Verdict on merit
THE ruling of a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court against reservation of seats in super speciality medical and engineering courses for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other Backward Classes candidates is likely to be welcomed and attacked with equal vehemence by groups on either side of the politically overused social justice plank.

TDP and other troubles
UNLIKE in the past, the BJP is finding seat-sharing talks with allies heavy going. Also, candidates, aspirants and important members do not take the central diktats without protest.

Post-Atlantique attack
THE propaganda directors of Pakistan are trying hard to break Joseph Paul Goebbels's record in tarnishing truth. However, it is known worldwide that Atlantique, a spy plane with a vast range of reconnaissance and combat equipment, entered Indian airspace aggressively on a surveillance mission and was downed by Indian MiGs on Tuesday.

52 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE
Strengths and weaknesses of the system
by Jai Narain Sharma
AT the stroke of midnight on August 14, 1947, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru made his famous speech wherein he referred to India keeping its tryst with destiny and awakening to life and freedom.

Bangabandhu and Bangladesh
by Sheikh Hasina
TO the people of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the founding father of their independent, sovereign state. Lovingly, they used to call him Bangabandhu, the Friend of Bengal.

A countdown to
N-conflict?
by Tavleen Singh
ON the day that the Pakistani plane was shot down in Gujarat last week, I happened to finish reading a terrifying, little book by Amitav Ghosh called “Countdown”. Ghosh, one of the best known India writers in English of the moment had been sent to India by the New Yorker magazine to do an assessment of India and Pakistan after last May’s nuclear tests.

Old wine in new bottles
by Amita Malik
THE big bash to announce the launch of two 24-hour channels by Doordarshan could not have been more glitzy. A vast hall in a five-star hotel overflowing with stars and producers flown up from Bombay, a long statement by the CEO of Prasar Bharati saying how DD was the mostest and the bestest, video projections about the “new” programmes with formidable technical back-ups, more statements, including some all-too-brief but frank and thought-provoking ones by Prasar Bharati Board members U.R. Rao and B.G. Verghese, followed by questions and answers.

Crowning glory
by D.R. Sharma
THE first time it throbbed and ached was in Shimla, 37 years ago. I rushed to one German dental surgeon with a sparkling clinic on the Mall. I had often seen him watching streams of amblers between Combermere Bridge and Scandal Point.

75 Years Ago

Will Das be unseated?
IN the political clubs at the roadsides it is being talked about for the past few days that Mr C.R. Das has been unseated as the result of the election petition against him.

Verdict on merit

THE ruling of a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court against reservation of seats in super speciality medical and engineering courses for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and other Backward Classes candidates is likely to be welcomed and attacked with equal vehemence by groups on either side of the politically overused social justice plank. There are those who may try to whip up caste passions by misrepresenting the verdict as an attempt to do away with the policy of reservation itself. Of course, there is little that can be done to stop the mischief-makers from trying to project the verdict as an upper castes' conspiracy against the Dalits and other under-privileged sections of society. Even those who understand that the apex court has merely tried to remove the distortions introduced in the policy of reservation of seats for categories mentioned in the Constitution are not likely to take the trouble of explaining the correct position to the largely illiterate and ignorant group of people because of the fear of losing the support of the Dalits in the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. To be fair, the Supreme Court has merely applied its judicial mind to the best of its ability for striking down the policy of reservation of seats introduced by some States, including Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, without evidently understanding its long term consequences. While stating that merit must be the sole criterion for admission to super speciality engineering and medical courses the apex court has taken the precaution of referring the question of prescribing "lower minimum qualifications" for SCs, STs and OBC candidates to the Medical Council of India since it affects standards of medical education.

What needs to be emphasised is that the Supreme Court has not touched the policy of reservation of seats at the entry level to medical, engineering, architecture, science and other premium professional courses. However, the Constitution Bench was of the view that "special provisions" in the matter of admission to super speciality courses would be contrary to national interest. The response to the verdict, specially of the political class, may have been more transparent had it been delivered after the Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. However, among those who are unconcerned with the outcome of the elections the verdict may revive the debate for and against the policy of reservation per se. It must be remembered that Chandigarh, which is among the most peaceful places in the country, witnessed the most vicious and destructive anti-reservation agitation in 1989 when Mr V. P. Singh as Prime Minister decided to expand the base of educational and job reservations by implementing the recommendations of Mandal Commission which earlier governments had put in the political deep freeze for reasons which manifested themselves in the form of upper caste youth attempting, successfully and unsuccessfully, to immolate themselves. The apex court's verdict on merit-based admissions to super speciality courses would be read with more than usual interest by the residents of Chandigarh for the simple reason that it is essentially a "service class city". Any increase in the number of seats in the reserved categories means denial of admission to professional and technical courses to students at the bottom of the merit list in the general category. That is the reason why the city virtually erupted like a volcano when Mr V. P. Singh unleashed the Mandal monster on the country.

TDP and other troubles

UNLIKE in the past, the BJP is finding seat-sharing talks with allies heavy going. Also, candidates, aspirants and important members do not take the central diktats without protest. There is no setback to the multi-party front, nor revolt by its own ranks. Yet the old military-style discipline is missing and the word of the top brass is not accepted stoically and everyone does not go back to the electorate with hope and determination. This time there is un-BJP-like stirrings in most states both from the coalition partners and selected nominees. Obviously the Hindutva party is growing up, rather is changing with its changed status as the leader of a ruling coalition. The Andhra experience brings out the troubles of the new-look BJP. First the TDP kept the BJP guessing until the very last hour and then slashed its demand for seats to eight out of 42 in the Lok Sabha and 25 out of 294 in the Assembly. In the 1988 election the BJP secured 18 per cent of the votes polled, though it fought on its own and won four seats for the first time. Its vote share is more or less accurately reflected in the allotment of Lok Sabha seats but is way down, or just about half in Assembly seats. What is more, TDP supremo Chandrababu Naidu took away two seats — Rajamundry and Kakinada — it won last time. It is never done and the first constituency is the electoral equivalent of the crown jewel for the BJP. Prime Minister Vajpayee addressed a meeting there immediately after he lost the majority support in a symbolic act of inaugurating the campaign from this special place. Now the TDP will fight this seat. One exasperated BJP leader talked of a possible sabotage by angry grassroots-level workers, with the Congress being the beneficiary. This time around, Mr Naidu needed the BJP more than it needed him. The two Left parties have deserted him and the main rival, the Congress, is rampant and rearing to go. Yet he could impose harsh conditions and get away with it. There is no threat of open defiance by partymen but there is no wave of jubilation either in the saffron camp.

Elsewhere too the situation is not all that hunky-dory. In Karnataka and Bihar the dispute is of a different nature and the central leadership is sharply divided, complicating the issue. The Prime Minister, the advocate of widening the alliance without any inhibition, is facing stiff opposition from the Thakre-Advani axis which is wary of gaining electoral muscle at the cost of the BJP’s old set of programmes. The relative strength and determination of the two schools of thought will be tested in these two states. Madhya Pradesh, the home state of the BJP President Kushabhau Thakre, is rocked by pockets of resistance. A former Chief Minister and a slayer of Congress leader Kamal Nath, wanted to fight from Bhopal but has been shunted off to Hoshangabad since the sitting MP, Mr Sartaj Singh, a Sikh settler there, cried off. Ms Uma Bharti has fled Khajuraho and wants the safe seat of Bhopal but there is resistance. Ms Sumitra Mahajan, the tough lady from Indore, was determined not to fight again but was persuaded to change her mind. In neighbouring Orissa the Biju Janata Dal is sulking and sulking. Even in UP, where the party is in power, the famed BJP discipline is missing this year. Gone are the days when the party leadership could shift and change nominees and an army of volunteers would plunge into canvassing with devotion. This time there may be some heartburning, or so it appears. Why, even in Rajasthan the entry of a candidate belonging to Andhra Pradesh has kicked of a local storm, a similar phenomenon in Chandigarh remains a surface wind movement. As one wag put it, the Congress party may not be as vigorous as it was once but the Congress culture is strong, alive and kicking. In other parties!

Post-Atlantique attack

THE propaganda directors of Pakistan are trying hard to break Joseph Paul Goebbels's record in tarnishing truth. However, it is known worldwide that Atlantique, a spy plane with a vast range of reconnaissance and combat equipment, entered Indian airspace aggressively on a surveillance mission and was downed by Indian MiGs on Tuesday. Chunks of the wreckage picked up by our helicopters later could not give the total picture of Islamabad's snooper fighter because Atlantique tried to get back into its territory after being set ablaze by Indian missiles. Sixteen years ago, former Navy Chief Vishnu Bhagwat had succeeded in scaring a similar plane away. Intrusions and airspace violations have continued from the Pakistani side in all sensitive sectors. The Rann of Kutch is not just a series of creeks. The Bombay offshore area, the oil-bearing assets along the West Coast, the oil terminal at Kandla and the shore-based industries near the Gujarat coast, besides pipelines up to Bathinda are under threat. Having woven a cunning screen to obfuscate the facts of aggression, Pakistani planes tried to kill fact-finding media men travelling by unarmed helicopters. The journalists returned to their stations to tell their readers (or viewers) authentic facts about the patent Pakistani style of murder in the sky. They have given first-hand accounts of their miraculous escape.

Pakistan does not believe in settling issues; it is keen on settling scores. It would have been an act of grace on its part to promise to desist from intrusion in future and bury its dead fighters in uniform, giving them the honour which it denied to its soldiers in the Dras-Kargil-Batalik belt to justify its false statement about their identity. To try to annihilate more than 40 journalists belonging to various countries, including India, in Indian airspace was to make a bizarre attempt to take revenge for the loss of lives on the spying Atlantique. The USA, which is equating India with Pakistan in the context of the latest warlike activity by the politico-military machine of our neighbour, would have reacted differently if any of its media men would have been affected during the attack on the helicopters. What has Pakistan achieved? It has prevented international newsmen from seeing the place where the Atlantique fell with its snooping personnel and gadgets. But facts are like the inner voice; they speak louder when one seeks to suppress them. The Indian Navy has to stay in combat readiness. The build-up in and around Badin, near the Rann of Kutch, is eminently indicative of Pakistan's designs. The IAF should be particularly vigilant about the American Orion planes which have been equipped by Pakistan with Harpoon missiles to hit high-value targets from a safe distance. The 1991 agreement on airspace tranquillity has been violated at least nine times recently by Pakistan. The USA need not worry much about the Indian subcontinent. However, its efforts to encourage Pakistan to take advantage of bilateralism will be welcome.

52 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE
Strengths and weaknesses of the system
by Jai Narain Sharma

AT the stroke of midnight on August 14, 1947, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru made his famous speech wherein he referred to India keeping its tryst with destiny and awakening to life and freedom. To review the last two and fifty years in an article is like trying to see the Himalayas at night in one flash of lightning and one’s own perception and preconceived notions sometimes come in the way of a balanced assessment making one economical with the truth. Hence in any objective analysis of the past it would be proper to take note of both the strength and weaknesses of the system.After Independence we started with three inestimateable advantages. First, we had 5000 years of a great civilisation behind us — a civilisation which had reached “the summit of human thought” in the words of Ralph Waldo Emerson. We inherited great skills and many-splendoured intelligence since the genes had developed over five millennia. We had a superb entrepreneurial spirit. A few years ago a World Bank report on India mentioned two favourable factors — an unlimited reservoir of skilled labour and abundance of capital available for investment in new projects. Nani Palkhiwala, the noted jurist, once said: “The trader’s instinct is innate in Indian genes. An Indian can buy from a Jew and sell to a Scot and yet make a profit”.

Secondly, whereas before 1858 India was never a united political entity, after that British rule — notwithstanding all its exploitations — welded us into one country, one nation and when Independence came, we had been a unified nationality for almost a century under one head of state.

Thirdly, our founding fathers after three years of laborious toil gave us a Constitution which a former Chief Justice of India rightly described as “sublime”. We can proudly say that our Constitution gave us a flying start and equipped us adequately to meet the challenges of the future.

Our greatest achievement is our democracy which is surviving unfractured for the last 52 years. Nearly one thousand million people — more than the combined population of Africa and South America — live together as one political entity under conditions of freedom. Never before in history, and nowhere else in the world today, has such vast human race existed as a single free nation. The achievement is all the more creditable since no other democracy has had such diversity in unity, such a mosaic of humanity.

Scientific temperament is another big advantage which we inherited from builders of modern India, especially from Pandit Nehru. He influenced the thinking of our generations and made them athirst for a free, democratic and secular India with science and technology as its driving force while the world around us indulged in religious fanaticism and fatalism ignoring the basic human needs.

But a glance over the failures during these years is rather more disturbing. The main among them is persisting poverty and unemployment. In the second Nehru Memorial Lecture, Lord Mountbatten referred to his first interview with Nehru on March 24, 1947, when he asked Nehru what he thought was the greatest problem confronting India. Nehru replied: “The economic problem”. That problem stubbornly refuses to go away. India has 15 per cent of the world’s population but only 1.5 per cent of world’s income and is one among the poorest countries of the world. Half of our people still live below the subsistence line. Their plight seems timeless and unchanging.

Perceptive observers in foreign countries where Indians work and prosper are baffled by one question — how does India with its great human potential and natural resources manage to remain poor. We are second to none in intelligence and the spirit of enterprise and we have all the skill and capability to be a great economic power. The answer to which would not be flattering to our politicians and bureaucrats because we are poor not because of the nature but poor by our policy and deeds. One would not be wrong, if one calls India the world’s leading expert in the art of perpetuating poverty.

Our another major problem is rampant corruption all around. It is a paradox of history that the empire builders of a foreign land who started their acts in India with naked corruption ended up handing over a relatively clean administration to the builders of independent India. It is a greater paradox that although our nation builders started off with the highest standards of probity and purity, we find ourselves trapped in the cesspool of corruption.

Every aspect of our national activity — agriculture, industry, commerce, administration, sports and even literature — has a political projection. The result is the emergence at the top of professional politicians who depend upon politicking for their income and livelihood. The attraction of politics has grown over the years making the ambitious and the enterprising either take to politics directly or to seek alliances with politicians. This has resulted in a growing rapport between business, bureaucracy, press, criminals and politicians.

The quality of our public life has reached the nadir. Further, with the intelligentsia disillusioned and by and large shunning politics and going into professions, politics has become the preserve of those who generally cannot make equal headway in other walks of life. The only qualification required for politics is the capacity to intrigue, to play one another and jockey oneself to the pinnacle. The cumulative result of these developments has been a kind of entente between those who yield power and those who call the tune and the absence of a healthy middle class bulwark against administrative corruption and political dishonesty.

The milling crowd that witnessed the hoisting of the tricolour on August 15, 1947, and the millions in all parts of the country who were a part of such exciting scenes elsewhere did not aspire for the stars. They did not ask for milk and honey flowing through India after the British left. But they had not bargained for what they are living through today with layers and layers of corruption around. They did expect that their country would be better, freer, cleaner and a more decent place for them and their progeny to live in.

Further, the administrative techniques pursued by the Government are the same as were cast in a concrete mould more than a century ago. Files and minutes still go perpetually from official to official and from ministry to ministry. As a result, nothing moves except the river Ganga “round and round”. Lord Curzon, the famous British Viceroy, once noted: “Like the diurnal revolution of the earth went the file stately solemn and same phenomenon”. Decades later Malcolm Muggeridge observed the same phenomenon, “It was Government pure and undefiled endlessly minuting and circulating files, which like time itself, had neither beginning nor end, but just were”.

Today the situation remains unchanged. Only the number of files has increased a million fold. Every segment of society is festooned with red tape. Millions of manhours are wasted everyday in coping with inane bureaucratic regulations.

Another problem which has plagued our system is increasing violence. Never before in our republic’s history has violence marked our national life on a scale so widespread as at present. We have enough religions to hate one another but not enough to love one another. Violence is on the throne today. Its victims among others, are helpless passengers in buses and trains, loyal workers in strike-bound factories and innocent citizens. In the recent years terrorism, both cross-border and state, has come home to us with a strange poignancy. Unfortunately, our legal system has made life too easy for criminals and too difficult for law-abiding citizens.

One may apply to India the words used by late Benigno Aquino about the Philippines — “Here is a land in which a few are spectacularly rich while the masses remain abjectly poor...... where freedom and its blessings are a reality for a minority and an illusion for many... a land consecrated to democracy but a land of privilege and rank — a republic dedicated to equality but mired in an archaic system of caste”.

But the picture is not entirely of unrelieved gloom. We have an imperishable heritage. Since measures of innate potential of the country are afforded by its actual achievement against heavy odds, the country has set its sights high. We are a recognised nuclear power and have satellites in space.

There is a basic lesson of Indian history. Our people have always taken their moral standards from their rulers. The people have risen to great heights when they have basked in the glow of noble rulers. The present generation is waiting for such a leader. Otherwise also the people today, specially after the Kargil war, are in a mood which comes rarely in the life of a country. They are looking forward, starry-eyed to a new direction, a new era, a new life. It is a moment for our leadership for shaping and moulding a new society, for giving a new and clear orientation to nation.

(The author is Chairman, Department of Gandhian Studies, Panjab University, Chandigarh.)

Bangabandhu and Bangladesh
by Sheikh Hasina

TO the people of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman is the founding father of their independent, sovereign state. Lovingly, they used to call him Bangabandhu, the Friend of Bengal. To me, apart from what he was to his people, he is a father, my father. Often one has to pay a price for being the child of a great man. I had to pay it too, the highest price, on August 15, 1975, when he was brutally killed by some military men in his own home in Dhaka early in the morning, along with my mother, my brothers and their wives and even my youngest brother, who was only 10. My sister Rehana and I escaped, since we were abroad with my husband, a scientist, then studying in Germany.

I did not see my father much as a young girl. He was busy with his work as a political leader and was, quite frequently, and for long spells of time, in jail. He was tall and handsome, with a deep, resounding voice, and very affectionate. Once when after a long period of absence, he returned home to our ancestral village, Tungipara, Kamal, my younger brother, then a small boy, asked me if he could go to my father and call him father too. If Bangabandhu had one quality, it was his enormous, unparalleled ability to love the people of his land. He could go to any length to help and serve them and he did. His courage never failed him. He was not a man to make any compromise when the interest of the people was at stake. He was not self-seeking at all. When the Awami League, his party, won the majority seats in the Pakistan Parliament in 1970, he could have easily given up his demand for the autonomy of the then East Pakistan and gone for the position of Prime Minister. He did not. Without him Bangladesh would not have emerged in the map of the world as an independent country in 1971. The Liberation War of Bangladesh was fought in his name and no one other than he could have declared the independence of the country. The hold he had over the people of Bangladesh is matchless in recent times. They loved him as much as he loved them and responded fearlessly to his call to liberate the country.

Bangabandhu’s dream was to realise Sonar Bangla, the Golden Bengal, a happy and prosperous land, where people were free from hunger and disease and where social justice reigned supreme. All through his life, he suffered for his people. I have had my share of suffering too. I have been in exile for long. I have faced bullets and political repression. I have fought against dictators and military rulers. I had to struggle relentlessly to restore to the people of my land their democratic rights. I have been put under house arrest many times, I had to take a great personal risk to restore peace in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of my country, torn by strike for more than two decades.

After the brutal assassination of Bangabandhu, a regime of plots and assassinations began in the political domain of Bangladesh, Change in political power was brought about by conspiracies and plots, through unconstitutional means and in gross violation of the Constitution of the People’s Republic. This became a normal trend, I have established people’s rights through prolonged struggle. Many leaders of my party and our followers have laid down their lives in these struggles for the restoration of the rights of the people. Many have become handicapped and maimed as a result of physical torture and repression. I have established democracy after a lot of sacrifice.

Now my aim is; to establish people’s rights to food, i.e. their economic emancipation. I want to build a Bangladesh free from poverty and hunger. For this we have to build a new society, on the ruins of a anachronistic, moth eaten one. Such a society would ensure the people of this country the fulfilment of their basic needs — need for food, clothing, shelter, education, health and employment. This I believe would redeem my father’s dream of a Golden Bengal, not for the privileged few, but for every citizen of this country. My father is my ideal, as he is of millions, and I would continue to work until the last day of my life to fulfil his dream and complete his unfinished task. That now is my only ambition in life.

(The author is the Prime Minister of Bangladesh.)

Crowning glory
by D.R. Sharma

THE first time it throbbed and ached was in Shimla, 37 years ago. I rushed to one German dental surgeon with a sparkling clinic on the Mall. I had often seen him watching streams of amblers between Combermere Bridge and Scandal Point. What always struck me was the row of degrees against his name, particularly the one from Vienna.

He looked at the tooth, warned me against myriad quacks in the town, and asked me not to worry. “My kit is Austrian,” he said. “You have a cavity which I’ll fill in 15 minutes.”

I returned to the YMCA with a spring in my steps. When I told some friends about the orthodontist, one of them with a long dental history asked me not to be euphoric. “If he has straightaway done the filling, then the pain can recur at night,” he remarked.

And that is what happened. At night the tooth with the filled cavity began to throb and ache with greater intensity. In the morning I noticed palpable swelling on the jaw holding that tooth. The friend who had the premonition asked me to see a native doctor without any string of degrees. And when I sat in the dental chair, he first removed the filling with the Austrian material, gave me some pain-killer and called me after a week for the filling part.

The tooth began to bite again with full ferocity — and it kept biting well for years together, at home as well as abroad. It enjoyed cracking the hard stuff in the American cuisine but the parathas in Northern Ireland intimidated it. The filling fell and the hollow tooth got exposed to all kinds of Irish threats. Luckily we were on our way back home, and the clove oil in Belfast numbed the pain.

Soon after arrival I ran to someone in a government hospital. When he looked at the crying cavity he said: “I can take care of the pain part and do the filling in a couple of days but I can’t save your tooth. I don’t have the means in this hospital to raise walls for your tooth.” Very candidly he told me that the round little thing with which he would plug the socket could come out, maybe in a week, a month, or stay in as well for a year or so.

When it came out after a couple of years he advised me to meet a competent young man who built walls and posts for the hollow teeth. And when I met him he asked me to first get the X-ray of the tooth. When I got him one he looked at it from different angles and remarked: “I think I can save it, but you rightaway get it rootcanalled.”

Now the tooth with the Austrian and Irish experience is ready for a crown. Shuttling between the prosthodontist and the technician I’m waiting these days for the coronation of my battered tooth.

A countdown to N-conflict?

by Tavleen Singh

ON the day that the Pakistani plane was shot down in Gujarat last week, I happened to finish reading a terrifying, little book by Amitav Ghosh called “Countdown”. Ghosh, one of the best known India writers in English of the moment had been sent to India by the New Yorker magazine to do an assessment of India and Pakistan after last May’s nuclear tests. The article he wrote was considered so significant that an Indian publisher asked him to expand it into a book, hence “Countdown”.

The book, only recently released, has quickly shot into best-seller charts in India not just because Amitav Ghosh is a well-known name but also because in “Countdown” he tells a frightening tale of what is likely to happen in South Asia as a result of the tests. He believes that “there is every reason to fear a nuclear catastrophe” because both India and Pakistan have ballistic missiles capable of hitting each other’s major cities and also because of the mistrust and paranoia that define the relationship.

We only have to look at the reactions to the shooting down of the plane last week to know just how deep this mistrust is. In Delhi, nobody seems to have even the faintest doubt that the plane was shot down because it had entered Indian territory.

To find out exactly what happened I rang Raminder Jassal, Joint Secretary (External Publicity), Ministry of External Affairs, and this is what he had to say. “The plane was shot down after it was warned that it had intruded and should, therefore, land at a specified place. Instead of doing this it turned towards one of our fighters in a seemingly hostile gesture when it was shot. There is a 1991 agreement between India and Pakistan which says clearly that surveillance aircraft come under the rubric of combat aircraft and should therefore not fly within 10 kilometres of each other’s borders. So, there was a definite violation”.

He added that the kind of aircraft that was shot down was capable of carrying torpedoes, surface-to-air and anti-shipping missiles, mines and bombs so our fighters were unlikely to have wasted much time wondering about its motives. As soon as it showed hostile behaviour it was shot down.

This may sound credible enough to you and me but the Pakistani side of the story is completely different and undoubtedly sounds as credible to the average Pakistani. Their story is that the plane was flying in Pakistani territory and was on a routine, unarmed flight when it was shot down. It was left to Pakistan’s chief loudmouth, Information Minister Mushahid Hussain, to read sinister meanings into what happened.

India was probably taking revenge, he announced, for the two fighter-planes that Pakistan shot down in Kargil. To most Indians a statement like that may sound bizarre and ludicrous but in a country gripped by the idea of Islamic wars and smarting from the defeat in Kargil, this kind of revenge shooting is likely to be believed, just as Pakistanis are more likely to believe their own Foreign Minister when he says that India is deliberately provoking Pakistan into further hostilities. You and I know that this is highly unlikely considering that most of our politicians are busy preparing for the general election but this vast difference in perceptions is what leads Amitav Ghosh to conclude that a nuclear war is possible in South Asia.

He then provides a chilling description of what will happen — a description that he bases on the analysis of various experts on nuclear warfare. Ground Zero in Delhi, he says is likely to be the top of Raisina Hill which separates North and South Blocks. This is where the maximum impact of the explosion would be felt and this is his description of what is likely to happen.

“By the time the fireball reached the facades of North and South Blocks it would probably have cooled to about 300,000 degrees. Although this would be no more than a fraction of its original temperature, it would be enough to kill every living thing within several hundred feet of explosion. Those caught on open ground would evaporate: those shielded by the buildings’ thick walls would be incinerated....... South and North Blocks, like many of the ceremonial buildings in New Delhi, are made principally of pink Rajasthan sandstone. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki granite surfaces and ceramic tiles were found to have melted up to several hundred feet from the points of explosion. Sandstone is considerably less dense than granite. The facades of the two Blocks would probably melt like candlewax, so would the dome and walls of Rashtrapati Bhavan and possibly even a portion of India Gate”.

Around 200,000 people would die in Delhi, experts estimate, and in Mumbai this figure could go up to 800,000 but it is the dead who will be the lucky ones. Those who survive will face the possibility that our hospitals — crowded and inadequate at the best of times — will have been destroyed completely since they are in the centre of our cities and the possibility of all municipal and other services being completely destroyed.

While talking to Mr Jassal I mentioned “Countdown” and asked him if he did not think we should be doing much more to reduce the mistrust between our two countries. This is what he said: “We have been trying to do exactly this. The whole Lahore visit was about this, the Prime Minister going to the Minar-e-Pakistan was about this but after Kargil we can only think of dialogue if Pakistan is prepared to reaffirm the inviolability of the LoC (Line of Control) and we consider cross-border terrorism as a violation of the LoC”.

So, where do we go from here? In the absence of official dialogue between the two countries it is, perhaps, only pressure from ordinary people that will make a difference, especially on the nuclear issue.

After the tests we had the absurd spectacle of people dancing in the streets in both countries and worshipping the bomb as if it were some new deity. This has to stop. Nuclear bombs are weapons of mass destruction and if they are used in South Asia we will be destroying the whole sub-continent. This message has to be got through to people who are illiterate enough to think of the bomb as some kind of a new status symbol.

Books like “Countdown” are a good beginning and should be circulated in both countries as widely as possible but since most people do not read in India or Pakistan, what really needs to be used is television. We have so many NGOs (non-governmental organisations) stirring up trouble all over the place, why is that none of them have discovered how important a role they have to play here? Meanwhile, we need to all start praying that our governments will discover how important it is to start talking to each other again.

Old wine in new bottles

by Amita Malik

THE big bash to announce the launch of two 24-hour channels by Doordarshan could not have been more glitzy. A vast hall in a five-star hotel overflowing with stars and producers flown up from Bombay, a long statement by the CEO of Prasar Bharati saying how DD was the mostest and the bestest, video projections about the “new” programmes with formidable technical back-ups, more statements, including some all-too-brief but frank and thought-provoking ones by Prasar Bharati Board members U.R. Rao and B.G. Verghese, followed by questions and answers. After two hours of this, a sit-down buffet lunch with three desserts. Basu couldn’t have done it more lavishly.

But after it all, one looks back on the sum total with some doubts. The hop-skip-and jump video was not very edifying, many old and hoary programmes being their mainstay and the new serials not exactly showing signs of moving with the times. The statistics (TRP’s) were meant to prove DD is the mostest and the bestest, naturally, for which satellite channel can even aspire to compete with DD’s vast terrestrial reach. When the CEO was asked why cable operators were so reluctant to show DD’s programmes properly if they were so good, after all they are in business and it proves a lack of demand, the CEO said it was due to “manipulation”, although he could not name by whom and he admitted that cable operators did give better quality for DD’s popular (meaning film-based) programmes. In any case he sternly warned, if not threatened, cable operators that in addition to the present law requiring that they show at least two DD channels, government might have to compel them to show them on prime channels. Strange that the danda should have to be applied to show DD’s wonderful programmes. All in all, one got the impression that we shall get 24 hours of the same, the stress being on quantity as far as software goes and not quality. And as Mr. Verghese pointed out, a public service broadcaster should not be just looking after its commercial interest but also community broadcasting. He also pointed out the importance of radio and the efficacy of FM channels in winning back listeners. One might point out in this context that radio still has larger audiences in India, particularly for those who cannot afford or get TV, than the cinema and television.

The 24-hour news channel (with mostly repeats after midnight instead of DD and AIR going to sleep at night, like good sarkari departments) will have a soft launch, and just as well. Because digging up sub-standard, sometimes retired newscasters to read more and more sarkari bulletins will hardly help. The statement by Mr Verghese that Prasar Bharati has given instructions that pressure by political parties on the newsroom will be monitored and complaints can be registered with the DG(News) of AIR sound a trifle optimistic in view of the cells set up by certain parties to monitor news on all media channels and newspapers to bring pressure on editors and other news personnel to come to heel. Can a poor DG pursue such blatant moves by politicians or will a post-mortem come only when the elections are over?

The coverage of Kargil has proved DD’s inadequacies. AIR sent three reporters promptly having hired a cab from Srinagar to make it to Kargil. DD recalled its most experienced reporter on Kashmir after a week and sent him on an educational course, in-house. Then DD waited for a week for a helicopter, which, it was alleged, the army did not give them while private channels made it by helicopter quite easily as soon as the army permitted. Again, the explanation was “manipulation”. One doubts if the army can be manipulated, least of all to keep a government channel out. It reminds one of the classic occasion when Saeed Naqvi got the first world exclusive with Nelson Mandela when he came out of prison. Without a satellite from DD, Naqvi borrowed some time from the BBC’s satellite and frantically rang up Doordarshan in Delhi. The DDG (News) said she had to ask the DG and the Secretary of the Department first and they were not available. Naqvi and India lost their world scoop. DD does not seem to have changed much nor is it likely to under political and bureaucratic tutelage in the near future. As B.G.” Verghese said, Prasar Bharati is only half autonomous. One can only wait for the other half. But for how long?

75 YEARS AGO

Will Das be unseated?

IN the political clubs at the roadsides it is being talked about for the past few days that Mr C.R. Das has been unseated as the result of the election petition against him. We do not know and cannot vouch for the authenticity of the statement.

These small political prophets further say that no re-election in Mr Das’s constituency will be arranged before the proposed supplementary demands for the Ministers’ salaries passes unscathed out of the legislative anvil.

The fear of these prophets is certainly strengthened by the fate of other similar election cases. Mr B. Chakarbarty has been unseated and the seat is still kept vacant, Mr DeLisle resigned but a successor soon stepped into his shoes. Mr Jones has resigned, and a fresh election has been declared. The oldest election dispute, that against Rai Pyarelal Das Bahadur, has yet to be settled.