EDITORIALS

Curbing black money
Tax evaders must be deterred strongly

It is regrettable that there is unfettered growth in the black money economy year after year and newer means of cheating the public exchequer are being found, with public integrity at a low ebb. Despite all efforts by the Finance Ministry to plug avenues of tax evasion, the parallel economy has touched ghastly proportions. It had been surmised that mandating the use of permanent account number (PAN) in all high-value transactions would curb black money. But even this has proved of no avail. According to the Annual Information Return filed with the Income Tax Department as reported in the media, while high-value transactions more than doubled to Rs 55.7 lakh crore in 2007-08 over the previous year, almost 30 per cent of these were without PAN being cited, giving rise to suspicion of tax evasion. Clearly, with the integrity quotient being low, laws and rules are not deterring the evaders enough.

While the public exchequer is being brazenly denied its due within the country, a huge chunk of unaccounted money is being stashed away in Swiss banks which protect the money-stashers with secrecy laws that shield these evaders. It is unfortunate that while these banks have turned over client details to the US upon Washington’s insistence, they have rejected India’s plea for information about the secret accounts of Indian clients.

Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee had made a welcome assertion in Parliament recently that India was committed to unearthing black money within and outside the country. It is indeed imperative that the matter of Swiss banks’ refusal to divulge information be pursued with new vigour and seriousness. The Indian tax authorities need to do their homework more thoroughly. The Swiss authorities have said that they are prepared to look at specific cases in which criminal complaints have been filed and a request for information is made through official channels. While this path must be followed relentlessly, it is equally vital that within the country, non-compliance with tax laws be punished severely so that an effective deterrent is built into the system.

A fruitful visit
India-Nepal ties get a boost

Nepal Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal’s five-day visit to India that ended on Saturday may infuse new life into relations between the two neighbours. The achievements of the visit can be seen at least on political, trade and security fronts. As Mr Nepal wanted, he got India’s clear support for his policy of non-inclusion of Maoist combatants into the Nepal Army. Any induction of the former rebels on a mass scale into the armed forces is bound to adversely affect the Army’s professional character. The two sides reached agreement to launch various development-related projects in Nepal with India’s financial and technical help. These projects are related to the development of rail and road network particularly in Nepal’s Terai region, setting up of a police academy, a big medical institute, among others.

India and Nepal have initialled the revised Treaty of Trade and Agreement of Cooperation to Control Unauthorised Trade. This will help enhance bilateral trade between the two countries, particularly when Nepal improves its rail and road connectivity in the areas bordering India. There is considerable scope for the two neighbours to benefit from each other, but they need to work together without doubting each other’s intentions. Nepal will obviously be a major beneficiary with various concessions that India will offer. India has already agreed to consider removal of the ban on the export of essential commodities to Nepal.

But Nepal will have to take care of India’s sensibilities too. For the past few years Nepalese territory has been used by Pakistan’s ISI to create trouble in India. The Nepalese Prime Minister has promised that anti-India forces will no longer be able to use Nepalese soil for implementing their destabilisation schemes. If he shows sincerity in honouring his word this may help create a new climate for greatly fruitful India-Nepal relations.

Ineffective policing
Ugly reality of City Beautiful

The recent spate of crime incidents across Chandigarh and its suburbs, Panchkula and SAS Nagar, is a cause for concern, especially since vulnerable sections of society, the old, infirm and poor, are being targeted. The recently-released figures regarding the overall fall in criminal cases notwithstanding, murders are on the increase and there is a sharp rise in the number of vehicle thefts. The rise in rape cases is also a cause for concern. Robberies involving violence are making headlines with distressing frequency. The sheer brazenness of the criminals leaves one wondering about the efficacy of the police force and of the criminal justice system. There are three administrative jurisdictions in the area and coordination among them is lacking. Much of the force is, in any case, deployed on VIP duty, which entails guarding the roads and checking the shrubs for such visitors.

Criminals in Chandigarh can be broadly divided into two categories — VIP-brats who operate with a feeling of impunity derived purely from the genealogy of power that they have access to through their family and friends, and ordinary desperados. Both operate with relatively little interference, in the first case because of lack of will, and in the second because the police force is stretched and too busy attending to duties other than preventing crime.

The Punjab Governor also heads the Chandigarh Union Territory administration and there should be close coordination between the two, especially when the safety and well-being of citizens is concerned. The Haryana government, too, is a stake-holder in City Beautiful and must do its bit for law and order in Chandigarh. The officials concerned need to work out and implement a join strategy to curb crime in the tri-city area and ensure that the citizens live without fear of criminals.

Thought for the Day

When my sonnet was rejected, I exclaimed, ‘Damn the age, I will write for Antiquity!’ — Charles Lamb

ARTICLE

Dealing with N. Korea
Seoul and Washington are losing patience
by S. Nihal Singh

To understand the new and dramatic developments that foreshadow rapprochement between the reclusive North Korea and the United States and South Korea, one has to dig into the past. North Korea sending a senior delegation to the South Korean capital, Seoul, ahead of the funeral of former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung was unprecedented. True, Kim was a great advocate of the “sunshine policy” towards the North and gave the North generous food and fertilizer assistance and won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2000 for seeking rapprochement on the Korean peninsula. But the question that remains unanswered is: why this turnaround by Pyongyang?

Reading tealeaves in the old days was largely confined to Kreminology and making sense of Chinese development out of the then British colony of Hong Kong. Then the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union disintegrated and the Cold War was over. North Korea today holds the distinction of being the only country that remains opaque and inscrutable, with the outside world, including its South Korean cousins, relying on the instruments of Kreminology to decipher what is going on there and what its future intentions might be.

North Korea’s moves in recent months, involving much tub-thumping and two tests of nuclear devices and missile launches, had the US, Japan and South Korea manning the barricades. The Obama administration sought and obtained tougher United Nations sanctions against North Korea. South Korea, with the accession to office of the conservative Lee Myung-bak 18 months ago, stopped its traditional generous aid packages, particularly of rice and fertilizers, tying them to the North’s nuclear disarmament.

The rumour mills in the outside world were meanwhile buzzing with reports of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, having suffered a stroke and that he was preparing for his youngest son Kim Jong-un to succeed him. The sabre-rattling and the turning up of vitriolic rhetoric, it was suggested, were meant to smoothen the path of succession and to buy the loyalty of the leader’s key constituencies among the elite. The joint North-South industrial complex in the border region was practically shut, the mountain resort developed by the Hyundai conglomerate of the South lay forlorn after the killing of a South Korean tourist and the North-South freight railway line lay idle.

There were other straws in the wind. Two American reporters were arrested by the North along its border with China and later sentenced to prison terms. And the flow of turgid Communist hectoring prose seemed endless. Whatever the reasons, the North wanted to convey to the world, in particular the United States and South Korea, that it was angry. Pyongyang indicated that the long-running six-party talks on North Korean nuclear programme were of little use and that it would talk only with the United States.

As so often with the North’s relations with the world, bluster and blood-curdling rhetoric gave way to gentler breezes of reconciliation. A visit by former US President Bill Clinton, carefully prepared by the two sides, yielded the release of the two American reporters. Pyongyang released the South Korean Hyundai worker it had arrested months earlier ostensibly for condemning the northern system and the North announced it was ready to resume rail freight traffic, that the industrial Kaesong zone could be reopened and that family reunions would be allowed again.

That South Korea’s President Lee agreed to meet the northern delegation for the first time was in itself of significance, but caution rules in Seoul and Western capitals in assessing these new developments. And the legion of analysts of trends in the Communist hermit kingdom in which the first hereditary change took place with Kim Il-sung’s death and a second is being planned put their thinking caps on.

One assumption shared by many is that the new UN-approved sanctions are beginning to bite and that a rapprochement with the South is the quickest and easiest way of obtaining much-needed hard currency. The Kaesong complex employs 40,000 North Korean workers in 100 South Korean-run enterprises and Pyongyang has recently been insisting on the South paying more money. Again, getting South Korean and other tourists to visit the heavily guarded mountain resort nets the North much money.

Beyond the purely monetary aspect, the North is also banking on tapping into the hope of many in the South for reunion of the divided peninsula. Although South Koreans with relations in the North are dying out, the intensity of emotions displayed by these monitored reunions is touching. There is dichotomy here between the Government in South Korea and the lay public outside of unreconstructed anti-Communists.

After careful examination of the German reunification process, a number of officially sponsored teams came to the conclusion that a sudden gunshot wedding after the German fashion would be disastrous for South Korea, which would be unable to bear the weight of instant reunification. Therefore, Seoul has been stressing on helping the North in its economic and agricultural development while seeking a détente. Kim Dae-jung, who held the only North-South summit with Kim Jong-il, epitomised this thinking by befriending the North in various ways.

But the compact between the North and its neighbours and the West broke down with the North’s decision to go back on ending its nuclear programme in exchange for South Korea and the West building two light water reactors and providing oil in the meantime. International nuclear inspectors were thrown out and the North left the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The stance in both the South and the North hardened with Lee Myung-bak assuming the presidency in Seoul.

Do the new whiffs of a coming spring amount to something more than the North changing its tune for a time to obtain desperately needed money and food or does it portend a change of policy? Only time can tell, but the patience graph in both Seoul and Washington has contracted significantly and the West is now tired of the cyclical periods of relative thaw alternating with rhetorical blasts. The North is unlikely to give up its nuclear assets. In that sense, the North will perhaps miss Kim Dae-jung more than the South.

MIDDLE

My companion, the compendium
by Roopinder Singh

A new city, new school, new house and no friends. Amritsar did not have much to offer when I first went there as a Class VIII student in 1973. Before I made friends with my fellow students, I found another friend, a compendium of information that became my constant companion.

My parents had shifted to Amritsar, and it was my routine to cycle down to the Golden Temple to meet my father, Giani Gurdit Singh, every day, via Hall Bazaar. Near Hall Gate there were many second-hand book stores and there I found that I could get more than enough reading material from them.

Given my pocket money, I found that most cost-effective was a copy of the Readers’ Digest for 50 paise. I would pick them up by the dozen and rush home to go through them…till the next time. What a world it opened for me! My vocabulary was shaped by Word Power and much of my perception has been influenced by the collection of uplifting features, comforting anecdotes that formed the part of every issue of Readers’ Digest.

My mother, Mrs Inderjit Kaur, was Principal, Government College for Women, and just near it was St. Francis School, where I studied. For me, Readers’ Digest was the world encapsulated in a small book-like magazine. By now, the dealers knew me and would holler whenever they had new stock. It was in Amritsar that I managed to build up a collection of Readers’ Digest dating back to 1960, the year I was born. It was small treasure, to be browsed, to savour, to learn from and to possess.

Moving from the magazine to Readers’ Digest Condensed Books was logical progression and I will forever be grateful to the exposure to literature they gave me. My collection increased, as did my friends who would read and discuss them with me. Many of them turned out to be my mother’s colleagues, particularly Gurdev Kaur, who later married a person who successfully runs a big book store in Chandigarh.

Within two years I had finished off about 13 years of back issues, and it was time to leave the city which was no longer new, but familiar; a school where I knew everyone; a house which had become a home and my many friends.

The shift from Amritsar to Patiala also spelt the end of an intense engagement with Readers’ Digest. When we moved, the cartons that had my precious cache of the magazine were misplaced. I would still read the magazine whenever a new issue came out, but I no longer had my treasure trove.

Today, when I read about Readers’ Digest Association filing for bankruptcy in the US, I realised that millions of others have stories like this to tell of the debt they owe to this great magazine.

OPED

No lessons learnt
The war in Afghanistan drags on
by Yasmin Alibhai-Brown

Unlike many others on the left, I am not a total pacifist and not a proponent of laissez faire foreign policy. I was absolutely against the war in Afghanistan. Sometimes intervention is the only option, often a lesser evil.

Ultra-nationalist Serbs in Bosnia and Kosovo would have successfully exterminated or driven out indigenous Muslims from those lands had NATO not intervened. Too many died as a result, a terrible tragedy and agonising, but the alternative would have been worse. Today it is hard, even impossible to affirm that interventionist position as the war in Afghanistan drags on and on, killing both people and the hopes many of us held when first our troops went in.

In the last few weeks I have questioned the wisdom of that stance and may well have to eat my views. No bad thing, bitter though the taste.Much worse would be to fanatically cling on, become like William Shawcross, Chris Hitchens and others in that sad gang of deluded vocal supporters of the Iraq war.

On September 10, 2001, the day before the Al-Qaeda attacks in US cities, I pleaded on these pages, asked Muslims and the western world to wake up and step in before the Taliban annihilated the life and soul of that troubled yet proud region that is Afghanistan : “...thousands of Afghanis are appearing as asylum-seekers around the world to be humiliated, perhaps even to die, a reminder of just what life can be under the Taliban... the Taliban is the bastard child of the Cold War in Afghanistan, and, even now, I hear Western money makers are happily doing business with it... girls and woman are being beaten, oppressed, denied health and education, hanged and stoned for the smallest transgressions.” What happened the very next day traumatised and roused the US and the west.

Violent Islamicists indoctrinated in Afghanistan had dared to blow up Americans, moved from domestic intimidation (easily ignored) to international terrorism.

On October 7, 2001 the US went in, under the banner Operation Enduring Freedom and most of the world cheered. (How hollow that ambition sounds today.) When that audacious and brave Afghani activist Malalai Joya, who knows she will soon be killed by misogynist warlords, says foreign troops should leave immediately, who are we not to heed her call? If one thing has pushed me to where I stand today, nervous, feeling naive and stupid, guilty too, it is this extraordinary woman.

She ran secret schools for girls, defying the men who want to slaughter female teachers and pupils. She also set up clinics for women who were dying needlessly because they were not allowed to be seen by male medical staff. She got herself into parliament in the last election and confronted the men who were mass murderers. Since then they have been looking to do away with her.

But she still is adamant: “I say to Obama n in my area, 150 people were blown up by US troops in one incident this year. If your family had been there, would you send in even more troops and even more bombs? Your government is spending $18m to make another Guantanamo jail in Bagram. If your daughter might be detained there, would you be building it? Change course or otherwise people will call you another Bush”.

There are other realities too that are leading to a reassessment of our presence in Joya’s country. In 2008 the UN expressed its concern that there had been a 40 per cent increase in civilian deaths. This year the figure will be higher. The Taliban kill the people indiscriminately but so to do our troops. No lessons have been learnt from the parts of Iraq where the allies treated local populations savagely and made enemies of those who were victims of Saddam and should have been their supporters.

An article in The New York Times described an American gunship attack in Azizabad in Afghanistan last August which wiped out 90 people, 75 of whom were women and children. Syed Mohammed from Kabul, a humble old man says Afghan and American soldiers shot his son, pregnant wife, and two grandchildren, one aged one, the other two. The stories are endless and endlessly sad. And what is it all for? In 2001, the two objectives were to neutralise Al-Qaeda and destroy opium farming and trade. Neither has been achieved.

The country has been bleeding from war wounds for far too long. Yet our presence in that country gives the worst men of Afghanistan kudos and status. The Taliban, petty dictators and villains cast themselves the latest heroes in the foundational legend of that land, the “graveyard of empires”, where no foreign rule can survive, not the once invincible British Empire, not the militarily mighty old Soviet Union and now not the best armed armies in the world.

That myth bewitches millions from disenchanted young British Muslims to the lawless and aimless angry young men of Somalia. Ironically, the war to end Islamicist terrorism may be turning into perfect propaganda for the followers of Bin Laden, himself of course a foreigner in Afghanistan. This summer has brought the bloodiest three months ever for the allies. Over 200 young men gone, many more disabled. Grief spreads and sometimes anger.

The government thought it would be good for national resolve if more visible public ceremonies marked the arrival back of dead soldiers. This is backfiring. Each incredibly sorrowful individual story makes people ask why we are there, soldiers included. This is seen now as a quagmire, as squalid and misguided as Vietnam was. Public opinion the world over is falling. Polls show dropping support in France and Germany.

A recent worldwide PEW survey found that only 46 per cent of Brits want to carry on. The figure for the US is 57 per cent. The country which most supports the war is Israel. In 2002, 6 per cent of Americans were against the action. Today that figure is above 40 per cent. Key figures in the Obama Administration admit the American people are tiring of this adventure. Labour’s Kim Howells senses the same fatigue: “I don’t think the public are up for it any more.” It has cost British taxpayers (pounds sterling) 2.5 billion and that figure is expected to rise fast. The inept and ineffable Defence Secretary, Bob Ainsworth, says it should take one more year while a number of army chiefs think we need to be planning for decades of engagement.

Does anyone know really or do they just make up the lyrics as they go along? So now we have had a dodgy election not worth the “indelible” washable ink on the fingers of voters. Hundreds of girls and women self immolate rather than succumb to this surge against them. After eight years, their ashes are a sign-off, the verdict on an abysmal military expedition. And I am not sure at all I should ever have supported it.

— By arrangement with The Independent

Security: Need to shed the VIP syndrome
by Lt-Gen Harwant Singh (retd)

Shah Rukh Khan

One may wonder why there has been no terrorist attack on the US since 9/11 whereas India has had a string of terrorist attacks since the attack on Parliament. What is so special in the security laws and their implementation in the US which we Indians do not have or are unable to enforce? Is it that the American security machine works conscientiously and by the book: without any exception, where as we live by the ‘chalta hai’ mantra?

The print and electronic media and the political class in India went overboard on Shah Rukh Khan’s ‘ordeal’ at Newark airport. A Union Minister has demanded a ‘tit for tat policy’ with the Americans! It is stated that Shah Rukh was subjected to interrogation.

For us, the word ‘interrogation’ conjures up visions of interrogation by Indian police. What he was asked were some simple questions, such as, persons he knows in America, the purpose of his visit, etc. This was obviously so because there must have been some inputs in the immigration official’s computer software, that required questioning him. Such a procedure is followed by the security staff at American airports and there can be no exception.

Earlier, Dr A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was subjected to search at Palam by an American airline staff. This aroused much indignation and protests in the country. It is to the humility and sanguinity of Dr Kalam that he submitted to body search without any fuss. Dr Kalam is on the Government of India’s list of high dignitaries who are exempt from search at Indian airports. Whereas the American government order makes it mandatory that all passengers boarding American airline flights at foreign airports and headed for the US will be searched.

This practice by US airlines ought to have been known to the authorities. Therefore, it was incumbent on them to take up this issue of exemption from search of listed Indian VIPs with the American government. Evidently, this simple action was not taken.

The Indian government, instead of hauling over the coals, those who had failed to resolve this issue with the American government, went ahead with the act of filing FIRs against the American crew for merely carrying out their duty!

Our former Defence Minister George Fernandes was detained at an American airport, because the computer put him down as a terrorist. He was involved in the Baroda dynamite case! Similarly, former Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee was detained for nearly an hour at an American airport because the computer showed him as a Communist, etc. The staff at the airport had to follow the laid down procedure without exception.

Had the security staff carried out its mandated duty and checked the identity of occupants of the car with red beacon at the entry point, there would have been no attack on Indian Parliament. Similarly, had Indian Airlines crew subjected passengers to body search before boarding its aircraft at Kathmandu, the highjacking of this aircraft to Kandahar would not have taken place.

In 2005, the Home Ministry allotted Rs 463 crore to coastal states and mandated them to establish 55 police stations along the coastline. How far was this project carried through and where did the money disappear? Absence of police post at the harbour, terrorists disembarked without being intercepted and Mumbai attack followed, where in addition, security functionaries at various levels failed to carry out their duties.

Ted Kennedy is a respected senator and is well known throughout the country. Twice he was denied entry into an American airport to take the flight, simply because the security computer, perhaps due to some bug, did not clear his name.  He took these mishaps in his stride and there was no commotion in the Senate, public or the press.

In the US, there is no compromise on security and no VIP gets worked up over such drills or demands short-circuiting the security procedure. That is how the Department of Home Land Security in America has ensured no terrorist strike since 9/11.

In India we need to shed this VIP and celebrity syndrome and let the security staff carry out its duties diligently and faithfully.

Delhi Durbar
BJP CMs not inclined to follow Modi

Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi might have rushed to ban Jaswant Singh’s book on Jinnah to stake further claim to Sardar Patel’s legacy and perhaps persuade more Gujaratis to call him ‘Chhote Sardar’. However, all BJP states are not as eager to impose this ban. The most reluctant of all is Himachal Pradesh. It was in Shimla that the BJP expelled Singh and Modi ordered the ban of his book.

This single act made Jaswant so well known to the average Shimla resident that two major book stores at the fashionable Mall immediately displayed his book along with a huge poster of the book jacket which depicts the life-size portrait of Mohammad Ali Jinnah. The book continues to do brisk business in Shimla.

Privately someone disclosed why Himachal Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal was reluctant to follow suit, despite his loyalty to L.K. Advani. “Who knows Sardar Patel here these days? Why create a controversy when none exists?” said a BJP leader from Himachal. So much for BJP’s claims of its ideology being non-negotiable.

Why Sujata put Nepal in a fix

Nepal Prime Minister Madhav Nepal faced some embarrassing moments during a visit to India. His foreign minister Sujata Koirala opted out of his entourage at the last minute, citing health reasons. Her hosts in Delhi had booked a room for her at the five-star Oberoi Hotel and also arranged adequate security.

It now turns out that Sujata, daughter of Nepalese Congress chief G.P. Koirala, was miffed with her Prime Minister for not making her Deputy Prime Minister before the start of the visit to India as was apparently promised to her. Therefore, she preferred to show her displeasure by refusing to be a part of the PM’s team.

India also wanted the trade treaty with Nepal to be signed during the visit. Arrangements were being made for the signing of the treaty on Saturday amid fanfare. But the Nepalese PM was hesitant on two counts: his is an interim government which should better avoid inking any major agreement that would provide ammuntion to the Maoists to turn the heat on him back home at a time they are already fanning pro-China sentiments in the Himalayan state. Anyhow, the two countries have concluded talks on the treaty which would be formally signed sooner than later.

E-mail fraud on mobiles

Not long ago, many were lured into committing money over e-mail by fraudsters promising huge rewards in return. After the police crackdown on these cheats, especially from African countries, these fraudsters have now evolved a new method to attract people through their mobile phones.

In many instances, especially with those who have not registered for unwanted calls, mobile phone customers have been getting messages on their phones to the effect that their number has been selected for a million dollar award in an international mobile phone contest, seeking to know their mobile phone and other details.

No complaint has been filed as of now, but officials are wary that it could be the start of another fraud campaign. Just beware!

Contributed by Faraz Ahmad, Ashok Tuteja and Girja Shankar Kaura