|
|
|
|
|
Development or temple?
Going back on promises |
|
|
Dhoni and Srinivasan
Changes in Obama administration
Resolution going for a toss
Growth key to national security
|
Development or temple?
If
the BJP’s undeclared prime ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, is stepping out of Gujarat to visit Delhi more often these days, the purpose is obvious: he wants to project himself on the national scene for a bigger role in future. A master communicator, he carefully chooses his words and issues in keeping with the interest of the audience and the media. Addressing students of New Delhi’s Sri Ram College of Commerce on Wednesday, he presented himself as a leader committed to development who wanted to see India’s image change from a country of “snake charmers” to that of “mouse charmers”. Given the commerce students’ ambition of entering the corporate world, he did not forget to tell them how within 10 days of taking over as the Chief Minister he brought together representatives of 121 countries on one platform as part of the Vibrant Gujarat conclave, delivering a powerful one-liner: “Fifty per cent of the country’s GDP was under one roof”. While this was one part of the reality, another was represented by a protest by Left-wing student organisations which showed black flags to Modi. The police used tear gas and water cannons to keep them at bay. Yet another bit of reality was reflected in the statement made by BJP party president Rajnath Singh at Allahabad on Wednesday that the party was committed to the construction of a Ram temple in Ayodhya. On Thursday, RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat backed the VHP's resolution for building the temple in Ayodhya. On his part, Modi avoids extremist views in public. He talks of development. He may appeal to certain sections of society, but he is resisted by others because of his controversial role in the 2002 riots in Gujarat. But can he distance himself from the temple agenda of the RSS and the VHP, supported by the BJP chief publicly, and still be their choice for the top post? Will the NDA partners accept him? These are the issues the BJP in general and Modi in particular will have to address in the days to come. |
|
Going back on promises
Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa hurt the sentiments of his country’s Tamil minority by declaring in the course of his Independence Day speech that “it is not practical for this country to have different administrations based on ethnicity.” This amounted to going back on the promises he had made after militarily vanquishing the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) in 2009 by using controversial methods. He had offered power-sharing arrangements on the basis of the 13 amendment to the Sri Lankan constitution to accommodate Tamil aspirations. The idea was to send across the message that the Sri Lankan government had no quarrel with the ethnic Tamils, who would be treated as equal citizens after the elimination of the separatist movement led by Prabhakaran. But, it seems, Rajapaksa’s expression of sympathy for the Tamil masses was only to prevent international scrutiny of the actions of the Sri Lankan armed forces, accused of having indulged in human rights violations on a massive scale. According to a UN estimate, nearly 100,000 Tamils were done to death in the prolonged war between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan army. The Rajapaksa government is likely to be reprimanded for human rights violations during the coming meeting of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. Rajapaksa, perhaps, believes that Sri Lanka’s ethnic problem has become history with the disappearance of the LTTE and its leader Prabhakaran from the scene. But he is mistaken. Such problems do not end in this manner. Tamils of Sri Lanka cannot feel secure when the President of that country goes back on almost every promise he had made in 2009. The Tamil National Alliance, fighting for the cause of the ethnic minority, has accused Colombo of devising controversial schemes for settling Sinhalese in Tamil-dominated areas. The Rajapaksa government has also been charged with militarising the northern areas of Sri Lanka. The real solution to the ethnic problem lies in the idea of devolution of powers to the autonomous provincial councils under the 13th amendment, keeping in view Tamil aspirations. The homilies offered by President Rajapaksa that “the solution is to live together in this country with equal rights for all communities” cannot help. |
|
|
Dhoni and Srinivasan
Legally, there is nothing that could prevent India Cements from hiring the services of Mahendra Singh Dhoni as a vice-president. Morally, though, it’s problematic – it is the latest evidence that the web of conflict of interests within Indian cricket is becoming bigger and stronger. Its growth remains unchecked because the men who are weaving it hold supreme powers in Indian cricket. The managing director of India Cements, N Srinivasan, is also its majority stockholder. India Cements owns Chennai Superkings, the IPL franchise. Srinivasan is also the president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India. All this means that Dhoni’s boss in Indian cricket, in Chennai Superkings and in India Cements is one man, Srinivasan. There’s more. Dhoni is managed by Rhiti Sports, a company owned by his long-time friend Arun Pandey. The exclusive marketing rights for Chennai Superkings are with -- surprise, surprise -- Rhiti Sports. Rhiti Sports also markets Ravindra Jadeja -- who also plays for Chennai Superkings, and India. Its clients had included other Indian cricketers like Suresh Raina and RP Singh. Rhiti Sports is also associated with Dhoni’s Mahi Racing Team India and has brought World Superbike racing to India. The staff a private company employs is entirely its own business. However, it becomes a matter of everyone’s concern if it is Indian cricket and the Indian captain who are caught in a web of conflict of interests. Dhoni is priceless for India Cements and Chennai Superkings as a marketing tool; now, isn’t it entirely plausible that India Cements and Chennai Superkings could use/play Dhoni without affording him rest, thus possibly affecting his performance for India? Dhoni, who tops the list of the cricket world’s top earners, is also among the busiest -- he captains India in all three formats of the game, apart from captaining Chennai Superkings in IPL and the Champions League Twenty20 tournaments. Could investment in Dhoni affect Srinivasan’s judgement and induce him to put his companies’ interests above India’s? Indeed, former selector Mohinder Amarnath created a stir late last year when he said that the selectors wanted to sack Dhoni but Srinivasan overruled them. Lalit Modi, the former IPL commissioner, has alleged that insider knowledge has helped Srinivasan manipulate things in Indian cricket such as the IPL auctions. As the latest IPL auction set the ball in motion for this year’s tournament, it is desperately hoped that Indian cricket administrators would adopt cleaner practices, and Srinivasan would set better precedents. |
|
|
Your neighbour's vision is as true for him as your own vision is true for you. —Miguel de Unamuno |
Changes in Obama administration
As the US President, Barack Obama, embarks on his second term, New Delhi is once again feeling the chill of a new administration in Washington. Sections of the Indian foreign policy making community are again doing what they do best — crying hoarse over a possible change in the tone and tenor of US foreign policy. Obama has a new Cabinet line-up with John Kerry having taken over from Hillary Clinton as the new Secretary of State, Chuck Hagel as the Secretary of Defence-designate and John Bremmer as the head of the CIA. The US foreign policy is in a state of flux and some very significant changes are likely over the course of the next few years under the second Obama Presidency. The most important issue in the short-to-medium term will be withdrawal of around 66,000 US troops from Afghanistan after more than a decade of battling Al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Like most nations, India will also be impacted by the impending changes in the foreign policy priorities of Washington. But instead of debating the larger ramifications of these changes, the discussion in India today is reminiscent of the discussion in the country when Obama came to office for the first time in 2008. There were widespread concerns about Obama’s attitudes towards India after eight years of privileged position under the George W. Bush administration. George W. Bush, deeply suspicious of communist China, was personally keen on building strong ties with India. That is why he was willing to sacrifice long-held US non-proliferation concerns to embrace nuclear India and acknowledge it as the primary actor in South Asia, de-hyphenated from Pakistan. The Obama administration’s concerns in its initial months with protecting the non-proliferation regime, dealing with the immediate challenge of the growing Taliban threat in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and solving the unprecedented economic challenge led it to a very different set of priorities and an agenda in which India seemed to have a marginal role. The only context in which Obama mentioned India in his early months was related to the need to resolve Kashmir so as to find a way out of the West’s troubles in Afghanistan. To many Indians, the new administration seemed intent on sidelining India. In a similar vein, discussion these days is centred around the appointment of John Kerry and his supposed ‘tilt’ toward Pakistan. Kerry has been closely associated with the Obama administration’s Pakistan policy. It was he who helped broker the release of the CIA contractor, Raymond Davis, arrested on suspicion of murder and later persuaded Islamabad to return parts of the US stealth helicopter that crashed during the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Kerry has already been termed by sections of the Indian media as a friend of Pakistan, the implication being that he would be unfriendly towards India. Kerry’s strong support for strengthening the NPT and the Kerry-Lugar-Berman Bill authorising a five-year $7.5 billion financial aid package to Pakistan have been viewed as examples of Kerry’s pro-Pakistan worldview. Pakistan’s effusive praise for Kerry’s nomination may indeed underscore a sense in Islamabad and Rawalpindi that they have gained a sympathetic ear in the new US Cabinet. It won’t be surprising if the recent adventurous behaviour of the Pakistan military at the Line of Control may have been inspired by this bravado. But just as Pakistan will be fooling itself if it believes that Kerry is going to be Pakistan’s friend, India is being unnecessarily defeatist if it thinks that Kerry’s nomination is a disaster for India. Kerry is neither going to be pro-India nor pro-Pakistan; he will be pro-US. And if Obama had to change his foreign policy worldview vis-ŕ-vis India soon after coming into office, Kerry will have no choice but to build on Obama’s first term and strengthen ties with India. After all, it was Kerry who described India-US ties as “without doubt one of the most significant partnerships in US foreign policy.” The US-India relationship has matured and reached a stage where changes in personnel will only have a limited impact on its trajectory. There is a growing perception that India is not yet ready for prime-time and that the political leadership in New Delhi remains perpetually preoccupied with domestic turmoil and lacks political will to claim India’s rightful place in the comity of nations. It is for India to pursue strategic partnerships with like-minded nations and advance its interests. The world will only take India seriously when New Delhi starts taking itself seriously and behaves like a serious power. There is a larger problem that underlies this perpetual hyperventilation in India about the ostensible tilt in Washington. It has become a regular feature of Indian diplomacy to press America towards securing its own regional security interests. The speed with which India has outsourced its regional foreign policy to Washington is astonishing. New Delhi is now reduced to pleading with Washington to tackle Pakistan and to rein in the Pakistan army’s nefarious designs against India in Afghanistan, in Kashmir and elsewhere. For all the breast-beating in recent years about India emerging as a major global power, Indian strategic and political elites display an insecurity that defies explanation. A powerful, self-confident nation should be able to articulate a coherent vision about its priorities and national interests. The brazen display of a lack of self-confidence by Indian elites in their nation’s abilities to leverage the international system to its advantage only weakens India. A diffident India will continue to crave for the attention of Washington but will find it difficult to get. A confident India that charts its own course in world politics based on its national imperatives will force the world to sit up and take
notice. The writer teaches at King’s College, London. |
||||||
Resolution going for a toss
After a food-filled holiday, losing weight often tops the list of popular New Year's resolutions, but a new study is shedding a different light on those extra pounds. Weighing 110 kg, my New Year resolution was to shun sweets, fried food and dairy products to lose weight and get a six-pack figure. Most difficult was to give up the occasional drink when friends arrive. It is a different matter that my friends arrive too often! Nevertheless I took this up as a challenge. I started going for a long walk in the morning and evening which led to constant knee pain. Exposure in view of utter cold led to bad cold and a feverish condition. The withdrawal symptoms were there to see and I had to seek medical help on more than two occasions. I was, no doubt, losing weight, but total abstinence had made me almost a recluse and forlorn. My isolation was giving way to an almost certain depression till I went through a US study, published recently in the Journal of the American Medical Association, which looked at nearly 100 previous studies on weight and mortality and found that overweight people have a significantly lower risk of premature death than those who are of normal weight. To track the finding, the team led by the National Center of Health Statistics looked at 270,000 deaths from a diverse array of countries. The result was that people with a body mass index between 25 and 30 — considered "overweight" -- were about 6 per cent less likely to die prematurely than those in the "normal" range, between 18.5 and 24.9. Dr Anil Bhansali, Head of the Endocrinology Department, PGI, Chandigarh, suggested that overweight people might be more likely to have regular doctor visits than people of normal weight, which might help detect illnesses earlier. Getting a new glimmer of hope, I am back on my routine stuff. After all, how can a lesser mortal like me forget Epicurus, the Greek philosopher as well as the founder of the school of philosophy called Epicureanism. I am once again advocating a nice palate for the enjoyment of good food and drink to end up as a gourmet. My days are again fun-filled and evenings even better. Perhaps by being happy I am serving the nation a purpose. Who can forget that Pakistan had beaten India on the Happy Planet Index where the former was ranked 16th among 151 countries of the world while India was ranked 32nd. Costa Rica was termed the happiest country, followed by Vietnam and Colombia. The Happy Planet Index was calculated using life expectancy, experienced well-being and ecological footprint (per capita) of the countries with data collected from various sources, including UNDP and Gallup data. The index was compiled by the New Economics Foundation (NEF). For me happy days are here again. The clothes that I had discarded because of my thinning frame are back in my wardrobe, thus cutting on possible expenditure. Neither are there gym bills nor visits to medicos. Alfred Lord Tennyson, the famous poet-laureate whose words inspired millions, had aptly commented that the happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in mastery over passions. Damn with the New Year
resolution! |
||||||
Growth key to national security
Excerpted from the K. Subrahmanyam Memorial Lecture delivered by Finance Minister P. Chidambaram on “India's National Security —Challenges and Priorities” on February 6 at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi Until recently, we had taken a very compartmentalised view of national security. Each threat to national security was neatly fitted into one compartment. The first, of course, was a war with Pakistan. That was meant to be deterred, or defended, through the might of our armed forces. A war with China was, and remains, unthinkable and therefore that threat was fitted into another compartment and reserved to be dealt with through a mixture of engagement, diplomacy, trade, and positioning adequate forces along the borders. Beyond Pakistan and China, we did not perceive any external threat to our security. Other threats such as communal conflicts, terrorism, Naxalism or Maoist violence, drug peddling and Fake Indian Currency Notes were bundled together under the label "threats to internal security" and were left to the Ministry of Home Affairs. Some threats were not acknowledged at all as threats to national security and these included energy security, food security and pandemics. K Subrahmanyam was one of the earliest to argue that we should take a more holistic view of the threats to national security. Three pillars Defending and promoting national security stands on three important pillars: firstly, human resources; secondly, science and technology; and thirdly, money. I have placed money last, not because it is the least important, but because it is the most important pillar of national security. Without money, we cannot nurture and build our human resources. We need schools, colleges, universities, libraries, laboratories, skill development institutions and, above all, highly qualified teachers. It was in the sixth decade of Independence that we were able to pass a law on the Right to Education. Only now we have been able to achieve near-universal enrolment of children in school, but there are still problems in retention and, according to 2010-11 statistics, only 73 percent of children who enrol in class I complete five years of schooling and only 59.4 percent complete eight years of schooling. Despite having 32,987 colleges and 621 universities, the Gross Enrolment Ratio is only 18.8 percent. The shortage of teachers at the elementary school level is estimated at 800,000. According to the Ministry of Human Resource Development we need 20,000 more colleges and 1500 more universities if we aim to provide post-school education to all the children who complete school. Even today we turn out only about 800,000 engineers from our engineering colleges and 44,000 MBBS doctors from our medical colleges every year. Only 72,202 scholars were enrolled in Ph.D programmes in 2012 and only 9,704 applications were filed for patents in calendar 2012 by Indians. The Central Government spends only 0.67 percent of GDP on education (2010-11), and that includes all heads of expenditure that could be broadly brought under the subject 'education'. It is estimated that all the State Governments put together spend another 2.36 percent of GDP on education (2010-11). The percentages may appear modest, but the absolute amounts are quite large. Nevertheless, the average child enrolled in class V has only attained the competence of a child in class II. At the other end, none of our universities figure in the top 200 universities of the world. Low spending on health The infant mortality rate is still at 44 per 1000 live births, maternal mortality rate is at 212 per 100,000 live births and, on both counts, we will not achieve the millennium development goal. Life expectancy has increased from 59.4 years in 1991 to 66.1 years in 2011, but during the same period the child sex ratio has declined from 945 girls to 914 girls per 1000 boys. The expenditure of the Central Government on 'health care' is 0.31 percent of GDP and State Governments spend another 0.60 percent of GDP. Thus, on education and health, the total Government expenditure is below 4 percent of GDP. Other emerging economies spend much more. For example, Brazil (9.1 percent), South Africa (9.6 percent) and China (5.9 percent) spend much more. If we can create the fiscal space that will allow us to spend an additional one percent every year amounting to an additional four percent over the remaining four years of the 12th Plan, it would make a huge impact on human resource development in the country. Science & technology Let me turn to science and technology. Every country that has moved up to the level of middle income country or a developed country has intensively promoted and heavily relied upon science and technology. It begins with the Gross Enrolment Ratio. Countries that have made the big leap in the last 30 years have an impressive GER. In Malaysia it is 40 percent; in Brazil it is 26 percent and in China it is 26 percent. China has about 1200 colleges devoted to engineering which produce about 700,000 engineering graduates every year. None of the threats to national security can be effectively countered unless we embrace science and technology and impart instruction in science and technology beginning at the school level. There are four physical domains in our world - land, sea, air and space. We have a land border of a length of about 15,000 kms with Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Bangladesh and Myanmar, and even a small length of 106 kms with Afghanistan. We patrol these borders using a variety of measures - from sophisticated radars to camel-mounted border guards. On the Indian-Bhutan border, there are only two land custom stations at Jaigaon and Hatisar. However, a large volume of goods do not move through these stations and do not bear the endorsement of the Customs authorities. There are densely populated villages on either side of the India-Nepal and the India-Bhutan borders. Because only border guarding forces are in place, and hardly any technology is employed, it is widely acknowledged that the borders are porous. As I speak to you, there are 191 battalions of the BSF, ITBP, SSB and Assam Rifles on our borders, but little technology. Growth yields money The last of the three pillars is money. It is also the pillar that will support the first two pillars. Money comes out of growth. The revenues of Government are tax revenue and non-tax revenue. Non-tax revenue constitutes a small proportion of total revenue and is more uncertain. Tax revenue consists, mainly, of five taxes: excise, customs, service tax, income tax and corporation tax. Excise revenue is a function of growth in the manufacturing sector; customs revenue is a function of higher imports; service taxes are a function of more activity and more transactions in the services sector; income tax and corporation tax are a function of more incomes for individuals, families and corporations. Increase in tax revenue is, in a very large measure, the outcome of higher growth. When the economy is on a roll, tax revenues are buoyant and when the economy slows down, the first casualty is revenue from taxes. In our own times, we have seen the difference between the period when the Indian economy was on a high growth path and the period when there has been a noticeable slow down. In the former phase (2004-2008), we were able to provide for virtually everything that we desired, but also for exceptional items of expenditure such as the agricultural loan waiver scheme. During that period, we were also able to reduce the fiscal deficit from 4.5 percent in 2003-04 to 2.5 percent in 2007-08. Short-term response When there is a slowdown, the consequence is the exact opposite. The first hit is on tax revenue. As the anticipated growth in tax revenue declines, expenditure cannot be compressed in the short term. The gap between revenue and expenditure rises rapidly. The short term response is to borrow more, leading to a ballooning of the fiscal deficit. The medium term response will be to contain expenditure, but that has its own consequences. A cut back on public expenditure will further slow down the economy. It will also curtail the number of jobs that are created. A cut back on social welfare will hurt the poor: less money for education or health care will deny, to many more people, access to basic education or basic health facilities. And, finally, a cut back on expenditure on defence or on the police forces will severely compromise our defence and security preparedness and diminish our capacity to meet the challenges to national security. It is therefore a self-evident truth that growth is the key for greater public welfare and greater security. Yet, we adopt a disdainful attitude to growth. Some think that the value of growth is overstated and that we would be better off if we pursued not the goal of growth but other goals such as cultural nationalism or debt-driven egalitarianism.
‘Army opposes amendment to AFSPA’ Replying to questions from the audience, Finance Minister Chidambaram made some interesting observations. Here are excerpts: |
|
| 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 | |
