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Beyond control RBI strikes again |
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Police at it again Death in custody shames none IT seems police stations are not meant to be interrogation centres but hotbeds of brutal violence. A person picked up by the men in khaki for involvement even in an accident is never too sure whether he will come out alive. Inderjit, a horse cart puller of Chandigarh, did not. He was taken in custody on Monday after his cart hit a scooter, injuring one.
The IAEA debate
Middle writing made easy
Not quite a dragon ‘Love letters of great men’ Inside
Pakistan
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Beyond control THE Pakistan Government did cause a bit of sensation when it issued a notification on Saturday saying the Prime Minister gave the Interior Ministry control of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Intelligence Bureau. Since Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gillani left for the US to meet President George W. Bush the same day, it was presumed that it was a calculated move to tell the West that the civilian control was complete in Pakistan. On paper, the ISI has been, financially and administratively, under the control of the Defence Ministry but answerable to the Prime Minister. But in practice, the ISI has always been a law unto itself that answered only to military dictators like General Pervez Musharraf. Saturday’s decision, therefore, amounted to a drastic change in the character of the ISI. Most people, within and without Pakistan, thought the notification was too good to be true. They were not wide of the mark as subsequent events proved to the hilt. The next day, the government issued another notification saying that the earlier order was misunderstood and the ISI would remain under the Prime Minister. Obviously, the ISI had struck back and was instrumental in undoing the proposal. It will continue to remain a government within the government, generally invisible and answerable to none. It was foolish on the part of Mr Gillani to have believed that he could get away with his nibbling at the ISI’s autonomy. He should have recalled that it was this outfit, which masterminded the Kargil war without the knowledge of then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who was supposedly controlling the agency. Umpteen have been the instances when it acted on its own, be it fuelling terrorism in India or strengthening the Taliban, first, against the erstwhile Soviet Union and, lately, against the Americans in Afghanistan. If today the world sees Pakistan as the source of terrorism, it is the ISI that is to blame. Small wonder that even many people in Pakistan and its neighbouring countries would like the ISI to be disbanded. Banish such hopes. The latest flip-flop by the Pakistan government shows that the ISI will continue to call the shots, irrespective of who adorns the office of Prime Minister. This is the price Pakistan has to pay for creating a Frankenstein. Even if the government wants to, it cannot get rid of the monster.
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RBI strikes again Home and auto loans are set to get dearer. The RBI has upped the repo rate (short-term lending rate) by 50 basis points and the cash reserve ratio (the percentage of amount banks deposit with it) by 25 basis points. These are sharper-than-expected measures aimed to control price rise, money supply and dampen demand. Bringing down inflation has been the chief concern of the RBI, which has raised the lending rate for the third time in two months to the highest level in seven years. Inflation has doubled to almost 12 per cent since February largely because of rising food and fuel prices. The domestic oil prices were raised in June, which pushed inflation into double digits and led the RBI to hike the CRR and the repo rate to tighten money supply. Price rise being an emotive issue, especially in an election year, the RBI with the blessings of the government, has struck hard, sacrificing growth in the process. As capital becomes costlier for companies and demand for goods and houses falls due to higher interest rates, corporate profitability takes a dent. The Sensex, small wonder, tumbled 557 points. Some feel weak demand will cool house prices, which had risen steeply to unsustainable levels. Choosing inflation control over growth, the RBI on Monday had scaled down its GDP expansion figures for the current fiscal year to 7.9 per cent from its earlier target of 8-8.5 per cent and the government’s expectations of “near 9 per cent” growth. However, tightening liquidity alone is not enough to win the inflation battle. Since there are reports of deficit rain in some parts slowing the production of pulses and edible oils, the Centre needs to ensure well in advance sufficient supply of these and other items of daily use. Fortunately, the global oil prices, which had climbed to an all-time high of $146 a barrel, have started declining, though these are still far from the comfort levels. |
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Police at it again IT seems police stations are not meant to be interrogation centres but hotbeds of brutal violence. A person picked up by the men in khaki for involvement even in an accident is never too sure whether he will come out alive. Inderjit, a horse cart puller of Chandigarh, did not. He was taken in custody on Monday after his cart hit a scooter, injuring one. A few hours later the police claimed that he had committed suicide by strangulating himself with a belt. Naturally, the people of the locality picketed the Industrial Area police station against the police injustice and a violent situation ensued. It was only then that the senior police officers woke up to the blood on the hands of their colleagues. If it is any consolation, the Senior Superintendent of Police has admitted that it was indeed a case of death in police custody and has marked a judicial inquiry. In normal cases, the police force stands behind its disgraced colleagues. That is why the unthinkable continues to happen with impunity. Indian has the dubious distinction of witnessing on an average four custodial deaths every day. That adds up to a huge figure. In the 2002-2007 period, as many 7,468 persons died in cusotdy, making it an average of 1,494 persons per year. There could not be a bigger shame for the police force which still continues to be an instrument of repression. Common people do not know their rights while the policemen know all too well that they can get away even with blue murder if it is of a poor man without connections. Otherwise, how can it be that in 2004, only four police personnel were convicted for custodial deaths and in 2005 just three? Most others suffer no bigger consequence than a suspension or transfer to police lines. Such callousness is leading to a total disconnect between the police and the public. The sufferers helplessly allege that the police force is the most organised gang of criminals. That may not be exactly true but the government must realise that such public perception is widespread and must be removed. |
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You really can change the world if you care enough. — Marian Wright Edelman
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The IAEA debate
The
safeguards agreement between India and the International Atomic Energy Agency is to come up for consideration before the Board of Governors on August 1, 2008. The IAEA has standard agreements for non-nuclear weapon states and nuclear weapon states. In the case of India it cannot be deemed a nuclear weapon state in terms of the Nonproliferation Treaty. At the same time the IAEA has to accept the reality of an Indian military nuclear programme. Consequently the safeguards agreement is India specific. This draft agreement has been negotiated between the IAEA secretariat and the Indian government. It has the support of the secretariat and the Director General. The leading members of the Board of Governors, the nuclear weapon powers US, Russia, UK and France are in favour of such India-specific safeguards agreement and they are likely to support it strongly during its consideration in the Board of Governors meeting. Pakistan, which is an elected member of the Board of Governors (while India is one of the 10 permanent members of the Board) has raised several procedural and substantive objections to the safeguards agreement. The procedural objection is about waiving the 45 day notice period. This will be disposed off by the Chairman. In its substantive objections Pakistan has expressed concern that this safeguards agreement will damage nonproliferation norms, and encourage an arms race in the subcontinent. Pakistan has also demanded that it should not be discriminated against and should be accorded the same treatment. Pakistan expressing concern about nonproliferation being damaged is like the devil quoting the scripture. Pakistan holds the record for proliferation, having proliferated to Iran, North Korea and Libya. Pakistan has refused access for the IAEA to Dr A Q Khan, the central figure in its proliferation. Pakistan’s own arsenal was the product of proliferation from China. The members of the IAEA Board of Governors are not likely to overlook the inadequacy in Pakistani credentials to raise proliferation concern and see through its motivation. In regard to its demand for nondiscriminatory treatment vis-à-vis India the reply of President Bush to General Musharraf during his visit to Pakistan in March, 2006 when the General raised the issue should be recalled. The US President replied that India and Pakistan had different histories and different needs in respect of nuclear programme. He was obviously implying that India, with its impeccable record on nonproliferation and Pakistan with its proliferation record could not be bracketed together. India is expected to become the fourth largest economy in the world in the next few decades. Therefore the energy needs of the two countries could not also be compared. In spite of such a clear-cut reply from the US President himself Pakistan continues its obstructionist tactics in the IAEA demonstrating to the world its animosity towards India. There are only four countries in the world which are outside the NPT. They are Israel, North Korea, India and Pakistan. All of them have military nuclear programmes. North Korea, after conducting a nuclear test has now agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal and rejoin the NPT. Israel’s arsenal goes back to 1967, before the NPT was drafted and Israel has no civil nuclear programme. Pakistan has both military and civil nuclear programmes. But all its civilian reactors are imported ones, already subject to safeguards. It has no civil nuclear reactor of its own to offer for IAEA safeguards. In India’s case India proposes to place 14 civil nuclear reactors in a phased manner under IAEA safeguards and proposes to import a large number of reactors if the proposed NSG waiver and the 123 agreement go through. Obviously the situations in India and Pakistan are different. The NSG is to consider the proposals from US, Russia and France to give waiver for India in view of is absolutely clean record on Nonproliferation. If China were to sponsor a similar case for NSG waiver in respect of Pakistan to construct more reactors than the two it has been doing, that would be considered by NSG on merits and Pakistan’s proliferation record and its refusal to allow access to Dr A Q Khan will figure in that consideration. Instead of objecting to India-specific safeguards Pakistan should try to get similar treatment by establishing its credentials on nonproliferation. There are some supporters of Pakistan in the US who argue that India should not get specific exemption but it should be criteria based. If the criteria were to include proliferation record then out of the two countries which need NSG waiver, India and Pakistan the latter would automatically get disqualified at this stage. Not only Pakistan but also some US Nonproliferation lobbyists have raised the issue of arms race. India has consistently pleaded for nuclear disarmament. Though Pakistan assembled its nuclear weapon in 1987 Rajiv Gandhi held back till March 1989, till after his disarmament action plan was completely ignored in the UN before he ordered the assembly of Indian weapons. Though India had a significant reactor capacity for decades most of the international observers are estimating Indian and Pakistani arsenals in comparative magnitudes. India has pledged itself to a credible minimum deterrent and no first use. Indian testing of missiles, wholly indigenous, has been very measured and restrained unlike Pakistan’s testing of missiles obtained through imports. The Indian arsenal is not considered threatening in the international security system. India has a record over the last 19 years as a nuclear and missile power and that record is sufficient to assess arms racing proclivities of India. On the other hand Pakistan has an India-specific nuclear and missile arsenal. There is very little probability of India being the driver of an arms race in the region. It is not clear how many other members of the Board of Governors will go with Pakistan. Since the matter is to be decided by a simple majority vote there is not much doubt about the final
result.
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Middle writing made easy
I
know what’s like staring at a blank sheet of paper or at the white computer screen. You are at a loss, not knowing how to get started with the very first sentence of 400 to 600 words you propose to write to give shape to your middle article. Chances are that your drawer is overflowing with enough Rejection (or Dejection!) Slips to cover the floor of your study. These are not meant to be flaunted like stamp-collections or wedding snaps but to be made stepping-stones to reach the heart and mind of the unpredictable editor. Now, stop fretting and brighten up. In this age of Made-Easy school text-books on all subjects, instant soups, instant coffee and ready-to-eat matar-paneer packs, how could middle writing be left behind? Surefire clues have been churned out to give you a clear vision of what you are going to write and see you in print on the edit page. When these tips are kept uppermost in mind, the speed of your writing on paper or the fingers pounding on the keyboard of your computer will gallop, hardly keep pace with the flow of words coming from your mind. The first good impression is not always the last impression unless you make it last by continuous scholarly inputs. So, make no mistake, waste no time and show your erudition of pedantry and name-dropping at the very start. Quote passages from books by Amartya Sen, Thomas Carlyle or Bernard Shaw, not necessarily relevant to your theme, but carry on merrily. Reminiscing, say about Holi or Divali, write how the advent of these festivals sees in you a Kafkaesque metamorphosis (well, roughly conveying: ‘inexplicable excitement’ but writing that would be too simple and not likely to have the desired impact on the editor). While describing your shopping spree at the vegetable up-market, proceed somewhat like this, “During our peregrinations (not ‘visits’ which is too banal), we invariably look for the elusive broccoli and lemon grass, but emerge each time holding a cornucopia (not ‘bunch’, oh! so trite) of lettuce and coriander leaves”. Accost a whippersnapper (upgraded from ‘peddler’ or ‘hawker’ which are so common) at Janpath in New Delhi or Sector 17 in Chandigarh. While bargaining for a length of ribbon or a bunch of safety-pins, argue with the passion of an Alan Greenspan trimming the Federal reserve. Or to show your awareness of world events, talk about the displacement problem at Darfur or about the consequences of the Spanish Civil War. In this game of impressing the impressionable, it matters little if the words you use are inapt and do not carry the right shade of meaning. At the end, gracefully exit by making a quiet wrap-up sentence which could be a quotation or a surprise twist. Now, here the surprise twist is that the editor is so well-versed with Queen’s English and Fowler’s English usage that you cannot hoodwink him nor pull wool over his eyes. He is well aware of these futile ludicrous tricks by desperate
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Not quite a dragon WASHINGTON – The People’s Republic is on the march – economically, militarily, even ideologically. Economists expect its GDP to surpass America’s by 2025; its submarine fleet is reportedly growing five times faster than Washington’s; even its capitalist authoritarianism is called a real alternative to the West’s liberal democracy. China, the drumbeat goes, is ready to dominate the 21st century the way the United States dominated the 20th. Except that it’s not. Will China really be another superpower? I doubt it. I’m not a China-basher. I first went to China in 1980 as a student, and I’ve followed its remarkable transformation over the past 28 years. I met my wife there and call it a second home. I’m hardly expecting China to implode. But its dream of dominating the century won’t be a reality any time soon. Too many constraints are built into the country’s social, economic and political systems. For four big reasons – dire demographics, an overrated economy, an environment under siege and an ideology that doesn’t travel well – China is more likely to remain the muscle-bound adolescent of the international system than to become the master of the world. In the West, China is known as “the factory to the world,” the land of unlimited labor where millions are eager to leave the hardscrabble countryside for a chance to tighten screws in microwaves. If the country is going to rise to superpowerdom, says conventional wisdom, it will do so on the back of its massive workforce. But China’s demographics stink. No country is aging faster than the People’s Republic, which is on track to become the first nation in the world to get old before it gets rich. Because of the Communist Party’s notorious one-child-per-family policy, the average number of children born to a Chinese woman has dropped from 5.8 in the 1970s to 1.8 today – below the rate of 2.1 that would keep the population stable. Meanwhile, life expectancy has shot up, from just 35 in 1949 to more than 73 today. Economists worry that as the working-age population shrinks, labor costs will rise, significantly eroding one of China’s key competitive advantages. Worse, Chinese demographers such as Li Jianmin of Nankai University now predict a crisis with China’s elderly, a group that will balloon from 100 million people older than 60 today to 334 million by 2050, including a staggering 100 million age 80 or older. How will China care for them? With pensions? Fewer than 30 percent of urban dwellers have them, and none of the 700 million farmers do. And China’s state-funded pension system makes Social Security look like Fort Knox. Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer and economist at the American Enterprise Institute, calls China’s demographic time bomb “a slow-motion humanitarian tragedy in the making.” One important nuance we keep forgetting is the sheer size of China’s population: about 1.3 billion, more than four times that of the United States. China should have a big economy. But on a per capita basis, the country isn’t a dragon; it’s a medium-size lizard, sitting in 109th place on the International Monetary Fund’s World Economic Outlook Database, between Swaziland and Morocco. China’s economy is large, but its average living standard is low and will remain so for a very long time. The big number wheeled out to prove that China is eating our economic lunch is the U.S. trade deficit with China, which last year hit $256 billion. But nearly 60 percent of China’s total exports are churned out by companies not owned by Chinese. When it comes to high-tech exports such as computers and electronic goods, 89 percent come from non-Chinese-owned companies. China is part of the global system, but it’s still the low-cost assembly and manufacturing part – and foreign, not Chinese, firms are reaping the lion’s share of the profits. China’s environmental woes are no joke. This year, China will surpass the United States as the world’s No. 1 emitter of greenhouse gases. China is the largest depleter of the ozone layer and the largest polluter of the Pacific Ocean. Sixteen of the world’s 20 most polluted cities are in China; 70 percent of its lakes and rivers are polluted and half its population lacks clean drinking water. By 2030, the nation will face a water shortage equal to the amount it consumes today; factories in the northwest have already been forced out of business because there just isn’t any water. Even Chinese government economists estimate that environmental troubles shave 10 percent off the country’s gross domestic product annually. And then there’s “Kung Fu Panda,” which embodies the final reason why China won’t be a superpower: Beijing’s animating ideas just aren’t that animating. The recent Hollywood smash, about the high-kicking panda who uses ancient Chinese teachings to turn himself into a kung fu warrior, broke Chinese box-office records – and caused hand-wringing among the country’s glitterati. “The film’s protagonist is China’s national treasure, and all the elements are Chinese, but why didn’t we make such a film?” Wu Jiang, president of the China National Peking Opera Company, told the official New China News Agency. The movie’s content may be Chinese, but its irreverence and creativity are 100 percent American. China remains an authoritarian state run by a party that limits the free flow of information, stifles ingenuity and doesn’t understand how to self-correct. Blockbusters don’t grow out of the barrel of a gun. Neither do superpowers in the age of globalisation.
The writer, a former Beijing bureau chief, is editor of The Washington Post’s Outlook section. By arrangement with
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‘Love letters of great men’ There is scene in the film Sex and the City that has sent its mostly female fans crowding into bookshops, only to emerge empty-handed. Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, is lying in bed next to her lover, Mr Big (Chris Noth), reading extracts from an interesting-looking book called Love Letters of Great Men. But the trouble with the movie of Sex and the City is that so much of it is fake. For instance, the quotations that Carrie read out were real but the tome itself did not exist, much to the exasperation of booksellers inundated by hundreds of would-be customers wanting copies. But now, a British firm, Macmillan, is plugging a gap in the market by issuing a new book with the same title as the fictitious one that so intrigued Carrie, and with the same wide choice of historical figures including Pliny, Henry VIII, Mozart, Napoleon, Prince Rainier III and Oscar Wilde. In it, you can dip into letters from the poet John Keats, who died young and did not always get on well with women. In fact, he once complained in a letter to a male friend: “When I am among women I have evil thoughts, malice, spleen – I cannot speak or be silent – I am full of suspicions and therefore listen to nothing – I am in a hurry to be gone.” Many years after Keats was dead, The Times carried a bald, uninteresting obituary of a 65-year-old woman, Mrs Fanny Lindon. You cannot blame the obituary writer for not knowing who Mrs Lindon was, because she had kept the secret even from her husband. She was Fanny Brawne, the lover who had befriended Keats when he was penniless and had become his inspiration. After his death, she watched his reputation grow while she kept his love letters stashed away for her children to read one day. In one, he wrote: “I love you the more in that I believe you have liked me for my own sake and for nothing else. I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a Poem and to be given away by a Novel.” Another featured poet is the notorious Lord Byron, who was the nearest 19th-century equivalent to a rock star. He had an infamous fling with a married woman, Lady Caroline Lamb, who famously warned that he was “mad, bad, and dangerous to know” – a warning ignored by Teresa, Countess Guiccioli. She was a teenager married to a man more than 40 years her senior, met Byron in Italy and became the love of his life. “My destiny rests with you,” he told her in one of his many letters. “And you are a woman, 17 years of age, and two out of a convent. I wish you had stayed there, with all my heart, or at least that I had never met you in your married state. But all this is too late. I love you, and you love me – at least you say so, and act as if you did so, which last is a great consolation at all events.”
By arrangement with
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Inside Pakistan How much Pakistanis themselves hate their notorious intelligence agency, the ISI, can be known from the reaction of the newspapers to a failed attempt to bring it under the control of the Interior Ministry instead of the Prime Minister’s Office. Making it part of the Interior Ministry would have meant snapping its links with the Army. This would have made it lose its de facto status as “a state within a state”. This was intolerable for those interested in maintaining the status quo. That is why they quietly forced the coalition government to reverse the order, issued by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani before he left for Washington to shift the ISI to the Interior Ministry. This happened within 24 hours of the issuance of an otherwise welcome order so far as the political and other non-military circles are concerned. In view of The Nation, “The idea of putting the different intelligence agencies under civilian control in one administrative unit suggests that they would not be able to deviate from their officially assigned role in future. Besides, the ISI’s political wing, created by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, must be disbanded to obviate any further chance of political manipulation on its part for which some circles have expressed their apprehensions. These agencies should confine themselves to intelligence gathering only. And for an effective and thorough control, their operations ought to be subject to the scrutiny of parliamentary committees, as is custom vogue in other democratic polities.” In an article in The Frontier Post, Dr Naeem Chishti says, “The role of the intelligence agencies, particularly the ISI, in Pakistan’s internal politics has always been on the increase. The ISI has been deeply involved in domestic politics of Pakistan since the late 1950s. The 1990 elections, for example, were widely believed to have been rigged by the ISI in favour of the Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), an alliance of mainly rightist parties .… “The agency was also alleged to have been involved in a massive corruption scandal dubbed “Mehrangate”, in which top ISI and Army brass were given large sums of money by Yunus Habib, the owner of Mehran Bank. Major-General (retired) Ehtisham Zamir shocked the nation when he said in a statement published in the newspapers on February 24 that he had played a role in rigging the 2002 general elections during his tenure as director of domestic politics in the ISI. His statement is enough to give us a glimpse of the role the ISI has been playing in the national politics over the years.” As Daily Times commented, “De facto, the ISI is a military body more controlled by and answerable to the Chief of the Army Staff (COAS) than the Prime Minister, who has traditionally said yes to the appointment of an army officer picked up by the COAS as the ISI chief. When, in rare cases, the Prime Minister has chosen the DG-ISI on his/her own, as Benazir Bhutto did in her first stint in power and Nawaz Sharif did in his first and second stint in power, things have not gone smoothly between the civilians and the military. Also, despite the formal tutelage of the Prime Minister, the civilian rulers have never been exempt from the hostile scrutiny of the ISI. Some ISI officials were actually caught trying to overthrow the Prime Minister they were supposed to serve as happened under Ms Bhutto in 1989-90.” If Ziauddin Sardar, Editor of Futures, a political monthly, is to be believed, the Pakistan government is not dealing with the Taliban ruthlessly because it wants to use the extremist outfit for its unholy objectives. In his article reproduced in The News (July 28), Ziauddin says, “There are roughly 500 Taliban commanders, every one of whom is known to the Pakistani authorities. The reason that they have not been captured is simple: Islamabad believes it can use them for its own purposes. This illusion has now become dangerously obsolete.” He referred to an ultimatum recently issued by Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud, asking Islamabad to leave Peshawar “within five days or face the consequences.” This is strange, but an undeniable reality. According to the writer, “The Taliban has been in total control of FATA for almost a decade. Peshawar will be the jewel in their crown (if the Taliban commanders succeed). And if Peshawar goes, the rest of Pakistan would not be far away.” |
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