|
|
|
|
|
Acquittals in
Shivani case Unsafe Pak nukes |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Contrails and
carbon credits
Tense US-Pak
relations
A
gentleman-officer’s seventy-fifth
IIT
Suicides Parents need to be
proactive It is so easy to
fall through the cracks
|
|
Unsafe Pak nukes
While nuclear bombs anywhere remain a threat to human existence, the world immediately needs to focus on the safety of Pakistan’s weapons of mass destruction. The reason, which has been pointed out time and again, is that Pakistan faces a serious challenge to its stability from extremists, who may capture power if that country continues to slide downhill as can be seen today. And once Pakistan’s nuclear weapons fall into wrong hands, no one can guarantee that these will not be used on any pretext. What Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said while addressing a conference of military commanders in New Delhi on Tuesday should be viewed against this backdrop. He did not name Pakistan, but the message he wanted to convey was crystal clear: South Asia was faced with a major threat of “nuclear proliferation and nuclear safety” emanating from India’s “neighbourhood”. India has been raising this issue time and again, but only now the US and its NATO allies have begin to concur with New Delhi’s argument. Yet the world community is not as serious about this horrifying scenario as it ought to be. The US and its Western camp-followers need to be told that those associated with Al-Qaida and the Taliban in Pakistan are not the only extremists who will be unperturbed about the consequences of using nuclear weapons in a future conflict with India or any other country. There are others, too, who consider the weapons of mass destruction as their ultimate “shield”. As the situation prevails in Pakistan, merely keeping a close watch on the developments there will not be enough. Continuous pressure must be maintained on the establishment, particularly the army, in Pakistan to make it realise that the world community will not remain a silent spectator if Islamabad does not take the safety of its strategic assets very seriously. At the same time, a strategy should be devised to strengthen the hands of democratic and secular forces so that extremists remain weak and ineffective. This may lead to the emergence of a more mature political leadership, which can be expected to behave responsibly as far as Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are concerned.
|
|
|
Contrails and carbon credits
We all know that fossil fuel is finite, and that it pollutes the environment. As the world has become sensitised to the pollution caused by fuel, governments in developed nations have taken the initiative to enforce progressively stringent anti-pollution provisions on vehicle and aircraft manufacturers and operators. The European Union has been a leader in this regard, and in fact the EU has set a target of 30 per cent reduction in carbon reduction by 2020. The US, too, is focusing on measures that will decrease pollution. This provides companies the impetus to explore various alternatives, and thus many new initiatives are being taken worldwide. While contrails, the trails of condensed water from an aircraft at high altitude, look pretty when seen as a white streak against the sky, aeroplanes are significant polluters, and thus airlines are under pressure to reduce their carbon footprint. The latest initiative announced by Virgin Atlantic, of chemically converting gases that are a by-product of the steel processing industry into aviation fuel, is promising, especially since a pilot project has already demonstrated the technology. With India and China being the largest steel manufacturers in the world, it comes as no surprise that Virgin and its partner, LanzaTech, the Swedish company that has developed the gas-to-ethanol technology, have announced that the conversion plants will be set up in these two nations. The technology, when implemented, will go a long way in both providing carbon credits and an alternative bio-fuel for the airlines. It will also help in meeting the pollution-reduction goals. Some hiccups are to be expected as the technology transitions from a demonstration stage to actual industrial production. However, in the long run, this process holds the promise of harnessing technology for a better, more sustainable, future. |
|
|
All human actions have one or more of these seven causes: chance, nature, compulsions, habit, reason, passion, desire.
— Aristotle
|
Tense US-Pak relations WHAT an irony it is that the worst-ever spat between the United States and Pakistan — the “most allied allies” during and the Cold War and “key allies” in the “war on terror” since 9/11 — has coincided with the tenth anniversary of the blasting of twin towers in New York and a small corner of the Pentagon in Washington. It is not at all unkind to say that today the US must be ruing both its decisions — to rush into the retaliatory war in Afghanistan within 26 days of 9/11, and to put its faith in Pakistan, particularly in its all-powerful army. For, today all the lofty American objectives in Afghanistan — quickly eliminating al Qaeda and its allies, restoring peace and stability in the rugged land, and persuading the tribal and medieval Afghan society to embrace democracy, free market and gender equality — are reduced to debris. No matter what claims the US commanders in Afghanistan might make, there is no way the US, the NATO and International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) can win this war that is intensely unpopular back home and horrendously costly. In an election year, the beleaguered President Barack Obama has no option but to somehow declare victory and evacuate at least several thousands of ground troops before the end of this year, and almost all of them by 2014. America’s closest western partner in the war, Britain, is anxious to withdraw immediately. However, the endgame designed towards that end, attempts to reach some kind of an understanding with the Taliban, has collapsed. Before arriving in New Delhi to sign the landmark Strategic Partnership Agreement with India — the first such protocol Kabul has signed with any country and has been welcomed by the Pentagon — Afghan President Hamid Karzai minced no words in declaring that there was no point talking to the Taliban because he could not find them. Talks, if necessary, will have to be held with their mentor, Pakistan. As far as the US taking Pakistan on trust, it was a classic case of the triumph of hope over experience. It needs to be remembered that America secured Pakistan’s support to the war on terror by threatening its then military ruler, Pervez Musharraf, that should he fail to comply, his country would be “bombed back to the Stone Age”. The man who used these words was the then US deputy secretary of state, Richard Armitage. Gen. Musharraf, who until then was backing Afghanistan’s Taliban government, headed by Mullah Omar, to the hilt, justified the 180-degree change of policy by telling his generally anti-American people that if he hadn’t done so, Pakistan’s “strategic assets”, the customary euphemism for the nuclear arsenal, would have been endangered. From day one, however, he embarked on a policy of duplicity that can be best described as one of hunting with the American hound and running with the jihadi hare. The US was by no means unaware of what was going on, but the surprise is that it was content to remonstrate with Gen. Musharraf privately and hailing his as a “key ally” publicly. This was reminiscent of America’s policy during the anti-Soviet jihad during the 1980’s to turn a blind eye to Pakistan’s clandestine nuclear programme even while championing the cause of non-proliferation. Those who succeeded in overthrowing Gen. Musharraf and ushered in a civilian government of sorts have stuck to his policy and stratagems resolutely. An obvious reason for that is that in Pakistan the Army that calls the shots. The present Army Chief, General Ashfaque Kayani, is his predecessor’s nominee. He should have retired a long time ago but the ineffectual civilian government gave him a three-year extension. Here is another quirk of irony: all American dignitaries visiting Pakistan have always spent more time talking to Gen. Kayani, spending very little time with President Asif Zardari or Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani. None met the defence minister! And so things went on until the case of Raymond Davis, a member of the US Special Forces on an obviously delicate mission who shot dead two agents of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in Lahore. Amidst mounting Pakistani anger he bought his escape by paying blood money to the tune of $ 2.5 million. Anti-American feelings in Pakistan did not abate but reached a crescendo with the elimination of Osama bin Laden at the garrison town of Abbottabad. A huge storm of protest against the “violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty” continued to prevail and became a shield for both the Army and the civilian government. The worsening relationship between unhappy allies reached the brink, however, after the attack on the US embassy in Kabul, followed by the assassination of Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former president of Afghanistan and at the time of his murder chairman of the Peace Council. The about-to-retire US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, who had earned the nickname “Pakistan’s best ambassador in Washington”, categorically blamed the Haqqani network in North Waziristan for both these outrages and equally emphatically declared that the Haqqani network was an “arm of the ISI”. He also stated that America would take whatever action was needed to protect “American personnel and interests in Afghanistan”. Pakistan’s response to this was a combination of denial and defiance, threatening strong measures against any fresh attempt to violate Pakistan’s sovereignty. Fears of a showdown started abating, however, when there were attempts by both sides to de-escalate the crisis. But then President Obama spoke up. He avoided Admiral Mullen’s harsh words but left no doubt that the US would constantly evaluate its relations with Pakistan and would have no use for a long-term relationship that is directed against US lives and interests. Since then the future developments in this strange relationship (“complex but important”, in the words of Hillary Clinton) has become a guessing game. Those who believe that neither side wants a breakdown argue that Pakistan, with a highly precarious economy, cannot do without American money. China is not interested in being the substitute, and even Saudi Arabia would think twice before defying the US. On the other had, it cannot be overlooked that American presidents do not say publicly what they do not intend to do. In other words, to use a Chinese phrase, they do not fire
empty cannon.
|
||||||
A gentleman-officer’s seventy-fifth Stationed
at a small-town cantonment, one morning I was informed that a retired Army Commander had been admitted to our hospital. So I made a courtesy visit to the ailing General but found him in good humour. With a twinkle in his eyes he said: “To tell you the truth Old Boy, I had received the Platinum Grant and in celebration, downed a bottle of champagne and lots of rich food!” I had no clue about the Platinum Grant nor indeed the courage to enquire, because this walrus-mustachioed KCIO (King’s Commissioned Indian Officer) had an acerbic tongue. Recently, when I too received the bank demand draft for Rs 50,000, I wondered about the Good Samaritan who had conceived this joyous scheme to endow each gentleman-officer with a gift on his 75th birthday! And as I flaunted the bank instrument, I realised how envious the officers of the Air Force and the Navy felt of this exclusive Indian Army grant. It was on this occasion that I learnt that this initiative was launched way back in 1951, by deducting a mere Rs 2 from the month’s salary of every serving Army officer. This contribution was steadily enhanced but ultimately capped at Rs 60 per month. Once the accruals had taken the fund to a comfortable level, the first lot of bank demand drafts (Rs 20,000 to start with), were sent to the octogenarian officers in Dec 1981. Lately, the managers of the fund have added to the grant an attractively packaged set of two CDs: “Military Bands, Martial Tunes”. The container is a laminated, cardboard foldout having six coloured photographs of Army bandsmen in resplendent ceremonial attire. Tucked in between, is a booklet explaining the origins of martial music. The first CD has 25 excerpted tunes from the ensemble of British martial music. Almost all tunes successfully create the auditory ambience of the battlefield; the awesome clatter of the hooves of galloping horses, clashing of swords and the crescendo of the thunder and volley of shell-burst. One of these tunes surprised me with its title, “PUNJAUB”! Surely, it must have been inspired by the epic battles of Mudki and Chillianwalla (1845-9) where the Sikh soldiers, in the words of the British commanders, were found “plucky as lions, fought like devils,………fierce and valiant even in their dying struggle ….” The second CD has 29 ethnic martial tunes composed by the post-1947 Indian Army. It opens with that most inspiring military-tune, “Kadam kadam badhaye chal…..” which would fire even the gout afflicted to leap out of the bed and start marching. As the finale, the last martial tune gives meaning to the collective sacrifices of the Indian soldiery, over the last 200 years, through the dignified and soul-arousing “Sare jehan se achcha, Hidustaan hamara, hum bulbulen hain iski, yeh gulistan hamara ….” Is the Ramlila Maidan generation
listening?
|
||||||
IIT
Suicides
Does a suicide in IIT mean it’s because of IIT? Tanya Thomas thinks other factors are at play.
Four. That was the number of times he had attempted suicide, he said, jogging down a verdant track on the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) campus. As spotted deer galloped ahead in the fading evening light, he described how the mind goes blank in those tense seconds. He had calculated with scientific precision the exact moment when death would arrive, and how it would shut down his senses. The farewell arrangements were already in place – a terse message to his family, a suicide note, and a bitter Facebook status message. Mercifully, his courage failed him in those crucial moments, and he lived to tell the tale. But others haven’t. Like V.Anoop (February), Nitin Kumar Reddy (May) and Gowri Shankar (August) who took their lives on the IIT-M campus this year. A blog called Suicides at IIT’s (sic) maintains a veritable death toll, listing news reports on a little less than 40 suicides in all IITs combined since 1981. Attributing all these cases to academic pressure would only be simplifying a layered issue, say academicians and psychiatrists. The reasons for these deaths appear to be very different, and in some cases, even unexplained, they point out. Some suicide notes blamed project extensions and low grades as the final straw. But Gowri Shankar’s suicide, on the other hand, baffled those who knew him. A post-graduate student, he had excellent academic scores, a seemingly happy family life with his wife and two children and a 10-year-old job with HAL. He didn’t leave a suicide note. A first-year student said that suicides were usually played down, with the management unwilling to examine the issue in public glare. This unwillingness has led to most of the causes being shrouded in mystery and “knee-jerk responses.” For instance, the internal committee probing the November 2010 suicide of IIT-Kanpur student Madhuri Sale (who had hung herself from a ceiling fan) famously decided to replace all ceiling fans with pedestal fans, and to reduce the speed of internet connectivity in hostels. But this didn’t deter Mehtab Ahmed, a first-year undergraduate student of Material and Metallurgical Engineering at IIT-Kanpur, from ending his life less than a week ago. (The case is under investigation.) Inordinate project extensions in the final year of a course don’t just damage a student’s future plans, but are also hugely taboo in the institution’s self-contained environment. However, the institution defends the practice, clarifying that the IITs cannot compromise on quality norms and give passing grades to a student who hasn’t completed course requisites satisfactorily. Many within IIT’s walls are angered by the media’s “one-sided reporting” of student deaths on campus, “headlining” them as cases of academic pressure even before investigations are through. This, without mentioning the support network built around student and faculty bodies. Parents are often informed when a student’s grades nosedive, or when social withdrawal has been observed. The support network at IIT-M is the Guidance and Counselling Unit (GCU). A vast body headed by a single faculty member and some faculty volunteers, it has a male and female student-in-charge under whom work an infinite number of counsellors – college students who watch out for each other. The drive to succeed, to get to the top of the pecking order, can make mediocrity hard to digest here. Students spend most of their non-class time “sitting alone in rooms, surfing the internet or watching movies all day” with little peer interaction. A sentiment echoed by a former faculty head of the GCU, who criticises the lack of social connection in a student population which would rather vent frustrations on online networks than speak to a friend next door. In response to the recent suicides, a 24/7 helpline involving the alumni was set up. And since early September, a Chief Happiness Officer with Happiness envoys has been instated, who students can approach to talk their problems through. Another advocate for the campus support system is the student who had attempted suicide four times. “It’s a strong network”, he explains, alluding to his otherwise lonely life at IIT. His problems were both academic and familial. Senior faculty members had assisted him through his period of terrible mood swings, and he now takes psychiatric treatment, which includes a course of anti-depressants, sedatives and mood elevators. The visiting psychiatrist at the campus hospital, Dr. Vasantha Jayaram is reluctant to speak on an issue she calls ‘controversial’. But she categorically states that most cases of depression and suicide are multi-factorial, where all stakeholders (parents, professors and the student) play a part. Another unexplored aspect is the increased likelihood of mental health difficulties in the higher academia, with many confessional blogs by depressed academics. An article in the American Journal of Psychiatry states that there is no relation between higher mental capacity and psychic illness. But it does concede that a higher incidence of mental illness is indeed reported among this population. But does this let institutions like the IITs off the hook? Some professors feel if students are determined to take their lives, the institution cannot be held responsible. A position contested by Shankar, a volunteer at a Chennai-based suicide helpline, Sneha. From his experience with suicidal callers, he believes that nobody is determined to die and there is no specific category of people prone to commit suicide. “It is a reaction to prolonged stressors”, and can be successfully dealt with in all cases by identifying triggers and keeping them at bay. *Names withheld to protect privacy. Tanya Thomas is a student at the Asian College of
Journalism, Chennai.
|
|
Parents need to be proactive
"Sometimes
students feel helpless, especially in a society like ours which lays emphasis on just a few conventional careers. Furthermore, we also place too much emphasis on the men being the bread winner. Being born in a society where keeping the family happy is paramount over individual happiness, and an acute fear of failure in our ultra-competitive society makes many teenagers opt for the subjects for which they lack the aptitude. They deny their own identity and while some can take it, others crack up. They are the quiet ones who never confide in anyone. Parents have a responsibility to constantly remind their kids that there are viable options out there that go beyond being mere engineers. In fact, parents need to be proactive and change their own viewpoint before they start putting pressure on a child to pick up a career. Finally, picking a career that utilises an individual's strengths will always be useful. I have come across a case where a teenager having a talent for languages went on to do engineering like any 'good' Indian kid despite her distaste for it. After four wasted years, no job and no motivation left to live, she finally discovered that translators for foreign investors and for UN can make upwards of $100 an hour. Doing homework on your child's strengths and options available is most important. Being there to listen and show that you are with them no matter how they perform or what they decide is most important." —
Dr Kanu Priya, formerly practising psychologist, presently Assistant Professor
at Arkansas State University (as told to Vipul Grover) — Amitabh
Tripathi, Professor, IIT Delhi — Jyotirmaya Desai, IIT Kanpur
|
|
It is so easy to fall through the cracks I still remember the chill I had felt when I had walked into my new hostel room in second year. A712 had been empty for six months - its last occupant had committed suicide by hanging himself from the ceiling fan. People didn’t really know him by his first name, as is common here. His nickname was a legend in the institute’s internal virtual world though. Over the years, he had accrued a few backlogs because of which he would have had to stay in the institute for another year. Those backlogs also meant that his chances of getting a good job were affected. If I ended this anecdote with a simple “So, he committed suicide”, it would be highly simplistic. Let me tell you why. The IITs were, and still remain, one of the most exclusive colleges in the world. Getting in is no easy task, as lakhs of aspirants find out every year. Few manage to get in and fewer manage to get branches of their choice. Inside, it is a tough world. Everyone has been an NTS scholar or an established quizzer or a classical musician or, at the very least, the standout kid of the class. Think of those one-off bright students in your class who seemed to score on exams without having to study. Imagine having such students constitute half of your batch, the other half being made of people who’ll persist till they break problems down and make them beg for mercy. Add to this, the beast of relative grading where the top performer typically gets a 10 in a course and the bottom-most one a 4, or one of the varied fail-grades, and you begin to get a sense of the situation. It is not that students at IIT study a lot - that impression should be reserved for our friends in medicine. Competitive as we all were, we instead make it out to be a race for those other titles and laurels – a club head, a college fest official, a coveted internship. These were things which made you a stud. In fact, academics, or acads as we referred to them, used to be last day affairs – one nightout per exam minimum. The rat-race at IIT was in every single pursuit of yours, not just academics. Most psychologists would probably talk of a good support system necessary to deal with such pressure. But then, your parents and relatives rarely understand your situation. You were always the blue-eyed kid of the class. How did you suddenly become average!? Or worse, how did you get a backlog! As if that was not enough, even your friendships have a competitive edge to them. In such an environment, it is very easy to fall through the cracks. One weak moment leads to another and before you know it, you find yourself in a deep hole, where everyone around you looks like an achiever. You forget your own as well as your life’s worth in such a situation, and this is where most cases stem from. Often, suicides are imputed to a bad academic record. While it is true that academics can be unforgiving, more so at IIT Kanpur than maybe at IIT Bombay, it really shouldn’t be any other way. The real core of the problem lies in the extreme peer environment, without which IIT would not have been what it is. Thus, the best attempt at solving the problem can only involve shoring up support systems on campus in the form of mentorship or buddy programmes, greater interaction with parents in the first semester to help them understand the environment at IIT and a larger team of full time psychologists. The system already has these ideas in place, at least at IIT Bombay and Kanpur. Beyond that, there is nothing anyone in the system can realistically do. The brilliant young men and women who come here have to learn how to measure their true worth through their own eyes and not through their projected images. (The writer, an alumunus of IIT Bombay, is working with Price Waterhouse Cooper, Mumbai)
|
||
|
Corrections and clarifications
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 appears twice a week — every Tuesday 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. Raj
Chengappa
|
||
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Letters | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
Obviously the pressure to succeed is very high in the
IITs, more so than in most other academic institutions. However, IITs (at least the older ones) have a counselling in place, the effectiveness of which may be in question now.
Each part of the individual's life, be it the institute, family, friends etc. have a responsibility to show that they care; not only when the individual is feeling good, or bad but that they care always. Period. That they would always be there for him or her, whatever may happen.