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EDITORIALS

Crowning glory
Nepal’s ex-king sent packing

A
T last, Mr Gyanendra Shah, the former king of Nepal, has vacated the Narayanhity palace, which was home to the royal family for over a century. The dethroned monarch, after some dilly-dallying, handed over the crown and sceptre to the government, which has allowed him use of the Nagarjuna Palace until he moves in to a private home to live as an ordinary citizen.

Judging judges
Need to enforce judicial accountability
T
HE UPA Government’s proposal to table a Bill to constitute the National Judicial Council (NJC) in the monsoon session of Parliament is welcome. Such an agency to enforce judicial accountability is long overdue because there is no mechanism at present to examine complaints of corruption and misconduct against judges.


EARLIER STORIES

N-terror
June 11, 2008
Sacked, not arrested
June 10, 2008
Musharraf’s musings
June 9, 2008
Military power
June 8, 2008
Protesting too much
June 7, 2008
No to biofuels
June 6, 2008
A bold decision
June 5, 2008
Growth not enough
June 4, 2008
Save these trees, Mr Badal
June 3, 2008
Appeasing the militants
June 2, 2008
Do we need POTA?
June 1, 2008


First spend, then ask
Make defence money count

THOUGH the defence budget crossed the Rs 1 lakh-crore mark this year, there were murmurs of protest that as a percentage of GDP, this was only around 2 per cent, or even less. There was a big jump in the capital allocation around the time the NDA handed over power to the UPA.
ARTICLE

Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani
The uncrowned ruler of Pakistan
by G. Parthasarathy
U
NDER siege from all sides, a defiant President Pervez Musharraf frontally took on his critics in a wide-ranging press conference on May 7, rejecting widespread public demands for an inquiry on the Kargil fiasco, defending his policies and his handling of the judiciary and vowing that he would not yield to demands that he should quit.

MIDDLE

Shadows of shame
by Geetanjali Gayatri

The common man is very common after all. The very fact that police inaction drove a 25-year-old rape victim Sarita to end her life at the Haryana Police Headquarters has proved this yet again.

OPED

People power can force change
India, Pakistan must overcome bias and mistrust
by Kuldip Nayar

A
seminar took me to Lahore. The topic was: ‘Rapprochement between India and Pakistan.’ Among the participants were scholars and retired diplomats from Germany and France. Their experience of striking a friendship after hundreds of years of war was the basis of their contribution to the seminar. They argued that certain members of the government elite had to undergo a personal ‘conversion.’ Public opinion followed later.

UN’s Darfur mission in shambles
by Steve Bloomfield
E
L FASHER – Almost six months after the United Nations launched its largest, most expensive and most hyped peacekeeping mission, promising to send 26,000 peacekeepers to Darfur, the operation is failing to protect the people it was sent to save.

Small lakes can recharge water table
by J.L. Dalal
Besides
the soil having become excessively infertile, there has also been a rapid decline in the watertable, which has now assumed disturbing dimensions.




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Crowning glory
Nepal’s ex-king sent packing

AT last, Mr Gyanendra Shah, the former king of Nepal, has vacated the Narayanhity palace, which was home to the royal family for over a century. The dethroned monarch, after some dilly-dallying, handed over the crown and sceptre to the government, which has allowed him use of the Nagarjuna Palace until he moves in to a private home to live as an ordinary citizen. That marks the symbolic end of the 239-year-old monarchy already abolished by a special session of the Constituent Assembly in the last week of May. All that remained of the discredited and discarded royalty after the historic proclamation of Nepal as a republic was the ex-king in the palace, holding on to regalia and important documents. With the last rites executed formally on Wednesday, the Himalayan nation may be said to have truly come of democratic age.

Mr Shah, as Gyanendra must get used to being addressed, departs unmourned and unsung. The popular upsurge of 1990 overthrew the feudal autocracy and gave rise to a multiparty democracy with a constitutional monarchy. The palace massacre of June 2001 put Gyanendra on the throne, and he could have continued in the palace had he not carried out a coup and seized absolute power in 2005. His usurpation of executive authority and eclipsing of democracy set in train a series of political upheavals that could not have ended otherwise for him. He has himself to blame for the overthrow of the monarchy.

In his ‘last stand’, addressing his first-ever press conference at the Narayanhity Palace, the ousted king said that he will not leave the country but stay on and work for “the good of Nepal”. In this time of transition in Nepal, doubtless, all good men must come to the aid of the party. Only time will tell whether Mr Shah’s words will be backed by the deeds that would make the ex-king a desirable presence at home. He may have stood against the future of the commons, but he may yet strive for a future in the commons if he keeps out of political mischief.

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Judging judges
Need to enforce judicial accountability

THE UPA Government’s proposal to table a Bill to constitute the National Judicial Council (NJC) in the monsoon session of Parliament is welcome. Such an agency to enforce judicial accountability is long overdue because there is no mechanism at present to examine complaints of corruption and misconduct against judges. The proposed legislation will empower citizens to file petitions with the NJC against judges on grounds of misconduct or deviant behaviour. In a democracy, every wing of the Constitution -- the legislature, the executive and the judiciary -- is answerable to the people for all its acts. Though the legislature and the executive have suitable mechanisms to deal with erring representatives or officials, the judiciary has so far failed to come up with a system to check the conduct of its own members. The NJC is expected to fill this gap.

According to Union Law Minister H.R. Bharadwaj, the NJC will be a five-member committee of judges consisting of the Chief Justice of India, two Supreme Court judges and two High Court Chief Justices. They will have the power to conduct inquiries into charges against judges in the higher judiciary. This internal mechanism under the CJI’s leadership is necessary to maintain the independence of the judiciary and safeguard the interest of the judges. In this context, the Bar Council of India’s suggestion to make the NJC broadbased by including the Lok Sabha Speaker, the Rajya Sabha Chairman, the Union Law Minister and the Leader of Opposition in the Lok Sabha is not constructive because it will dilute the independence of the judiciary.

While due care must be taken to preserve the independence of the judiciary and ensure its separation from the executive, the power of adjudication must necessarily vest in the committee of senior judges alone. The President should take the consequential action on the advice of the CJI in accordance with the findings of the NJC. This will, certainly, be a refreshing alternative to the constitutional provision of impeachment of judges which is time-consuming and cumbersome. Needless to say, the proposed legislation, which seeks to repeal the 1968 Act, should cover all aspects of judicial accountability as a facet of judicial independence. 

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First spend, then ask
Make defence money count

THOUGH the defence budget crossed the Rs 1 lakh-crore mark this year, there were murmurs of protest that as a percentage of GDP, this was only around 2 per cent, or even less. There was a big jump in the capital allocation around the time the NDA handed over power to the UPA. However, the subsequent increases in the budget have served to keep the allocation at a fairly high mark. India’s economy has been booming and thus the allocation, as a percentage of GDP, has been on the decline in recent years.

When you consider the fact that the forces are crying out for modernisation, arguments for more money make sense. But defence minister A.K. Antony has taken umbrage at such whining, pointing out that the forces need to spend the money they are allocated in the first place, before asking for more. This is valid, as for almost a decade now, the ministry has been returning a few thousand crores every year from the budget, unspent. The reason cited: slow procurement procedures. This, unfortunately, is valid as well, and the defence minister is at least as responsible as the service headquarters in ensuring faster procurement — especially when the Kargil Committee recommendations to devolve more spending power to service chiefs have not been implemented fully.

One parliamentary standing committee on defence recommended spending 3 per cent of the GDP on defence, as it would be quite in order for a large country like India, with its security environment. But given the fiscal pressures on the government it is unlikely that such an allocation will be made in the near future. In the meantime, both Mr Antony and the forces should do everything possible to speed up the modernisation and defence procurement process, which is nowhere near as smooth and transparent as the minister claims. The fear of corruption in big-ticket deals cannot act as a brake on modernisation. It should only serve to increase vigilance and punitive retribution against violators. It is the country’s security which is at stake.

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Thought for the day

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. — Margaret Mead 

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Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani
The uncrowned ruler of Pakistan
by G. Parthasarathy

UNDER siege from all sides, a defiant President Pervez Musharraf frontally took on his critics in a wide-ranging press conference on May 7, rejecting widespread public demands for an inquiry on the Kargil fiasco, defending his policies and his handling of the judiciary and vowing that he would not yield to demands that he should quit. But the embattled President knows that he has reached the twilight of his controversial career and that it is only a question of time before he, like the proverbial “Lone Ranger”, would have to “ride into the sunset”. The squabbling politicians now ruling Pakistan are already daggers drawn on how to deal with this relic of the past, but are not able to decide how they can get rid of Musharraf, while protecting their own personal interests and political turf.

Even as the political soap opera between Musharraf and the politicians is played out, it is apparent that real power behind the scenes is wielded by the country’s army Chief, Gen Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani, with the army having been proclaimed as the protector of Pakistan’s “ideological frontiers” by no less than Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. Kiyani, who recently had three-hour-long midnight meeting with the besieged Musharraf, is consolidating his position as the country’s ultimate arbiter. It is now acknowledged even by the supporters of Nawaz Sharif that while Kiyani would not interfere in the President being eased out in a constitutional and graceful manner by Parliamentary action, the army would not countenance its former chief being humiliated.

Nawaz Sharif cannot, after all, forget that when the personal vendetta between him and the then crusty old President Ghulam Ishaq Khan got out of hand, the then army Chief Gen Abdul Waheed Kakar stepped in and forced both the President and Prime Minister to resign on July 18, 1993.

It is now evident that General Kiyani is determined to put his own stamp on Pakistan’s turbulent history by easing out Musharraf’s proteges and reversing his predecessor’s policies on both Afghanistan and India. Musharraf earned the wrath of traditionalists in the army establishment and their Jihadi followers by providing support to the American-led ouster of the Taliban and thereafter deploying, under American pressure, over 80,000 troops to fight pro-Taliban Pashtun tribals in the Tribal Areas of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP). In the bloody conflict that followed, between the Pakistan army and the tribals, an estimated 1564 armed forces personnel were killed and 570 captured in operations in the NWFP between March 2004 and May 2008.

There have also been numerous cases of desertions and refusals to fight by members of the armed forces. In the meantime, the pro-Taliban Jihadis have united under the banner of the Tehriq-e-Taliban-e-Pakistan and carried their fight with the establishment across the country and into the very heart of the capital, Islamabad.

Shaken by the ferocity of the tribal resistance, the Pakistan army has time and again tried to work out “peace deals”, with the militant tribals, only to find the “deals” flounder because of the refusal of the tribals to end cross-border support for their Taliban kinsmen in Afghanistan. A recent “peace deal” in the picturesque valley of Swat has resulted in the Pakistan Government accepting that the district will be governed, not by Pakistani, but by Shariah laws. In the meantime, Kiyani and the ISI agreed on a ceasefire with the Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud on February 7 and are negotiating another “peace deal” with Mehsud, which will result in the withdrawal of the Pakistani army from the tribal areas. This has provoked widespread concern in Kabul and Washington, as Mehsud has publicly declared that “Jihad in Afghanistan will continue”, adding: “Islam does not recognise any manmade boundaries or barriers”.

It is evident that despite American concern, General Kiyani is determined to strike yet another “peace deal” with pro-Taliban elements in Pakistan. Pakistan’s foremost expert on the Taliban, Ahmed Rashid has recently revealed that Kiyani has told American and NATO officials that he will not retain or reequip troops to fight a counterinsurgency war in the NWFP, as the Americans are demanding. The Taliban virtually rules the seven tribal agencies bordering Afghanistan. NATO officials have reported a sharp increase in the number of Pakistanis, Arabs and other nationalities fighting alongside the Taliban in Afghanistan.

While the US has provided over $ 8 billion in military assistance to Pakistan, virtually the entire assistance has been used to “buy expensive weapons for the Indian front, rather than smaller items needed for counterinsurgency”. Rashid adds that in the light of these developments, the US is now delaying supply of arms that Pakistan intends to use on its eastern front (against India) and is asking its NATO allies to do likewise. The Americans will learn that while Kiyani may have been trained at the US Command and Staff College in Fort Leaven-worth, Kansas, he remains a traditionalist in using militant Islam as a political tool of Pakistan’s foreign policy.

Speaking to his troops along the LoC on February 12, Kiyani averred that the Pakistan army will never “turn its back” on the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. He made similar remarks when speaking to his retired colleagues on Pakistan’s national day on March 23. Taking the cue from the Army Chief, the politicians led by Prime Minister Gilani have disowned Asif Zardari’s suggestion that differences on Kashmir should not affect the normalisation of India-Pakistan relations and reverted to the old hackneyed rhetoric on Kashmir being the “core issue” in India-Pakistan relations.

Those formulating policy in New Delhi would do well to remember that Kiyani was commanding the 12 Infantry Division located in Murree, with its troops deployed in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir between 1998 and 2000 — a period when cross-border terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir was at its height. He was Director-General of Military Operations during the tensions that followed the attack on the Indian Parliament by the Jaish-e- Mohammed. Moreover, as Director-General of the ISI he was more than familiar with the tricks of the trade of “bleeding India”.

General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani will continue as army Chief till November 28, 2010 and is already putting his stamp on the directions that Pakistan’s military establishment will take in determining the country’s foreign and national security policies. Those in New Delhi who were rejoicing at the “restoration of democracy” in Pakistan would do well to remember the realities of how political power is exercised by the army in our turbulent neighbour — realities that will have to be equally well understood in Washington, London, Berlin and Kabul.

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Shadows of shame
by Geetanjali Gayatri

The common man is very common after all. The very fact that police inaction drove a 25-year-old rape victim Sarita to end her life at the Haryana Police Headquarters has proved this yet again.

I didn’t know her personally, had not met her during coverage of the darbars revived recently by the police, never heard of her sordid story till the day she died. But still I could relate to her anguish as I went through news of her suicide splashed in the dailies. I even felt a pang of guilt.

Her extreme act was a telling comment on her helplessness at being unable to find justice, her inability to bring to book the cops who raped her on the pretext of completing formalities for her husband’s release, her overwhelming urge to make her voice heard in a callous system.

I can’t help but think of her last few moments with her two small children who had accompanied her and what a distraught, desperate mother would have said to them before consuming pesticide.

And, of course, my thoughts go out to the many justice-starved villagers who flock to the weekly police darbar. They come from far and wide in the hope of getting justice, in the anticipation that their travails will end and in the expectation that the top cop will be able to rein in the trouble-makers. Just like Sarita did.

Instead, the big boss sits in the darbar, in the middle of his battery of officers, accepting applications and assuring action. The complaints find their way to the respective districts where the “samvedi” cops sit over them, more often than not, unmindful of the trauma of the complainants. While the hopes of justice get raped in this manner, the department and its officers pocket media publicity and the matter ends with that.

Is this the kind of justice that independence has gifted to the common man? Is this the governance our great statesmen had envisioned?

Certainly not but this will not prevent Sarita’s suicide from becoming another statistic sooner than later and being resigned to one of the many files which lie undusted on shelves for years.

Life will be back to normal for the “disturbed” top brass of the Haryana police — signing files, issuing instructions, making speeches and, of course, holding darbars. No lessons learnt, no action taken, an innocent life lost in vain.

For us journalists, too, life will move on with the day’s developments taking precedence, without the “torch-bearers” of this worthy profession realising that they too had a hand in Sarita’s death. Was it not us who held out the hope to her that she will get justice by publicising such gimmicks? So, despite all our moments of glory, such tragedies are, and should be, our moment of guilt also.

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People power can force change
India, Pakistan must overcome bias and mistrust
by Kuldip Nayar

A seminar took me to Lahore. The topic was: ‘Rapprochement between India and Pakistan.’ Among the participants were scholars and retired diplomats from Germany and France. Their experience of striking a friendship after hundreds of years of war was the basis of their contribution to the seminar. They argued that certain members of the government elite had to undergo a personal ‘conversion.’ Public opinion followed later.

With India and Pakistan, it is different. Bureaucrats who formulate and execute policy for a détente between the two countries constitute the ‘mindset’ and they are far from converted. The initiative here has been by the people. Whatever progress has been made to lessen tension, it is because of them. They, too, have their eyes fixed on how France and Germany reached the equation.

This example was cited by Quaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah two years before the creation of Pakistan. He came to the Law College at Lahore where I was studying. In reply to a question expressing fear over the hostility between Hindus and Muslims, he said: “Some nations have killed millions of each other’s people and yet an enemy of today is a friend of tomorrow. That is history.”

I find his prophecy coming true when I see people-to-people contact not only spreading but also strengthening. Yet the attitude of the bureaucracy and politicians on both sides leaves me cold. That a visa is hard to get is no more news. The news is that the intelligence agencies are the ultimate arbiter.

One glimmer of hope is that India has proposed to Pakistan to abolish visas for people above 65. Islamabad, which had once rejected the proposal, is reconsidering it after the advent of the new government. Still, the grievance of New Delhi is that it is doing its best, but Islamabad is not cooperating. The Indian High Commission at Islamabad claims that it has issued more than one lakh visas last year as against Islamabad’s 35,000.

However adamant the governments on both sides are, the people will make a difference to any sterile exercise that both sides carry out periodically. The world is replete with examples where people have forced events.

Poland is thousands of miles away from the subcontinent. Yet, this European country has a lesson for people living in the two countries. Europe asserted itself against the dictating of who will meet whom and under what circumstances.

The common man was only a tool in the hands of some faceless Communist party bureaucrats wanting to control him. Suddenly, from among the people, rose an ordinary worker – with the same failings as others – to ignite the desire to overcome individual differences and stand together, to defeat those who sowed separateness.

This man was Lech Walesa, head of the ship workers’ union at Gdansk and later the first President of a free Poland. To the world he gave an idea, the idea that people who join hands for a common cause are a power to be reckoned with. They can remove any impediment, any wall and any border.

Before I crossed into India, after traveling some 250 kilometers in a jeep from my hometown, Sialkot, on September 13, 1947, I saw a column of Muslims coming from India stopping near us, outside Lahore. None spoke – neither them nor us. But we understood each other; it was a spontaneous kinship.

Both had seen murder and worse; both had been broken on the rack of history; both were refugees. The emotional bonds between peoples of the two countries had not died even after the holocaust when at least one million people were killed and 20 million uprooted.

After staying for some time on the outskirts of Lahore, they went their way and we ours. I told myself that someday we must create conditions where we could meet, the friends I had left behind, or their children. I do not like gates at the border, nor barbed wires. Jinnah did not want it that way. He said that Pakistan and India would settle down as America and Canada had.

A candlelight vigil at the Wagah border or a busload of women from Lahore to Delhi, or a lorry of passengers traveling between Muzaffarabad and Srinagar, are by themselves not great events. But they signify the breaking of the crust of hostility between the two countries.

‘Composite dialogue’ and ‘confidence building measures’ may be overused phrases. But what they mean is that the era of hostilities is over and the era of sitting across the same table has come. The basic problem between the two countries is how to have faith and confidence in each other.

I suggest that the Punjab assemblies on both sides pass a resolution offering apologies for the killings, looting and the like during partition. This may have a psychological effect. There are a few relentless optimists who have prepared the ground. They had to confront nearly implacable opposition, vested interests and extremism of the worst type.

The task in Pakistan was still more Herculean because the openness of India’s democracy does help to an extent. Pakistan believed that India was out to undo it. Yet India, however democratic, did not learn how to live with an intransigent neighbour. There was so much tension that one could taste it. Even the best of friendships were under strain.

Things have changed now to a large extent. Cricket teams and film stars have done a tremendous job. They are heroes on both sides. People applaud good cricket, whichever team wins. Cassettes of Indian music and films are popular all over Pakistan. This has helped lessen bitterness. Information and Broadcasting Minister Sherry Rehman told me that Pakistan had unilaterally lifted the ban on screening Indian films.

I personally think that such praiseworthy efforts get embroiled in preconceived notions of the ‘mindset’ – bureaucrats and politicians of limited vision. Some activists, already engaged in the process of people-to-people contact, know this from their experience at the grassroots.

Governments at New Delhi and Islamabad have to realise that it is really the people who have the power to change and if they are kept at a distance the process itself will get defeated. Politicians have certain pulls and compulsions, but the people are their masters and, if allowed, they can change the course of history. Witness the popular revolutions in France, China and, most recently, Iran, where the tide of public opinion swept away the established order.

The people in those countries realised the folly of tolerating rule by those who did not represent the popular mood. Have Pakistan and India reached that stage? Ultimately, their understanding will count. Kashmir is a symptom, not the disease. The disease is the bias and mistrust in each other. If you do not remove that, you will have another Kashmir after solving this one.

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UN’s Darfur mission in shambles
by Steve Bloomfield

EL FASHER – Almost six months after the United Nations launched its largest, most expensive and most hyped peacekeeping mission, promising to send 26,000 peacekeepers to Darfur, the operation is failing to protect the people it was sent to save.
Zambian soldiers from the UN peacekeeping force atop an armoured personnel carrier at the UN base in Sudan’s oil-rich Abyei town
Zambian soldiers from the UN peacekeeping force atop an armoured personnel carrier at the UN base in Sudan’s oil-rich Abyei town – AFP

Just one third of the military personnel and one quarter of the police have been deployed in what has been billed as the biggest and most important mission in the UN’s 60-year history. It is now threatening to turn into its most catastrophic failure. No new equipment has arrived. Peacekeepers have had to paint their helmets blue (or put blue plastic bags over them, tied on with elastic).

To cap it all, the general leading the force, Martin Luther Agwai, revealed he had considered quitting because “I thought the world didn’t care about us”. Only after reading a self-help book, Stop Worrying and Start Living, did he decide to stay.

To date, not a single additional soldier has arrived since the joint UN and African Union mission was born at the start of the year to help protect seven million Darfuris in Sudan’s western province from militia and rebel attacks, and banditry. The joint mission took over from its under-resourced and under-funded AU predecessor, Amis.

“At the moment we are Amis with blue helmets,” said the force commander, General Agwai.

But even the helmets are not new. Most soldiers had to paint their green helmets blue. Much-needed equipment, such as helicopters and new armoured personnel carriers, has not arrived. The vehicles the mission does have, inherited from Amis, are falling apart – four years in the desert takes its toll. Most of the vehicles still bear the legend “Amis”.

On the civilian staff there are splits between the old AU officials and the new UN ones. The UN staff are “arrogant” and “superior”, according to several AU officials; the new UN recruits in turn accuse some AU staff of “laziness” and “incompetence”. “They play solitaire all day and have a nap in the afternoon,” said one UN appointee.

From the dusty, dry heat of the over-crowded displacement camps to the air-conditioned containers in the El Fasher headquarters of Unamid, as the hybrid mission is known, there is a sense of despair.

For those who fled their village as long as five years ago, those who have waited in camps for an international force to make it safe enough for them to return home, Unamid’s performance has been a crushing blow.

“We thought they would save us,” said Zahara Khetir, a 60-year-old mother of 10 living in ZamZam camp, 16 miles outside El Fasher. “But there is no change. We are just waiting for when we will die.”

The town she fled from, Tawila, is still being attacked – the most recent janjaweed offensive was last month. The UN troops stationed there watched as the market was burned and homes were looted.

The frustration among senior Unamid officials is palpable. “We don’t have the manpower to guard all these camps across Darfur,” said Lt-Col Ahmed al-Masri. “Unamid can’t do anything, only observe.”

But there is also a growing anger towards the international community – namely the United States, Britain and France – for not backing up their words with action. “Unamid is not the problem,” insisted Henry Anyidoho, the deputy political head of the mission. “The problem is the failure of the international community to give Unamid the equipment it needs to do its job. They expect too much, too quickly – even though they are not providing the means.”

New battalions are expected in the coming months. Publicly, the force remains hopeful that the full 26,000 military personnel and police officers will be deployed by this time next year. Privately, some admit it may never reach full deployment.

The force is also suffering from potentially damaging internal splits. Some senior officials openly support the Sudanese government, others do little to hide their affection for the rebels.

Col Augustine Agundu, the Nigerian chairman of the ceasefire commission – which has to work closely with both the Sudanese government and the rebels – said the government’s role in the conflict was misunderstood in the West.

“The government are the good guys,” he said. “They are putting things in order ... It might not be acceptable in your culture, in your democracy, but one thing you must understand – the way government is done in this part of the world is different.” His counterpart at the ZamZam military base, Col David Ngarambe, disagreed vehemently. “There are signs of genocide here,” he said. “The plan itself is to eliminate the blacks of Darfur.”

Col Ngarambe, a Rwandan who fought alongside President Paul Kagame during the genocide in 1994, said he saw similarities between the two conflicts. “We cannot sit back and watch.”

These splits could grow with the deployment in the coming months of the first of two battalions from Egypt. Sudan’s northern neighbour is seen as a strong ally of the Khartoum government. When one of the Darfur rebel groups, the Justice and Equality Movement, launched an attack on the capital last month, Egypt sent planes and offered troops.

By arrangement with The Independent

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Small lakes can recharge water table
by J.L. Dalal

Besides the soil having become excessively infertile, there has also been a rapid decline in the watertable, which has now assumed disturbing dimensions.

For achieving high foodgrain production targets fixed annually, as a policy regime, the installation of lakhs of tubewells and continuous lifting of water for the irrigation of water-intensive paddy and wheat crops became a necessity for farmers. With the decline in the water table, the tubewells are likely to become non-functional in the near future.

In my own village of Jhajjar district there are three very big and deep ponds (Johrs) and ten medium to small ones. The farmers used to divert rainwater to these and harvest as much as possible. Even pacca walls of the irrigation wells were broken to fill them with rainwater for irrigation of winter crops.

This was the most effective and easy way of rainwater conservation for improving ground water resources. Regrettably, this age-old legacy of a collective water conservation system has been bid goodbye.

Lest the land should be drained of sub-soil water, there is a need to make “water management” a priority issue. As the implications are immense, the corridors of power in the government must have a long-term perspective and can no longer afford to dither. They have to adopt it as a “Forward Looking Policy”. It is time to act with comprehensive planning, otherwise severe water crises will become inevitable – a tragedy of hydrological poverty.

In order to revive traditional water conservation systems, all low-lying flood prone areas should be converted into small or big lakes, as the site warrants, by constructing “thick earthen dams” to trap rain water efficiently. The farmers whose lands fall under these lakes should be adequately compensated, once or annually, as per the price indices.

The Irrigation Department has the onerous duty to undertake this developmental initiative as a “Water Mission” by keeping it as priority on its agenda. It may formulate a “Comprehensive 100 per cent Centrally Sponsored Project” for this purpose.

An amount of Rs 1800 crore has been provided to NABARD in the Union Budget for the year 2007-08 for ground water charging schemes. The State Government must avail of the opportunity. With proper execution, the lakes will automatically become “natural water reservoirs” and will gradually ensure a rise in the ground water table. It will also complement minor and major water works.

Industrial complexes having mushroomed around all big cities, especially around the National Capital in Haryana, should be involved in formulating such projects with 100 per cent financial support. Areas may be identified and earmarked for them by the State Government. All non-government organisations and corporate houses should also be made to coordinate. This coordinated and harmonised integration will open the door for speedily constructing “Earthen Dams”. This concurrent partnership of various organisations and the Irrigation Department will become an effective “water conservation” venture and up-gradation of watertable will become a reality.

The writer is former Director Agriculture, Haryana

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