O P I N I O N S

Perspective

A Tribune Special
The new geopolitical paradigm
We are witnessing the Atlantic era’s end and the Asian Century’s advent, says Ash Narain Roy
Today is like yesterday in a world without tomorrow”. This lament by a Latin American bard typified the painful present and the uncertain future of most of the third world for major part of the 20th century.

How All India Radio Jalandhar-Amritsar came into being
by Harjap Singh Aujla
After the British Indian government decided in 1936 to open state-owned radio stations in India’s metropolitan cities, radio stations were opened at Calcutta, Bombay, New Delhi and Madras. The fifth was opened in 1937 at Lahore, the Punjab Province’s capital, with a modern studio complex.

OPED

SC ruling on Narco tests
Need to improve the justice delivery mechanism
by Arun Bothra
Contrary to popular belief, the Supreme Court ruling on Narco and other scientific tests has not come as a surprise or a bolt from the blue for the investigating agencies. There may be reasons for some disappointment but in effect the judgment has simply reiterated the already existing guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission on the subject. With the Supreme Court backing it has, of course, become the law of the land.

On Record
Death sentence must go, says Pushkar Raj
by Ashutosh Sharma
Even as the controversy over the mercy petition of death row convict Afzal Guru in the Parliament Attack Case continues, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties’ national general secretary, Dr Pushkar Raj, advocates abolition of the capital punishment, maintaining that it defies the very concept of justice. In an interview to The Tribune in Jammu, he says that death sentence won’t help check the crime rate across the world.

Profile
Chinese scholar’s passion for Tagore’s works
by Harihar Swarup
Prof Dong Youchen, a Chinese scholar, is little known in India. Few know that he has spent a life-time researching and translating the works of Rabindranath Tagore into Chinese and was honoured this year with Bangla Akademi’s prestigious Rabindra Puraskar. The award is recognition of Prof Dong’s life-long work of translating Tagore into Chinese, a difficult language to learn.

Perspective

A Tribune Special
The new geopolitical paradigm

We are witnessing the Atlantic era’s end and the Asian Century’s advent, says Ash Narain Roy

Illustration: Kuldeep Dhiman

Today is like yesterday in a world without tomorrow”. This lament by a Latin American bard typified the painful present and the uncertain future of most of the third world for major part of the 20th century.

The United States, on the other hand, it was said, was born rushing into the future. As ‘Old World’, Europe had its own advantages. Colonisation and colonial exploitation allowed Europe to fatten itself on some one else’s feed. Japan worked hard to find its way to the top. While the first world held sway, the third world appeared destined to live in misery.

But as George Will says perceptively, “the future has a way of arriving unannounced.” Russia, the other super power, lost not only parts of its territory but also the zeal to fight. Its economy shrank and its global influence waned. The second world suddenly disappeared.

Today, the wheel seems to be turning full circle. The US, Europe and Japan are all in trouble. The US remains and will remain a vital global player that can enhance or restrict the aspirations of new powers. But it is on a declining curve nevertheless.

In 2003, the US accounted for 32 per cent of global output and the developing world’s share was 25 per cent. In 2008, these got neatly reversed. At a different level, while Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRIC) currently account for 14.6 per cent of world GDP, BRIC’s share in global economic development has exceeded 50 per cent.

A programmer busy chatting with her listeners at All India Radio Prasar Bharati, Jalandhar. Tribune photo: Malkiat Singh

A new Iron Curtain is rising in Europe. The fault lines of the new Iron Curtain are the same that divided Europe 50 years ago. Europe’s North-South divide is also becoming visible. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has blamed feckless Greeks and Latins for Euro debacle. Germans are proud of their wage discipline. Obviously, cultural Germans and cultural Latins are unable to meet half way in Europe. What an irony that the Euro which was launched with so much fanfare should become an engine of intra-European hatred.

Japan, a country known for its egalitarianism, has now discovered that it has a large and growing number of poor people. One in six Japanese, that is 20 million people, lived in poverty in 2007. The Japanese government had been keeping these statistics secretly. The poverty level in Japan is close to the figure for the US (17 per cent). Japan is walking a financial tightrope with a public debt mounting bigger than that of any other industrialised country.

Japan’s revenue is roughly 37 trillion yen and debt is 44 trillion yen in fiscal 2010. Its debt to budget ratio is more than 50 per cent. Without issuing more government bonds, Japan would go bankrupt by 2011.

Such is the state of affairs in the first world. The bi-polar world came crashing down after the collapse of Marxism. And now the unipolar world is on its way out. The liberal West had hoped that the new world order would emerge from the ruins of the Communist world. Instead, it seems to be emerging from the ashes of footloose capitalism and the market jehad.

The market, says Alvin Toffler, is a tool, not a religion, and no tool does every job. Alas! To many it is too late to realise.

Where and how is this change happening? The centre of gravity of global politics is shifting from the North Atlantic to the East and the South. The rise of China and India is a game-changing phenomenon. The greatest strength of “chindia” is that it is a mega market for almost every product and service.

At a time when the US and Europe are wrestling with the financial mega crisis of 2008, both China and India are virtually booming. As far as India is concerned, thanks to its prudent monetary policy, it remained largely insulated from the crisis. The capitalist world is now realising the dangers of living beyond its means.

One could argue that after all, China and India are reclaiming their lost glory. The two were major economies in the 17th and 18th centuries. In a sense, one is witnessing a slow move towards a more equitable global equilibrium. According to one calculation, India and China could be back to contributing 50 per cent of the world’s GDP by 2020, which they did till the 19th century.

The present combined GDP of India and China in Purchasing Price Parity terms is bigger than that of the US, while the BRIC countries have among them a larger GDP than the European Union. In the next two years, India’s GDP will become bigger than that of all 10 ASEAN countries combined. In a decade’s time, India could overtake Germany and Japan.

China and India are not the only powers on the horizon. Brazil, South Africa and maybe, Indonesia have their stories to tell as well. Way back in 2003, President Lula of Brazil said very bluntly, “We will not accept any more participating in international platforms as if we were the poor little ones of Latin America, a ‘little country’ of the third world…This country has every thing to be the equal of any other country.” When George Bush visited Brazil a few years later, he acknowledged, “Brazil is big!”

The nuclear swap deal struck by Brazil, Turkey and Iran may not be the model that India would like to follow. But it has clearly demonstrated that the US power s being usurped. It is the pro-active approach of BRIC, IBSA (India-Brazil- South Africa), BASIC (Basic group of countries include Brazil, South Africa, India and China) and other such platforms that President Obama has thrown the G8 into the trash heap of history.

The G20 is now the primary workshop to deal with global financial crisis. After all, Obama has realised that the power grids of the existing anachronistic global institutions don’t match the real world.

The idea that China, India, Brazil and some others would lead the twenty-first century would have been dismissed only two decades earlier. If China had the Tiananmen Square baggage and India was stuck in the quagmire of the Hindu rate of growth, Brazil did not know how to deal with the debt bomb. The global economy was anchored in America, Western Europe and Japan.

Unlike the present world order, the new global order will be different. The western domination will not be replaced by another form of domination. The western coercive paradigm itself will be rejected. The rise of new powers will help put the wolf back in the cage. Mercifully, one single power dominating the world seems unlikely. President Obama said the other day, “No world order that elevates one nation or group of people over another will succeed.”

The world is witnessing a new geopolitical paradigm — the end of the Atlantic era and the advent of the Asian Century. Laurent Cohen-Tanugi, author of The Shape of the World to Come, calls it “a historic change.” It is the first time in modern times, says Cohen-Tanugi, that the wealth and world’s population are concentrated in the same place. While China, India, Brazil, Russia and certain others have a long way to go, hundreds of millions of people are actually coming out of poverty and joining the middle class.

This emerging world’s revolution is a historic comeback for countries like China and India. As is widely known, before the Industrial Revolution, China accounted for about 30 per cent of the world economy, India about 15 per cent and Europe about 23 per cent. We are now witnessing a comeback of the world’s old powers to the forefront again. Didn’t George Orwell tell us that who controls the past controls the future and who controls the present controls the past?n

The writer is Associate Director, Institute of Social Sciences, New Delhi

How All India Radio Jalandhar-Amritsar came into being
by Harjap Singh Aujla

After the British Indian government decided in 1936 to open state-owned radio stations in India’s metropolitan cities, radio stations were opened at Calcutta, Bombay, New Delhi and Madras. The fifth was opened in 1937 at Lahore, the Punjab Province’s capital, with a modern studio complex.

From 1937 to 1947, All India Radio (AIR) Lahore served as the cultural melting pot and an information and entertainment hub of all the Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs of Punjab. Then came August 14, 1947, the Independence Day of Pakistan, when this radio station got converted into Radio Pakistan Lahore.

The communal atmosphere in Punjab was getting disturbed since March, 1947. But since Lahore was the seat of administration, the communal harmony at AIR Lahore remained remarkably undisturbed for a very long time. But as the movement of religiously divided mankind gathered momentum in August, the radio station started losing its Hindu and Sikh staff members.

From 15th of August Radio Pakistan Lahore became the instrument of carrying out the policies and programmes of the newly formed Government of Pakistan. On the Indian side the cities of Amritsar and Ferozepore were getting flooded with refugees coming from all the districts falling in the Islamic nation of Pakistan. Amritsar’s population, which stood at 400,000, lost half of its population, which happened to be Muslim. But what the city got in return was twice and thrice of what it lost.

The Khalsa College, the Fort Gobindgarh, the Golden Temple with its serais, the Durgiana Temple and all the schools and colleges in the city got flooded with refugees. The same was true in Ferozepore too. The Government of India had appointed two senior Indian Civil Service officers — Sardar Tarlok Singh and Dr Mohinder Singh Randhawa — to quickly move the incoming refugees from Amritsar, Ferozepore, Fazilka and Pathankot to other places in Punjab, Delhi and the other provinces of India.

Rehabilitation of the refugees was a gigantic task. Many had lost their blood relations in the communal frenzy and many families got scattered without a clue. There was no way to trace the lost family members. Everybody felt the necessity of having a dedicated radio station to announce the names of lost refugees and their former places of residences. This message was forcefully conveyed to the interim Government of India in New Delhi.

This writer’s late father Sardar Sochet Singh was a senior official in the administration of erstwhile Kapurthala State. He was privy to some of the information about the flood of refugees entering India. He told me some of the refugee-related stories.

In 1947 itself, the Government of India decided to open two transmitting stations in East Punjab. At that time India had very few spare radio transmitters. Most spare medium-wave transmitters were meant for emergency duties to fill in for under repair high powered transmitters. Two transmitters of the one kilowatt power denomination each were dispatched to Amritsar, the premier gateway of India and Jalandhar. Construction of the transmitting towers and the buildings took several months.

Between June and September of 1947, both transmitters started functioning. The new combined radio entity was named All India Radio Jalandhar-Amritsar. Most refugees were still not settled. The first task before these radio stations was to announce the names, villages, tehsils and districts of the missing individuals.

The daytime range of both radio stations was a little more than 15 miles. Therefore, the broadcast hours were mostly in the evenings after sunset. Both stations used to go on the air between 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. and then between 6 p.m. and 10.30 p.m.

AIR Delhi started two news bulletins one each in the morning and evening to be relayed by AIR Jalandhar-Amritsar. The first news bulletins were in Pothohari dialect of Punjabi language. Later, the dialect was changed to Standard Punjabi spoken in Lahore division in Central Punjab. The bulletins in Standard Punjabi are still continuing.

All the staff artists and casual performers at Lahore Radio Station were approved by the new radio outlet. The programme for rural listeners was initially used for broadcasting information on the refugees. Later, as the problem came under control, announcements about weather, commodity prices, innovations in agricultural techniques etc. started being broadcast.

On the information front, especially for the farmers and agricultural labouers, AIR Jalandhar-Amritsar became very successful, but on the entertainment front, it always played a second fiddle to Radio Pakistan Lahore. East Punjab’s most popular singer Surinder Kaur moved to Bombay in 1948. Her elder sister, also a very popular singer Parkash Kaur settled in New Delhi. In 1952, Surinder Kaur also moved to New Delhi. They both performed extensively at AIR Jalandhar-Amritsar, but as guest artists from New Delhi.

In 1952, after the first elections to Parliament, Dr B.V. Keskar, a scholar of eminence, was appointed the Union Minister of Information and Broadcasting. It was he who was instrumental in developing a master plan to replace the low powered transmitters with high-powered transmitters.

This plan led to the strengthening of the radio station at Jalandhar to 50 kilowatts and the closure of the radio station in Amritsar. Since 1953, AIR Jalandhar is counted amongst the most powerful capital stations of India. But the fate of Amritsar station is still in a state of flux.

OPED

SC ruling on Narco tests
Need to improve the justice delivery mechanism
by Arun Bothra

Illustration by Sandeep Joshi

Contrary to popular belief, the Supreme Court ruling on Narco and other scientific tests has not come as a surprise or a bolt from the blue for the investigating agencies. There may be reasons for some disappointment but in effect the judgment has simply reiterated the already existing guidelines of the National Human Rights Commission on the subject. With the Supreme Court backing it has, of course, become the law of the land.

In 2000, the NHRC issued guidelines on the polygraph test and made it voluntary on the part of the accused or suspect. It ordered that the consent has to be recorded by a judicial magistrate. It was also decided that the person will be explained about the importance and implication of the test by his own lawyer other than the police. With such clear guidelines, not many tests were being conducted due to the unwillingness of the suspected person.

It is mostly because of graphic descriptions on the electronic media that people have an impression that every other suspect was being dragged and drugged in police stations. If you think about more than 21 lakh cases registered under the Indian Penal Code annually, not even .1 per cent cases go for any scientific tests. And those high profile cases which reach that stage are mostly done as per the NHRC’s rules.

The 251-page apex court ruling has, however, raised the important question of “tensions between the desirability of efficient investigation and the preservation of individual liberties.” This bigger question has been dealt with by the court time and again and this judgement is much more important for being the latest in the series. The verdict has clearly gone in favour of individual freedom and liberty.

The balancing act between individual freedom and societal need has been a matter of debate since the beginning of the civilization, more so in modern age. The western societies have generally favoured personal freedom. But while the West has valued right to liberty to its members it has also made arrangements to ensure that criminals don’t go scot-free .

In our case, it has been a little different story. We have gone out of the way to ensure personal freedoms of the individual as envisaged in our Constitution but there has been no effort to see that denial of justice is also violation of rights. Right to liberty has been well emphasised but right to justice has often been denied. In fact, the importance of fundamental rights coupled with general disbelief on police has slowly but steadily made our judicial system accused-friendly. Thus, people who have committed the most heinous crimes are either not punished or punished with so much of delay that it loses any meaning to their victims.

Interestingly, the government and the courts find it easy to enforce the rights which have no financial implications. Thus, while enforcing right to liberty we are very active but while giving right to employment we could silently wait for 60 years. But right to personal freedom and liberty also comes with a cost. The cost is invisible but very high.

The society does not pay it in terms of money but some of its members pay it. It is a Catch 22 situation. If we allow police and enforcement agencies to go all out in solving and detecting crimes, it affects the persons who are suspected or accused for the crime in question. There will be better detection and control of crime but with a high possibility of excesses, even against those who are innocent.

On the other hand, if the suspect’s right is held so high, many criminals will never be caught. If a crime goes undetected and guilty goes unpunished this is a double punishment to the victim. It is easy to say let the 99 guilty go unpunished but one innocent should not be punished. This lofty idea of justice looks great only on the face of it.

In the given situation, we have to compromise with one of the things. Either we are willing to forgo a bit of our individual freedoms or we get ready for a little less detection of crime. This raises the question: Is there any way by which crimes can be detected and controlled without compromising with individual freedom? Yes, by strengthening the criminal justice system and empowering the police with resources. 

Over 60 lakh criminal cases, including 21 lakh under the Indian Penal Code, are registered annually and investigated at one police station or the other — the basic and most important unit in the criminal justice system. From FIR of the crime up to the end of investigation, the cases are dealt with at the police stations. The expenditure on a normal case in a normal police station would be a mere few thousand rupees. Neither the police have enough manpower nor resources to investigate these cases properly, detect the crimes and prove the guilt of accused in the court beyond reasonable doubt.

A police station is meant to investigate cases. But it has some more jobs to perform: prevention of crime by patrolling, etc., law and order, VIP security, duty during fairs and festivals, passport verification, intelligence collection, conducting exams to elections, traffic management, taking on terrorists and extremists, stopping trafficking of humans and smuggling of timber, stopping illegal liquor to catching narcotics.

All this has to be done with a physically stressed, ill-trained, low paid and de-motivated manpower. There have been recommendations to improve police infrastructure. But police is a non-Plan subject where money can be spent only with reluctance and disdain.

The only way by which police stations can handle the investigation of cases and deliver justice is by adequate resources, professional competence and good service. This requires mammoth expenditure and efforts, which is accepted in discussions but missing in implementation. Our options are only three. Either we lose a bit of personal freedom or the right to justice or else some money to improve the justice delivery mechanism. In the given situation, the third one is the only option. n

The writer, an IPS officer of Orissa cadre, is presently Senior SP, CBI, Kolkata

On Record
Death sentence must go, says Pushkar Raj
by Ashutosh Sharma

Dr Pushkar Raj

Even as the controversy over the mercy petition of death row convict Afzal Guru in the Parliament Attack Case continues, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties’ national general secretary, Dr Pushkar Raj, advocates abolition of the capital punishment, maintaining that it defies the very concept of justice. In an interview to The Tribune in Jammu, he says that death sentence won’t help check the crime rate across the world.

Excerpts:

A: It is unacceptable in a civilised society. There is no research to suggest that it brings down the crime rate. The fact that over 118 countries have abolished capital punishment proves that violence as revenge in the name of justice is increasingly becoming unacceptable in the contemporary society.

There is also the moral argument that if we cannot create life, we have no right to take it away. In fact, death penalty demeans the state and makes society more violent. This is especially worse for a society like ours that is inherently violent. A true democratic country represents the will of all the people, not the majority.

A: Capital punishment here has been death by lottery. There are no foolproof standards. This could be acceptable when the quantum of punishment is say, one year to ten years of jail in which case if one is wrongfully convicted, he could be released if new facts emerge. But what about a person who has been proved innocent after he is killed by the state?

Moreover a trial judge may award death, a high court judge may overturn it and then the Supreme Court might concur with the trial judge. There is also the state’s discretion to appeal. So where is the objectivity?

A: This is startling. If society is so blood thirsty that a person’s death will pacify it, can the state assume this on behalf of society? Don’t we have enough of violence that we wish to institutionalise the state violence in the form of capital punishment?

A: Yes, it is so. Look at the extra-judicial killings. If a criminal is killed in cold blood, nobody protests. The due process of law takes a back seat. Murder in actuality is condoned in Indian society.

A: It is terribly sad. Over the last decade, it has deteriorated. The kind of development pattern we have chosen in the face of globalisation is affecting the rights of tribals, farmers, workers and the poor. Peaceful peoples’ movement like the Narmada, Nandigram and Singur never catch the government’s sight. In insurgency-prone areas, security forces are accountable to none and use draconian laws against innocent people. Human rights activists are falling victim to such laws.

A: Maoists have a mission and a method to achieve that. No human rights organisation that works within the framework of the Indian Constitution can agree with them. As for violence, the state must deal with them as it should deal with any illegal action of any person or group. But the state is bound by the Constitution. It must respect the due process of law. It cannot use extra-legal methods, whatever the provocation.

A: Human rights bodies need to be proactive at the Central and state level. We should have human rights commissions in all the states. Now only 18 states have them. They should have all infrastructural facilities. Those appointed to these bodies must have credibility. Right now, these bodies do not inspire confidence.

Profile
Chinese scholar’s passion for Tagore’s works
by Harihar Swarup

Prof Dong Youchen

Prof Dong Youchen, a Chinese scholar, is little known in India. Few know that he has spent a life-time researching and translating the works of Rabindranath Tagore into Chinese and was honoured this year with Bangla Akademi’s prestigious Rabindra Puraskar. The award is recognition of Prof Dong’s life-long work of translating Tagore into Chinese, a difficult language to learn.

It was over 60 years back that Dong, as a student, had his first encounter with Tagore at a Chinese middle school. A Chinese translation of excerpts from Gitanjali was compulsory reading in the literature course. A fire was ignited here in the life of the Chinese Professor since then and it still glows.

There is something unusual about Dong’s simple manners, not feign humility, and his love for discipline and hard work that are typical of rural people from north China. Even his tall frame, broad forehead and round face show his northern Chinese links. Like most Chinese of his generation, the rural roots are still strong in his life and personality.

Born in a peasant family in the Jilin, one of the most picturesque provinces of the northern China, close to the Russian border, Dong grew up helping his peasant parents in the fields, spending most of his early years in the village. The life of Chinese peasants those days was hard. But he loved the serenity of the village life and that was the reason why he loved Shantinekatan.

It was not so good when Dong decided to devote his life to translating and researching Tagore. The first spark from Gitantali poem had grown into a mild fire by the time he read a Chinese translation of Tagore’s novel, Nouka Dubi (capsizing boat), while learning Bangla and Rusian at Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) University in the early 1960s. Nouka Dubi was his translation of Tagore’s work followed by other writings of the Nobel Laureate.

Why Dong has not come to Indian to learn Bangla? Viswa-Bharti would have been the best place. It wasn’t best of time in India-China relations. The 1962 war had soured relations between the two countries. Dong was a member of the Chinese Communist Party. Good Communist as he is, Dong maintains that China’s love for Tagore has nothing to do with politics. “Tagore’s work gives the Chinese leaders peace of mind and a spiritual dimension to their own life”, he has been quoted as saying.

Tagore’s appeal to his Chinese readers has always been deep, but its reach is becoming wider now. This is in sharp contrast to the situation when Tagore visited China in 1924 for the first time. Many Chinese intellectuals, especially those sympathetic to the Left wing politics and the fledging Chinese Communist Party, were evidently hostile to Tagore. Some critics even distributed leaflets criticising Tagore’s “spiritualism” and “Orientalism”.

The Chinese government published 10 volumes of Tagore’s works in Chinese. On May 7, 1961, the People’s Daily, the party organ published a supplement on Tagore. Much earlier, Zhou Enlai visited Shantiniketan and wrote effusive comments on the poet in the visitor’s book.

Translating Tagore is almost a 100-year-old tradition in China. Chen Duxlu published four poems from Gitanjali. Then followed a surge of translations between 1915 and 1924. Now Tagore’s complete works are being translated from Bangla into Chinese by Prof Dong and his team.

The first five volumes, to be published by Renmin Publishing House, are due in May 2011 to coincide with the 150th anniversary of the poet’s birth, and all 24 volumes are expected to see the light of the day by 2015.