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SIMI stays banned Imbecile government |
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Hawala
flourishes
Challenges from China
Hire the
hacker
Communist withdrawals Africa — land of
opportunity for Punjabis CPC to ink MoU with
Congress
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SIMI stays banned THE banned Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), which had been given a clean chit by the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Tribunal headed by Justice Geeta Mittal of the Delhi High Court on Tuesday, has received a jolt. The tribunal’s order has been stayed by the Supreme Court, which was approached by the government on Wednesday. The apex court, initially inclined to allow the status quo, found merit in the prosecution’s plea that the tribunal’s order would lead to “serious consequences” if it was allowed to take effect. The tribunal had lifted the ban imposed on SIMI by quashing a February 2008 notification of the Ministry of Home Affairs. The government failed to provide evidence to substantiate the charges levelled against the extremist outfit. The ban, imposed on SIMI in 2001 for “indulging in activities prejudicial to the security of the country”, was extended year after year. Irrespective of the relief provided to the government by the Supreme Court, which will resume hearing in the case after three weeks, the fact remains that the intelligence agencies functioning under the Home Ministry have not done their work properly. Had they taken their job seriously and gathered sufficient evidence to nail SIMI, the UPA government would not have to suffer the embarrassment that it did after the tribunal’s ruling. If the case collapses at the apex court, too, it is bound to boost the morale of not just SIMI but other extremist outfits as well. SIMI was founded in 1977 as a youth wing of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind. The Jamaat snapped its links with its errant offspring when it showed signs of working on a militant agenda. It has been accused of having links with the ISI of Pakistan and the Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami of Bangladesh. It is believed that SIMI was behind most of the bomb blasts in different parts of India, including those at Hyderabad. But the government could only provide evidence of SIMI’s involvement in what happened at Malegoan in Maharashtra, leading to 37 deaths, mostly of Muslims, in 2006. There is a clear case of overhauling the country’s intelligence network to frustrate the designs of terrorists and their masters. Terrorism cannot be fought unless there is a foolproof intelligence-gathering system in the country.
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Imbecile government NOTED jurist HM Seervai had said to the then Prime Minister Morarji Desai that if the chief ministers do not abide by the law, then God save the country. Things have deteriorated further since then. Now even God cannot save the country, laments the highest court of the land. When even the Supreme Court is provoked into saying that “even God feels helpless in this country”, the anguish of the common man can well be imagined. Ironically, this comment has been occasioned in a case which should not have gone to the courts at all. The unauthorised occupation of government houses and bungalows is a simple case of squatting and had the government been serious, the illegal occupants could have easily been evicted. But the political will is missing in the drive against the violators. Some of the biggest encroachments are by the lawmakers themselves in Lutyen’s Delhi where VVIPs refuse to give up the accommodation allotted to them and some of them even do not pay the rent. The court wanted the government to amend the law so that criminal prosecution could be launched against such violators. But the government has refused to do so, saying that the existing provisions are sufficient. If they are, then why does not the government evict these squatters? No answer! That is why during the arguments, Justice B. N. Agarwal was constrained to observe that “the whole government machinery is corrupt, whether at the Centre or in the States… We are fed up with this government. There is no accountability and nobody bothers about laws or guidelines. Nobody in the government works and the whole government has become non-functional….” There could not be a sadder commentary on the state of affairs. One just hopes that the government, instead of striking a confrontationist stance against this “judicial activism”, would realise that the court is only reiterating the feelings of every citizen and would galvanise itself into some meaningful action so that the extreme sense of helplessness over official apathy can be made a little less acute. To begin with, let the government evict, if necessary, forcibly those who have been illegally occupying 300 government houses and bungalows.
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Hawala flourishes ARMS dealers, drug traffickers and other criminals launder about $1 trillion in India, according to a report released by audit firm KPMG on Tuesday. Money laundering, better known as ‘hawala’, is a parallel system of money transfer and is also sometimes called ‘underground banking’, though such money transfer is not always illegal. Persons of Indian origin and non-resident Indians frequently send money back home through ‘hawala’ as it is faster and less expensive than banks. The ‘hawala’ route is also used to finance the smuggling of diamonds, endangered species and migrants. Corrupt politicians, officials and business people use this route to deposit their ill-gotten money in foreign banks. The government wakes up to the threat of money laundering only when reports appear of terrorist financing. The recent bomb blasts have once again brought the issue to the centre-stage. After 9/11, the US tried to trace and curb sources of terrorist funds. India has not yet woken up to the challenge of unaccounted money flowing in the financial system. At the height of India’s stock market boom last year there were reports of terrorist organisations parking funds in stocks, but nothing concrete has emerged from the follow-up action. The RBI has often questioned the sources of foreign capital flowing into the real estate and stock markets through the P-note route and from countries viewed as tax havens. Small wonder that Mauritius accounted for a larger share of foreign investment in India than several developed countries. The government has passed the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002, and proposed amendments to it to bring terror financing under greater scrutiny. The government plans to make it mandatory for credit card issuing agencies, casinos, money-changers and transfer service providers to report major transactions to the authorities concerned. The Financial Intelligence Unit, set up in 2006, has identified 600 questionable transactions. There is obviously need to maintain greater vigilance on ‘hawala’ deals and make the legal ways of money transfer more efficient and transparent.
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One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. — Elbert Hubbard
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Hire the hacker Hackers
might have got hold of critical flaw in internet”, shrieked a newspaper headline. Which, broken into nut and bolts, means that the attackers are free to route internet users wherever the hackers want, no matter what website address is typed into a web browser. This, in fact, is a godsend for the phishing cons who could lead you to imitation web pages of business such as bank or credit card companies to trick you into disclosing your account number, password and other personal information. Hackers are as old as our worldwide web. How to ward off these cyber terrorists is a challenge. That reminds me of how the collective wisdom of the US Senators worked about 8 – 10 years ago. Scared by a string of sensational hack attacks against some of the internet’s flagship websites, the US Senate roped in Kevin Mitnick, one of the most infamous computer hackers of those times, to seek advice on the ways and means to guard against such infiltration and suggest solutions to lawmakers. Mr Mitnick had the dubious distinction of having worked as, hold your breath, a paid consultant to a California College whose computer system he had earlier broken into! Didn’t in our schooldays class teachers, finding no enduring and effective way to put the fear of God in the heads of a few nuts, would foist on us a bully as the class monitor to mind the class? Taking a cue, why shouldn’t our somnolent sleuths tap the talent of the likes of Charles Sobhraj who has time and again outwitted the best of our law- enforcement agencies to make good his escape? Recently, he realised the need of it and advised the cops investigating the mysterious Arushi murder case to carefully go through the Indian Penal Code before they applied its provisions to various suspects, including Arushi’s father who eventually got a clean chit. Likewise, when the market sorcerer Harshad Mehta was busy driving the bulls up and up the stock market in the early nineties, the then Finance Minister should have engaged him as a consultant who with his wizardry would have brought the berserk bourses to behave! Did I hear you saying “Why not engage one to drive away the bears staying put since Jan’ 08.” Sounds senile. Nay, cynical. May be. But it is iron that cuts iron. A snake bite victim is saved by administrating to him or her a snake venom based formulation. Thanks to Louis Pasteur who discovered that animal and human life could be protected by innoculating them with the same bacteria that caused the disease. Ditto for the computer virus. We would all agree with Austen Riggs who believed that the sorrow of knowing that there is evil in the best is far out-balanced by a joy of discovering that there is good in the
worst!
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Communist withdrawals The
cause of communism suffered most at the hands of the Communist Party of India. The role of the Communist Party of India has made nationalist India its opponent. Opposition to the Communist Party of India is not merely political. The whole nation is angry with them”, said Jawaharlal Nehru in a speech at Beawar on October 23, 1945. The context of the statement was the communist role during World War II when Germany attacked Russia and the Quit India movement. The reaction of the majority that supported the trust vote in Parliament on July 22 is thematically not very different from remarks made almost 63 years back even if the context may vary. What still has not changed is the tendency of the communists to stand on the other side of the national mainstream. These remarks hardly leave an option but to accept that the communist stand on the Indo-US nuclear deal is yet another consistent part of the history of the communist movement in India. To withdraw their support and thus isolate themselves from the mainstream of Indian politics is their modus operandi . However, much the stand be justified in the name of being a disciplined party, they continue to be as dogmatic and doctrinaire as ever. The communists tend to isolate themselves more from the people whom they claim to represent. The communists are still tied to the permanent strings of international loyalty to communist countries accompanied by their antipathy to the USA. It is mandatory for them to abhor any Indo-US association and oppose it. To recall a few instances of communist withdrawal and shifts in their stand at the behest of the Comintern (communist international) may remind them of what they later term as “historic blunders”. From the initial stand of working within the Indian National Congress to an ultra leftist course defined by the Comintern, 1928, the communists took a somersault irrespective of the supportive stand and inclination of prominent Indian nationalist leaders towards the communistic ideals and Marxist approach. They made no accommodation to support India’s cause during the phase of the ultra leftist course (1928-1935) and withdrawal from the forces with whom they initially intended to work with. They overlooked the efforts of the nationalist leaders in defence of the convicts accused in the Meerut conspiracy case and remained unsupportive of them. The focus to serve the international organisation loomed larger over the interests at home and they made no accommodation, according to their wisdom, to view things from a national perspective. They abandoned the hardcore line only in 1935 when the seventh congress of Comintern advocated an anti-imperialist struggle in collaboration with the bourgeois national movements. This initiated a phase of collaboration with the nationalist forces in pursuance of the fresh guidelines. The communists went to the extent of identifying themselves with the objectives and ideas of the Congress. During this phase the communists were members of the AICC and elected Congress bodies as well. In the event of World War II in September, 1939, the communists’ decision not to support the British war efforts placed them in tune with the attitude of the nationalists though implicitly for different reasons. The communist stand was explicit when Germany attacked the Soviet Union in 1941 moving them towards another withdrawal. War alignments changed. The communists tendency to view the situation from international standpoint took precedence over nationalist sentiments and they positioned themselves in alliance with the Soviet Union against India to protect the interests of the former. The change in war alignments since 1941 disturbed communists at home in pursuance of united front tactics which was further exploited by their attitude during the Quit India movement launched in 1942. This attitude turned them off the line with the Indian nationalist forces and established their image of being extraterritorial. The post-war scenario saw the communists out from the Congress, thus ending a brief stint of united front tactics. No urgency for common constructive propositions in the larger interest of India was able to reduce the widening gulf to sustain the communists by the side of nationalist forces. Another withdrawal from the nationalist stream left the communists almost isolated, not in tune with those who were negotiating for the independence of the country. Much in tune with the communists on the international front, they did not recognise India’s Independence and declared it to be tied to the Anglo-American bloc. In the events that followed they viewed India’s policies and relations with foreign powers not from basic needs and requirements of the nation but from its tie-up with either of the two blocs that the world was divided into in the post-war period. This attitude determined their vision and they accepted whatever emanated from the communist bloc and opposed the other side. This put the communists in a dilemma many a time, especially when communists abroad hailed India’s stand while the same was scathingly attacked at home. The writer is a senior lecturer in history at Himachal Pradesh University,
Shimla.
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Africa — land of opportunity for Punjabis We
have hundreds of Punjabi youth languishing in jails of European cities. Yet each year greedy agents collect lakhs of rupees to send Punjabis illegally abroad in search of a better lifestyle. The genesis of the issue leading to this illegal trade needs to be studied. Over the years land-holdings in Punjab have consistently shrunk to uneconomic cultivation levels. The frustration of the farming community is manifesting itself in rampant indebtedness, desperate outbound ventures and suicides. This community, against all odds, still contributes 21 per cent of the national pool of wheat, and a sizeable amount of rice among other crops. This is the same lot of industrious people who run dairy and poultry ventures as well. Can we afford to have a proud and highly capable community demoralised? Look at the burgeoning Indian population. Who is to feed the two billion people in 2020? Do we, have sufficient cultiviable acreage available within the nation, leave aside Punjabs shrinking land bank. Today India is attracting much attention as a marketplace for foreign wares. Can India afford to not plan for 10 years hence, when this financial capital flows run elsewhere in search of better opportunities other than the BRIC economies? Do we not need to explore other employment avenues leveraging on our strengths? Let’s also not forget the huge global food shortages which are beginning to loom as a crisis for the world. They are all going to be looking at places which can provide food security for their populations. Why should we not look elsewhere in the world to take advantage of our farming genes, the technology evolved over centuries of farming, the brain and the brawn? The Punjabi DNA is perfect to home into this opportunity before others do. We do not require, therefore, to do menial jobs in the West when much more is waiting to be had by our youth in stable countries in Africa. Africa is unique in many ways. Labour is still cheap. There are stable nations there looking desperately to enterprising farmers who could help them cultivate and reap the benefits, apart from providing jobs and learning options for the locals. Many of these African nations do not have dairy or poultry as well. The continent saddles the equator. Most countries on the radar of this subject get rainfall six to nine months of the year. Some even have giant rivers and superb underground aquifers. And, above all, have cultivable land holdings in thousands of acres, if not hectares. An exercise in this regard was initiated by a close friend in the foreign service during his stint in Tanzania. A blueprint was prepared with the Punjab government with RN Gupta as the nodal officer from the Punjab Agro Export Corporation. Unfortunately, the officer was transferred and thereby hangs the tale of lost possibilities. With such ideas still floating around, perhaps, the Punjab government needs to go ahead and study the possibilities. Organisations such as the CII could assist the government to tie up MoUs with nations and begin exploring not just manpower export, technology export, equipment export, but also a means to channel Punjabi youth in productive endeavour. If we miss out on this strength, we shall have them selling their shrunken holdings to malls and multiplexes to buy cars and trips to Canada, America and Europe. What happens when these unproductive investments die out? I see GenNext Punjabis with the genetic farming disposition as entrepreneurs and supervisors, reaping what they sow in Africa, exporting around the world, including India. I believe this is the next river of NRI financial flows possible after the Mideast and the West have started to dry up. The opportunity is to go where our abilities are needed and, therefore, assist as we profit. I see more here in Africa than driving cabs in Manhattan, or scrubbing floors at international airports, hiding from immigration authorities and perhaps getting deported. The horror stories we hear of young boys dying in closed containers locked up for days on end, of frostbite taking away limbs as they cross CIS borders in the dead of the night, and of countries such as Italy declaring immigration emergency to oust 9,000 illegal Indians. These do not need to happen as the opportunity lies awaiting elsewhere. The writer is the
Vice-Chairman of the CII, Punjab State.
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CPC to ink MoU with Congress The
CPM and other Left parties’ lack of trust in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s government notwithstanding, the Communist Party of China has reposed faith in the ruling Congress party and is likely to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) when Sonia Gandhi travels to Beijing on Thursday. The MoU is likely to be signed by Sonia Gandhi as the Congress president and by CPC general secretary and Chinese President Hu Jintao after a meeting between the two in Beijing on Thursday. “It is strictly an interaction on a party-to-party basis and shows the trust and confidence the Chinese Communist Party has in the Congress,” well-informed diplomatic and political sources told IANS. “The fact that Hu Jintao is meeting Sonia Gandhi on Thursday, a day when nearly 70 heads of state from different parts of the world are arriving in Beijing, shows the importance he gives to the Indian leader and her party,” a high-level source told IANS, pleading anonymity. The Congress has signed a similar MoU with the African National Congress, a party with which it has traditional and emotional ties. Sonia Gandhi, her daughter Priyanka along with her husband Robert Vadra and their two children are leaving for China to attend the August 8 opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics. Her son, Rahul Gandhi, has also been invited for the event, but he might travel separately after finishing his tour of Bangladesh. Rahul, who is one of the general secretaries of the party, will also be present at the Sonia-Hu meeting. Since she does not hold any government post, Sonia Gandhi will be sitting in an enclosure reserved for the guests of the Chinese government. She will not be in the VVIP enclosure where President Hu, his American counterpart George W. Bush and other heads of states and governments will be seated. Sports Minister M.S. Gill, who is likely to head the government delegation, will get that privilege. In October last year, Sonia Gandhi and Rahul had led a delegation of the Congress party to China. They were the first visitors invited to China after the Communist Party ended its party congress and as a result got a chance to interact with a number of leaders who are likely to play an important role in China in the near future. Sino-Indian relations have gone through several highs and lows during the past six decades. In 1962 the two countries had gone to war to settle their boundary dispute. It was Rajiv Gandhi — when he was prime minister — who embarked on a historic visit to China to remove the strains from relations between the two neighbours. The bilateral ties suffered a setback in the run-up to the Indian nuclear tests of May, 1998, when the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance had described China as India’s “security threat number one” and also cited it as the main reason that made New Delhi go nuclear. —Indo-Asian News Service
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