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Bahadur Sam Pilgrims’ progress Rapists in uniform |
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Blackmailers at work
Middler on the roof
Food for thought Dateline Washington The dollar in decline
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Bahadur Sam AS a soldier’s soldier and the nation’s archetypal war hero, Sam “Bahadur” Hormusji Framji Jamshedji Manekshaw was the very stuff of which military legends are made. Whether taking Japanese bullets in his stomach during World War II, or marshalling his forces for the triumph of 1971 against Pakistan, Sam exemplified the best of military virtues — the ability to see the strategic big picture without missing the devil in the detail; to display courage and determination under fire; to stand by every single man under one’s command; to work hard and party hard; and to deploy reserves of wit, humour and even school-boy braggadocio, to serve where a bullet would not. These virtues were on display right from the very beginning, when the Amritsar-born Parsi joined the very first batch of the Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun. A great soldier always finds himself in the thick of action, and in Burma, it was his bravery against Japanese forces that saw his superior pinning his own Military Cross ribbon on him in the battlefield. He joined the Frontier Force Regiment, and declined Jinnah’s invitation to be a part of the Pakistani armed forces at the time of Partition. He oversaw the defence of Jammu and Kashmir against the tribal raiders in 1947-1948. Apart from commanding divisions and corps in J&K and the Northeast, he was commandant of the Defence Services Staff College in Wellington, the Nilgiris, a place which he made his home. As the Eastern Command chief, he handled the insurgency in Nagaland. As Chief of Staff during the East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) crisis, he famously resisted attempts to rush the Army into military action, instead taking time to get his men and material exactly where he wanted them, primed and ready for a decisive success. The 1971 victory catapulted him to iconic status which sat lightly on his shoulders. He set the highest standards of excellence in service to the nation and he was a source of inspiration, not for just armed forces personnel but for men and women in general. Good bye Sam, we’ll cherish your legacy of gallantry and military sagacity, and your old-world virtues of courtesy, chivalry and charm. A billion hearts salute you.
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Pilgrims’ progress THOSE who thought Jammu and Kashmir was on the mend have to revise their opinion. General S.K. Sinha, who relinquished charge as Governor early this week, seems to have left the border state in a flux. The immediate provocation for the trouble is the assigning of 39.88 hectares of forestland to the Shri Amarnathji Shrine Board for temporarily housing pilgrims. General Sinha’s principal secretary Arun Kumar’s statement that it was a virtual allotment of land added fuel to fire. Some fundamentalists in the Valley saw a golden opportunity to fish in troubled waters. They have been fanning fears of the Kashmiris that the government’s decision amounted to undermining the Constitutional stipulation that only people of J&K could own land in the state. Organisations like the Vishwa Hindu Parishad have also joined the fray threatening retaliatory action against Muslims elsewhere in the country. Governor N.N. Vohra has not only appealed for calm but has also indicated that he has an open mind on the question. As a veteran on Kashmir affairs, he knows that the only way to tackle this kind of a problem is through talks with all the people concerned. Any delay in settling the problem would be advantageous only to the enemies of peace. In other words, keeping the issue on the boil would be tantamount to playing into the hands of militants and their benefactors across the border. Under no circumstances should this happen, particularly when the state is gearing up for elections to the State Assembly. Amarnath yatra is an integral part of Kashmir’s culture. The majority community in the Valley never felt uncomfortable with the Hindu pilgrimage. Rather, the Muslims would do everything possible to facilitate the pilgrims’ progress. There is no reason to believe that saner elements in Kashmir would ever attack the yatra. Yet, when the atmosphere is vitiated and communal elements on both sides of the religious divide are busy fomenting trouble, the government has to be proactive in nipping the mischief in the bud. While the pilgrims need facilities for rest and recreation along the way, it needs to be found out whether assigning of such a huge chunk of land is necessary at all.
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Rapists in uniform AFTER the public outcry over the Sarita rape and suicide case and the dismissal and arrest of the two accused Haryana policemen, one thought policemen would now think twice before committing such a crime. How wrong one can be! Within days of the horror of a married woman killing herself in the presence of her two daughters at the police headquarters in Panchkula to protest against the police refusal to book her rapists, here is another rape of a young married woman — this time in Karnal, and again, by a policeman. The rape victim, a BA-II student, was, perhaps, too young to see through the villainous motives of a wolf in police clothing. She had gone to the house of the SHO, supposed to be a provider of help to the aggrieved, along with her husband to meet her parents to sort out a dispute over her inter-caste marriage, unaware of the tragedy that awaited her. For a change, the police acted tough and swift in arresting the SHO and got the victim and the accused medically examined. This was in sharp contrast to what Sarita and so many others like her had experienced. Policemen usually fend off complaints against their own colleagues, delay action or even harass and threaten the complainant. The victim of a gang rape tore her clothes in a police station at Yamunanagar recently and staged a dharna along with her brother and sister to demand the arrest of the accused. How many beastly acts by policemen does the top leadership in Haryana require before moving to purge the police of criminals? The Supreme Court has initiated countrywide police reforms and laid down guidelines about providing women cops and counsellors to rape victims. Has anyone in the Haryana government heard of these?
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Lead me from the unreal to the Real; Lead me from darkness to light; Lead me from death to immortality. — The Upanishads
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Blackmailers at work DELHI is agog with speculation that the government and Left Front have reached breaking point on the Indo-US nuclear deal on which time is fast running out. The Prime Minister, allegedly with Mrs Sonia Gandhi’s concurrence, is insistent on taking the next steps to secure the deal. This now entails three stages: getting the IAEA to endorse a safeguards agreement for India which will clear the way for securing NSG approval, armed with which the US Congress can be moved to ratify the 123 Agreement already entered into between the Bush Administration and India. A safeguards agreement has been largely worked out in principle and now only needs the IAEA’s formal imprimatur. With this, NSG concurrence may be sought and would pave the way for civil nuclear cooperation with countries like Russia, France and Australia even pending US Congressional ratification of the Indo-US 123 Agreement. This seems a clear win-win situation for India. It will not merely be able to access nuclear fuel supplies to step up generation from its existing power reactors, currently operating at no more than 30-50 per cent capacity, but also free it from sanctions that have debilitated its nuclear and more general technological progress. These would be no small gains. However, the Left still has ideological objections and has fallen back on absurd arguments. What is the hurry it asks when “only” eight months have lapsed since its special dialogue with the government? Why has it not been given the text of the draft IAEA Agreement though it has an official summary pertaining to all core issues? Why not instead fast-forward the Indo-Pakistan-Iran pipeline deal to mitigate the energy crisis? All these matters have been well rehearsed. The Iran pipeline is not an alternative to the nuclear deal. Both are necessary and negotiations are under way. The government has pleaded confidentiality in sharing the IAEA safeguards text before it is placed before the IAEA board. Even were this objection overcome, what new knowledge will it add? And if Russia and America, China and Pakistan and China and Russia are busy signing civil nuclear deals, should India forego pursuing its interests? The BJP’s position has changed from outright opposition to ambiguity, caught as it is in a web of its own contradictions. Some UPA allies have also both supported the deal and called for an understanding with the Left, wanting to have their cake and eat it too. This is chicanery. The language used by some, including those in the media, is deceptive. It is being said that the country cannot be sacrificed to the Prime Minister’s desire to trumpet his nuclear “legacy”; that none has a right to “impose” early elections especially when prices are ruling high; that the highest duty of the Congress/UPA is to win the next elections and not to sign a deal that can wait; that the Left’s withdrawal of support will reduce the government to a minority and signal the electorate that the Congress/UPA is unable to manage coalitions. These are frivolous and fallacious arguments. Managing inflation has no connection with going ahead with the nuclear deal. The UPA government has already served over four years and if elections were to be held in October/November — the earliest possible date even were the government to fall tomorrow — would not have any adverse implications. Inflation should in all probability have started declining by then; but even otherwise, the public is savvy enough to know that the massive increase in oil prices confronts the world with an unprecedented energy/food crisis. No other government could have done better. But why assume that the government must fall whether or not the Left withdraws support? The Left knows that it will be answerable to the electorate if it sacrifices the national interest to outworn ideology. Hence the attempt to hedge its bets. Likewise, can a divided BJP afford to abort a process that it earlier initiated? Even if either or both the Left and the BJP oppose the deal will they vote against the government and take the onus of wrecking what most in India and much of the world regard as a considerable prize won through patient diplomacy and steadfastness of purpose? Either or both may well abstain in any vote of confidence, while some in the Opposition may actually vote with the government. Talk about the government being reduced to a minority is meaningless. What matters is whether it enjoys “the confidence of the House”. And there is reason to suppose that it could do so though technically reduced to a “minority”. Finally, it is time to draw a sharp distinction between power and principle. To cling to power while being constantly blackmailed by one’s partners and allies, who seek power without responsibility on the cheap, would be to betray lack of will and integrity, forego national interest and earn widespread contempt. Not to go through with the nuclear agreement at this juncture will dent the country’s credibility and stature and retard national advancement. What India needs is good governance, not shadow
boxing.
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Middler on the roof
MOST writers whose last names are not Naipaul or Maugham probably began their careers with a newspaper middle”, mused the retired editor as he stretched in comfortable laziness amidst the tools of his trade - a half-smoked pipe and book-lined shelves. “What if your names were Naipaul or Maugham, Sir?”, piped the wannabe columnist. “You wouldn’t be here in that case!”, came the scornful reply. There is a certain insouciance about the inveterate middle-writer, or middler, as I would call him. “It does not matter if the middle never gets published, what matters is you have written it and dashed it off! It’s the creative urge that rules!” A long-suffering snort accompanied this declaration: it was the middler’s wife, whose look clearly said, “Don’t believe him. It is true that nobody else bothers whether they publish his middle or not, but it matters to him all right. He makes the rounds of the newspaper office every fortnight chasing his “pieces” as he calls them and freely curses editors for their lethargy and favouritism.” If entering this esoteric club is difficult, staying there is next to impossible, given the long list of middlers in Chandigarh alone. “Retired generals, serving bureaucrats,” scoffed a senior doctor. “Only when their middles dry up can we medicos get a chance. Unless, of course, you chance to perform an endoscopy on an editor.” The speculative gleam in his eye said it all. He should know, I reflected. Gastro-enterologists work on the anatomical equivalent of the newspaper middle! Greenhorn middlers have to resort to all manner of tactics to get people to read their stuff, even when the newspaper deigns to publish their prose. Some tell their friends, some thrust their middles under the noses of their bosses. Yet others send SMSes begging their contacts to read them. The truly desperate try all three methods. Some middlers lose steam and quit desultorily after the first hurrah. “Such a middle-class pastime, boss!”, comes a disdainful comment that fails to conceal a classic case of sour grapes. Middlers have voiced their angst over adolescence and old age and cried over their children and grandchildren. They have ranted over unkempt parks and raved about happening malls. War heroes have written about battle exploits and homemakers have exulted over a perfectly rising soufflé. Celebrities rediscover a latent creative gene while teachers write about campus peccadilloes. Some write because their neighbours do and they can’t stand the resultant gloating. While the occasional middler terrifies us with a ghost story, the breakfast middler feeds us a toast story! “The newspaper middle is a dying art form”, observed one veteran writer. There was a time when most newspapers had space for a light piece somewhere in the middle of the editorial page. This ancient relic is now on the verge of extinction. Some papers have pushed aside the middle to the left or the right, some have taken it to the roof and most have given it an unceremonious burial. An aspiring middler, however, would say, “You need guts to retain your middle in the face of all
pressures.”
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Food for thought ENOUGH
heat has been generated by US president George Bush’s recent assertion that the middle class in India and China are eating better and hence the world food shortage. The resulting backlash caused him to hastily add that he did not mean that food consumption in poor countries should not improve. This also means that the earlier remark stands. The Indian response has been that it is the large scale switch over to bio-fuel crops in the US which is responsible. Both have got their facts wrong. The world population is presently estimated to be about 6.6 billion, 39 per cent of which is in India and China. India’s population is approximately 1.15 billion and that of the US 302 million. The Planning Commission figure for those below the poverty line is 27.5 per cent. This means that nearly 311 million Indians live in poverty, more than the total population of the USA. Some years ago the poverty line stood at about 30 per cent. Does it then mean that the slight decline in poverty, which does not mean immediate ascendancy into middle class affluence, has people suddenly eating so much better that a world food shortage is being experienced? China’s figures included (whatever they be), the “eating better” thesis cannot possibly have any takers. Soaring inflation and rising oil prices have banished any thoughts of eating better. The National Sample Survey Organisation, (NSSO) in its report of 2007 states that the middle income group has a Daily Per Capita Consumption Expenditure, (DPCE) of just Rs.37.00, which is a Purchasing Power Parity, (PPP) of about $4.00. Those with a PPP of less than $2.00 a day comprise 2.8 billion of the world’s population and they fall below a sort international poverty line. Of this 1.2 billion live on less than dollar a day. In India, a massive 77 per cent lives on less than Rs.20.00 a day. The middle income group, living on an average daily expenditure of Rs.35.00 a day, accounts for 19 per cent the population, leaving just 4 per cent in the high income group with a DPCE of only Rs.97.00, all the Tatas and the Ambanis not withstanding. Where then is “The Great Indian Middle Class” and the shift to better food? The fact is that in India we have an actual middle-class and a “visible middle class”. To the latter belong the software professionals, the business classes and the well employed. It is they who flood the malls and the multiplexes, are seen in nightmarish traffic jams and flocking to the stores in search of the latest. Given the figures, simple calculation will reveal that they are not more than 8 to 10 million people. Are we to believe that their food consumption has changed dramatically in the last one year? Assuming it has – and it hasn’t – has it impacted on world food shortages? Turn now to the view that the switch over to bio-crops in the US has been the cause. In America the main sources for ethanol production are maize and soyabean. The US Govt. provides a handsome ethanol subsidy to its farmers resulting in about 14 per cent of the maize crop going to this industry. Even with this subsidy (and many want it scrapped), American ethanol production in 2007 was of the order of 8 billion gallons. As against this US oil consumption is 19.6 million barrels per day! US interest in ethanol is limited and certainly not at the cost of food. If both the American and Indian versions are incorrect and since the food shortage cannot be attributed to any single cause, what might be the reasons? First, there is the level of production which is influenced by several factors such as climate, soil health, biological stress (pests etc.), continuous cropping cycles and resultant declines in productivity. Crop scientists, farmers and ultimately governments are more than aware of the constraints imposed by physical realities and they take such compensatory measures as are feasible on a crop to crop basis. What is usually beyond their control are the economic causes and sometimes they do have a world wide impact at the same time. Main among them are rising oil prices, increasing fertilizer costs and in fact an overall increase in all input costs. The consequent fall in production also takes place if there is a predicted rise in oil prices but this year the price hike has been beyond expectations. In such situations in the past price guarantees for their produce have been extended to farmers or increased and this will continue to happen at whatever cost to the concerned economies; eventually the market makes its own adjustments. Retaliatory and compensating measures are being taken but whereas the oil price rise is abrupt, the effect of these measures will take time and production can only be expected to rise in the next harvest or cropping cycle. This means that in the interim countries have to look to their food reserves. These are quite substantial but for a variety of reasons go unutilised or underutilised. Food shortages tend to get viewed by countries as commodity shortages, i.e. as wheat shortage or rice or vegetables, milk or meat. Rarely, if at all, are shortages measured in nutritional terms. With over three quarters of the nation’s population living on less than Rs. 20 a day, our nutritional status is obviously pathetic. Therefore the logic of periodically exporting, (or presently not exporting), is only a short run one. If nutritional imbalances and the skewed distribution of food between rich and poor are to be corrected then long term policy measures are required. At the other end of the spectrum in the US, where malnutrition and skewed distribution are not an issue, an all together different problem exists, namely food waste. By its own admission the US Department of Agriculture states that 30 per cent of milk and dairy products, grain products, fresh fruits and vegetables plus another 15 per cent of meat, dried beans, nuts, processed food and vegetables go into landfills. The dubious common denominator is a lack of will and initiative to deal with the real food shortage in the world, (nutritional and wastage), instead of being perpetually concerned with the perceived shortage, (commodity). The problems in both countries are very different and attempts at resolution cannot be expected to yield any short term electoral benefits and hence perhaps they do not get the attention they deserve.
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Dateline Washington Washington:
On a recent summer morning, CNN was telling its viewers that Senator Barack Obama had spent yet another day urging Americans not to be afraid of him. You see, Obama, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee is black. And if that weren’t bad enough in this colour-conscious society that we live in, his middle name is Hussein. In a post-September 11 world, any label even hinting at Muslim heritage is perhaps as bad as the Star of David patches Jews were forced to wear by their Nazi killers. And Hussein is a name Americans have come to know all too well. In a column headlined “Barack Hussein Obama: Once a Muslim, Always A Muslim” right-wing trouble-maker Debbie Schlussel contended that because Obama’s middle name is Hussein (his late father, from whom he got his first name, was of Muslim descent) and he has shown interest in his father’s Kenyan heritage, Obama’s “loyalties” must be called into question. In her column, Schlussel asked: “So, even if he identifies strongly as a Christian ... he is a man who Muslims think is a Muslim, who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father, and who is now moving in the direction of his father’s heritage, a man we want as president when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where will his loyalties be?” A recent poll by the non-partisan Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that while a majority identify Obama as a Christian, 16 per cent of conservative Republicans, 16 per cent of white evangelical Protestants and 19 per centof rural Americans believe the Illinois senator is Muslim. An earlier poll had found 80 per cent of the general public said they had heard rumors that Obama is Muslim. It is ironic that these rumours persist despite the senator’s much-publicised troubles with his pastor, the Reverand Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose acerbic and at times borderline racist rants caused Obama much embarrassment. Among other incredulous claims vented in vitriolic sermons, the pastor accused the U.S. government of creating AIDS to wipe out the black population. Wright, all too often wrong, had been Obama’s pastor for over two decades, married the senator and his wife Michelle and baptised their two daughters. As the Wright fiasco threatened to derail the senator’s campaign, Obama publicly split with his pastor and quit his church, the Trinity United Church of Christ. And yet there are some who continue to believe he is a Muslim. A Muslim who went to church for 20 years must be a very confused man! It is unfortunate that Obama’s faith is even a subject of discussion in an election cycle that should be dominated by issues more real. A recession is gripping America; food prices have skyrocketed and the ever-rising cost of a gallon of petrol is making those old enough to remember the oil shock of the 70s break out in reminisces of that nightmare. And don’t forget the war; two wars, as Afghans like to point out; that continue to keep young American men and women from their families and deprive countless more Iraqi and Afghan kids of theirs. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently assured a Jewish audience that Obama was indeed not a Muslim and told them these rumours were intended to scare them. Obama’s campaign itself was accused by two Muslim women donning headscarves of bias for not letting them sit behind the senator at a televised event for fear of ruining a carefully choreographed backdrop. Fear may win the day in this post-9/11 world. Republican Senator John McCain, the self-appointed “war hero” whose greatest achievement in the Vietnam War was to be captured by a bunch of ragged Vietcong soldiers, is trying to scare Americans into believing his Democratic presidential opponent is “soft” on terror. The 2008 U.S. presidential election will forever be remembered as one in which many glass ceilings were broken. What Obama has done for blacks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, a former first lady who once angered women by saying she chose to follow her dreams despite the option of staying at home and baking cookies, did for women. Clinton had to end her candidacy earlier this month after finishing second best to Obama, who could now become the first black leader of the so-called free world. Unfortunately, in the land of the free you’re only as free as your name. Hussein is not one of them.
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The dollar in decline THE dollar has lost a big chunk of its global purchasing power since the end of 2001 – an average of 37 percent, as measured by one index that tracks the greenback against other major currencies. Gauging the decline is easy; explaining why the buck has slumped is much more complicated. Some theories about the dollar’s fall are grand in scale: for example, the concept that the buck’s fate is a symptom of a fading U.S. empire. Other explanations are largely technical, including the idea that currency values are cyclical, and that the dollar’s downswing inevitably will give way to an upswing. On some level, the dollar’s shift has to be about basic supply and demand. The price of anything usually will decline if there is an excess of it in the marketplace. That’s how Michael Woolfolk, veteran currency strategist at Bank of New York Mellon Corp., frames the buck’s slide. He sees it as “the unintended result of globalisation.” The boom in the developing world occurred in large part to supply the goods US consumers wanted at low prices. As a nation, we borrowed heavily in the last decade to sustain our lifestyles, and sent trillions of dollars abroad to pay for imports, including oil. The cumulative U.S. trade deficit – the amount by which imports exceeded exports – was a whopping $4.4 trillion from 2000 through 2007. With the world awash in dollars, they’ve lost a portion of their value. And cachet. Tom Higgins, chief economist at Los Angeles investment firm Payden & Rygel, says another factor helped wallop the dollar in 2007: the deep interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve, intended to cushion the U.S. economy from the housing crash. Low rates in the United States compared with rates in most of the world made U.S. bonds less appealing to global investors. As they pumped cash into non-U.S. bonds, investors helped boost the value of the currencies in which those bonds were denominated, at the dollar’s expense. But Higgins and Woolfolk both note that, left to their own devices, free markets eventually should correct their own imbalances. As the weak dollar boosted prices of imports while lowering the prices of American exports for foreigners, the U.S. trade deficit fell last year for the first time since 2001. If the U.S. economy comes out of its funk in the next year or two, the inherent investment appeal of American assets to foreigners should help bolster the dollar, Woolfolk maintains. And despite the popular notion that the world might abandon the dollar as the primary global currency, Higgins says that isn’t realistic – because, as he puts it, “there’s really nothing to replace the dollar.” He also points out the need to keep history in mind when discussing currencies’ shifts: “The dollar has gone through long periods of strength and then long periods of weakness.” The slide of the last 6 1/2 years, Higgins notes, followed seven years of a rising dollar, from 1995 through 2001. So this cycle, he said, could well be about to turn. By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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