The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Prohibiting ragging
Hoping tough steps will have an effect

The Himachal Pradesh Educational Institutions (Prohibition of Ragging) Bill, passed by the state’s Vidhan Sabha, is a necessary and welcome step towards curbing the obnoxious practice of ragging. The groundwork of this provision was laid by the then Chief Minister, Mr Shanta Kumar, in 1992, but that ordinance lapsed because of inhospitable political climate. Now, this Bill will replace an ordinance issued by the Dhumal government in March.

All right-thinking people will welcome the legal strength it gives to the government and the administration in tackling the menace that has led to many deaths across the country, including that of Aman Kachroo, a medical student in Tanda, Himachal Pradesh, which finally pushed the state politicians into taking requisite measures. While experts may debate about exactly why students of professional institutions, otherwise the best and the brightest, are the worst offenders, there is simply no place for this inhuman practice in the education system.

The RK Raghavan Committee on ragging had gone into the issue at the behest of the Supreme Court, and its recommendations basically focus on the fact that “softer options have not worked and, therefore, it is time for tough measures.” The state government, therefore, has done well to make ragging an offence that could lead to suspension and expulsion of offenders. However, the Opposition has apprehensions on this issue, which have some basis, given the highly politicised campuses of the state. Consequently, care will have to be taken that the provisions of the law are not misused. Deterrent punishment for those found guilty —up to three years of imprisonment and a fine up to Rs 50,000 or both — is necessary and it is expected of all political leaders and other prominent people to come together to curb this menace without being influenced by personal or sectional interests.

Combating swine flu
Fresh guidelines must be enforced

In the wake of the threat posed by the H1N1 pandemic, the Union Health Ministry has been issuing guidelines from time to time. Earlier, it categorised patients and specified treatment accordingly. Now, the ministry has advised schools to refrain from closing down and instead suggested precautionary measures like doing away with morning assembly, sports and other gatherings and keeping a close watch on students. Indeed, as the experience of virus-hit nations has proved, closing down schools is not the solution.

As it is, the public in India has reacted with virtual hysteria. The closure of schools, colleges and multiplexes has been part of the exaggerated reaction. The health minister’s unguarded statement that one-third of the country’s population could be affected in varying degrees in two years, too, fuelled the panic. The ministry’s latest advisory is not only aimed at containing the virus but also meant to allay fears. Efforts are being made to correct the perspective. A trifle late though, it is a worthy move. With infections increasing by the day — on August 17 the nation recorded 220 fresh cases of swine flu — it is clear that the H1N1 menace is not receding. However, it is not as deadly as it was perceived to be and the virus has as yet not mutated into a more virulent form.

Still, nations, especially developing ones like India with an over-stressed health care system and few specialists for infectious diseases cannot afford to let their guard down. Swine flu cases need to be monitored with alacrity and responded to with equal promptness. A close check on students as suggested by the ministry is a must. For schools can be the breeding ground for infections and the young have been more susceptible to the virus. The government guidelines to schools must be followed.

Thought for the Day

For if happiness develops the forces of the mind, happinesss alone is salutary to the body. — Marcel Proust

ARTICLE

Jinnah pursued Pakistan for power
Jaswant disappoints; ignores British designs
by Narendra Singh Sarila

I am disappointed with Jaswant Singh’s 660-page book on Jinnah and Partition, released earlier this week. At the end he says: “I still fail to understand why India was partitioned in 1947? Or the manner in which it was done.” If even after his massive research and hard work, he did not get to the bottom of his subject, there is a reason for it. It is because he has ignored the most important element that was responsible for Partition, namely British strategic interests that required the creation of Pakistan. The British top secret documents on Partition have now been unsealed and there was no excuse for ignoring them. I myself showed these to him some years back. The whole story is there in those documents.

The Labour government that came to power in Britain in mid-1945 was willing to grant independence to India but was worried about losing its 60-year-old military base here from which the British controlled the whole Indian Ocean area, including the eastern Middle-East that contained oil wells — The Wells of Power — of increasing importance in war and peace and which Stalin, with his rising ambition after his victory over Germany, the British feared, might seize. In the last two great wars it was from their Indian base that the British deployed Indian and British forces in Iran and Iraq and the British Chiefs of Staff were adamant on keeping a foothold in India. But Atlee, the British Prime Minister, knew that the government of a free India under the Congress party’s rule would neither give them a military base nor join their team against the Soviet Union in the fresh Great Game. What were they to do?

Towards the end of 1945, Field Marshal Wavell, the Viceroy of India, came up with a possible wayout of their quandary. After the Congress party had refused to cooperate in the war effort in 1939, unless Britain announced that it would give freedom to India after the war, Wavell’s predecessor, Lord Linlithgow, had encouraged Jinnah to formulate the Pakistan scheme, informing London that Jinnah was in his pocket. “He represents a minority and a minority can only hold its own with our assistance,” the Viceroy told London.

Wavell now suggested that they use Jinnah’s demand to create a separate state in the north-west — not give him all he wanted in the west but territories along Iran, Afghanistan and Sinkiang with the port of Karachi — and Pakistan would cooperate with them on defence matters. On being asked by London to give them a clear picture of the areas that could go to Pakistan, Wavell in a historic dispatch on February 6, 1946, sent a map delineating the boundaries of Pakistan he had in mind, which were exactly the boundaries that Radcliff drew 18 months later.

So, what Pakistan was going to be was already decided in early 1946 and the time between then and August 15 was used by Atlee, Cripps and Wavell and later Mountbatten to make Jinnah accept the smaller Pakistan and the Congress party to accept Partition, while Atlee kept proclaiming from housetops that they were working to preserve India’s unity. All the British manoeuvring can be discerned by studying the British top secret files. It is a myth that Jinnah founded Pakistan. President Roosevelt had posted his representative in Delhi after1942 and his dispatches in the US archives also tell us much.

Some of the assessments in the book are also mistaken. To believe that the Cabinet Mission Plan would have resulted in a united India is moonshine. After 10 years Punjab, Sindh and the NWFP had the option to break away on one side and Bengal and Assam on the other side. That would give the League a much larger Pakistan after 10 years and certainly, in the meanwhile, it would fan the flames of communalism to prepare the ground for the above. And what about the princely states? They had the option to break away too . So, possibly Hyderabad would join Pakistan and would help reach Tripura and Manipur, which would be swallowed up. The Plan would have balkanised India and Nehru, despite the many mistakes he made, was correct in striking it down.

The Congress made many mistakes in the struggle, but Gandhiji united a heterogeneous and largely uneducated people, without which Independence was not possible.

I agree with Jaswant Singh that Jinnah at heart was a nationalist and a secularist. And he remained so for the first 60 years of his life — a long time. Jinnah opposed satyagrah, calling it an extreme programme that would lead to disaster. He was shunned by Gandhiji. And Motilal Nehru feared that this brilliant man would eclipse his son, Jawaharlal. In 1928 Jinnah proposed to convince the Muslims to give up separate electorates — that were preventing Hindu-Muslim political interdependence and unity — suggesting in return that Muslim representation in the Central Assembly be raised from 27 per cent to 33 per cent — a very minor concession compared to the possibility of ending the pernicious separate electorates. But he was pooh-poohed, and virtually driven out from the Congress party.

After the Congress refused to cooperate in the war effort in 1939, the Viceroy sought out Jinnah. The doctors had earlier the same year told him that he had terminal TB. Jinnah had always wanted to be the first in every thing. There are many instances in history of people abandoning their principles to achieve power and glory. So, for him it was now or never. His Pakistan scheme, launching Direct Action — the precursor of today’s terrorism — and mobilising Muslims against the Hindus, were all in the persuit of power and glory. He did not believe in what he was doing. After Pakistan had been achieved, he spoke in Karachi advocating secularism. But he quickly retreated when opposed by his followers.

Chagla, who worked with him in his law firm in Bombay, once told me that he was a man of great integrity. But it was tragic that at the end he lost it. And no man can be great without integrity. I also feel sympathy for Jinnah, for his humiliation and suffering. But at the end of his life he did many bad things, and inflicted incalculable harm. To believe that he was great just because he fought the mighty Congress party is nonsence. Do we call Hitler great because he fought the mighty Allies?n

The writer is a former Ambassador of India to France and Switzerland. Earlier, he was ADC to Lord Mountbatten. He has authored “The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition.”

MIDDLE

In conflict zone
by Tejinder Singh Sodhi

There are some who see journalism as a profession and some look at it as a passion, but for me my career started by chance.

I belong to the generation of those unlucky Kashmiris who grew up watching the conflict.

I remember one of my teachers commenting about the then situation in Kashmir: “We have to return to our houses much earlier than the chickens return to their coop.”

One day while on my way back home there was a powerful IED blast in the main market. The army cordoned off the entire area. Everyone was being frisked but a person who was carrying a press card, just flashed it and went away. We were made to sit for hours before we were allowed to go. Later, I came to know five innocent Kashmiri youth had died in the blast.

For the entire night I could not sleep. I was not mourning the death of those who died in the blast because death was nothing new in the valley and was a routine affair, but I was impressed with the journalist and wanted to have a press card in my wallet.

The first thing that I did the next morning was to approach the Editor of a Srinagar-based newspaper and expressed my desire to work for him, to which he reluctantly agreed. At first some of my stories were killed, obviously because I had no nose for news, but soon I developed some liking for the profession and suddenly all my stories started to appear on the front page.

I had learned to write news and my nose for news too had developed. After completing my studies, I applied to some national newspapers and luckily after a rigorous interview landed in one of them.

Life was going on as usual. I used to make calls to my sources to enquire how many died that day. Reporting was fun for me, but one day everything changed with a bang.

I was supposed to cover a political rally in Srinagar. The Chief Minister was to address that rally. Sitting in the media podium I was wondering why I was bearing so much of heat to listen to a political speech that would give me an inner page story, that too without a byline.

I was lost in my thoughts when suddenly there was a blast at the entrance of the venue. It was followed by indiscriminate gunshots from all sides. Two militants were standing in front of me and firing. Everybody jumped to the ground and tried to crawl to safety. I was bleeding profusely. But the flow of adrenalin was so high that I could not check where I was hit, although my wit wanted me to take shelter at a safer place.

Amidst raging bullets I managed to take shelter behind some flowerpots. Later I was rushed to safety by a media colleague. When I searched my body for any bullet injury I found that it was my nose that was fractured in the melee.

I was lucky I had survived, but not seven others who died there in the encounter.

Next day I anxiously waited for the newspaper, where two of my stories had appeared on the front page. I forgot all that I went through just 24 hours ago. I knew I was a journalist and I survived in my own valley and the survival was no mean feat for me.

OPED

Time to engage with Myanmar
The country may turn into an economic vassal of China
by Thant Myint-U

Twenty years of sanctioning and lecturing Myanmar’s military regime have failed. The West needs to engage with Myanmar’s leaders, increase humanitarian aid and reopen commercial relations with the country. If it doesn’t, not only will positive change remain as elusive as ever, but the country will also turn quickly and irreparably into an economic vassal of China.

In a sign of just how impervious the regime is to Western pressure, last week opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to her fourth spell of house arrest. Two thousand political prisoners remain locked up. And a transition to democracy appears nowhere in sight

I was born in the United States in 1966 to Burmese parents. My grandfather, U Thant, was then serving as the United Nations’ third secretary general. I witnessed repression in Myanmar firsthand when I was 8, during the violent unrest surrounding my grandfather’s funeral.

In 1989, just after college, I spent a year in Thailand and along the Thai-Burmese border, working with dissidents and trying help the first wave of Burmese refugees. Thousands had been killed during a failed anti-government uprising. Suu Kyi had just been placed under house arrest.

And the ruling junta, after losing relatively free elections, was refusing to hand over power. Later in Washington I argued with members of Congress and others that maximum sanctions were the best way to topple the dictatorship. It was an easy argument to make.

By the early 1990s nearly all Western aid to Myanmar had been terminated, and development assistance through the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund had been blocked. A decade later, embargos and boycotts had cut off nearly all economic ties with the United States and Europe. None of the senior Burmese government officials or their children (these are the only international sanctions targeting children) are allowed to travel to the West.

But as the regime not only survived but also began to seek trade, investment and tourism, I started having doubts. My feeling was that the West should use the opening and find a back door to change while the front door remained firmly shut.

In 2006 I published a book, “The River of Lost Footsteps,” in which I argued for a shift in the West’s approach. Even when, in 2007, new protests were violently crushed, I still believed greater engagement was the right way. I felt that many policy-makers and journalists were missing the bigger picture.

Few seemed aware, for example, that Myanmar was just emerging from decades of civil war. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the government and more than a dozen different ethnic insurgent armies hammered out cease-fires, a breakthrough that went virtually unnoticed in the West. (Today, though the cease-fires remain, there is no permanent peace.) And few seemed concerned by the country’s grinding poverty, the result of decades of economic bungling as well as embargos, boycotts and aid cutoffs.

In 1991, UNICEF’s country director warned of a humanitarian emergency among Myanmar’s children, arguing that more aid couldn’t wait for the right government. Eighteen years later, Myanmar still receives less than a tenth of the per-capita aid handed out to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Tens of thousands die needlessly from treatable diseases.

These challenges have been ignored in the hope that sanctions and tough talk would lead to political change. But that hasn’t happened.

Part of the reason is that the people who fashioned the sanctions didn’t consider how the rise of Asia’s giants — China and India — would transform Burma. As American businesses pulled out in the mid-1990s, Chinese and other Asian companies poured in. Hundreds of billions of dollars worth of natural gas have been discovered offshore, and massive hydroelectric and mining projects are being signed.

Within two years a 1,000-mile oil and gas pipeline will stretch across Myanmar, connecting China’s inland provinces to the sea. The U.S. trade embargo led to the near-collapse of the garment industry in the late 1990s, throwing tens of thousands of people out of work, but for the regime this has meant little.

Myanmar today is in no danger of economic disintegration. Without Western engagement, however, Myanmar’s 55 million people risk becoming a virtual colony of their 1.3 billion Chinese neighbors to the east. There is no nefarious Chinese takeover scheme, but the vacuum created by Western policy is being filled.

The old Burmese generals will soon retire, and a new generation will rise to the top. Gen. Than Shwe, Myanmar’s powerful autocrat, is 77 and ailing. Any chance for change requires support from at least some military leaders. Yet we’ve done nothing to try to influence the worldview of Than Shwe’s possible successors. The upcoming generation of officers will be the first never to have visited Europe or America.

Asia has experienced many successful democratic transitions, and none came about because of the sanctions and lectures that Western powers and advocacy groups seem to think will work in Myanmar. Generals don’t negotiate away their power in the face of threats. You have to change the ground beneath them.

Engagement is not just about talking — it’s about dealing with the powers that be enough to get a foot in the door and create new facts on the ground, especially through economic contacts with the Burmese people. Nor is it based on the notion that economic development will automatically produce democracy, but that we must tackle simultaneously Myanmar’s political and economic ills.

Thant Myint-U is the author of “The River of Lost Footsteps: A Personal History of Burma.”

— By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post

Enforce the law in North-East
by Suhas Chakma

The pictures exposed by The Tehelka magazine establish beyond any reasonable doubt that Chungkham Sanjit was shot dead in cold blood on July 23, 2009, by the Manipur police commandos. Yet, the state government failed to take any measure that would assuage pent-up public sentiment against widespread and systematic extrajudicial executions in Manipur.

In 2008, the Asian Centre for Human Rights (ACHR) investigated 19 cases of extrajudicial execution in Manipur. Out of 96 complaints of extrajudicial executions filed by ACHR before the National Human Right Commission in the last five years, 50 are from Manipur alone.

Following a telephone call from Home Minister P. Chidambaram, Chief Minister Ibobi Singh has ordered a judicial inquiry and suspended six accused commandos.

Unfortunately, past track record evoke little confidence. The reports of over a dozen magisterial and judicial inquiries, including the infamous killing of Thangjam Manorama Devi in July 2004, have not been made public, let alone prosecute the accused.

The state machinery is more interested in protecting the culprits. Parag Das, then Executive Editor of Asomiya Pratidin and Secretary General of Manab Adhikar Sangram Samiti was shot dead in broad daylight on May 17, 1996, in Guwahati.

On July 28, 2009, the session court judge of Kamrup, Justice Dilip Kumar Mahanta, had to acquit Mridul Phukan, prime accused in the Parag Das murder case, because of the “wilful lapses” by the Central Bureau of Investigation and the Assam Police in conducting the investigation.

Even where the culprits are identified the Central government seldom gives permission for prosecution. An inquiry by the Criminal Investigation Department (CID) of the government of Tripura found that 15-year-old Rathajoy Reang and three others were picked up for interrogation by the Assam Rifles on June 21, 2002 and severely beaten in custody. As a result of torture Rathajoy Reang died in the hospital on June 25, 2002.

The CID recommended prosection of Maj S.S. Dhanda and male nurse A.K. Sahu. The government of Tripura sought the sanction of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs but there was no response.

It was only after the National Human Rights Commission summoned the Home Secretary to appear in person that on January 21, 2009, the MHA informed that the Assam Rifles were functioning under the opertional control of HQrs. 3 Corps HQ, Eastern Command at the relevant time and therefore, the Defence Ministry is the one to grant the sanction for prosecution. And the Defence Ministry is currently sitting on the file.

When so-called exemplary punishment is meted out, it is disproportionate to the crime committed. In February 2006, Ajit Mahanta was killed in the custody of the Army after his arrest from Kakopathar in Tinsukia district of Assam.

Following protests, the Army admitted the mistake and constituted a military court to try the accused. In July 2006, two soldiers Nishant Sharma and Sudip Gurung were found guilty of killing Ajit Mahanta. But the punishment given was too lenient.

While Nishant Sharma was suspended from service for one year, Sudip Gurung was merely sentenced to two months’ rigorous military imprisonment. In normal court, murder is punishable at least with life imprisonment.

Insurgency across the North-East has lost public support. The romanticism with secessionism too has evaporated. As the insurgent groups resort to criminal activities, especially extortion and killings, many common citizens today dare to speak against the insurgent groups.

Obviously, the Central government and the state governments in the region have failed to capitalise on public sentiments against the insurgent groups. First, the government continues to condone serious human rights violations by providing impunity to the security forces.

Second, the Centre, which signed cease-fire agreements with over half a dozen armed groups, failed to enforce the cease-fire ground rules. The state as an alternative to the armed group simply does not exist.

In a significant step, the Union Home Ministry is presently drafting an amendment to the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, in particular, the proviso empowering the non-commission officers to “fire upon or otherwise use force, even to the causing of death” and to incorporate of “dos” and “don’t” guidelines issued by the Supreme Court while upholding constitutional validity of the AFSPA.

But these amendments are unlikely to reduce human rights violations unless the government addresses the regime of impunity provided through the requirement of prior sanction of the sate.

To effectively combat terror, there is a need for change of perception and mindset and actions. Human rights violations are serious criminal offences and are ought to be treated as such. They can never be justified or be part of winning hearts and minds necessary for successful counter insurgency operations.

If the law is allowed to take its own course, human rights violations will significantly reduce and this will win the hearts and minds of the people.

Kidnapping used to be Bihar’s cottage industry but the enforcement of the law had visible deterrent effect under Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Instead of learning any lesson, both the Centre and the state governments have been squandering the peace and fomenting the insurgencies in the region.n

The writer is the Director, Asian Centre for Human Rights

Biofuel production ‘harms the poor’
by Emily Beament

The production of biofuels is fuelling poverty, human rights abuses and damage to the environment, Christian Aid has warned.

The charity said huge subsidies and targets in developed countries for boosting the production of fuels from plants such as maize and oil palm are exacerbating environmental and social problems in poor nations.

And rather than being a “silver bullet” to tackle climate change, the carbon emissions of some of the fuels are higher than fossil fuels because of deforestation driven by the need for land for them to grow.

According to a report, Growing Pains, by Christian Aid, industrial scale production of biofuels is worsening problems such as food price hikes in central America, forced displacement of small farmers for plantations and pollution of local water sources.

But with 2.4 billion people worldwide currently without secure sources of energy for cooking and heating, Christian Aid believes the renewable fuels do have the potential to help the poor.

The charity highlights schemes such as the growing of jatropha in Mali, where the plant is raised between food crops and the oil from the seeds is used to run village generators which can power appliances such as stoves and lights.

The report argues that talking about “good” or “bad” biofuels is oversimplifying the situation, and the problem is not with the crop or fuel - but the policies surrounding them.

Developed countries have poured subsidies into biofuel production - for example in the US where between 9.2 billion dollars and 11 billion dollars went to supporting maize-based ethanol in 2008 - when there are cheaper and more effective ways to cut emissions from transport, the report said.

The charity said biofuels production needed a “new vision” - a switch from supplying significant quantities of transport fuel for industrial markets to helping poor people have access to clean energy.

The report’s author Eliot Whittington, climate advocacy specialist for Christian Aid, said: “Vast sums of European and American taxpayers’ money are being used to prop up industries which are fuelling hunger, severe human rights abuses and environmental destruction - and failing to deliver the benefits claimed for them.”

He said the current approach to biofuels had been “disastrous”.

“Policymakers should urgently rethink their entire approach to biofuels, to ensure that only crops and fuels which will achieve their social and environmental goals receive government backing.”

He added: “Christian Aid believes that the best approach to biofuels is to grow them on a small scale and process them locally to provide energy for people in the surrounding countryside.

“This can also increase rural people’s incomes and has the potential to actually increase soil fertility and moisture retention, without compromising people’s food security.” n

— By arrangement with The Independent

Corrections and clarifications

In the report “Autos remain off road today, too” (Page 3, Aug. 18) the expression “unavailability of LPG gas” has been used. Since the abbreviation LPG stands for Liquified Petroleum Gas, the word “gas” should not have been used after LPG.

The headline “Funds deter control of stray dog menace” (Page 10, Aug.17) was inappropriate. It should have been “Lack of funds hamper stray dogs control”.

The headline “Get your vehicle checked through NCRB before buying” (Page 3, Aug.17), should have used the word “by” instead of “through”.

The headline “Woman wing of Hry police first in march past” (page 5, Aug.16, Chandigarh Tribune) should have been “Women’s wing of…”.

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

This column will now appear thrice a week — every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Kamlendra Kanwar, Senior Associate Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the word “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is kanwar@tribunemail.com.

H.K. Dua,
Editor-in-Chief