E D I T O R I A L   P A G E

PERSPECTIVE

Security Council reform: The long wait continues
by A. Balu
If the two-debate in the UN General Assembly last week on the reform of the Security Council, including an increase in its membership, provided any clue, it was that the marathon exercise would go on till the cows come home.

Law and the police order
by Rakshat Puri
TO whom are men and the officers of the Indian police accountable? Evidently, to the ruling politicians, who are a tradition from the British Raj days, and after that to themselves, which is largely a post-1947 change. Police honesty is unlikely to be acclaimed by rulers. The most recent example of this is the case of North Kerala’s DIG Mohammed Yasin.

Disposal of the dead: Parsis fight back 
by Amrit Dhillon
Vultures have always had a bad press. Apart from bird lovers and ornithologists, few would shed any tears if the ‘bad guys’ of the avian world becoming extinct. But in India, one community would be devastated: the Parsis who, abhorring cremation and burial, leave their dead to be devoured by the great flesh-eating birds.

Profile

Man who let down his country, fans
by Harihar Swarup
There was a time when every morning Azharuddin would cycle to practice in the cricket ground, return home, pick up his two sisters and drop them at school. He would then clean the bicycle and keep it ready for his father to go to office. Those were the tough days in Hyderabad for the rising star of Indian cricket. According to reports he now owns two Mercedes and a Honda, besides a bungalow in Mumbai. When not on the pitch, he is seen elegantly dressed in imported suits and sporting the best of sunglasses.

Delhi durbar

Jadeja's connections raise dust
THE Indian cricket board's decision to defer disciplinary action against Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Manoj Prabhakhar and Ajay Sharma has raised many an eyebrow among the fans of the game. Board President A.C.Muthiah, who till the other day talked about stringent action, including a possible life ban, changed tone and was heard taking a soft line. This volte face, however, has not gone down well with cricket lovers and efforts are on now to find out the reason for the cricket board's change of heart. It appears the entire gameplan of the board is to save a single player, Ajay Jadeja.

Diversities — Delhi letter

Show of solidarity with the Palestinians
bY Humra Quraishi
NOVEMBER 29 and yes, this week there was focus not only on West Asia but also on Iraq. In fact, the Vice-President of Iraq, Mr Taha Yassin Ramadhan (must have been born in the month of Ramzan!) was in town and a reception was hosted in his honour that very evening. I will include details of his visit later in the column but as I often write, first things first. On “The Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” ICCR had arranged for a series of programmes.

Security Council reform: The long wait continues
by A. Balu

If the two-debate in the UN General Assembly last week on the reform of the Security Council, including an increase in its membership, provided any clue, it was that the marathon exercise would go on till the cows come home.

More than a hundred delegates waxed eloquent on the urgent need for reaching a consensus on the issue that has been under intense debate for seven long years, but as the New Zealand representative pointed out, the missing key ingredient was the political will to negotiate a consensus.

Singapore’s delegate, Ms Tan Yee Woan, declared: “For the eighth time, the security council reform is being debated, and for the eighth time the General Assembly would probably not get anywhere.” Her judgement on the ongoing exercise might sound cynical, but was not far from the truth and reality. “The debate on the Security Council was warped,” Ms Woan said. “It was controlled and managed by a few actors: the permanent five whose interest was to preserve their privilege indefinitely, and a small group of major and medium powers, who believe they had arrived and deserved the same privilege.”

It was clear from the debate that the majority of UN member states hold the view that the structure of the world organisation should not be based on a “frozen picture” of the international powers way back in 1945. Amid all lofty talk about making the principal organ of the United Nations more democratic, the General Assembly discovered that the differences on the question of expansion of both categories of permanent and non-permanent members and on the veto power enjoyed by the current five permanent members continue to persist with no indication of a change in the “mindset” of the permanent members of the Council.

This is not good news for India, which has been nursing the ambition of joining the “exclusive club”. The wait can be long and agonising, but New Delhi can have the consolation of getting open support from one of the “big five”-the Russian Federation-for its claim to permanent membership in the Security Council. Gennadi Gatilov pronounced in the General Assembly that India was a “strong and worthy” candidate for a permanent seat, should it be decided to enlarge the Council in both the categories of membership. Bhutan was another country that extended its support to India.

Pakistan, which can be expected to do all it can at the appropriate time to lobby against New Delhi’s candidature for a permanent seat, came out in favour of Africa on the basis of geographic representation, but in an apparent snipe at her neighbour in the subcontinent, suggested that other claims were narrow by definition and driven by ambitions of power and status.

India’s ambassador, Mr Kamalesh Sharma, regretted that after seven years of deliberations, the Security Council remained unrepresentative and an anachronism, continuing to conduct its business through super-annuated and non-transparent working methods. He stressed that developing countries could not be expected to be bystanders applauding the Council’s actions from the sidelines. Creating additional categories of membership based rotation would not meet the essential aspirations of the developing countries, as they would then be relegated to a subsidiary and discriminatory status. Mr Sharma declared that India’s commitment to all aspects of the UN work was “total and immutable”, and expressed confidence that the Assembly membership would conclude that India possessed the necessary attributes for permanent membership in the security council.

In September last, the UN Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Annan, had expressed his disappointment at the lack of progress in the reform of the Security Council, and without naming any countries, said, “the minority, a very small minority, should not withhold its consent unreasonably.” During the assembly debate, Mexico chose to identify two “very small minorities”-one minority made up of “pretenders” to reform, hoping for a permanent seat in the reformed Council, and a second, composed of the current five permanent members, who were “clinging” to antiquated rules that were anachronisms. It was ironic that “the Security Council, the most visible organ of the UN, should be the least democratic part of the organisation that was established on the basis of sovereign equality of states,” Mexico’s delegate Pablo Mecedo told the General Assembly.

An open-ended working group of the General Assembly has been grappling with the problem of Security Council reform for seven years now, and many delegates feel fatigue and stagnation have overtaken the group resulting in lack of progress. The recent Millennium Summit had called for a comprehensive reform of the Security Council in all its aspects, which is interpreted to mean that there should not be partial solutions. Member states acknowledge the fact that in recent times, there is more transparency in the working of the Security Council, but are clearly unhappy that the reform process is nowhere near the realm of possibility.

While the US has expressed its willingness to consider proposals that would take the membership of the Security Council from the present 15 to slightly more than 21 members, it is firmly opposed to any attempt to tamper with the veto power. It believes that the veto has had real value in helping the Security Council to maintain international peace and security and is integral to the Charter and the UN itself. The Russians too feel the veto is not a privilege but a serious factor for ensuring consensus and effectiveness of the council decisions and is a guarantee against arbitrariness of unilateral actions against the interests of member states.

But a majority of member states take the stand that the veto is an archaic privilege and that the statistics advanced by the permanent five on the rarity of the use of the veto are misleading. They also opine that the use of veto had allowed national interests to take precedence over international peace in many instances. Expressing understanding for the “delicacy and complexity” of the issue. Many delegates are inclined to propose a limited right of veto.

For the United Nations, unending debates on issues of concern to the international community are nothing unusual. There are many items on its agenda for decades without being finally disposed of. Security Council reform looks well set for a long drawn out draw. After all, the amendment of the Charter requires two-thirds majority of the assembly and ratified by two-thirds of the members of the UN, including all permanent members of the Security Council. For now, the open-ended working group of the assembly will, when its fatigue ends, return to its entrusted task of reaching that elusive word “consensus”. 

Law and the police order
by Rakshat Puri

TO whom are men and the officers of the Indian police accountable? Evidently, to the ruling politicians, who are a tradition from the British Raj days, and after that to themselves, which is largely a post-1947 change. Police honesty is unlikely to be acclaimed by rulers. The most recent example of this is the case of North Kerala’s DIG Mohammed Yasin. He investigated a recent bomb explosion in the Dharmadam office of the ruling CPM, for which the party had blamed some RSS workers. Yasin found that the explosion was due to the party members themselves making bombs in their office. He was immediately transferred to an ineffective post in the state Capital. Usually, police officers and men go along with the ruling party; and they also increasingly associate quietly with criminals - making good for themselves.

Last May a huge amount of looted cash and unlicensed arms were discovered in the trunk of a clerk at the Railway police set-up at Howrah. The trunk was kept in the office premises. The cash was a part of the loot from a bank by dacoits, of whom the clerk was one. The incident highlighted the nexus between the police and the underworld in West Bengal. This is happening in other states too, in addition to astonishing police brutality.

In Bihar, a few days ago, one Anjani Kumar was taken away by the police for questioning after student protests in a Patna cinema hall against the sale of tickets at a higher price through touts. He was kept in the police premises overnight. The next day, as a result of the questioning, Anjani Kumar was taken to the Patna Medical College Hospital, where the doctors found multiple fractures on his hands and legs. There is hardly any need to recall yet again the way custodial deaths take place at police stations all over the country during interrogation.

Early this year, the absence of any sense of accountability in the police led to the police shooting a boy and a girl in a car near Meerut. The girl died. The police realised that they had made a grievous mistake. And what did they do? They beat up the boy. They did not make any arrangements to send the girl to hospital. A similar incident took place in the heart of New Delhi at Connaught Circus some months ago when the armed police descended on a car carrying innocent passengers whom they shot, mistaking them for wanted criminals. The mistake was realised after the shooting - but the police was reported planting a pistol in the car and claiming that the occupants fired first!

It is not that the public keeps taking the rough end of the Indian policing without protest. Complaints have been filed frequently against policemen in the police vigilance departments. These have from all accounts referred to torture, corrupt practice, misbehaviour with women, associating with criminals, not registering cases, registering false cases, abusing police power, detaining illegal, bribery and threat to citizens. In Delhi, where the police is \ldblquote with you, for you always,\rdblquote by November 1999, nearly 20,000 complaints against police personnel had reportedly been made by citizens to the police vigilance department. In 1998, the number was said to be 28,279; in 1997 it was 28,746. But the number of inquiries completed by the department added up to only 380 for 1999 (up to mid-November), 299 for 1998 and 373 for 1997. The explanation offered was an under-staffed department. Meanwhile, crime itself is spreading at an alarming rate. Consider some recent reports. There was the grotesque incident of some doctors of the Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital in Delhi beating up a 50-year old man and his 21-year old son with broken bottles, iron pipes and hockey sticks - where? Inside the hospital police post, with the policemen looking on! The beating went on for a considerable time. The cause of the doctors’ ire was that they wished to call from a telephone booth before the young man, Asim Hamid, who was in the queue. The newspaper report says the Mandir Marg police station registered a case after some dilly-dallying?

This happened at Delhi. Another incident, no less grotesque, was reported very recently from Ahmedabad: a man called Santram Upadhyay voiced his protest to two neighbourhood youths who were teasing and harassing his daughters. The two youths, along with friends, attacked him with sticks and metal pipes. Upadhyay died. The police arrived on the scene after the youths had fled. His daughter told the Press that the whole basti had watched (her father) being clobbered to death but none helped. This is a common attitude among Indian citizens almost everywhere in the country, and probably has its roots in fear about being involved with the police — “interrogation,” broken bones, repeated visits to court for evidence, and all the rest. Every kind of crime seems to be on the increase — bride burning, rape, and robbery with murder, highway robbery, criminal fraud, criminal misdemeanour, criminal transgression, and lawbreaking in other ways. In recent months there has been a spate of kidnappings. Kidnapping by terrorists in the North-East and in J-K for “militant” reasons has been known for some years. But there is now an increase in cases of kidnapping in Chennai, Bangalore (witness the Rajkumar-Veerappan case), Mumbai (where gang-wars are becoming more and more common), Delhi, Patna, and other places.

A recent case involved the kidnapping and murder of a teenager, Vikas Bhandari, who was taken from a Delhi suburb called Yojana Vihar. He was kidnapped for ransom. A series of kidnappings started in Delhi some time towards the close of summer, with the disappearance on August 12 of a share broker\quotes son and driver. In September, a businessman’s daughter, Nidhi Jain, was abducted and released for ransom. Three kidnappings took place in October - a man called Rajinder Kumar was abducted and murdered in a west Delhi suburb; a rich brick kiln owner, Subhash Batra, was abducted in a south Delhi suburb; and a person called Manish Choudhury was abducted and murdered in the same area. Five cases of kidnapping have already taken place this month, November: Shafiq Ali in Badarpur; Sachin Aggarwal in Delhi’s Nirman Vihar suburb; Uday Vohra in the Patparganj locality for ransom; an 11-year old girl kidnapped by car-borne men near her home in the Capital’s Ashok Vihar suburb and the teenager, Vikas Bhandari, already mentioned.

The police actually solves some of the crimes, including kidnappings. Very likely, the rate of crime solving would rise dramatically if the public cooperated with the police. But with the police aggressive, criminally brutal and overbearing with the public, is it surprising that the citizen should prefer to stay as far from the police and its doings as possible?\par

The distance between the police and the public can be narrowed only with the police personnel being trained to go out of their way imaginatively to sympathise with the public. The only way to bring the public to sympathise with the police in an effective way would be for the police to be made accountable to the public in each locality, not only in the Capital but in every city and town in the country. Unless and until, the police and the public cooperate in a genuine way, crime will not only flourish but also rise spectacularly everywhere in the country.

At a time when “militancy”, narco-terrorism, and smuggling of every kind including arms are making an onslaught on this country from many directions, a high degree of cooperation between the public and the law-enforcers is imperative for individual and collective security.

Commissions have been set up at various times to assess and discuss police efficacy and improvement. The need for the police accountability to the public and for resulting police-public cooperation does not appear to have ever been adequately addressed.

 — (Asia Features)

Disposal of the dead: Parsis fight back 
by Amrit Dhillon

Vultures have always had a bad press. Apart from bird lovers and ornithologists, few would shed any tears if the ‘bad guys’ of the avian world becoming extinct. But in India, one community would be devastated: the Parsis who, abhorring cremation and burial, leave their dead to be devoured by the great flesh-eating birds.

An unexplained decline of the formerly great flocks of the flesh-eating creatures has prompted Bombay’s Parsis to fight back with proposals for a breeding programme which they hope will rebuild the dwindling species and allow them to continue with their ancient death rite.

All over India, the large, ferocious, baleful-looking harbingers of death that used to be seen in towns perched on top of large monuments, on telegraph poles, foraging on rubbish heaps and hovering expectantly around slaughterhouses waiting for animal carcasses, are conspicuous by their absence. In the countryside, the sight of white-backed vultures greedily hacking at cow carcasses, picking them clean, used to be a common sight. These days, more often than not, the carcasses are left to slowly rot without a vulture in sight.

Substitute corpse for carcass and a similar scene presents itself in the Towers of Silence in Bombay. This is a kind of open-air amphitheatre in the heart of the city where Parsi families take their corpses for disposal. The families are not permitted. Professional corpse-bearers take the body inside and lay it out in the open. These death rites go back 2,000 years and have been an integral part of the Parsi identity ever since their ancestors fled from Iran to escape Muslim persecution and settled in India, mainly in Bombay.

Years ago, great flocks of vultures, helped by the visibility that comes from flying at great heights, astonishingly keen eyesight and a strong sense of smell, used to descend within minutes. The pecking order meant the big boys got the choice soft flesh while the junior ones settled for the tougher meat.

Today, however, few vultures arrive. The main flesh eaters are kites or crows. Naturally enough, Parsis are disturbed at the idea of corpses lying around half-eaten, slowly decomposing. Even if some vultures do come, it takes them much longer —sometimes weeks — to finish a job that used to be accomplished by a flock in just two hours. There are so few of the creatures around that about six months ago the priests in the Towers of Silence had to start inserting chemicals into bodily orifices to speed up deterioration and help the diminished flocks to complete their work in reasonable time, says Jehangir Patel, editor of the Parsi website, Parsiana.

This death ritual is precious to Parsis. Since they revere fire, cremation of dead bodies is unacceptable; since they believe that the elements are aspects of divine purity, burial is out of the question as it would contaminate the earth. To protect this ancient and ecologically impeccable practice, the Parsis are planning to set up an aviary around the Towers of Silence to breed enough vultures to cope with the dead. The number of corpses involved is actually very small: although the Parsis are renowned for their talents, business acumen, material success and philanthropy, their numbers are so small that the Towers of Silence only have to deal with around three bodies a day.

Government approval has been granted, but the religion’s trustees in Bombay also need permission from other Indian states since they will have to catch vultures from outside to bring them to the city. Debate within the community also continues, with some die-hard traditionalists still harbouring doubts.

‘Some of our priests have pointed out that the vultures will have to be fed inside the Towers of Silence. It won’t be acceptable to have meat brought into it a sacred place so we are still working on all the issues,’ said Beram Dastur, chief executive of the Parsi Panchayat, or council. But supporters of the aviary idea believe that it will not only help Parsis preserve their traditions but also help India save a threatened species.

If they succeed, the Parsis of Bombay will earn the gratitude of Indian bird lovers shocked at the speed at which vultures are dying out throughout India. Northern India used to be home to tens of thousands of the white-backed birds. Ornithologist Vibhu Prakash talks of a complete ‘wipeout’ - even in protected areas. At Bharatpur bird sanctuary in Rajasthan he recorded 350 nesting pairs in 1987. Ten years later there were 25 pairs. This year, there were none.

No one knows for sure why vultures are dying. Some experts suspect pesticides. Others point to a possible virus that may have originated in South-east Asia from where vultures disappeared 50 years ago. If the Parsis’ captive breeding scheme is successful and the numbers increase, the death of a species will have been averted by the need to save a death rite practised by a community.

Ironically, the Parsi community is also dying out: their number in India has fallen by almost half in 40 years to just 58,000 souls. Some fear it’s only a matter of time before they disappear altogether.

What ails our universities
by Gobind Thukral

With visa cards in their pockets and an assured price tag on their qualifications, over two lakh young computer professionals,. those hardware and software experts from Indian institutions, are marching to western countries. The greener pastures in the United States and other countries, the advanced world are beckoning to them. Already Indian professionals, doctors, engineers and business management gurus are much in demand. In fact, a good deal of health service in England that ruled India for over two centuries is managed by Indians. Asian professionals have earned a degree of respect and a good deal of money and are already pedaling some political influence.

All this may suggest that Indian universities and colleges are imparting a good deal of quality education and Indian education institutions are in excellent state of health.

But is the situation really so rosy at the campuses of our colleges and universities? A close look at the nearby universities — Panjab University, Punjabi University, Guru Nanak Dev University, Kurukshetra University, Himachal Pradesh University and MDU at Rohtak or in the colleges and universities of the troubled state of Jammu and Kashmir, reveals that academic excellence has been nearly given a go-by.

Colleges and universities are now only producing graduates and post graduates or PhDs by hundreds. Only in rare cases curiosity to gain and create fresh knowledge is being taken care of.

What is worse each university has over thirty to forty per cent vacancies of teachers. Engineering and medical colleges suffer the worst, in some cases having less than fifty per cent of the teaching faculty. Look at Punjab government's new wonder scheme. It has begun engaging part time teachers for a bare Rs 4,000 per month against Rs 22,000 which a regular teacher would get.

But in this otherwise bleak scenario, there is now a ray of hope.

There is some introspection at many levels by teachers.

The University Teachers Federation has decided to address the problem squarely. Looking into the past, they rightly recalled that a damaging impression was encouraged that the main aim of the British Raj in establishing the western oriented university system in India was to transmit /distribute the scientific knowledge already created in the modern western countries. This was questioned and rejected by many nationalist scholars and scientists during the freedom struggle.

However, after independence, not much was done to rectify the institutional structures and practices of the colonial era. Continuing the legacy of colonial ways of thinking, many new research institutions and organisations, separate from the universities, were set up to undertake research activities in specific areas as if the creation of new knowledge was not the main function of the Indian Universities. This did a great harm to the standards of academic excellence and quality of research work in the university system. Continuous and unchecked presence of the extraneous and internal pressure groups in the governing bodies generated vested interests that further damaged the health of the universities. No wonder that, apart from a few exceptions proving the rule, the borrowed conceptions and concerns tended to dominate the studies in humanities and social sciences in the Indian Universities. Similarly simple replication of the ongoing research remained the norm in physical and life sciences.

It is no surprise that many sections of the public, including politicians and bureaucrats, believe that the huge financial investments in the teaching of humanities and social sciences are useless and wasteful expenditure.

A critical questioning must be made into the practices of teaching and research in humanities and social sciences in order to make them more responsive to the needs of changing Indian society.

The old policy of fragmenting various disciplines into insulated compartments continues to dominate the working of the teaching departments in many universities. This anti-holistic approach has seriously harmed the designing of courses and curricula.

Proper conduct of examinations, formulation of fair policies of admission to various courses, are other main functions of the university system. Unfortunately, there has been a growing suspicion about the academic credibility and practical value of the work being done in many universities because of the extraneous considerations influencing the working of the university system. It is the responsibility of the academic community to highlight the essential task in expanding the frontiers of knowledge.

There is a consensus that the University Teachers' Association must come forward to identify the sources of the acute crisis affecting the work crisis in the universities in terms of (a) institutional limitations, (b) faulty management, (c) resources, (d) working and living conditions of university teachers. If the University Teachers' Association fail to create a public awareness about the real aims and functions of higher education at the university level, it may no longer be possible to safeguard the Indian universities from further marginalisation and imminent collapse.

University teachers, apart from debating the reasons for the falling standards in education and lack of excellence in research and academics, must get involved in the real pursuit of learning and teaching in a serious manner.

The All India Federation of University Teachers Associations should encourage pursuit of excellence among their members.

Government at the central and state level must discourage the tendency to appoint non academics to university bodies.

There should be just one five year term for a vice chancellor and no more. This would help end the political jockeying. University's autonomy should be guaranteed at all levels.

Teachers participation should be ensured in policy making bodies and standards of academic excellence improved by participation in academic management.

In selections, there should be total transparency and so in promotions.

More funds should be available for academic work at the universities. Now almost 90 per cent of the budget goes into salaries and pensions etc, or what is broadly called the non plan expenditure. At least 30 per cent should be earmarked for academic pursuits.

There should be a code of conduct amongst the teachers for providing quality education to the students and uprooting corruption.

Commercialisation of education should be resisted by all and at all levels.

Man who let down his country, fans
by Harihar Swarup

There was a time when every morning Azharuddin would cycle to practice in the cricket ground, return home, pick up his two sisters and drop them at school. He would then clean the bicycle and keep it ready for his father to go to office. Those were the tough days in Hyderabad for the rising star of Indian cricket. According to reports he now owns two Mercedes and a Honda, besides a bungalow in Mumbai. When not on the pitch, he is seen elegantly dressed in imported suits and sporting the best of sunglasses. He has the best pairs of Oakleys and Ray Bans. Likened to Indian cricket's best captains — they are worshipped in India — Azhar has also another facet of his personality. Controversy has always followed him. The slapping a photo journalist, his romance with a film star, a brawl with Navjot Sidhu in England and now the issue of match-fixing has completely overshadowed his heroic performances and achievements.

Azhar may be brusque in behaviour but he is generous. At benefit matches he would often slip the beneficiary a personal cheque. He personally handed over a cheque of Rs 50,000 to a Ranji Trophy player and requested reporters not to write about it as it would look like showing off. When Ajit Wadekar retired, he gifted him a Rolex watch. He has said often out of disgust: "Sometimes, I feel, nothing I do is good enough.’’

The elegant Hyderabad batsman started his international career in 1984-85 in spectacular fashion, setting a world record by scoring a century in each of his first three Tests and subsequently earned the sobriquet India's "winningest" captain in both Tests and one-day internationals. Having established the reputation of a dashing, wristy and graceful batsman, he formed the backbone of the Indian middle-order batting. His quick flicks, glances and drives were a veritable feast to the cricket lovers all over the world and once in form, nothing could stop him. He hit the fastest century in one-day cricket against New Zealand until the record was broken by the explosive Sri Lanka opener, Sanath Jayasuriya, and later by Pakistan's Shahid Afridi. Cricket commentators say ‘‘Azhar is an outstanding player of spin and medium-pace bowling.’’ He sometime used to bowl brisk off-spin in one-day cricket until a back strain forced him to stop. He has also earned the reputation of being among the best fielders of the world, pulling off unbelievable catches.

It was unfortunate that he was first removed from captaincy on the basis of just a bad patch he was passing through in the mid-nineties. He had a good series against South Africa in the winter of 1996 but a little careless performance in the Caribbean resulted in his replacement from the team for the India Cup. His prestige was restored when he was back as skipper and played a great series in Sri Lanka, having achieved the highest average among the Indian batsmen. Doubtlessly, he commanded the respect of his entire team.

It is really sad that Azhar, having been found guilty in match-fixing by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), may be banished from cricket for life. Reports say that he has even accepted his guilt to the CBI. His fans still don't believe the charges hurled at him and doubt their authenticity. ‘‘It is intriguing and unbelievable that he could have fixed matches’’, they wonder. The most apt comment on Azhar's involvement in match-fixing has been made by the English and Welsh Cricket Board Chairman, Lord MacLaurin. ‘‘It is a tragedy. It is sad that someone like him has been found guilty, but people now know they will get life bans if they transgress’’.

Lord MacLaurin profusely praised Azhar, saying ‘‘Azhar has been a wonderful player and it is terrible that he will have to face his friends and the general public and say I am guilty. This will indeed be irksome and would be totally unacceptable to the cricket fraternity. And, of course, the cricket followers would also feel that they have been cheated in the name of the gentleman's game and the whole episode is a sham and totally disgraceful.’’

The Inquiry Commissioner of the BCCI, Mr K. Madhavan, has been particularly harsh on Azhar and, in his report, he has justified the indictment of the former Test captain saying, ‘‘I have to necessarily distinguish the case of Azhar from the case of others; a leader has to lead by example. While this is the modern theory in management, this was well-known to our ancestors also’’. The charges against Azhar include close contacts and nexus with bookies and Madhavan's report says ‘‘in his case the misconduct is aggravated as he was the captain of the Indian team for long and let down the country and the cricket loving public in a despicable manner.’’

Jadeja's connections raise dust

THE Indian cricket board's decision to defer disciplinary action against Mohammed Azharuddin, Ajay Jadeja, Manoj Prabhakhar and Ajay Sharma has raised many an eyebrow among the fans of the game. Board President A.C.Muthiah, who till the other day talked about stringent action, including a possible life ban, changed tone and was heard taking a soft line. This volte face, however, has not gone down well with cricket lovers and efforts are on now to find out the reason for the cricket board's change of heart. It appears the entire gameplan of the board is to save a single player, Ajay Jadeja.

Jadeja's association with the top guns of a powerful partner in the National Democratic Alliance is well known. The association has landed some of the senior leaders of the party in trouble. The last time it related to an income tax raid on Jadeja. However, the powers that be ensured that there was little damage from the raid. Now the talk is about how a senior Minister is pulling strings to let Jadeja off the hook, or at least ensure that he gets away with the minimum penalty. The Minister's alleged interference is threatening to snowball into a major political issue with several Opposition leaders getting ready to embarrass the ruling NDA.

Polluted Ganga

The Ganga, revered by Hindus, is not all that pure. According to reports, the Ganga is more polluted than Norway's sewers.

A Norwegian Institute report indicates that a sample of treated effluent from the common effluent treatment plant set up for treating tannery effluents in Jajmau shows a chemical oxygen demand level of 800 milligram per litre and chromium concentration of 10.9 milligram per litre. The Central Pollution Control Board carried out the monitoring of the Jajmau common effluent treatment plant during the months of April and June this year and found chemical oxygen demand concentration of 341 milligram per litre and chromium concentration of 0.15 milligram per litre in the treated effluent as against the prescribed discharge standards of chemical oxygen demand of 250 milligrams per litre and total chromium of 2 milligram per litre.

The Government is once again talking about the good old Ganga Action Plan to get rid of the problem.

After all they are Elders

The Rajya Sabha is known for its meaningful and qualitative debates on various burning issues confronting the country. Often House business drags on for long hours as member after member, most of them elders and elected by the electoral college of the people, speak on any given subject. No wonder, the Rajya Sabha is called the House of Elders.

The other day, a member, inspired by the quick pace of proceedings in the Lok Sabha, pointed out that the Upper House took time in conducting its business. His reference came during a discussion on the passage of a Bill. He pointed out that the Lok Sabha would have passed the Bill in no time. To this the experienced Deputy Chairperson, Dr Najma Heptullah, reminded him that it was the House of elders. she said that ‘‘ this is a House of elders. Members here do not talk like children.''

Walk-out party

While the Janata Dal has set a record of sorts in the ‘‘splits’’ it has witnessed in the decade gone by, its President, Sharad Yadav, has a record of his own. The President of the Janata Dal (United), who considers his party as the parent body, says that though his party has seen several leaders, including three former Prime Ministers ‘‘walk out of the party’’, he had not taken action against anyone. ‘‘I have not suspended any top leader,'' Mr Yadav said recently when asked why no action had been taken against Mr Ram Vilas Paswan despite his open criticism of the leadership and his decision to float a new party. ‘‘Though there is provision in our constitution for disciplinary action, there is no precedent,’’ a senior JD (U) leader pointed out. Political observers say that naive as Mr Yadav may seem, there was definite reason in not taking action against Mr Paswan. Such a course, they point out, would have given a martyr's halo to Mr Paswan.

Staying on

After a brief lull, the culture of rallies seems to be back in Delhi with a vengeance. New parties are being launched and protest and support rallies are being planned one after the other. Though these may be big morale-boosters to the organisers, they seem bad for Delhi's health. One, there are long traffic jams near the venue of rallies, and more importantly, some of the rallyists find Delhi fine enough place to settle down. Referring to the stupendous growth in Delhi's population in the past few years, old-timers recall the spate of rallies in Delhi in the late eighties when each party tried to outdo the other in mobilising the masses. Many of the rallyists hailing from poverty-stricken areas of UP and Bihar found Delhi a good enough place to eke out a living and stayed on, throwing all calculations of urban planners to the wind. How many of rallyists in Mr Ram Vilas Paswan's huge ‘‘Janshakti’’ rally would have chosen to make Delhi there home is anybody's guess.

Sporting the flag

The use, or rather the misuse, of the National Flag has been an issue of debate in the country. The latest to add grist to the debating mill is the Indian cricket captain Saurav Ganguly. The flamboyant skipper has been seen sporting the Indian flag on his batting gloves. Ganguly is perhaps unaware of the Indian Flag Code. Nor does he seem to be aware of the dust that was raised when Malini Ramani landed in trouble for using the flag on a costume at a haute couture show.

(Contributed by T.V. Lakshminarayan, Girija Shankar Kaura, Tripti Nath, Prashant Sood and P.N. Andley).

Show of solidarity with the Palestinians
bY Humra Quraishi

NOVEMBER 29 and yes, this week there was focus not only on West Asia but also on Iraq. In fact, the Vice-President of Iraq, Mr Taha Yassin Ramadhan (must have been born in the month of Ramzan!) was in town and a reception was hosted in his honour that very evening. I will include details of his visit later in the column but as I often write, first things first. On “The Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People” ICCR had arranged for a series of programmes. The highlight of the show was children’s participation — school kids from two of Delhi’s well known schools did take part and this I feel was a nice, healthy gesture. And the ace politician duo Mulayam Singh and Amar Singh were quick to build on the significance of the day by hosting an iftaar party that very evening. Their way of expressing solidarity with the people of Palestine! Don’t ask me the reasons for this-except, perhaps, the fact that the people did talk about the Palestinian problem and pondered on the irony of the situation of being persecuted in one’s own homeland.

And though Ajit Kumar Panja (MoS-External Affairs) did speak on the occasion but as an expert on West Asia commented, those days of “Hindi-Arab bhai bhai” seem to be over because of our very obvious stance towards Israel. And the balancing act that the Indian government is trying to perform seems inadequate. View this in the background of a very interesting quote repeated by Mani Shankar Aiyar and the PLO Ambassador to India, Dr Khaled Al Sheikh, at a function organised by the Indian Federation of UN Associations. They said wayback in the 40s Mahatma Gandhi had been critical of the terrorism unleashed by Israel, with the help of the UK and the USA. The Mahatma is said to have also commented that “Palestine belongs to the Palestinians just as England belongs to the English and France to the French.”

From here we move on to the dinner-cum-reception hosted by the Iraqi ambassador to India, Salah Al Mukhtar, for the visiting Vice President of his country. I think Iraq has come out of the worst possible phase (the people of that country ought to be congratulated for their patience and forbearance in upholding their honor and nationalism and we could learn a lesson or two from them). And present at this reception was Ajit Kumar Panja (MoS -External Affairs), Secretary West Asia (MEA), ambassadors of Libya, PLO, Jordan, Lebanon, UAE, Sudan, Somalia, Senegal, Oman, several of our senior politicians — Najma Heptullah, Bhishm Narain Singh, K M Khan and Anil Mehtani who was overheard telling the Vice-President that he did his schooling in Baghdad! Excellent arrangements that evening which included some slightly more subtle ways of security check- though the security was tight and absolutely foolproof but one was not subjected to those humiliating frisks and none of those quick touches. I think we ought to learn a lesson or two on this too. Talking of security checks I cannot help but write that the most humiliating experience vis-a-vis security checks is at the Embassy of the USA. Been there just once (mind you, with prior appointment to interview one of its staffers for a feature) and I have sworn never to go ever again — they strip you of your car keys, driving licence. Probably the yankees have never ever heard Mahatma Gandhi’s famous one liner — trust begets trust.

Anyway, back to the visiting dignitary from Iraq. It is after a gap of nearly 20 years ( I am told that Saddam Hussein was here in 1974) that such a high ranking dignitary is here from Iraq with a high powered delegation and the basic thrust has been to revive the economic cooperation between the two countries. Don’t know whether political men in New Delhi would muster up enough courage to bypass those ongoing UN sanctions against Iraq and thus be in any danger of annoying the USA and its allies (allies in favour of continuing those sanctions in spite of the damaging effects on the Iraqi population. Pick up any of the UN newsletters and the figures of those dying and dead because of the sanctions shock you, yet those sanctions continue. Thankfully the spirit of the Iraqi people is alive and that’s the ultimate test!)

With colours and much from Malaysia

And in town was a water-colour painters’ delegation from Malaysia. ICCR’s Deputy Director Divyabh Manchanda hosted a reception in their honour at the IIC and even before I saw their works (they visited several of our cities and inspired by whatever they saw they sketched, drew and painted ) I was almost taken aback by their no fuss attitude. Though they are the best known in their country yet they were so down to earth and modest. Space constraints come in the way of sharing all the details of their visit with you, but the artists did speak of the inspiration they got after seeing the Taj Mahal and all seemed to marvel at the romantic gesture of the Mughal Emperor Shahjahan. Not bad, if romance and the intricacies that go with it can be rejuvenated by a quick peek at the Taj Mahal, then going towards Agra isn’t a bad idea at all. More and more contingents of men (definitely the Indian men) ought to be taken for those visits/trips/dekko sessions.

TAILPIECE - Met JS Africa Desk (better known for his writing prowess) Pavan Kumar Varma at a reception and he didn’t touch a drop of liquor. “No, during the first week of Ramzan I don’t touch liquor at all..this is my gesture towards all those who are fasting during this holy month!”

Who says politicians have been successful in bringing about divisions? Pavan’s remark set me thinking about how a simple gesture is enough to get you closer to each other (let me quickly clarify — that is members of one community to those of the other!)