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Corporate corruption
Attack on Swat girl |
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Gastroenteritis toll
Power play around Af-Pak
Short-term memory loss!
The Khushwant Singh Literary Festival, which begins at Kasauli today, is a celebration of the creativity
of India’s most-read author, who has lived life on his own terms and continues to do so at 97 Roopinder Singh Columnist, journalist, scholar, historian, diplomat and lawyer—Khushwant Singh wears many hats, even as he seldom sports the turban these days. But then, at 97, he can pretty much do what he wants to now, which is what he has done most of his life.
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Corporate corruption
Extending the anti-corruption laws to punish bribery in the private sector, as has been suggested by the Prime Minister, is a laudable idea. Drawing attention to the supply side of corruption, Dr Manmohan Singh has said that the Prevention of Corruption Act will be amended to include “corporate failure to prevent bribery as a new offence”. At the Central and state levels politicians, bureaucrats and corporate representatives join hands for mutual benefit. Be it the irrigation scam in Maharashtra, the mining scandal in Karnataka, the allocation of second-generation spectrum or the allotment of coal blocks, ruling politicians in states and at the Centre have misused their power to favour corporates. It is true the series of corruption charges, quite often levelled to draw political mileage, have generated a wave of negativity that saps the morale of the people and hurts the country’s image. But corruption is rampant and needs to be dealt with head-on to avoid street demonstrations popularised by Team Anna. Transparency International ranks India at 87th on its corruption perception index. But it is wrong to blame economic reforms for growing corruption. The 1991 reforms, in fact, have curtailed the “licence-permit raj”, which largely fuelled corruption. Automatic clearances have reduced areas of corruption, but the widespread misuse of the power of discretion in the distribution of natural resources has given rise to “crony capitalism”. Auctioning can help limit chances of graft, but as the Supreme Court has ruled, that cannot be the only way to distribute natural resources. Technology provides innovative ways of minimising corruption in day-to-day life. Progressive states are resorting to e-governance, passing laws to deliver time-bound services to citizens and opening single-windows for project clearances. There is merit in economist Kaushik Basu’s suggestion to decriminalise what he called “harassment bribes”. The bribe giver can help catch or discourage the bribe taker. The root cause of corruption, however, lies in the opaque funding of political parties. To meet election expenses, parties turn to corporate houses, which pay donations in return for favours or protection from official harassment. Any battle against corruption will have to begin with electoral reforms. |
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Attack on Swat girl
Taliban extremists have once again proved that they deserve to be fought to the finish. The latest proof of their being the worst enemies of humanity is their attack on a school girl, who had dared to express her views against the extremist movement in a free and frank manner. Some Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan activists fired at the innocent girl, Malala Yousufzai, while she was in her school bus at Mingora in the Swat valley in Pakistan’s tribal areas on Tuesday. They hated her because she had shown the guts to narrate the atrocities committed by the Taliban in a blog for BBC Urdu. She expressed her views under a pseudonym, yet the militants identified Malala and tried to eliminate her. She is still alive as she has been provided the best medical facility possible in a military hospital in Peshawar. However, whatever happens to her is not as significant as her success in bringing under sharp focus the plight of girls in Pakistan’s tribal areas. Swat was once under the control of the Taliban where the extremists burnt schools meant for providing education to girls. They had targeted girls’ schools in other areas also before Pakistan was forced by the world community to launch a military drive against these enemies of peace. However, the campaign against the Taliban ended without achieving the desired result. The time has come to re-launch a military drive to crush the remnants of the Taliban. The Pakistan Army Chief, Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who has described Malala as “a symbol of the values that the Army, with the nation (Pakistan) behind it, is fighting to preserve for our future generations”, should lose no time to embark on this noble task. All well-meaning Pakistanis may be with him if he decides to crush the Taliban militarily. He is bound to get support from the outside world also. Besides this, there is need for civil society in Pakistan to use the opportunity to expose the extremist ideology of the Taliban so that they find it impossible to get fresh recruits. |
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Gastroenteritis toll
In times when medical science is crossing new frontiers with each passing day, it is indeed ironic and shocking that in India people still die of diseases like gastroenteritis. The deaths in Batala, where the disease has claimed 11 lives, and in Patiala, where the outbreak led to the death of three persons, are sorry reminders of the negligent attitude of the civic authorities towards a public health issue. Whether a leaking sewer pipe is to be blamed or the lack of medical care, the fact remains that precious lives could have been saved. Gastroenteritis, also known as stomach flu characterised by symptoms such as diarrhoea, vomiting, nausea and fever, is generally caused by contaminated food and drinking water. The outbreak of gastroenteritis is a recurring feature not only in Punjab but in other parts of the country as well. Not too long ago over two dozen cases of gastroenteritis were reported in Ludhiana. OPD’s in Delhi’s hospitals too were overflowing with cases of diseases like gastroenteritis. Yet precious little is done on the preventive front. Despite much ado, the municipal authorities are not even able to supply clean drinking water to residents. Instead of going into overdrive after the damage has been done, the authorities would do well to act in time. Various government departments too need to work in tandem and not indulge in blame-game after disaster strikes, as they usually do. People too must be made to understand that part of the cure to such diseases lies in prevention. Healthy sanitation practices and personal hygiene are some of the imperatives that they need to follow diligently for hygienic conditions are known to cut down the risk of infection. Diarrhoeal diseases, the fifth leading cause of mortality globally, can’t be taken lightly. Rotavirus infection that often leads to childhood diarrhoea costs the country Rs 250 crore a year and a family an average of Rs 2,956. Both the authorities and the general public need to be aware of the economic burden and the human cost involved and take remedial steps. |
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To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift. — Steve Prefontaine |
Power play around Af-Pak
NO one should be surprised by the intense power play focused on Afghanistan because of the widespread fear of renewed “uncertainty and
instability” in that war-ravaged country with which Pakistan is so inextricably intertwined that the American-invented expression “Af-Pak” has found international acceptance. At the root of the
current activity lies the belief that although the United States plans
to maintain an “enduring presence” in Afghanistan even after the withdrawal of all NATO combat troops by the end of 2014, it is a “receding” power in the region. Consequently, other major stakeholders in the region are busy redesigning their policies. Quick to enter the Afghan arena is China with its vital interests, including in Afghanistan’s rich mineral resources, having already acquired a license to extract mammoth quantities of copper. It is also taking care of playing both sides of the street — befriending President Hamid Karzai’s government and simultaneously keeping contact with the Taliban. Some analysts appear to have concluded that Beijing may be distancing itself from its “all-weather friend”, Pakistan, in order to establish itself in Afghanistan. This is far from being the case. Indeed, China is one country about which no one in Pakistan across the political spectrum says a critical word. The GHQ knows that China is its most reliable ally. Astute Chinese leaders would not let go of this advantage. Understandably Russia is also anxious to play a larger role in the region, if only to safeguard its supreme interests in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and to guard against a sudden spurt in the smuggling of narcotics through these republics. Moscow is also determined to prevent the return to the former Soviet territory of Islamist insurgencies that had rocked it in the 1990s. Indicative of
Russia’s anxiety about the region is that Russian President Vladimir Putin was in Kyrgyzstan only the other day and signed agreements that would substantially increase Russia’s footprint there, including a 15-year extension of Russian lease on the Kant airbase. He will be in Tajikstan soon on a similar mission. With all that, however, Russian policy has shown a “strange confusion” in recent days. Mr Putin cancelled his visit to Pakistan at the last minute, causing dismay in Islamabad. For, had it taken place, it would have been the first ever visit to Pakistan by a Soviet/Russian leader. And then, using the pretext that he was expected in Islamabad only to
attend the meeting of Russia-Tajikstan-Afghanistan-Pakistan forum focusing on Afghanistan, he dispatched his foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, to Islamabad for the meeting. More remarkably, Russia also invited the Pakistan Army Chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, to
Moscow. The general was keen to meet Mr Putin but it is not yet known whether such a meeting took place. Russian sources are reluctant to explain these twists and turns beyond saying that it is a “complicated matter”, but it seems the Russian policy makers felt that their President’s sojourn in Pakistan at this stage would be “premature” because several “difficult pipeline projects” are still up in the air. Therefore, the agenda for a summit-level Russo-Pakistan meeting cannot be complete until these issues are settled. This shows there can be no doubt about an imminent warming of relations between Russia and Pakistan. Moscow knows that it would not be possible for it to be proactive in Kabul without good relations with Pakistan that has practically an open border with Afghanistan because
nobody respects the Durand Line. Having learnt its lesson in the 1980s, Russia has absolutely no intention to intervene in Afghanistan in any case. Nor has it forgotten that its efforts to maintain the pro-Soviet regime of President Najibullah had turned out to be futile. At the same time, there is no cause for any undue alarm in New Delhi over these developments. The era when in South Asia the Soviet Union/Russia could be friends exclusively with India is over. International relations across the board have undergone a change. Indo-US relations are no longer what they used to be. Ditto for India-China relations. Relations between the US and China, which
became virtual allies in 1971 after two decades of bitter enmity, have undergone significant variations even in recent years. Three years ago, on a visit to Beijing, President Barack Obama was so solicitous of cooperation with China that his hosts had started talking of a
“G-2” dispensation. Today the US has shifted the “pivot” of its foreign and security policies to East Asia obviously because of Chinese over-assertiveness. Whatever its aims and compulsions in Afghanistan, Russia also knows that in this region India is its weightier friend. Improved Russo-Pakistan relations, are therefore, no threat to the time-tested
India-Russia friendship in both the Soviet era and the subsequent one. In Afghanistan itself Indian presence is considerable and significant. And almost all other players, with the exception of Pakistan, want the Indian footprint to be enlarged. The advice by some for Indian military presence there has to be shunned, of course. On the other side of fence at a time when Russia and China are getting active in Afghanistan in cooperation with Pakistan, the US has taken steps to prevent a further decline in its relationship with Pakistan that are already in a dire state. President Obama has waived the conditions on the resumption of military and economic aid, imposed by the US Congress, on American assistance to its one-time “most allied ally”. Some other features of the Afghan situation, with a bearing on the future, should also be noted. The 200th Ame ican soldier was killed only the other day, and this can have repercussions even on the US presidential elections. Especially because there is no love lost between the Afghan national army and the NATO troops. Many of the latter have been shot to death by uniformed Afghan personnel, not all of them being Taliban masquerading as Afghan soldiers. In his latest speech Mr Karzai has been sharply critical of the US on several counts. He lambasted it for using drones to kill civilians and others in Afghanistan but not targeting the sanctuaries of the
jihadis in Pakistan. He also complained that the US was not giving Afghanistan sophisticated weaponry. “Does it want us to buy it from Russia, China and India”? According to seasoned observers, this could be a “bargaining chip” in negotiations with the US or a need of domestic
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Short-term memory loss!
From forgetting where you left your house keys to forgetting to return a phone call, not being able to recall names of familiar faces and not keeping up with anniversary and birthday dates are an almost daily occurrence for some people. At times, the habit of forgetting or the problem of short-term memory loss from which the protagonist of Memento suffered, can lead to hilarious situations. My dad brews trouble for himself owing to his forgetfulness many times. Not so long ago he had been invited to a wedding in Delhi. Forgetful as he is, he kept the invitation card in the pile of newspapers, which my mom later sold off. Dad booked tickets for Shatabdi and we all reached his friend’s house with an expensive present for his daughter’s wedding. It was a shocker for us as the tent was being removed and caterers were clearing the venue when we reached there. His friend and his wife laughed their heart out as the marriage was solemnised a day before. On our way back, my mom recalled the lines of Alexander Pope that “fools rush in where angels fear to tread”. On another occasion my dad again made a faux pa when he parked his car in a plaza and came back home at night in his colleague’s car. Early in the morning, my dad raised an alarm that our car was nowhere in sight; it had been stolen! He lodged a complaint with the police. Another colleague who saw the car parked in the plaza called him up to find out if they could sit in the coffee house to discuss an issue. It was then that my father realised his folly much to everyone’s amusement. My younger brother has the distinction of forgetting his mobile set at least a dozen times in sports grounds and in movie theatres. It is a different matter that he always gets it back perhaps because his mobile is not worth taking away. It is not that forgetfulness is prevalent in our family alone. A neighbour of ours had a similar experience. She had to attend the wedding of her sibling in another city. She coaxed her husband to buy her an expensive saree and a good present for the wedding. All done, they reached the venue to attend the late night party. It was here that she realised that she had forgotten to bring her pair of sandals. She could certainly not attend the wedding wearing a pair of slippers! At the wedding she kept sulking in a sofa telling relations that she had hurt her foot and could not walk. However, her husband and daughter laughed their hearts out at her plight. A colleague of my dad has the habit of forgetting the keys of his house. He picks up the keys of others as a matter of habit and thrusts these into his pocket. Once he went to a provision store and asked the man for home delivery of certain grocery items. Back home, he waited and waited and finally called the owner who said that he had been unable to locate the keys of the godown. At this, the kleptomaniac recalled that he had unknowingly picked the keys of the godown from the counter. My message to all those who suffer from forgetfulness: Learn to forgive and forget rather than forget and
forget! |
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The Khushwant Singh Literary Festival, which begins at Kasauli today, is a celebration of the creativity
of India’s most-read author, who has lived life on his own terms and continues to do so at 97
Columnist, journalist, scholar, historian, diplomat and lawyer—Khushwant Singh wears many hats, even as he seldom sports the turban these days. But then, at 97, he can pretty much do what he wants to now, which is what he has done most of his life. Lakhs of readers in India meet Khushwant Singh through his columns translated into many languages and published across the country. His books have contributed substantially to Indian literature and the study of Sikhism. He has raised controversies, lived life to the fullest, and now is one of the rare individuals having a literary event named after him— the Khushwant Singh Literary Festival — which gets off to a start today at his favourite hill station, Kasauli. Khushwant Singh was one of the earliest students of Modern School, Delhi, after which he attended St Stephen’s College, Delhi, where he was more devoted to tennis than academics. He did clear his Intermediate Arts exam and went to Government College, Lahore, to study law, a pursuit that took him to England, where he did his LLB at King’s College, London. London introduced him to different shades of romance. He met his wife-to-be there. Kaval Malik, daughter of Sir Teja Singh Malik, whom he remembered as a gawky schoolmate. By then she was a much-sought-after beauty. His earlier misadventures in the UK are faithfully documented in Truth, Love & A Little Malice, his autobiography, an engaging and candid account of his life. After he returned to India, Khushwant Singh tried to make a living as a pleader, without notable success. He, however, put his time in Lahore to good use by spending as much of it as he could with many creative people and literary luminaries in the cultural capital of North India. The Partition made him move from Lahore to Delhi, the city that his father, Sir Sobha Singh, helped to build as a contractor. He also moved away from law and focused his energy on writing. What he saw as he left Lahore became the subject of a story, Mano Majra, which won him a $1,000 prize from Grove Press. The story of Mano Majra village became the famous Train to Pakistan (first published in January 1956), and established him as a creative writer. Scholar first Unlike many writers, Khushwant Singh scholarly work dominates the early period, when he translated parts of Sikh scriptural texts, worked for the Unesco and lived with his family, which now included his son Rahul and daughter Mala, in Paris. Two years later, he quit, without a job in hand. Earlier, he had served in Canada and the UK as an Indian diplomat, but left the service, much to his father’s disappointment. An editorship of Yojana, a government publication, came his way in 1957, but he did not find it fulfilling. With the support of the Rockefeller Foundation, he wrote A History of the Sikhs, followed by a biography of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and a book on the Anglo-Sikh wars — all came out in the four years that Khushwant Singh spent on this project, during which period he also taught at the University of Rochester, Princeton University and University of Hawaii. Lucidity and research define these volumes, and both point towards the disciplined person that the writer is, contrary to a carefully cultivated image of a bohemian and an epicurean, a persona most people are familiar with, and indeed identify with, somewhat erroneously. Personal discipline He is known to drink only Scotch or single malt, and in case the host doesn’t have his brand, the grand old man will get one himself, and the guests are welcome to drink from it, as long as he is there with them. Dinner has to be served at the proper time (by 8 p.m.) and he retires early, even if the party is at his home and the guest is Rajiv Gandhi. Khushwant Singh is a disciplined person. He gets up and writes every morning, takes his deadlines seriously. He is knowledgeable about birds, trees, flowers and various aspects of nature. As his son Rahul Singh likes to point out, it was a case of father following the son into a profession. Rahul had been an Assistant Editor with The Times of India in Bombay for five years, when Khushwant Singh was offered the editorship of The Illustrated Weekly of India. Rahul left Bombay to become the first Indian editor of Reader’s Digest. Since Kaval did not want to move from Delhi, Khushwant Singh moved into the PG accommodation that Rahul had previously occupied in Bombay. Stint as editor The Illustrated Weekly of India soon became the most sought-after magazine. Its circulation grew from one lakh to over four lakh copies per week. Khushwant Singh mentored bright journalists who became successful editors later, including M J Akbar, Bachi Karkaria, Bikram Vohra, and even JIS (Jiggs) Kalra, the famous cook book writer and food critic. Khushwant Singh was at the top of the world, till it all came crashing down with his abrupt removal, evidently at political behest. The writer returned to Delhi where later he was to edit The National Herald and eventually The Hindustan Times, where he had a three-year stint. Controversies & courage Khushwant Singh and controversies often went hand in hand. Be it the salacious details of gossip that make way into his columns and writing, his fondness for Scotch and girls who gossip, he is a man of contrasts and has unfailingly waged a war against priggish mindsets. He liked Indira Gandhi but opposed the Emergency. He was fond of Sanjay Gandhi and his wife Maneka, and paid the price for it when Indira Gandhi turned against Maneka, and Khushwant Singh refused to do so. On the other hand, it was Maneka Gandhi’s petition to the Supreme Court that held up the publication of the author’s autobiography for five years! He was among the few who stood up to Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and the extremists, and wrote fearlessly against them. This earned him a place on the hit list of the militants who called him a Congress stooge. It was with that party’s support that he became a member of Rajya Sabha from 1980-1986. His returning the Padma Bhushan, awarded to him 10 years earlier, to protest against Operation Bluestar earned him the wrath of Congress leaders and many others. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 2007, a decoration he proudly accepted. However, controversies often arise because of what he writes. Bengalis were upset with him for his comments on Rabindranath Tagore, Marathas lambasted him for what he said about Shivaji, but he has managed to take it all in his stride He is an ardent admirer of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, but the admiration comes with reservations. His admirers come from all sections of society, and include some of the most prominent people, Indians and foreigners alike. Popular columnist Tens of lakhs of readers in India read Khushwant Singh’s columns. This Above All is published weekly in The Tribune and in many other newspapers in many languages. With Malice Towards One and All, is published in the Hindustan Times. He has a unique ability to reach out to ordinary readers, inform and entertain them on contemporary issues. He gets a laugh, generates controversies, and comments daringly on issues. He engages his readers and they have made him India’s most read columnist ever. He is generous in endorsing writers and in writing about their books in his columns. Many readers write to him, and most are pleasantly surprised to get back a handwritten postcard reply from him. “I have always tried to reply to every letter that I get,” he says. Family man He played tennis at Delhi Gymkhana Club, as did his wife Kaval. Widely regarded as an independent person with strong likes and dislikes, she was the strength behind the success of the family to which she devoted her life. Kaval passed away in 2002, after battling Alzheimer’s disease. The devotion with which her family—Mala, now an author and an editor, Rahul and Khushwant Singh—looked after her in those years is still talked about by those who know the family closely. Everyone one meets has a Khushwant Singh story to tell, either something that has been read, or an interaction that became a memorable moment, or some inspiration that changed the direction of a person’s life. Such is the man who has lived life on his own terms and has never allowed the inkwell of his creativity to run dry.
Literary timeline
(an autobiography), 2002
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Venue: Kasauli Club Friday, October 12 Inaugural session Saturday, October 13 Session 3 Session 4 Session 5 Session 6 Session 7 Session 8 Session 9 Session 10 Session 11 Sunday, October 14 Session 12 Session 14 Session 15
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