Worst phase in Bihar
THE massacre perpetrated on Wednesday night in a small village of Bihar's Palamu district is a theme too deep for tears.

Importance of Jyoti Basu
THERE is no age-determined retirement for politicians, but 86 years should normally be the outside limit. West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu must have felt that way when he sought to quit his job and lead a quiet life.

Sonia's gesture
IT would be unfortunate if Mrs Sonia Gandhi's reported request to President K. R. Narayanan to spare the life of Nalini, who along with three others has been sentenced to death for killing Rajiv Gandhi, is dubbed as a political gimmick by her detractors.

CHOGM RHETORIC ON DEMOCRACY
For India, Pak Generals are a reality
by Hari Jaisingh
IN my article published in these columns on October 22, I pleaded that India should adopt pragmatic diplomacy in dealing with Gen Parvez Musharraf's Pakistan. In the context of the CHOGM Declaration and the overall Indian response to Pakistani developments, it may be relevant to recall certain observations then spelt out.

Whitewashing of army regime
by R.A Singh
NOW that sufficient time has elapsed after the military coup in Pakistan for its implications to be more fully absorbed, it is impossible not to notice a degree of schizophrenia within the US power elite with regard to the military regime in Islamabad.

Puzzling popularity of Musharraf
by Tavleen Singh
THE most puzzling aspect of the military coup in Pakistan is its apparent popularity. While the rest of the world frets and fumes about the death of democracy, we have ample evidence from inside Pakistan that there is a general sense of relief that the country is now in the hands of military dictator.

What’s really wrong with DD?
By Amita Malik
THIS week I reproduce without apology a letter written to the Minister, Mr Jaitley, with a copy to the DG, Doordarshan, by Dr Aditya Bhattacharjea, Reader at The Delhi School of Economics. The letter is dated November 2, but up to the time of writing, he had not received even the courtesy of an acknowledgement, let alone an apology.

Excuses, all the way!
by S. Raghunath
IT is a matter of pride that the country has achieved near-total self-sufficiency in the manufacture of excuses. Let the habitual India-baiters take note of this no mean achievement.

75 Years Ago

November 20, 1924
The Calcutta Town Hall Meeting
THE Associated Press report of the recent protest meeting in the Calcutta Town Hall conveyed no adequate idea of what actually took place. The meeting appears to have been one of the largest ever held in that historic Hall. No less than 30,000 people, representing all Indian communities in Calcutta and all political parties, were present.

Worst phase in Bihar

THE massacre perpetrated on Wednesday night in a small village of Bihar's Palamu district is a theme too deep for tears. More than 200 heavily armed activists of the Maoist Communist Centre (MCC) hacked 12 members of a single family who were asleep. The victims included seven children, three women and two men. The house belonged to Ghafoor Mian who is now described as a supporter of the People's War Group (PWG). The MCC and the PWG are known rivals. Palamu falls in the caste-ridden and extremist-dominated belt of South-Central Bihar. Daltonganj is the meeting point for MCC men. The PWG has a much wider area of fearful domination. The Rabri Devi government has begun to shed crocodile tears over the gruesome incident. Major terrorist pockets like Garhwa, Aurangabad, Chatra and Gaya have been put under "special vigil". The police are in league with the criminals in and around Palamu. Therefore, the Director-General of Police, Mr K.A.Jacob, has cleverly managed to pass on the task of the post-mass-murder surveillance to the Border Security Force (BSF). He has got BSF units not from Patna but from Ranchi! The District Magistrate has tried to give the heinous episode the colour of group rivalry. But nobody can ignore the fact that Ghafoor Mian belonged to the minority community. A Union Minister, Syed Shahnabaz Hussain, was attacked by Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) supporters at Araria just two days earlier. Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had to order the emergency aerial shifting of the Minister from a small Bihar hospital to Delhi's Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital for treatment and protection. Mr Hussain had suffered serious chest and abdomen injuries inflicted at a public meeting by men controlled by the RJD leader and former Union Minister Mohammad Taslimuddin. One thing is certain: the Rabri Devi regime will, as earlier, not allow the facts to come out from the Palamu village. Every time a tragedy of this magnitude has occurred, the government has promised a thorough probe whose aim "would be to bring the guilty to book". But the guilty and the so-called safety-providers come from the same section patronised by the de facto Chief Minister, Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav. What is the state of democracy in Bihar? The broad answer is that there is no rule of law and the description of the prevailing condition as "jungle raj" by the Chief Election Commissioner during the recent poll is appropriate.

All institutions of governance have been systematically destroyed there. All avenues of justice have been blocked. Corruption, unemployment and savagery have taken over the entire area. As Mr K.F. Rustamji, the veteran manager of terrorist crises, has written in The Tribune, quoting from the manuscript of S.K. Ghosh's next book titled "Bihar in Flames", this state was judged by Paul Appleby, an American expert, in 1948 thus: "Bihar is the best administered state in India". That was the time when Dr Shri Krishna Sinha was the Chief Minister and Mr L.P. Singh was the Chief Secretary. Years rolled by. Maladministration brought Bihar to the verge of anarchy. When Mr Yadav came to power, there was no administration worth mentioning. It should suffice to remind the Prime Minister and the Union Home Minister of the slaughter of a large number of Harijans by Ranbir Sena men on the night of December 1, 1997, in Lakshmanpur Bathe in Jehanabad district. The swift and savage attack took dozens of lives. Horrifying massacres have continued through "lesser" incidents until last Wednesday. About 80 per cent of the men in charge of police stations in Bihar come from the caste of Mr Yadav. Loot, rape and mayhem are the order of the day as far as the police is concerned. It is not fair to blame everything either on the supineness or on the backwardness of the populace in Ghosh's Bihar where "the criminal justice system is making criminals out of a lot of us. The judge is not interested in justice. The police loses count (of incidents) owing to delay. The indifferent government is reluctant to intervene. We are slowly driving into a state of anarchy and other states may follow suit." One fails to understand why President's rule was not imposed on the state when there was convincing evidence of bad leadership, defiance of the rule of law, large-scale money-making through corrupt means and repeated massacres. The question was addressed to Mr I.K. Gujral when he was the Prime Minister. Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee talks of anarchy time and again. Now he has two concrete cases before him: the slaughter of Ghafoor Mian's family and the murderous assault on the Food-processing Minister Shahnabaz Hussain (of the BJP). Will he act now?

Importance of Jyoti Basu

THERE is no age-determined retirement for politicians, but 86 years should normally be the outside limit. West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu must have felt that way when he sought to quit his job and lead a quiet life. His party, the CPM, thought otherwise and coaxed him to stay on. The only concession he has wrenched is to have an understudy to be formally titled Deputy Chief Minister. That means that Home Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharya, already working as number two, will get the party nod and relieve the boss of much routine work. This sequence of events will intrigue those unfamiliar with the party or West Bengal politics. Marxist veterans do not opt out of party leadership posts and except in very rare cases, they are not dropped either. Seniority and the experience it spells are highly valued and respected. However, unlike in non-Marxist parties, the entrenched top leaders cannot bulldoze the party to accept their pet policies. The decision-making organs will spend hours debating the pros and cons before accepting a new policy, amending another or revoking a flawed one. In the CPM, the Central Committee, which is the highest policy-making body, is no respector of age or post and in 1996, it was not swayed by the standing of Mr Basu either. It refused to endorse his nomination as the leader of the United Front and hence as a candidate for the post of Prime Minister. He had no regrets, although he later felt that the decision was a historic blunder. This inner-party democracy compels unreserved acceptance of the party stand and it is particularly so in the CPM more than in the CPI. When Mr Basu told reporters, “What can I do?” he was not being helpless; his was a matter of fact remark.

For the party his continued presence at the top is absolutely essential if it wants to win the municipal election early next year and the Assembly poll a year later in West Bangal. The party units in some rural areas have become rusty and the old and famed vigour is fading. The sole beneficiary has been the Mamata Banerjee-led Trinamool Congress. Her militant and often virulent opposition to the Left Front and her energy and easy accessibility are uniting anti-front voters and fence-sitters. She is furiously nibbling at the Left Front base and the Congress is in a moribund state with its MLAs steadily walking over to the splinter group. The CPM, as the powerful leader of the front, has to go flat out to block her path to political primacy, a development that will be a serious setback. Not only his own party, the three other members of the front too want Mr Basu to continue. The idea is to pit his charisma and tested appeal to voters against the militancy of Ms Mamata Banerjee. Without him, the CPM will be somewhat rudderless as an election-fighting machine. There are second-rung leaders occupying key party and government positions but lack the stature and allround acceptability of Mr Basu. His problem and the CPM’s dilemma bring out the flip side of the organisational traditions of a well-knit cadre-based party. There can be only one tall leader and others reflect his lustre. And the leader is thus trapped in his indispensability, particularly when Mr Basu has led his party to electoral victory for more than 20 years. Come to think of it, Mr Atal Behari Vajpayee will receive the same response from his party and the alliance if he were to apply for premature retirement!

Sonia's gesture

IT would be unfortunate if Mrs Sonia Gandhi's reported request to President K. R. Narayanan to spare the life of Nalini, who along with three others has been sentenced to death for killing Rajiv Gandhi, is dubbed as a political gimmick by her detractors. The gimmick, if any, in the seemingly humane gesture should be attributed to Mrs Mohini Giri, former Chairperson of the National Commission for Women, who broke the news about Mrs Sonia Gandhi's clemency appeal to the President. Mrs Giri after relinquishing the NCW post has now floated a non-government organisation called Guild of Service and is currently busy garnering public support for the removal of the provision of capital punishment from the statute book. That Mrs Sonia Gandhi herself did not seek to obtain political mileage is evident from the fact that she met the President last week to acquaint him with her children's and her views on the death sentence awarded to Nalini, her husband and two others. Details of what transpired at the private meeting became public knowledge only after Mrs Giri shared with the media details of her own meeting with Mrs Sonia Gandhi who "categorically said that neither she nor her son and daughter wanted any of the four convicts to be hanged. Mrs Gandhi specially mentioned that no child should be orphaned by an act of State". Not only Mrs Sonia Gandhi but most human rights activists and organisations want Nalini's sentence to be reduced to life imprisonment because of her daughter who was born in jail. If both Nalini and her husband are hanged, there would be no one to look after their daughter. There is no reason why President Narayanan should ignore the plea for converting the death sentence awarded to Rajiv Gandhi's killers to life imprisonment.

Last year President Narayanan commuted the death sentence of two convicts in the Guntur bus-burning case to life imprisonment. The convicts, in their 20s, belonged to two poor Dalit families. Their plea that they only wanted to loot the passengers and not kill them by setting the bus on fire was ignored by the courts. The presidential pardon was the result of the collective efforts of various organisations, including the People's Union of Democratic Rights, Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee, Amnesty International and UN Special Rapporteur on Summary or Arbitrary Executions. Mr Narayanan's gesture was not only applauded by Dalit organisations but also those who see in the legal sanction to the sentence of death elements of primitive barbarity. More recently the NCW was successful in getting the death sentence of Ramshri reduced to life imprisonment by the President. Had the clemency plea been rejected Ramshri would have become the first woman convict in free India to be hanged. Mrs Giri evidently believes that by mentioning the names of Mrs Sonia Gandhi and her children, who do not want "any of the four convict to be hanged", the task of mobilising public opinion against capital punishment would become easier. She should know that arguments in favour of not only retaining the death sentence but extending its application to other crimes like rape are equally strong. However, even the pro-capital punishment lobby is not likely to oppose the plea for sparing Nalini's life purely on humanitarian grounds.

CHOGM RHETORIC ON DEMOCRACY
For India, Pak Generals are a reality

by Hari Jaisingh

IN my article published in these columns on October 22, I pleaded that India should adopt pragmatic diplomacy in dealing with Gen Parvez Musharraf's Pakistan. In the context of the CHOGM Declaration and the overall Indian response to Pakistani developments, it may be relevant to recall certain observations then spelt out.

First, General Musharraf is unlikely to buckle under pressure and restore democratic rule though he might sell his martial rule in "democratic packaging" to meet Western criticism. He will give himself an extended term on the plea of setting the Pakistan house in order.

Second, the western world has a very limited understanding of the subcontinent's political realities. It invariably sees everything in terms of nuclearisation of the subcontinent and the festering Kashmir issue, though it swears by democracy, if convenient. The CHOGM bashing of Pakistan at Durban has to be viewed in this light.

Third, the Americans have their own strategic calculations. They have generally felt more comfortable dealing with military dictators than with democratically-elected governments. Washington's global views have certainly changed somewhat under President Clinton, but the US establishment may still find it easy to tackle the vulnerable Pakistani General and make him toe its line. Indeed notwithstanding the lofty CHOGM Declaration, the USA looks like preparing itself to accept General Musharraf and adopt a soft line on the military regime in Islamabad.

It needs to be remembered that as a frontline state, Islamabad has provided "the infrastructural framework" to the Pentagon's decades-long bonds with the Pakistani Generals. The Americans think that the military regime can play an effective role to facilitate the arrest of the international terrorist, Osama bin Laden, and to check anti-US forces in the Taliban-controlled Afghanistan and within Pakistan.

South Block needs to watch developments in the Pakistan-Afghanistan belt closely. It must look for proper answers to several questions which lie hidden in the present fluid situation. How far will General Musharraf go to respond to US pressures on bin Laden? Will he adopt a tough line on the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalists who, incidentally, have backed him up in preference to Mr Nawaz Sharif? Will he agree to close down terrorist training camps and put curbs on the Lashkar militants who want an intensified proxy war in Kashmir? General Musharraf is a known hardliner. He was behind Pakistan's Kargil misadventure. To pursue its interests, New Delhi will have to evolve pro-active but pragmatic diplomacy.

Four, seen against this backdrop, an American understanding with General Musharraf will put Indian diplomacy under tremendous pressure.

Five, India will have to work out both short-term and long-term strategies to deal with the military regime. General Musharraf seems well entrenched right now. Even if he inducts a civilian set-up, it will work only under his supervision. The General cannot be wished away. Whether we like it or not, we will have to deal with his Pakistan. For that, we must be clear about our goals and objectives and work out our global strategy accordingly.

The key nation in this exercise will be the USA. True, the military regime in Pakistan came in for severe criticism at the Heads of Commonwealth Government meeting at Durban. They adopted a tough line and were firmly against any legitimacy being accorded to the military regime. They sought "restoration of civilian democracy without delay" and suspended Pakistan from the councils of the Commonwealth.

The CHOGM concern for democracy is certainly a healthy sign in today's complex global order. It has been part of the CHOGM spirit. India as the largest democracy in the world has reasons to be happy about such response. However, global realities are not dictated by democratic norms. Nor are geopolitical considerations guided by democratic yardstick. Take India's case. India never got special treatment from the western countries because of its democracy. Even Britain, till recently, has been showing a pro-Pakistani tilt despite the fact that this country has had a firmly rooted democratic tradition. But who cares?

Of course, the US House of Representatives seems to care for the success of Indian democracy. It has urged President Clinton to "broaden our special relationship with India into a strategic partnership". But will the Pentagon-controlled US establishment go along with the House sentiments?

India has to be both cautious and guarded and not allow itself to be carried away by the CHOGM rhetoric on democracy. I am saying this because for India General Musharraf's Pakistan is a reality as the nextdoor neighbour. It has no choice but to deal with the person who happens to be at the helm of affairs in Islamabad. In fact, New Delhi has a rich experience in dealing with the military regimes from Ayub Khan to Yahya Khan followed by Gen Zia-ul-Haq.

In Pakistan, the Generals are known to call the shots even during civilian rule. Indian leaders, therefore, have no reason to go ga ga at the CHOGM condemnation of the military regime. Most of these countries have hardly any direct dealings with Pakistan. Islamabad enters their calculations as part of their global strategies.

It is true that during the CHOGM deliberations, the Indian delegation, by and large, maintained a low profile. It allowed other countries to speak against the military coup. This should only be seen as a consolation prize and not as a triumph of Indian diplomacy.

In fact, New Delhi ought to have been clear and categorical in evolving the right response towards Pakistan. It cannot ignore the fact that CHOGM is just a club of the former colonies of Britain. It does not have collective economic muscle power beyond the moral authority to influence the world order in a limited manner.

Though General Musharraf will have reasons to be concerned about the CHOGM outburst, he is unlikely to lose sleep over it. For the General, the country that matters is President Clinton's America. And he knows that the USA goes by its own crude calculations as formulated by the Pentagon. Once he settles down, the USA may even be the first country to strike a deal with the Pakistani General.

The time has come for South Block to come out of its obsessions and see the world in a pragmatic way. In fact, Indian leaders ought to set the tone for Asia-related global events keeping in view the country's basic interests. The bashing of Pakistan at international fora like CHOGM is no doubt heart-warming, but that can hardly help India's policy makers to force Pakistan give up its aggressive postures and proxy war. That is a different ball game.

The main challenge to Indian diplomacy lies in coaxing Pakistan on to the right course so that it behaves as a responsible and responsive neighbour. During a short interaction with both Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh, I did refer to the Indian dilemma in the context of the CHOGM line on Pakistan. They did graciously and readily acknowledge my apprehension, but I could see that instead of setting the pace for evolving correct relations, we continue to go along with the others emotionally and derive satisfaction from small gains while the hard issues remain unattended and unchallenged.

It is in the fitness of things that Mr Brajesh Mishra, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, has since clarified that the government would not "snap ties with the military regime." This stand may go against the spirit of the Commonwealth Declaration but India has no choice but to establish a working relationship with Gen Musharraf and Co. The question of providing legitimacy to Pakistan's military regime cannot be seen in isolation but has to be tested on the touchstone of India's national interests.

Whitewashing of army regime
by R.A Singh

NOW that sufficient time has elapsed after the military coup in Pakistan for its implications to be more fully absorbed, it is impossible not to notice a degree of schizophrenia within the US power elite with regard to the military regime in Islamabad. The Clinton Administration and the U.S. Congress — the two major nodal points of governance — have been talking with widely differing voices about how Washington should handle yet another takeover of Pakistan by the men in uniform.

Various Administration officials have, of course, been demanding a quick return to a democratic, constitutional, civilian government in Pakistan. Much was also made of the fact that President Clinton continued to maintain sanctions on Pakistan for some programmes on which India had been taken off the hook. But that was less a sign of presidential outrage, and more an indication of the need to comply with Congressional mandates. So much for the much-ballyhooed new tilt in favour of India, an idea that has been causing unjustified euphoria in New Delhi.

It is worth noting that even while dutifully mouthing pious protestations about the military coup and pushing for a restoration of democracy, a number of officials have, at the same time, adopted a willing-to-wound-but-afraid to-hurt attitude towards Pakistan. The syndrome manifested itself quite early, even before the heat of the coup had time to cool down.

For instance, the reaction of U.S. Ambassador William B. Milam, who rushed back to Islamabad from Washington. After a face-to face 90-minute meeting with Gen Musharraf, the Ambassador found the General “a moderate man who is acting out of patriotic motivations.”

Another agency of the Administration that was not at all fazed by the military takeover was the Pentagon, which has always had a good rapport with the Generals in Pakistan. No wonder the Pentagon took the coup with a degree of equanimity that was decidedly missing on Capitol Hill.

The Clinton Administration has been actively pursuing a programme to soften the public image of the coup leader. Stories were suddenly spread around about Musharraf’s parents being U.S. citizens, about his son and brother being in the U.S. It has also been mentioned that Musharraf is not a madrassa product injected with the “jehad” virus, but a soldier trained in Sandhurst, the Mecca of all officer cadres in the Commonwealth.

Senior officials have made it clear in Congressional testimony that the U.S. cannot walk away from Pakistan because instability there will have an adverse impact within the region and beyond. The Administration has also taken to recruiting former officials and think tank experts to help it sell the idea of continued engagement with Islamabad. One of the latest results was an article in in the New York Times by two former CIA section chiefs — one in the Middle East and the other in Pakistan. The two argued that the Pak military was indeed a viable factor for stability, and it was during military regimes that all the good things had occurred in U.S.-Pak relations: Nixon’s opening to China, setting up the Pak conduit to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and the rest.

In contrast to the necessarily restrained but determined Administration bid to lighten the dark visage of the military regime, members of Congress were quick off the mark with unequivocal condemnation of the army takeover, demands for further punitive sanctions on Pakistan, and a policy of greater amity and cooperation with India to prove conclusively that America was on the side of freedom and democracy. Many resolutions were introduced and passed in the House in pursuance of the above goals. An increasing number of legislators have written to President Clinton to protest the continued blockage of World Bank loans to India and seeking to have such sanctions waived too.

Meanwhile, the Administration has continued its subtle efforts to throw a cloak of legitimacy over the military regime. This became evident during the visit here in the second week of November of former Pakistani Foreign Minister Shabzada Yaqub Khan as a special envoy of Gen Musharraf. Instead of the usual requests for interviews with the visiting dignitary, the Pakistan Embassy went around offering meetings with Yaqub Khan. In the dialogues that resulted, Yaqub Khan asserted that he had warned the U.S. that a Clinton visit to India without touching Pakistan would encourage fundamentalists and inflame passions in Pakistan, and set back efforts at an Indo-Pak accord.

More significantly, Yaqub Khan revealed that the Clinton Administration and he had agreed on a series of informal benchmarks by which Pakistan’s return to democracy could be measured. That was the cue for an administration spokesman to chime in that the benchmarks ( “we prefer to call them milestones”) could ultimately decide whether Clinton should include Pakistan in his South Asian itinerary. The whitewashing of the military regime is on.

Rumours have also been floated that Islamabad might help nab Saudi millionaire-terrorist Osama bin Laden who is at the top of America’s most-wanted list. That, of course, will ensure an outpouring of effusive American gratitude towards Gen Musharraf and his men and an opportunity to point out how he is really on the side of the angels. But what will get lost in that hustle is the fact that it is not so much Bin Laden, but the Taliban that has emerged as the real danger to the region. Apart from harbouring Bin Laden, the Taliban has been spawning fundamentalist offspring, particularly in Pakistan. It has to be remembered that the ultimate paternity for the Taliban rests squarely with the military and intelligence wings of Pakistan as well as with the short-sighted and flawed U.S. policies during the height of the Afghan insurrection against the Russians that would be a nexus difficult to sever.

In any case, Indo-Pak amity is bound to be light years away under the Musharraf-Taliban combine. Besides, on a longer term basis, India has to be extremely guarded in dealing with the U.S. the so-called great white light of understanding and cooperation between the two democracies is liable to be extinguished the day Texas Governor Bush makes it to the White House. Bush has already showered encomiums on the Musharraf regime as a harbinger of stability on the subcontinent.

The situation will become more complicated if the military regime tries former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif for treason, as it is threatening to do. If Sharif is found guilty, he could be hanged, raising a worldwide furore which the U.S. Administration will find difficult to live down. But then, General Zia also hanged Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto despite half-hearted appeals from the U.S. President and several other heads of state. After dust settled, U.S. let pragmatism win over principles, and continued business as usual with Islamabad. History has an unfortunate habit of repeating itself.

The writer is a Washington-based analyst.

Excuses, all the way!
by S. Raghunath

IT is a matter of pride that the country has achieved near-total self-sufficiency in the manufacture of excuses. Let the habitual India-baiters take note of this no mean achievement.

National Dairy Development. Yes, we know that Operation Flood is a miserable flop, but it is those miserable cows. They are being so uncooperative. Every time a dairyman goes to milk, they butt him and that has resulted in a shortfall of 20 million litres a day.

Amitabh Bachchan. The municipal nursery school in Old Delhi refused admission to my children because I could not afford to pay a monthly tuition fee of Rs 5 and I had no alternative but to get them admitted to a fashionable finishing school in Switzerland.

Haryana State Electricity Board. We know that we have failed miserably on the power front, but those pesky sparrows are entirely to be blamed. They sit on their tails on high-tension power lines and that causes the inter-state grid to trip and collapse.

Reported starvation deaths. Foul, contemptible lies. It is malnutrition really, resulting in the cessation of the respiratory and cardiac functions.

Indian Olympic Association. Yes we know that the country has failed to produce even a single athlete of international standards, but it is those sharp cinders on the tracks. They keep getting into a runner’s corns and the poor fellow hurts so.

Failure to design an indigenous aircraft. We are all set, but the drawing boards are a bit wobbly and that is hampering our work.

Unprecedented students unrest on the campuses. Well, boys will be boys.

Flight of talent abroad, hampering the country’s development. Well, travel broadens the mind.

Union Forest Ministry. Yes we know that our afforestation programme is a disastrous failure, but the blame lies squarely with those tailor birds. They built their nest on newly grown trees and under their weight, the trees keep falling down.

Win Chadha. Honestly, I did not know that Bofors was a gun. I was under the impression that it was the brand name of vermicelli noodles being test marketed.

Kashmir Police Dept. What can we do? Pak-trained militants are going on a rampage at night and that is when our constables are fast asleep after a day’s work.

Chandrababu Naidu. Yes I know that my govt. has failed to keep its election promise to provide employment to one member of every family in the state, but I meant joint, nuclear families and not Hindu Undivided Families.

Union Health Ministry. What can we possibly do if our family planning programme is a failure and the population keeps growing unchecked? How can we stop young couples from loving one another?

Federation of Indian Export Organisations. We were all set to export goods worth Rs 15,000 crore, but the Indian one paisa suddenly appreciates in value against the American dollar and Japanese yen and we were left high and dry.

Technology Mission on Drinking Water. We wanted to drill tubewells in every village in the country to provide the people with safe drinking water, but we kept hitting high-quality crude oil and natural gas.

Atal Behari Vajpayee. I know that I have not been able to root out corruption in high places, but I was busy maintaining a studious silence on the sugar and telecom scam allegations.

An astronomical number of people out of work. Those unemployed chaps are entirely to be blamed. Instead of minding their own business, they go and register their names with employment exchanges and adding grist to the statistics mill.

Puzzling popularity of Musharraf

by Tavleen Singh

THE most puzzling aspect of the military coup in Pakistan is its apparent popularity. While the rest of the world frets and fumes about the death of democracy, we have ample evidence from inside Pakistan that there is a general sense of relief that the country is now in the hands of military dictator. This is truly puzzling when you keep in mind the unpopularity of military rulers since Gen-Yahya Khan’s ham-fisted handling of the crisis in East Pakistan led to the disintegration of the country and the eventual creation of Bangladesh.

After the short Bhutto democratic interlude, Pakistan went back into the hands of the military with Zia-ul-Haq proving to be one of that country’s longest surviving and most resilient rulers. But, despite being in power for nearly 15 years, Zia never managed to win the love of his people. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say he was hated almost from the day that he seized power. This was one of the reasons that he had to get rid of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Pakistanis who remember that time speak of how, within weeks of Bhutto being overthrown, the mood in the country changed so dramatically that when he was briefly released and travelled to Karachi by train thousands of people poured into railway stations en route to greet him. Had Zia dared hold elections ‘within 90 days’ as he had promised Bhutto would almost certainly have won. After he was executed, as a result of a sham trial, the ordinary Pakistanis’ hatred for the General doubled and continued to increase in the years that he remained in power. The fact that the USA backed him despite this led to anti-American feelings across Pakistan which have never quite gone away. When Zia-ul-Haq’s end came in 1988, as a result of a mysterious plane crash, there was jubilation rather than mourning. Pakistani friends tell me they danced and cheered when they got the news and when arrived, shortly afterwards to cover the aftermath of his death, it was this mood that I perceived wherever I went.

So, I have been personally been more than slightly taken aback this time to find that not a single Pakistani I know disapproves of Gen-Parvez Musharraf’s coup. And, even those of liberal, democratic bent have welcomed it on the grounds that things had got so bad under Nawaz Sharif that anyone is better than him.

According to them Sharif was not just autocratic and corrupt but had also destroyed the country’s economy. As long ago as early last year one of the slogans that was being heard in the streets of Lahore paid Benazir a back-handed compliment in these rather colourful words, “Luchi si, lafangi si. Mian naalon changi si”. Loosely translated from Punjabi they mean: She may have been hopeless and even a bit of a bad woman, but she was better than Mian. This, despite the huge unpopularity of both Benazir and her husband Asif Zardari.

What then has gone wrong in Pakistan that its people seem to prefer military dictators to democratically elected ones? It is a long story and hard to explain to those who do not have some basic understanding of what Pakistan has become as a country. This incomprehension is a fairly widespread thing in India which is why even most Indian journalists come back from Lahore or Karachi with impressions that are often based on illusion rather than fact. It is even more unfortunate that much of our policy towards Pakistan is based on the impressions these journalists bring back.

In trying to understand what has gone wrong it is important, first and foremost, to remember that none of Pakistan’s democratically elected leaders have behaved like real democrats. Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, probably Pakistan’s most popular leader to date, was so much of an autocrat that during his rule even his own ministerial colleagues feared him.

Among the rumours that surrounded him was one that said he had ticked one of his cabinet ministers off in these words, “Do you think you have the right to call me Zulfie just because of.... your wife”. There were other rumours of women abducted and raped and opponents terrorised and killed. By the end of his rule he had become so unpopular that nobody believed he had not rigged the election that brought him back to power. Opposition leaders took to the streets to protest and Zia-ul-Haq got his chance to step in.

Bhutto’s daughter Benazir was the next democratic ruler to become hugely popular. One of the most unforgettable moments of my career as a journalist was being in Karachi after her People’s Party won the 1988 elections. I remember standing with a Pakistani friend on the balcony of his apartment and looking down at streets that were so filled with people that you could no longer see tarmac. All night they shouted “Jiye Bhutto”. Long live Bhutto. And, all night they danced and sang as if it were not an election that had ended in victory but a revolution.

In less than three years Benazir had made herself unpopular enough to be toppled without any tears being shed. She had behaved more like a feudal princess than a modern Prime Minister and had done nothing whatsoever to improve the lives of ordinary Pakistanis for whom democracy is not so much an idea as a mantra for development. Many ask me why India is still a poor country and why it is corrupt and backward despite having democracy.

Finally, we have seen Nawaz Sharif who learned no lessons from either the Bhuttos or from his own first term as Prime Minister. His massive majority this time appeared to make him even more arrogant and autocratic so that General Musharraf by comparison is seen not so much as a military dictator but as a hero.

So, when Atal Behari Vajpayee demands the restoration of democracy in Pakistan he needs to be careful how he chooses his words. We may not like the General because we hold him responsible for what happened in Kargil but we need to keep in mind the fact that foreign policy in Pakistan is always in the hands of the military. We also need to remember that it was under Nawaz Sharif that Pakistan became a reckless, rogue state backing the Taliban in Afghanistan and horrors like the Lashkar-e-Toiba in Kashmir. Can the General do much worse? Can he really?

What’s really wrong with DD?

By Amita Malik

THIS week I reproduce without apology a letter written to the Minister, Mr Jaitley, with a copy to the DG, Doordarshan, by Dr Aditya Bhattacharjea, Reader at The Delhi School of Economics. The letter is dated November 2, but up to the time of writing, he had not received even the courtesy of an acknowledgement, let alone an apology.

“Yesterday I reluctantly agreed to appear on The Business News segment of the DD News Channel. The recording was to be at 8.30 p.m. last evening for telecast this morning. I was told I would be picked up from my residence near Delhi University at 7.30 p.m. and dropped back by 9.30. I did a lot of homework on current economic developments and was ready well in time. The official vehicle arrived more than 45 minutes late, but that was just the beginning of a nightmarish experience. The car’s tyre developed a puncture near Pragati Maidan and the stepney burst as soon as it was put on. I had to walk nearly a kilometre to get a taxi, but when I arrived at the studio at Chirag Delhi at 9.15, I found only a couple of bored caretakers. No member of the production staff was there. The programme’s producer/anchor had not yet returned from an urgent “VIP shoot” which had superceded my scheduled recording session. I was told that this was a frequent occurrence. I waited in the studio’s dingy lobby for a further 45 minutes without being offered even a glass of water. At 10 p.m. I was told the producer’s car had met with a minor accident and he would be further delayed. At that point I gave up and insisted on going home. Even if the recording had taken place, by that time I was so irritated, hungry and covered with sweat and grime from the ordeal of reaching the studio, I was in no mood to be objective and I would probably have suppressed even the few positive comments I could have made on your government’s handling of the economy. I have been waiting since this morning for an apology from the programme’s producer, but he is obviously too busy with VIPs. Instead of spending lakhs of public money on a new logo and signature tune for DD, perhaps you should inject some professionalism into your staff, or else replace DD News with a special “VIP Channel” for VIPs to watch each other while we go about our business. “In his covering letter to this columnist, Dr Bhattacharjea adds: “I am no Amartya Sen (he was a former professor here) but I think we deserve more respect”. Good point, Dr Bhattacharjea. But down the years I have come to the conclusion that neither the Ministry nor DD will ever learn. Not even to acknowledge letters, let alone apologise.

Over the last two weeks, a number of Information Service officers with no previous background in radio or TV, who double for AIR and DD as correspondents and get all the plum postings in India and abroad, have suddenly erupted on the screen. And they are a dismal lot. Mostly unkempt and totally without poise, they have neither reporting ability nor a sense of the sort of language which is required for TV. One cannot for the life of one understand why they did not rough it out in Orissa, instead of going to Vienna with the President (Mr Muthu Kumar looked so grim while reporting and spoke so solemnly that one hardly warmed to him). While the NDTV correspondent made it to Paradip from Andhra, DD’s Sanjiv Thomas and Krishna Rao remained bogged down in Hyderabad. Seasoned correspondents and they have done good reporting also from abroad down the years, as have other DD staff and radio correspondents. This seems to be a deliberate effort to push the Information Service, whose officers have not renounced their own service or trained or opted for broadcasting, at the expense of AIR and DD’s original and trained and experienced staff. This is a very controversial issue and needs to be settled once and for all so that this strange caste system does not continue any further.

75 YEARS AGO

November 20, 1924
The Calcutta Town Hall Meeting

THE Associated Press report of the recent protest meeting in the Calcutta Town Hall conveyed no adequate idea of what actually took place. The meeting appears to have been one of the largest ever held in that historic Hall. No less than 30,000 people, representing all Indian communities in Calcutta and all political parties, were present.

As many as six overflow meetings had to be held, and of the enthusiasm and determination that characterised the proceedings some idea can be formed from the statement published in a journal noted for its veracity, that “from the steps of the Calcutta Town Hall, as successive speakers addressed the massive gathering, the echoes of resounding response were heard to the farthest ends of the Maidan”.

The speeches were fully worthy of the occasion. Babu Bipin Chandra Pal dwelt with his customary eloquence on “the deathless determination of Bengal to win freedom” and Mr C.R. Das concluded an impassioned oration, with tears rolling down his cheeks, with a fervid appeal to “Mother India to kindle such a fire in the heart of Bengal as will not die out till she is free”.