The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Best ever at Asiad
But we still have miles to go

The best-ever Asian Games medals haul at Guangzhou has proved that the good showing by India at the recent Commonwealth Games in Delhi was no flash in the pan. The foundation laid on the home turf has stood India in good stead in neighbouring China with our sportsmen returning with a record 64 medals – including 14 gold, 17 silver and 33 bronze. India’s previous best of 57 medals – 13 gold, 19 silver and 25 bronze – had come way back in the 1982 Games, on the home grounds. Winning in China, where the crowds root for local heroes like in no other place, adds an extra zing to the triumphs. India thus grabbed the sixth spot in the medals tally. Ironically, some of the Commonwealth Games champions, especially shooters, did not live up to expectations in Guangzhou. Fortunately, new heroes emerged in track and field events (five gold), boxing (two gold, 3 silver) and tennis (two gold, one silver). Perhaps the rich incentives offered by various states to the winners also helped in this surge, which was long in coming.

Lest the improvement occasions any kind of complacency, one must also look at the phenomenal showing of China which has taken its medal tally to 416, including 199 gold. That only underscores how far India has to progress before it starts dreaming about the 2012 London Olympics. Even the second placed South Korea has as many as 233 medals, with 76 gold. Although three world records were set during the Asiad (two in weightlifting, one in archery), in many of the events, Asian records are way below the world marks. India will have to put up a Herculean effort to nurture hopes of an Olympic medal.

As far as the organisation of the Asiad was concerned, it was in sharp contrast to the corruption-ridden Delhi CWG. There was hardly a glitch, with the Olympic Council of Asia President Sheikh Ahmed Al Fahad Al Sabah gushing that “elements of the 2010 showpiece even surpassed the Beijing Olympics”. China has set new benchmarks in medals tally as well as organisational capacity, which India will have to equal – if not better – if it decides to play host to the Asian Games in future.

Row over Punjabi
Writers’ concern misplaced

Punjabi writers often get emotional about their mother tongue. It is one thing for people to love their mother tongue, which is natural, and quite another, especially for writers and literary activists, to get worked up and pick up a fight in defence of the language. Any signboard written in English in a government office can provoke them. The latest “threat” to Punjabi comes from a proposal of Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar, to curtail Punjabi lectures for “overburdened” B. Sc. students. Not to be left behind in this emotive battle, Punjab’s Education Minister Sewa Singh Sekhwan too has taken up the “cause”.

Before others too blindly jump in the irrational chorus of condemnation it is better to get the facts right. Guru Nanak Dev University is not going to “do away with Punjabi” or render Punjabi teachers jobless. Vice Chancellor A.S. Brar has clarified that the university intends to cut teaching hours in its affiliated colleges for various subjects like Punjabi, English and environmental studies. College teachers have to teach 45-50 hours a week compared to 25-30 hours by university teachers. Universities are autonomous bodies and within their right to decide what is good for students and teachers. Writers’ excellence in writing does not make them experts on university administrative affairs.

If present-day writers devote more time to producing better works than “protecting Punjabi”, maybe they could arrest the over-all decline in Punjabi literature, which itself would brighten the future of the language. Students need not be exposed to excessive learning or teaching. But it is imperative even for science students to be proficient in one or more languages. They would not be able to express their scientific knowledge or rise in their chosen careers if they do not excel in the written and spoken word – be it Punjabi or English or both. Maybe, syllabuses can be redesigned to focus more on functional knowledge of a language than on literature. Students then won’t have to turn to “teaching shops” to clear the IELTS.

Thought for the Day

When I hear of an ‘equity’ in a case like this, I am reminded of a blind man in a dark room — looking for a black hat — which isn’t there. — Lord Bowen

ARTICLE

Lisbon dialogue on Kabul
NATO exit will go in favour of Islamabad
by D. Suba Chandran

The much-awaited NATO summit in Lisbon has concluded with a NATO-Afghanistan partnership, calling for the winding up of the Western alliance’s military operations by 2014, and handing over of security to the Afghan security forces. President Hamid Karzai was reported to have stated, “As I stand before you today, we are moving in the direction of Afghan leadership, Afghan ownership.”

One is not sure whether NATO is more anxious to leave Afghanistan by 2014 or Karzai wants to “own leadership” by that time. Perhaps it is both, but the primary question is: Will the NATO exit and Karzai’s ownership be really productive and lead to positive results? Are the security forces of Afghanistan ready to take over the country’s military operations by 2014?

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, then Secretary-General of NATO, announced at a Press conference in Lisbon following the meeting on Afghanistan, “Starting early next year, Afghan forces will begin taking the lead for security operations. This will begin in certain districts and provinces, and based on conditions, will gradually expand throughout the country. The aim is for Afghan forces to be in the lead country-wide by the end of 2014.”

Where is NATO going to start? Before that, has there been a single success story until today in which the Afghan security forces have led the military operations on their own, and won it? Has there been a single instance in which the Afghan security forces were able to hold on a cleared territory on their own, without support from NATO? Will they be able to secure their capital on their own in 2014?

The Afghan security forces are not prepared yet; at least the ground-level military operations do not give the confidence that they can do on their own, without NATO support.

Second, the military leadership and the civilian control over it in Kabul – in terms of command and control —- is still in the evolutionary stage. Deeply divided on ethnic lines, the military leadership and the soldiers are yet to work closely, on their own, without any external support. One is not sure about the ethnic equation between the Pashtuns, the Uzbeks, the Hazaras and the Tajiks. Both NATO and Karzai have kept this equation a secret; as long as NATO is militarily present, these sub-nationalities may remain subdued. Once NATO leaves Afghanistan, one is likely to witness the sub-national sentiments being played, or worse, exploited by different ethnic leaders.

At least, this has been the recent history of Afghanistan. To maintain and achieve more political leverage, different leaders used their ethnicity card in the Afghan military to influence or, worse, blackmail the leadership in Kabul. Besides the lack of training and the establishment of clear command and control, the political use of the ethnic components in the Afghan Army makes it extremely fragile.

Third, Afghan security forces also need a strong military commander, who gains the loyalty of all “Afghan” groups, besides possessing the acumen and military skills to lead his security forces against the Taliban. While the security forces remain weak, for the above-mentioned reasons, their opposition forces, the Taliban, today remain perhaps the most lethal armed group at the global level. Though divided by the Quetta and Jalalabad Shuras, the Taliban is still the most potent force with a mastery over hit-and-run operations.

The Afghan military leader should be able to understand this tactic, if not experienced with the same. Ahmed Shah Masood, the Lion of Panjshir, had that charisma, experience and military skills. Unfortunately, however, even he could not protect Kabul. It was no coincidence that the Taliban killed him first, two days before 9/11. The Taliban knew the military skills of Masood would be the greatest threat to them in the post-9/11 era and used a suicide bomb to assassinate him.

Who else has his legendary skills, charisma and experience? Certainly not Abdur Rashid Dostum, the Uzbek warlord, though he was earlier made the Chief of Staff to the Commander-in-Chief of the Afghan Armed Forces. Even the Uzbeks are divided as could be seen from the factional fights within. Though he is seen secular and moderate, and has been trying to gain American support, he does not have the support at large. Nor does Gulbuddin Hekmetyar, who is actually fighting Karzai and is wanted by the US as a global terrorist. Of course, he can be won over, but will never be acceptable to even the Pashtuns.

Given this ethnic fragility within the Afghan leadership, the statement by NATO General Secretary that in Lisbon they “have launched the process by which the Afghan people will once again become masters in their own house” is a cruel joke. The Afghan security forces are not ready yet to take over the situation. No military chief, who understands the situation in Afghanistan, in terms of preparedness and opposition, will be willing to take over. This decision is being forced on the security forces by Karzai and NATO – for political reasons. This will only make the situation worse.

Why then is Karzai keen on the NATO exit? Does he not understand? Karzai’s calculations are based on two beliefs. First, there is an effort to reach out to the Taliban: a Peace Council has been formed by him and he has been given the mandate to negotiate with the Taliban. Second, there is enormous pressure from Pakistan to ensure that NATO exits earlier and Karzai reaches an understanding with the Taliban and this leads to a power-sharing agreement. Both are in Pakistan’s interests, and the recent efforts by Gen Ashfaque Kayani and Gen Pasha (Pakistan’s ISI chief) to negotiate an understanding between the Huqqani network and Karzai, and the signing of the Transit and Trade Agreement between Pakistan and Afghanistan (in which India has been excluded) are a part of the renewed efforts by Pakistan to impose its writ on Kabul.

From an Indian perspective, one is not sure whether the Lisbon summit’s major conclusion – the exit of NATO by 2014 — will result in the Afghan ownership of security. Certainly, it will bring Afghanistan under Islamabad’s influence. The Taliban will remain its trump card vis-à-vis Karzai.n

The writer is Deputy Director, Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies, New Delhi.

MIDDLE

Call of the divine
by Simrita Dhir

This summer along with a swarm of people from across the world, my brother and I read the bestseller, “Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India.” William Dalrymple’s moving rendition of the stories of nine people from faiths ranging from Sufism, Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism left us mesmerised by the innate humanity and dignity that each life portrayed. We also realised, rather sadly, that Dalrymple had given Sikhism a complete miss. And I began to search for a story to represent the faith and discovered that the story of Nand Singh was one among many that beautifully illustrates the Sikh doctrine of work, worship and charity.

Nand Singh was born Nand Lal in Patiala sometime in the 1960s. His family lived in the beautiful Baradari Gardens. In fact his ancestors had worked on the planting of the gardens several decades ago when the then Maharaja of Patiala, Rajindra Singh, had the gardens laid out. Growing up, Nand Lal had a boyhood like any other boy growing up at the time in Old Patiala. His mind was pre-occupied with cricket matches, afternoon matinees and the neighbourhood girls.

After he finished college, Nand Lal began working for an insurance company. With a college degree and a job, he had managed to fit fabulously in the dictum laid out by the middle class. His family felt he had arrived. Little did they know of the elusive call that stole Nand Lal away every time he heard the Ardas, or the Sikh prayer being recited at the nearby Gurudwara Dukhniwaran Sahib.

As the Ardas recalled the past glories and suffering of the Sikhs, he felt a sense of pain and longing that was incomprehensible and yet not alien. As much as he tried to involve himself in secular endeavours, Nand Lal felt more and more drawn towards the gurdwara. And finally, it was his aborted romance that set him free to take the plunge and step forward on a different and difficult path.

Renouncing the worldly, he embraced his life and purpose inside the gurdwara. His agony was forever drowned in the ethereal Amrit or the holy water that trickled down his throat. In that luminous moment, Nand Lal became Nand Singh.

Today after a decade, Baba Nand Singh as he is now referred to — is at the helm of kar sewa or voluntary service at the Gurudwara Dukhniwaran Sahib. He and his fellow kar sewaks work on restoring the magnificent shrines and the sarover or the holy tank. They have also brought many restless and destitute into the folds of the faith. They also render themselves to those hit by disease, calamity and natural disasters like floods thereby upholding Nishkam Sewa or selfless, voluntary service as the true essence of Sikhism.

Many years ago, I had met Mr Nand Lal, the insurance officer, and this year when my parents re-introduced me to Baba Nand Singh, his positive clairvoyance resonated in me. In the white robe was a man who had chosen service over the temporal. He invoked the very spirit of Bhai Kanhaiya, the legendary Sikh volunteer in the forces of Guru Tegh Bahadur, who more than a hundred years before the inception of the Red Cross came to epitomise service without discrimination.

William Dalrymple, are you listening?

OPED NEIGHBOURS

Many metropolises across China have seen millions of "outsiders" with their families residing in the cities having registered houses and cars, etc, are still being deprived of local permanent residency. Rich people are better placed as they can afford to pay for their sibling's education, health and other social securities.
Ending China's systemic rural-urban divide
B.R. Deepak

In any major agrarian society, agricultural productivity is lower than industrial and service sector productivity. Therefore, it is obvious for the rural labour force to move towards non-agricultural sectors. The process plays an important role in income distribution and regulation. And since most of the non-agricultural sector employment opportunities are concentrated in cities and towns, the rural labour force tends to move to these centres of economic activity.

In India, the constitution protects labour mobility from countryside to the cities; albeit such a guarantee has resulted in large slum dwellings in the Indian cities with pathetic living conditions. In China, there exist various factors, rather remnants of the rural-urban binary system, that hinder and discourage the mobility of the rural labour force to the cities. One such system is the household registration system (Huji Guanli Zhidu HR System) or the Permanent Residency System established during the planned economy era.

The 1958 constitution amendment pertaining to household registration in China divided the rural and city dwellers as "rural residents" (nongye hukou) and "non-rural residents" (feinongye hukou) and stipulated that the rural citizens migrating to cities must carry an employment certificate from the city labour department or a migration certificate issued by the concerned household registration department of the city, and meanwhile should apply for migration procedures in the local permanent household registration office. Another blow was dealt to rural migration in 1975 amidst the Cultural Revolution when rural mobility to cities was stopped altogether.

The HR (Household Responsibility) system, therefore, penetrated so deep into every segment of social life that the supply of consumer goods and means of production, education, employment, housing, labour insurance and all other welfare needs depended on this system. The system not only provided "social stability" in the larger sense, but also "political stability" in the cities. For example, "politically unreliable elements" were sent to the villages, and even intellectual youths were dispatched to the villages through various political movements when the cities could not generate enough employment opportunities for them, obviously in the garb of re-education in labour camps. It is recorded that after 1962 some 60 million city workers were sent to villages; between 1966 and 1976 another 16 million city intellectuals were dispatched to villages; and in 1988 during the "rectification and consolidation" campaign, some 70 million rural folks working in cities and towns were driven back to the villages.

Academicians in China are of the view that the HR system has further scuttled the smooth operation of the market economy. According to Huang Weihong of the Guangdong Zhongkai Rural Technology Institute, one-fifth of the US population moves from one place to another in a year, but in China the figure is just 0.5-3 per cent a year. Criticising the system, the Chinese scholar says that the "HR has trampled on the basic right of the people and has violated the principle of equality." Not only this, the government, while extending food price subsidies, preferential prices, supplies and privileges to the urban population, depends on the income and accumulations of the 800 million peasants. Since the 1940s, every year the peasants were ripped of 26 billion renminbi (RMB), which was transferred to the cities as financial subsidies.

In recent years the amount has surpassed 60 billion RMB. Therefore, the worker-peasant alliance has merely become an empty political slogan. "The long-term phenomenon of 'landlessness' (wutian kegeng) and 'no skilled force' (wuji xuren) might drive some peasants to take extreme steps." Therefore, if the HR system is not overhauled, any endeavour to solve the problem of 'three rurals', an acronym used for agriculture, countryside and peasants in China, would be tantamount to taking totally ineffective measures, asserts Huang.

Although in recent years the Chinese government has initiated measures to release the rural labour mobility due to the immense need for infrastructural development in the cities, the measures are "administrative" rather than those governed by the economic principles, for in an attempt to "transform rural residents into non-rural" (nongzhuanfei), the government has stipulated that such transformation should not exceed 1.5 per cent in a year. Another measure adopted by the government since 1997 is the "urbanisation" (chengzhenhua) of small townships and HR reforms. Some Chinese scholars such as Wang Xiaoyun and Gan Qiming have argued that it is important to accelerate the urbanisation drive to enhance the income of farmers.

They try to justify the "urbanisation" drive by presenting a case study of Ganzhou Township in Jiangxi. According to them, by the end of 2005, the urbanisation level of Ganzhou reached 31.06 per cent and registered a growth of 9.06 per cent. Ganzhou may be an exception as the population is small and forest cover huge (around 74.2 per cent).

Since the average number of enterprises in townships nationwide is minuscule, the employment opportunities are very few. Moreover, the townships do not have the appeal of the mega cities to attract labour force. Since these measures smack of conservatism of the planned economy era, new liberal measures that allow free movement and equal opportunities and competition on the basis of free market economy as regards the HR system need to be urgently initiated. In this context the HR system reforms initiated by Chengdu in Sichuan is a welcome step. Many metropolises across China have seen millions of "outsiders" with their families residing in the cities having registered houses and cars, etc, are still being deprived of local permanent residency. Rich people are better placed as they can afford to pay for their sibling's education, health and other social securities. However, the farmers, especially the immigrant labourers, without a Hukou have to pay a considerable sum of extra amount if they would like their children to attend a city school.

The proposed plan by the Chengdu government will ease such concerns, for on November 14 this year Chengdu released a working plan on the free migration of its residents between urban and rural areas starting from the year 2012. China Daily reported in its online edition on November 19 that being a pilot city for HR reforms since 2003, more than 2 million people have acquired permanent residency in Chengdu. According to the plan, not only the migrant workers but farmers too would be able to register as urban residents, even though they have land and houses in the countryside. Conversely, urban residents would also be able to register as rural residents with proof of residences in the countryside. Once implemented, the plan will make it possible for more than 5 million rural residents in Chengdu to enjoy the same social security and public services like education and healthcare as their urban counterparts have.

If successful, the plan is likely to be implemented by other provinces, and many more cities across China. It could be adopted as a national policy in the near future by the Chinese government. If adopted across China, it would be for the first time in the history of communist China that the discriminatory barrier hindering the free movement of rural people would be broken.

The plan is likely to face stiff opposition from the urban population, as the move may result in a major influx of rural residents into the cities, putting an increasingly unbearable pressure on the already congested metropolises like Beijing and Shanghai. Will Chengdu plan revolutionise the HR system in China the way Anhui Household Responsibility System did in the case of the agriculture sector during mid-1980s? Well, we will have to wait and watch!

The writer is Associate Professor, Centre for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

window on pakistan
Surviving on international loans
Syed Nooruzzaman

The Pakistan Senate adopted the hotly debated General Sales Tax Bill 2010 last Friday despite opposition from many political parties, including a ruling coalition member, the MQM. Now the Bill has gone to the National Assembly, which will give its approval with little difficulty. The Bill is aimed at bringing in the tax net five major sectors of the economy, including those affecting some wealthy classes, not taxed so far. There is also a proposal to impose a flood tax on people earning more than Rs 500,000 annually.

Those opposing the imposition of the new taxes argued that these would lead to back-breaking inflation, making people's lives more miserable. But the government has to go ahead because this is what the IMF wants for releasing its next tranche of the loan sanctioned to bail out the ailing Pakistani economy. Experts are of the view that Pakistan cannot fulfil its loan repayment obligations without loans from
international institutions.

More interesting details have come to the surface during the debate over the controversial Bill. Pakistan's Federal Finance Minister Abdul Hafeez Sheikh has been described as the "IMF loan recovery officer". According to The News (Nov 25), President Asif Zardari "is reported to have played a role from behind the scene. Political bribery in the form of important slots for certain parties to win their support is only too obvious…."

The Daily Times (Nov 25), a left-leaning paper, says, "Management of the economy has never been Pakistan's strong point. Successive regimes have wedded themselves to the international capitalist system and depended on doles from international financial institutions (IFIs) and other donors to run the economy.

The situation has gone from bad to worse with the country now finding itself having to choose between the devil and the deep blue sea. On the one side is the critical need to raise money to meet development and running expenses, and on the other is an exploitative international system of lending that has entrapped the country to an extent that without loans, Pakistan, with its current economic structure and style of governance, cannot even meet its running expenses, let alone meet the needs of development."

There is also pressure on the government to reduce its own expenses as far as possible. But the government seems to be the least bothered, as it gets sufficient aid from international sources on different pretexts, including fighting terrorism.

Schools' closure to help terrorism

It is well known that widespread illiteracy and unemplyment in Pakistan's tribal areas have been helping extremist and terrorist outfits to find recruits to their destructive cause. Yet the authorities in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) have issued a notification to close down many community schools, which will affect over 25,000 male and female students. Approximately, 1000 teachers associated with these educational institutions have been sacked.

According to Dawn, "These community schools, 870 of which were established by the government in 2003, were set up in order to raise FATA's literacy rates while creating employment opportunities for tribesmen holding high school-leaving certificates."

Dr Ashraf Ali, head of the FATA Research Centre, Islamabad, says in an article carried in The News (Nov 27) that the FATA authorities' decision is a "huge blow to a critical section of the war-stricken poor in a region with a literacy rate as low as 17.42 per cent (and only 3 per cent among the females). At the federal and provincial levels, it is 59.6 per cent."

According to Dr Ali, the education budget in FATA was nearly doubled in 2004-5 to Rs 2.7 billion from Rs 1.5 billion in 2001. But this increase is “virtually meaningless: it is estimated that for the provision of universal primary education alone, another Rs 1.08 billion is required.”

There are 5,620 educational institutions in FATA, but most of these exist only on paper. Most of the teachers turn up to collect only their salaries. With this state of primary education, it is not surprising if these tribal areas continue to be the most dangerous breeding-ground for terrorism.