P A G E
Monday, June 14, 1999
today's calendar
|
E D I T O R I A L P A G E |
Monday, June 14, 1999 |
| weather n
spotlight today's calendar |
||
|
Warn them of nemesis India’s Cup of woes
HANDLING DEFENCE SERVICES Welfare state and Europe |
 |
Mutilated bodies; Red Cross
powerless
Attack on Kashmiri Pandits:
genocide or no?
The idea business
Alleged culpable homicide |
||||||||
 |
|
|
There have been innumerable sessions of bilateral talks — and talks about talks — before New Delhi's foredoomed Hyderabad House dialogue between India's External Affairs Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, and his Pakistani counterpart, Mr Sartaj Aziz, on Saturday. Nobody expected any positive result from this farcical exercise materialised for the sake of propaganda mileage by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Not even a hint about the possibility of finding a way out of the Kargil imbroglio emerged at the end of the show. Mr Sartaj Aziz came with a mandate given to his government by its military masters. One need not go beyond the taped text of the conversation between Lt-Gen Mohammed Aziz, Chief of the General Staff of Pakistan , and the Army Chief, Gen Pervez Musharraf. Mr Sartaj Aziz obeyed the orders implicit in the May 26 and May 29 military consultations. Mr Jaswant Singh was prepared for the verbal journey to nowhere. On his part, the issues were clear — and announced in advance: the vacation of aggression in Kargil, the restoration of the status quo ante, and a promise of the award of adequate punishment to those who were perpetrating barbarism on Indian soldiers in their custody. Mr Sartaj Aziz left no room for the success or failure of the talks. According to his inanimatedly articulated brief, his Army was not involved in the conflict; the "intruders" were Kashmiri "freedom fighters". Pakistan had not violated the Line of Control because there was no LoC "demarcated on the ground". Indian soldiers were not tortured. India was making atrocious accusations. The military action in the Dras-Kargil-Batalik belt should end. India should surrender more territory and allow Pakistan to sanctify and perpetuate aggression. That is that. The result: The process of dialogue has been abandoned by Pakistan. About 28 years of consonant history has been negated and the LoC has been subjected to sacrilege. Pakistani soldiers have become "freedom fighters" in the process of Goebbelsian myth-making. Islamabad would not buzz from its stand or positions. Mr Jaswant Singh, a generally reticent, polite but determined person, has exposed the mendacious Pakistani skulduggery. "It would be a misnomer to call it (Saturday's parley) a dialogue", he said. He knew, among other things, much about Pakistan's plan to grab the entire Turtuk valley and to capture Ladakh by various means. No reasonableness could be injected into the process of aggressive distortions. The area of trust had been transgressed. Moments after returning
home, Mr Sartaj Aziz started uttering war-threats. What
if China had not made an anti-India statement? Mr Jaswant
Singh would visit Beijing as the Pakistani Minister had
visited New Delhi. The Pakistani defence budget had been
increased by 11 per cent. To hell with world opinion! War
(jang), after all, is an ordinary, little word in the
fundamentalist vocabulary. What if Pakistan got a beating
more shattering than what it had got in 1971? Oh! that
Bangladesh business? That is the fact. India must pay for
it. It is election time for the politically disturbed
nation. What would Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee do? Well, Mr
Sartaj Aziz, the entire nation has risen as one man to
have the aggression vacated. Despite certain undiplomatic
statements made by the Defence Minister and a slip in an
external communication emanating from the Prime
Minister's pen, Mr Jaswant Singh's visit to China will
not go in vain. Mr Vajpayee has seen blood and inhaled
gunpowder smoke in Kargil. The defence forces are in full
preparedness. In any assault on India, there will be no
reactionary among the progressives. We must redeem
ourselves in the northern state because we have hugged
illusions of amity. National security demands that we
become more stern, strong, purposeful and ruthless.
Remember the salute of Ayub Khan to Lal Bahadur Shastri
or that of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to over-magnanimous Indira
Gandhi in the hour of defeat? Pakistan must be warned of
yet another nemesis. |
|
India's quest for cricket's version of the Holy Grail ended rather abruptly on Friday when Pakistan virtually beat the daylight out of Zimbabwe in their final Super Six game of the World Cup.Indian cricket coach Anshuman Gaekwad, among the countless mediocre cricketers who have played for the country, was the first to put the blame on the format and the rules evolved for the last World Cup of the millennium. Of course, the jobless pundits too would in due course produce reams on the flaws in the format by pointing to the "redundant" league match Pakistan lost to Bangladesh and the elimination of India from the contest even before its last Super Six game against New Zealand. It would be instructive to know from the self-appointed pundits of the game of cricket the reason why South Africa did not crib about losing points to Zimbabwe after leading the pack,as it were, in Group A. Australia from Group B found itself on a similar sticky wicket as India with no points in its Super Six kitty. It is not complaining. If anything,Steve Waugh,the Australian captain,must have said a silent prayer of thanksgiving for his bad luck with the toss in the Super Six games against India and Zimbabwe which helped him pick up four valuable points in the competition. To blame the format and the rules for India's "sudden death" in the World Cup is nothing but a clumsy attempt to protect those who should be hung by the nearest lamppost for destroying the team by handing it over to too many lousy cooks like Gaekwad,Brijesh Patel and Ravinder Chaddha, who in their playing days were not famous for consistently setting the stands on fire through their cricketing skills. Consultant Bobby Simpson's role too needs to be explained. Was it possible for him to transform the players into a match-winning team by spending just a few days with them? The first basic blunder
was committed by the Board of Control for Cricket in
India when on the eve of the World Cup it embarked on the
hare-brained scheme of "experimenting" by
pushing greenhorns at the deep end while other
countries,including Pakistan, were in the process of fine
tuning their strategy for the cricket calendar's biggest
event. There is lobby which loves going for Mohammad
Azharuddin for the shortcomings of the team as a whole.
However, it was under his leadership that India put the
last nail in the coffin of defending champions Sri Lanka,
dashed the dreams of hosts England of proceeding further
in the tournament and made it a hat-trick of victories
over Pakistan in the World Cup. India has yet to taste
defeat at the hands of Pakistan in a World Cup game. To
be fair his captaincy in the games against England and
Pakistan was top class. Instead of crying over spilt milk
a better approach would be to start preparing for the
next World Cup, to be hosted by South Africa, with
special emphasis on fielding and bowling and playing as a
team. In the meantime let us root for Pakistan [no,
cricket is not Kargil]. It would be an equally happy
ending if the Cup that brings joy to countless cricket
fans in the sub-continent remains either with India,
Pakistan or Sri Lanka Three consecutive defeats after a
stunning start in the championship made the pundits
believe that Pakistan may have run out of steam. However,
if the sustain the form they displayed in the Super Six
match against Zimbabwe, they are capable of bringing back
the World Cup, symbol of cricket supremacy, to the
subcontinent.
|
HANDLING
DEFENCE SERVICES ON failing to break through the British lines at El-Elamein during World War II, Rommel pulled back his forces and took up a defensive line, bristling with tanks and anti-tank guns. It was imperative for the British forces to breach this line at the earliest and push the Germans back. This task was given to 9 Armoured Brigade.The brigade commander protested that it would result in his losing almost 80 per cent of his tanks. His corps commander informed him that the army commander was prepared to accept 100 per cent casualties. Did the army commander really say so, and could he afford to lose the finest armoured formation in the Eighth Army in this manner? Such a thought never crossed the brigade commander’s mind. Out of 123 tanks that went into battle, only eight survived. No written order was ever issued for this operation. This happens almost daily in every war. Men and officers work on mutual trust and the spoken word is as good as the written, and commanders mean what they say and say it in clear and precise language. That is the ethos on which armies work and succeed. But all this is foreign to our Defence Minister, Mr George Fernandes, who can change his statements faster than anybody and anything. Even what is said on TV for all to see and hear is retractable for him. What confidence would he inspire in the defence services where a word from a senior is taken at its face value and binds one to an irrevocable commitment. More and more of the “other side” of Mr Fernandes is coming to light. The better discerning minds did get fair glimpses of it during the Bhagwat episode. In retrospect, how much of what Mr Fernandes said was true? Admiral Bhagwat, throughout that controversy, maintained that his minister was not telling the whole truth and revealing all. Does he mean what he says and promises to the defence services? There are reasons to harbour serious doubts on this issue. While it may be part of an Indian politician’s “mental make-up” to shift positions and alter statements, such a disposition would hardly fit into the military system and working, and would lead to mistrust, suspicion and forfeiture of confidence leading to confusion, with the plans and operations going awry. Would his orders carry the seriousness and conviction to demand obedience and faithful implementation when the change in the stance may be round the corner, or a simple denial of having given them in the first place a distinct possibility? Public discussion or pronouncements on many sensitive defence issues should be avoided, and some others require circumspection and caution when needed to be revealed to the Press. Mr Fernandes can throw caution to the winds and enlighten the world about the country’s main adversary, without regard to the damage such a statement can inflict on the country’s diplomacy and the relations with it. He had gone public and set a deadline of one month to integrate the service headquarters with the MoD. On protest from the Service Chiefs he set up an “anomalies committee” to go into the injustice done to the services by the Fifth Pay Commission. Many months have passed and nothing more has been heard of these two issues. He has made many promises on issuing orders early on, “one rank one pension”. At Anandpur Sahib he announced that the issue of “one rank one pension” has been settled and the orders will be issued in a few days. Nearly two months have since passed and nothing has materialised. A few recalcitrant and obdurate officers of the MoD were sent to Siachen to acquaint them with the conditions at the glacier, for better understanding of the demands of the Army deployed there. It is learnt that these officers never went to Siachen but came back from Leh. The bureaucracy in the MoD seems to block the Defence Minister at every step, and he is none the wiser for it. Mr Ram Jethmalani too was stonewalled by his secretary in the Urban Development Ministry. The political executive seems to have no hold over the bureaucracy and the latter has taken the bit in its mouth and is taking them all for a ride. Mr Fernandes told the nation that its most guarded secret had been leaked to the Press by Admiral Bhagwat. That secret, if it is one, is there in its full details in world publications on weapons and equipment and the Internet. Was this statement and accusation out of ignorance or on purpose, only he can tell, provided, in keeping with his style, he does not deny it all? He failed to carry conviction on the key issues that led to sacking of the Naval Chief, even though his TV interviews and discussions were sadly stage managed. According to him, the ongoing mischief at Kargil is the exclusive handiwork of the Pakistan army, and that the noble ISI and Mr Nawaz Sharif were totally innocent and oblivious of this diabolical operation of considerable scale backed by extensive and detailed preparations. His source of this dark secret is an innocuous tape of dubious source or perhaps a plant, played at the Cabinet Committee meeting. Only he opted to volunteer the information to the Press and when the naivete and absurdity of such a proposition dawned on him and it appeared too ridiculous for words he promptly retracted, his reply faithfully recorded by TV cameras notwithstanding. Is he really so gullible? Now link this to what Mr Ajit Kumar, the previous Defence Secretary, fed him about Admiral Bhagwat. Then, of course, there is the retrieved statement on safe passage to the aggressors of Kargil. What sort of signals does the safe passage statement throw up for the troops who have put their lives on the line and are battling against impossible odds to drive out these violators of the sanctity of our frontiers and when these “honoured guests” of Mr George Fernandes are shooting them down. His inexplicable silence during the critical period from May 6 to 20 when the extent and scale of ingress in the Dras-Kargil-Batalic sector had come to light, and two of our patrols had been despatched by the enemy, remains unexplained. It was left to the Chief Minister of J and K to echo the urgent demands of the Army for the deployment of the IAF. It was only when the Chief Minister rushed to Delhi and nudged the authorities that the IAF was committed on May 26 after a delay of a few weeks. Why was it left to the Chief Minister of J and K to take up the military’s urgent calls for help from the IAF? How was the Army Chief allowed to proceed on a foreign tour when the development at Kargil had surfaced? This is not to overlook the Army Chief’s own judgement and priorities. With the BJP coming to power, the defence services, more so a few million ex-servicemen, felt that they would receive a sympathetic and just response from the government and the years of wrongs and injustice done to them would be set right. In Mr George Fernandes the services had high hopes, which were reinforced with the good start he apparently made. Their expectations have been belied, and there is disillusionment and dismay among the retired defence services personnel. The BJP is fast losing this important and large constituency. Mr Fernandes has allowed himself to be stymied by the bureaucracy in the MoD at every step. The Fifth Pay Commission has delivered a body-blow to the morale of troops, and he has not only failed to set right the great injustice done to the defence services but has also managed to add a few of his own. Several former service chiefs have expressed their serious concern over the manner in which the defence forces were being handled in general by the government and the Defence Minister in particular. The three retired and highly respected service chiefs took the unusual step of meeting the Prime Minister on this grave issue and once again raised the question of Admiral Bhagwat’s sacking which has left a permanent scar on defence services’ psyche. They also pointed out that the then Defence Secretary, Mr Ajit Kumar, against whom the court had passed strong strictures and adversely commented on his integrity, was completely let off. The service chiefs went to the extent of pointing out that, “Armed forces cannot be taken for granted. They may react in a manner not expected of them.” By George, mark their words! The author, a retired
Lieut-General, was a Deputy Chief of Army Staff. |
Welfare
state and Europe THE World Bank and most Indian intellectuals don’t tire of stressing the need for the government to increase its expenditures on public welfare — the provision of social safety nets to those out of work in particular. The fact is that Europe is reaping the fruits of following precisely such a policy. The rates of unemployment are high, rates of growth are low and the euro is continuously falling. On the other hand, the USA and the UK are forging ahead having followed exactly opposite policies under Mr Reagan and Mrs Thatcher. It is time for us to wake up to the fact that the welfare state will drag us into the same quagmire that it successfully drawn Europe into. We need to put into place policies that create employment instead. According to the IMF’s recent study, “World Economic Outlook”, the unemployment rate in Europe at 12 per cent is nearly double the rate prevailing in the USA. The main reason is that “high labour costs encouraged capital-intensive production in Europe... (and) also made many activities in Europe unprofitable”. These high costs of labour, in turn, have been a result of the following four factors. First, Europe has had a policy of heavily taxing those who are employed in order to support those who are not. For those who were employed these taxes reduced the incentive “to aim for better paying employment” because most of the additional incomes would be taxed away; and for those who were not, the “generous unemployment benefits reduce the pressure on the unemployed to price themselves into employment”. The result was that both had no incentive to work! Second, the productivity of labour increased both in Europe and the USA. But Europe chose to “raise real wages (with little growth in employment), while in the USA it translated primarily into rising employment, with only a modest increase in the real wage”. In other words, Europe chose to protect the interests of those currently employed even though it meant the unemployed would continue to eke out subsistence out of welfare doles; and it also meant that the European industry would price itself out of global competition. The Americans took the opposite course. They provided work to a larger number of their people and maintained their position in the global economy. Third, the taxes and expenditures of the European governments are “already high by historical and international standards”, in part because of high welfare expenditures. These taxes act as a brake on business expansion. Fourth, rigid labour regulations, which prevented part-time work and lay-offs, assure high minimum wages, and prohibited contract employment acted as a disincentive for companies to employ more persons. The result is that a smaller number of the employed people have “shouldered the burden of the expanding welfare state” in Europe. But, the IMF cautions, this state of affairs is not sustainable. The economy and the number of employed persons continue to decline due to an increased tax burden, high wages, bloated government expenditures and rigid labour regulations. A declining economy implies an increasing number of the unemployed who have to be supported in the coming years. This implies ever-increasing rates of taxes which will eventually price Europe out altogether. The collapse of the welfare state is inevitable as it gets weighed down by its own burden. The World Bank approach of expanding the welfare state does not withstand these objections. The Bank case rests on the belief that these problems are temporary. Increased growth will eventually create more employment. The problem is to ride over the hump. It fails to answer why the “temporary” welfare state will not pull down the economy permanently as it has done in Europe. The recommendations made by the IMF in this backdrop should be an eye-opener for our intellectuals and policy makers. First, wage rates should be made flexible. Minimum wages should be scaled down. Second, employment security — the prohibition of dismissal and layoff — should be reduced. Companies should be allowed flexibility in adjusting their work-force to their requirements rather than carry an unnecessary overload. Third, obstacles placed by the unionised workers for lower-wage or contract employment of the unemployed must be dismantled. Fourth, and this is important in our context, instead of providing welfare benefits unrelated to employment we should shift to employment-linked incentives. Last, and this is equally important, it says that on-the-job training should be promoted, not “classroom training”. The IMF goes on to say that the European countries had agreed to implement many of these proposals in mid-nineties but they have so far failed to implement. Thus there is no dispute about the need for these policies. There is a consensus on the approach. The difficulty is that the beneficiaries of this system — those who are presently employed — are in a majority and they do not want to let go of their existing benefits. It does not matter to
them that their high wages are leading to the decline of
their economy, that companies are shifting their plants
to countries with less restrictive labour practices, and
that bright workers are migrating to where there are
greater incentives to work. Europe is clearly losing the
race. The most visible sign is the continual decline of
the euro since it was launched six months ago. |
The idea
business ENGAGING your imagination in order to create a picture of a future desired situation is called visualisation. In other words, it is a scripted day-dream. This concept is effectively used in health-care, i.e. helping patients to see themselves robust again. It is again used in the sports arena where athletes use it to see themselves winning. It is used in weightlifting where the lifter imagines and sees in the mental eye that he has lifted a certain weight and proceeds to lift it successfully. What happens here is that it gives all a sense of familiarity with the goal they have set. In 1950 in Yale University in the USA, a questionnaire was sent out to 1500 students; the topics ranged from the quality of food in the canteen to access to the library. Two questions were important here. One was: ‘Do you have an ambition in your life?’ The second was: ‘Have you written it down?’ Twentyfive years later, a postgraduate student who accidentally came across this questionnaire was interested in these two questions to do a bit of further Research. He discovered that 75 per cent of the 1500 had an ambition in their lives but only 3.3 per cent had written it down. He tracked down as many as he could and found that everyone of the 51 students who had written their goals down could realise their dreams: Whether it was commerce, government or business. Some of the others had achieved more by chance than design; many had ended up in careers they had not planned. The researcher realised that a daydream is not a dream but fertile seeds of reality. It is believed that writing a clear goal down is so effective because it programs or reprograms your brain to an objective; it actively changes the mental perception. You must have seen a stage hypnotist putting people into a trance and then, at a subconscious level, instructing them to do certain things. Though writing down things is not self-hypnosis, writing things down helps to print the goal on the subconscious mind and once the information is thus printed, the subconscious works continuously non-stop to make it a reality. The brain reinforces its images not just with visual signals but also with sound, smell and other senses. Writing down something serves as a reinforcement in achieving the task you have set. The most remarkable ability that we have which is different from other species is our ability to harness our imagination. It is imagination alone that has enabled us to create great art, entertainment, discover cures for ailments or achieve great feats in Engineering. Norman Vincent Peale (1898-1993) the Guru for positive thinking says: Formulate an indelible stamp on your mind, a mental picture of yourself as succeeding. Hold this picture tenaciously. Never permit it to fade and your mind will seek to develop that picture”. In 1990, Toyota employed 47000 people who generated 1.8 million suggestions. Some were unworkable but many had the colour of genius. It explains how Toyota created the Lexus, a luxury car that went in record time from the drawing board to the showroom and later to occupy the prime position in the highly competitive luxury car market. Jack Welch, Chairman and CEO of General Electric says: “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision and relentlessly drive it to completion. Whatever business or profession you are in, think of yourself in the Idea. Business”. Encourage, nurture and develop those ideas. You will notice that you are moving forward forever. Albert Einstein once
admitted; “I know quite certainly that I myself have
no special talent. Curiosity, obsession and dogged
endurance combined with self-criticism have brought me my
ideas”. Nothing was ever created that did not first
exist as a dream in someone’s imagination. No matter
how fantastic or unrealistic, it sprouted from the mind
of a human Being. Look at yourself. Whatever you have
achieved is the result of an idea or dream planted years
ago! |
STRANGE, nay startling, are the ways of the National Human Rights Commission, India’s premier agency for the protection of human rights. Even as the nation receives back its uniformed dead from Pakistan, brutalised, disfigured and mutilated in defiance of all norms of international law and humanity, the Commission has declared that the militants in Kashmir were guilty only of trying to achieve secession but not of the crime of genocide. Headed by a former Chief Justice of India, the Commission — which generally takes a very expansive view of its powers and the concept of “human rights”, stretching them to include starvation deaths and poverty-driven suicides — chose last week to adhere to what it called the “stern definition” of genocide in international law and to dismiss a petition filed by the Panun Kashmir movement alleging that genocide was taking place in the valley. “The crimes committed against the Kashmiri Pandits,” ruled the Commission on June 11 in a 39-page judgement, “are, by any yardstick, deserving of the strongest condemnation. And there can be no gainsaying the acute suffering and deprivation caused to the community. But against the stern definition of the Genocide Convention, the Commission is constrained to observe that while acts akin to genocide have occurred in respect of Kashmiri Pandits and that, indeed, in the minds and utterances of some of the militants a ‘genocide-type design’ may exist, the crimes against the Kashmiri Pandits, grave as they undoubtedly are, fall short of the ultimate crime: genocide.” Acts akin to genocide and a genocide-type design, but not genocide! That is like saying that we have a war-like situation in Kargil but not a war. A description that conceals more than it reveals. But while such concealment might at times be good diplomacy, it is not, and cannot be, good adjudication. Certainly not at the hands of a Commission that has rarely felt hampered by the strict letter of the law and has so very often looked beyond the limitations of its own founding charter, the Protection of Human Rights Act of 1993. Mark, for instance, the Commission’s thund-ering order of August 4, 1997, relating to the Punjab mass cremations’ case. A simple order of remand from the Supreme Court to examine the matter “in accordance with law” was used by the Commission to cast aside a statutory bar against taking cognisance of matters more than a year old, enlarge its own jurisdiction and set itself up as a body “sui generis”. Sui generis is Latin for “the only one of its own kind” (Black’s Law Dictionary, emphasis in the original). But how exactly does the Genocide Convention, referred to by the Commission last week, define “genocide” and how stern is that definition? Genocide, says Article 2 of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the UN General Assembly on December 9, 1948, “means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” Not merely genocide but acts by way of conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide and complicity in genocide are also punishable under the Convention. That is Article 3. Neither genocide nor any of the said acts enumerated in Article 3 shall be considered as political crimes for the purpose of extradition. That is Article 7 of the Convention. The origins of the Convention, said the International Court of Justice in May, 1951, in an advisory opinion specially sought by the UN General Assembly, “show that it was the intention of the United Nations to condemn and punish genocide as a crime under international law involving a denial of the right of existence of entire human groups, a denial which shocks the conscience of mankind.....” The Convention was manifestly adopted, the court continued, for a “purely humanitarian and civilising purpose. It is indeed difficult to imagine a convention that might have this dual character to a greater degree, since its object on the one hand is to safeguard the very existence of certain human groups and, on the other, to confirm and endorse the most elementary principles of morality..... The high ideals which inspired the Convention provide, by virtue of the common will of the parties, the foundation and measure of all its provisions.” The high ideals which inspired the Convention provide the foundation and measure of all its provisions. That is the canon, the precise canon, of interpretation of the Genocide Convention (an international document) laid down by the International Court of Justice in its majority opinion. The dissenting opinion of four Judges of the court headed by its Vice-President, J.G. Guerrero (and including Sir Arnold McNair) — dissenting on a different point — states even more explicitly that the “enormity of the crime of genocide can hardly be exaggerated, and any treaty for its repression deserves the most generous interpretation.....” Why then has the National Human Rights Commission, headed by the venerable Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah, sought to play down the enormity of what is happening in Kashmir by conjuring up a “sternness” of definition that is simply not there? I shall continue next
week. |
THE six mutilated bodies of our soldiers brought to New Delhi on Friday have sent sorrow waves, to put it rather mildly. And though there has been mention in certain sections of the Press that the International Committee of the Red Cross would intervene and take up this case of gross violation but reliable sources point out that this wouldn’t be possible as the Red Cross does not have the powers and nor the mandate to investigate cases. The only platform where we could have appealed is the International Criminal Court. But there is a hitch there too — India is not a signatory to it. When asked, Army sources refused to comment on queries as to why we are not a signatory, adding that it falls within the jurisdiction of the GOI to provide explanations for the same. Meanwhile, with news coming in of more and more of the civilian population moving away from Dras and Kargil sectors, it is said that the International Committee of the Red Cross has sought the Government of India’s permission to conduct an evaluation on the humanitarian needs along the Line of Control. And till the day of filing this column the permission was still awaited, though each day more and more people are being displaced. Moving ahead, security has got tightened here in view of Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz’s visit to New Delhi on Saturday, but all queries on whether he would hold a meeting with the President of India who is also the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces, became redundant when one was told that the President would leave New Delhi for Hyderabad, on Saturday morning — that is, just before the arrival of the Pakistani Foreign Minister. If I am not mistaken around this time of the year the President usually visited a hill resort; now, of course, this exception. Also, last year just around this time even the Prime Minister had spent several days in a Himachal hill resort but this time he too wouldn’t be going there, rather proceeding towards Bangladesh to receive the first lot of bus passengers from Calcutta in Dhaka. More joining media In the seventies and eighties there had been that maddening rush for admission to engineering and medical colleges. In the early nineties there was a shift towards management courses and now lately there is an obvious tilt towards media-related courses. Probably the disillusioned youth of today is hell bent on seeking queries to the turmoil around and in that search finds media-related jobs to be a means. In fact, at the concluding day get-together of the first batch of students of the National Institute of Communications (Media Watch Group together with Nehru Bal Samiti have set up the first ever bilingual institute of the training of journalists) one was left touched by the earnestness of some of the students. Though most seemed from the lower middleclass and rural backgrounds yet possessed tremendous will power to strike out at the lurking perils within us and around. Or as one of the co-founders of this institute who is also a senior correspondent with UNI, Kuldip Singh Arora told me, the primary aim to open an institute of this level was to give an opportunity to those coming from the less privileged sectors to get training to work for the media. Adding that training of this sort cannot be completed without imparting the right ethics, especially in the context of the times we are destined to live in. And so immediately after setting up this institute Arora and his associate PK Bandyopadhyay completed their book — A Practitioners Guide to Journalistic Ethics. A comprehensive book complete with codes formulated by 30 professional bodies from all over the world and those adopted by UNESCO have been dealt with in this book, plus a chapter on Press Councils and ombudsmen. Just before filing this column I had to interview Khushwant Singh. Dressed appropriately for the intense summer heat — in a pair of blue shorts with a light orange shirt — he had Lee Siegel’s ‘Love In A Dead Language’ clutched in his hands couldn’t really get over the fact that Siegel, who is professor of Sanskrit at Hawaii University, has written remarkably explicity about love and love making. And that brought me to ask him how explicit has he been in his forthcoming novel — “Only One Life To Live” — Sexual Fantasies Of An Octogenarian (Penguin). Sipping ‘bel’ sherbet the admits that he has been very explicit but disappoints by adding that all those love sequences are nothing but sheer imagination. In spite of putting this very question from different angles our octogenarian writer doesn’t budge from the line that the entire novel is based on fantasies. Adding in the same breath, that adultery is committed by us all, if not physically then definitely mentally “Adultery is never out from the man or woman’s mind...” Unexpected Though till last month
it was more or less certain that Cabinet Secretary
Prabhat Kumar would be getting the IMF or the World Bank
post, till recently held by Mr Sivaraman and former CS
Surinder Singh, respectively, but with news coming in of
the Union Health Secretary BP Singh’s name being
cleared for the new executive director at the World Bank
and the Union Finance Secretary Vijay Kelkar’s name
for IMF there is some sort of bewilderment in
bureaucratic circles. And there is news that there could
be another round of mild reshuffling taking place at the
Centre. |
Alleged
culpable homicide Charged with causing the death of two men and injury to two others by firing four live cartridges from his double-barrelled, twelve-bore gun and thereby committing an offence of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, Ardeshir Tajmulji Mirza took his trial today in the Dadar Police Court. Mirza is the proprietor of a soap factory in Parel and is aged 65. During the recent labour unrest soon after the police firing on the millhands, the accused fired upon a few men who had gathered round his factory overnight believing them, as he later on confessed, to be dacoits. This had resulted in a prolonged enquiry by the Coroner into the deaths of the victims of the firing under dispute. Alongside of this case there is another in which a mechanic and a millhand are charged with forming an unlawful assembly with a view to causing injury to Mirza’s soap factory. The meeting of these two men outside the factory on the night of the tragedy had resulted in Mirza’s taking fright and using his revolver. After the preliminary
hearing, the cases were adjourned. |
 |
 |
| Nation
| Punjab | Haryana | Himachal Pradesh | Jammu & Kashmir | | Chandigarh | Business | Sport | | Mailbag | Spotlight | World | 50 years of Independence | Weather | | Search | Subscribe | Archive | Suggestion | Home | E-mail | |
