar and an RSS tirade against him is said to be in the offing. Congress only Congress leaders, it seems, are not keen to remind their youth cadre about the contribution of leaders outside the Nehru-Gandhi family. At a training camp of Indian Youth Congress district presidents at Gandhi Smriti in the capital recently, senior party leader Oscar Fernandes told Congress President Sonia Gandhi that IYC workers had during their stay visited the samadhis of Jawaharlal Nehru, Rajiv Gandhi, and Indira Gandhi to derive inspiration. Fernandes did not mention if the IYC workers also visited the samadhi of Lal Bahadur Shastri. In her speeches, the Congress president also dwells mostly on the role of the Nehru-Gandhi trio, rarely mentioning the contribution of the leader who gave the famous slogan ‘Jai Jawan, Jai Kisan.’ Contributed by Girja Shankar Kaura, Rajeev Sharma, Satish Misra, Prashant Sood and Manoj Kumar
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From the pages of Norah Richards Punjabi theatre today is much the poorer without Norah Richards, the lady who not only founded it but gave it a sense of purpose and direction. For Mrs Richards Punjabi drama was a life-long mission. As a pioneer of the Amateur Stage of Dyal Singh College at Lahore and the Saraswati Stage Society, her efforts were mainly directed at producing purely Punjabi plays depicting the peasant life, as was done by the Abbey Theatre in Ireland. For this Grand Old Lady from Ireland to have given the call for Swadeshi theme and style in Punjabi Theatre was indeed creditable. "Indian plays by Indian authors about India, for the Indian people," was her constant slogan. A frequent contributor to The Tribune columns, Norah Richards was a dedicated soul. A prolific writer, she set a new dramatic tradition in Punjabi literature. She wrote a number of plays. Her last published work, "Country Life", gives delightful pen-pictures of Indian village life — the life she was in love with. But it was not a passive love. She had a dream, a vision of India and of a New World which, as she put it, "cannot come into being without a new civilisation and that civilisation will be of culture, not of power."
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