 |
| Tuesday, December 12, 2000, Chandigarh, India   
|
Custodial violations Dump anti-dumping cry |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Basu in forefront The talk of reviving the Third Front is old hat. But on Sunday the felicitation ceremony at Calcutta's famous Salt Lake Stadium for veteran Marxist Jyoti Basu gave the idea of its early resurrection a positive boost. Two former Prime Ministers, Mr H. D. Deve Gowda and Mr V. P. Singh, for once appeared sincere while making a public appeal to the longest serving Chief Minister of any state in the country to accept the leadership of the Third Front.
Lessons from U.S. polls Power shortage and costly investment
It is a steal
“Ideavirus” unleashed
Taliban: will joint siege work?
|
|
HUMAN RIGHTS DAY comes once a year. It is not clear whether human rights violations are stopped in jails and police stations on this day. What is for sure is that these are routinely perpetrated on the other 364 days of the year in most of the places. The full range of violence — torture, assault, injury and death in police custody — is exercised to extract a confession or to teach the suspects a lesson. This barbaric practice has prompted the Chief Justice of India, Dr A.S. Anand, to call it the worst form of human rights violation. Many such observations in the past have shamed top police functionaries but nothing much has changed on the ground. This inertia is there perhaps because the police mind is still steeped in the colonial era. There are no qualms about obtaining a confession through the use of the third degree methods. Terror is an established tool of maintaining law and order. The common man has to be subjugated somehow. Unfortunately, this campaign has failed to show results. The number of incidents of custodial violations is on the rise, as is the crime wave. Violence at the hands of police personnel is more or less counter-productive. Traumatised by an insensitive police, many innocent suspects have turned criminals. In fact, the grouse they have against a particular policeman motivates them to rebel against the country as a whole, with all the resultant complications. Many such victims have done incalculable harm to themselves, the country and society in the past. Even ordinary criminals come out of detention duly hardened. The whole approach has to be changed to avoid the undesirable consequences. Law Commission Chairman Justice B.P. Reddy has opined that one way of curbing custodial violence is to make such an activity of a police officer a punishable crime. That is an idea worth considering but the problem is that the technique of inflicting pain has been perfected so much over the decades in the dingy
goals that it is almost impossible to corroborate that torture actually did take place. And there are no eyewitnesses in most cases. Even in the case of injury or death, colleagues of the guilty police personnel come to his rescue, stonewalling investigation, making prosecution very difficult. Surprise raids and the presence of neutral observers may be of some use but real improvement can be brought about only by changing the orientation of the police force, especially the constabulary which comes in contact with the public on a day-to-day basis. The grey area of how to tackle hardcore criminals who just would not confess to their crime through peaceful, persuasive means remains. But it has to be drummed constantly into the mind of the men in khaki that even a criminal is not an enemy. A confession has to be obtained, not “extracted” like a tooth. Countries like Britain have made a clean break from the past. So can India. |
|
ALL the loud babble about dumping by China has turned out to be just that — meaningless babble. As serious study goes on, although disjointed and piecemeal, evidence is surfacing that Chinese goods are very cheap because of the streamlined system of production and pricing. All these practices are perfectly permissible under the WTO (World Trade Organisation) rules. What is more, the initial Indian reaction of raiding shops stocking imported goods has turned out to be illegal. Once a commodity enters the country, a trader is under no legal obligation to prove its origin or provide other proof. Anyway, all that the raids have achieved is to drive the sale underground and not to deter the importers or sellers. The second knee-kerk reaction has been to force as many as 131 Chinese goods to obtain a certification from the Bureau of Indian Standards to ensure that they are of the same quality as those made in India. The idea is to block items which Indian makers say are substandard. For instance, pencil cells made in this country last for double the duration of the Chinese ones and certain food preservatives are said to be unreliable. But the main attack is on bicycles; the imported one costs Rs 850 or less while local ones cost nearly double as much. But the Chinese use alloys which are supposed to be less safe. So the dingdong battle is on to somehow keep out the cheap imports. The latest entrant into the controversy is that country’s envoy, Mr Zhou Gang. He has taken serious objection to the dumping charge which has filled the air as though on a cue. He has flatly refused any underpricing, but is quite willing to cooperate in checking smuggling. Recently three persons found smuggling have been executed in southern China. As he has pointed out, imports through official channels has gone up by 33 per cent while exports from this country has jumped by over 60 per cent. A senior official in Beijing refuted the charge of smuggling with statistics. Customs duty collection has shot up by 38.9 per cent during the first 11 months of this year. The point is that a smuggler does not pay customs duty! An analyst finds strong structural advantages which help China produce goods at world beating prices. Take import duty. It works out to a very low 4 per cent for both raw material and intermediate goods. In India the rate is about 20 per cent. This is a very big plus factor. Two, it has developed a vast network of exporting organisations, which increases their clout. It supplies power and raw material under its control at low prices not to select industries but to specified regions. Not only this is WTO compatible but also economically wise in the long run. This has attracted huge foreign investments and given a massive boost to development. The government has earned enough revenue because of the economic growth to more than compensate it for the initial splurge. But the real reason is the huge production facilities or, what academics call, the economy of scale. In the case of certain consumer durables one factory in China turns out double the volume of all Indian units do. With the capital costs distributed among so many units of production and power and raw material available at very low rates and, finally, a producer-friendly taxation rate, China no doubt offers fierce competition not only to India but even to the mighty USA. A Chinese spokesman, sensitive to foreign suspicions of secrecy and underhand deals, challenged anyone to prove that the government has ordered a low price to earn export dollars. He asserts that every manufacturing unit is totally autonomous in its selection of technology and pricing and this is open to inspection. The final word comes from an Indian economic writer who had visited that country a few times. He says local goods are available at very low prices in that country itself, thus knocking out the charge of dumping. As global trade understands it, dumping is selling a commodity in a foreign country at a fraction of the price the locals pay and thus capture the market, destroy indigenous competition and a little later jack up the prices to make a killing. China is confident of convincing anyone that it sells a pencil cell at a slightly lower price in Guandong than its products sell in Chandni Chowk. |
|
The talk of reviving the Third Front is old hat. But on Sunday the felicitation ceremony at Calcutta's famous Salt Lake Stadium for veteran Marxist Jyoti Basu gave the idea of its early resurrection a positive boost. Two former Prime Ministers, Mr H. D. Deve Gowda and Mr V. P. Singh, for once appeared sincere while making a public appeal to the longest serving Chief Minister of any state in the country to accept the leadership of the Third Front. Free of the worries of heading the coalition government in West Bengal, a task which Mr Jyoti Babu performed with rare aplomb for 24 years, the man who missed becoming Prime Minister in 1996 too gave more than a subtle hint of his willingness to head the proposed Third Front. Two other former Prime Ministers, Mr Chandra Shekhar and Mr Inder Kumar Gujral, too may have no difficulty in throwing their weight behind Mr Basu. Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav's presence at the function should be treated as good news for those who too are not happy with the emergence of the Sangh Parivar-dominated political formation at the Centre. The fact that his wife, Ms Rabri Devi, is Chief Minister of Bihar because of Congress support is a political irritant which can be taken care of when the Third Front comes close to assuming political shape and substance. Taking the Congress along would in effect reduce Mr Basu's political stature, for he would be seen as the leader of a "second front" of which Ms Sonia Gandhi would like to be seen as an equal partner, at least in the project of dislodging the Bharatiya Janata Party from power. Once Mr Basu formally accepts the responsibility of heading the Third Front, he is likely to run into other imponderable difficulties. He may find himself having to dilute his commitment to class struggle in favour of the points of views of the caste-driven political parties in the Hindi heartland. However, keeping in mind the larger objective of dislodging what the Third Front perceives to be parties representing the communal forces Mr Basu should have no problem in doing business with even Mr Mulayan Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party. Although officially the Samajwadi leader sent a specially emissary for conveying to Mr Basu his party's support to his appointment as leader of the Third Front, his absence at the rally may come in handy in providing the over-ambitious "messiah of the Muslims" a political escape route in the event of differences over what gets into the fine print of the Front's agenda. However, as of now Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav is in a reasonably happy frame of mind, so much so that he made a public announcement of the end of his differences with Mr V. P. Singh. He went to the extent of declaring that "Mr V. P. Singh is now playing a constructive role and has no selfish interests in politics". However, Mr Basu's emergence as the most acceptable face of the Third Front should be seen as just the beginning of the process of bringing together on a common platform all the like-minded parties whose commitment to secular and democratic values are above suspicion. If Mr Basu is able to win back the South for the Third Front, it would be seen as bad news for both the Congress and the BJP. As of today only Kerala would be willing to march in step with Mr Basu. But Karnataka too can be brought back into the fold. A little bit of persuasion should see even Mr Chandra Babu Naidu of Andhra Pradesh return to the front which brought him into national reckoning. Of course, Mr Basu should also brace himself for welcoming back Mr Ram Vilas Paswan, Mr Nitish Kumar and Mr Sharad Yadav without making them feel guilty for having shared power with the BJP. There should be no doubt that the resurrection of the Third Front under the leadership of Jyoti Babu would prove to be an interesting political development. There is no reason why the second coming should not also be politically significant for those who genuinely believe that the country's secular image has taken a few serious knocks. |
|
Lessons from U.S. polls THE sordid drama that has unfolded since the November 7 polling in the United States presidential elections highlights the archaic character and the inherent limitations of the American political system. After a series of recounts and bitter legal battles, the country that routinely calls itself the world’s “greatest democracy” seems all set to install a President who doesn’t have a popular mandate! There was always something wrong about an Electoral College in which a President needs to win just 11 states (of the total of 50), and where 11 per cent of the people (e.g. who live in California) count for 20 per cent of the national vote. But the full absurdity of this arrangement, to which 538 “electors” matter more than 100 million-plus flesh-and-blood voters, is not being played out. The winner-takes-all system, which was meant to provide stability in the USA, will probably create the most acute political uncertainty and instability in America’s living memory. No matter which man is declared the winner, his rival will always think the election was stolen from him. This is likely to make for legislative blockades, government shutdowns, and paralysis in Cabinet formation, as well as policy-making in some areas. Even the Senate — where a working majority is usually 60:40 — is likely to be vertically split thanks, among other factors, to Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate Joe Liberman’s greed in standing for two posts. The “partisan bickering” of which both the Democrats and Republicans accuse each other is unlikely to abate. On the contrary, it will probably further intensify, with hardened right-wing Republicans going on the offensive against the Democrats just as they did with Mr Bill Clinton during the impeachment episode. The crowning irony of all this is that the two major parties would be fighting more over words and icons than over substantial policies. Indeed, the differences between their two presidential candidates are far less important than their differences from the third and only principled, but marginal, candidate Mr Ralph Nader, who alone had thoughtful, pro-people policies. As has been said, the American fault-line runs not so much between the two major parties as between voters and non-voters. From one point of view, it is those who didn’t vote (because they felt there was no real choice or are too despondent, sullen or poor) who decided the outcome of this bizarre contest. This is not to deny the significant differences between Mr George Bush’s and Mr Al Gore’s respective support bases. For instance, Blacks came out in fairly large numbers and voted 10 to 1 for Mr Gore. Families of unionised workers (more than a fourth of the popular vote) favoured Mr Gore over Mr Bush in a two-to-one proportion. Mr Gore’s 11-point lead among female voters is attributable to pro-“choice” women (who stand for abortion rights). Nor will it do to minimise their differences on domestic policy — from health care, tax reforms, reproductive rights, environmental protection and the death penalty, to religion and politics. There are equally significant differences on security and foreign policies: Mr Bush will be less interventionist than Mr Gore. And he will certainly push harder for anti-missile defences and deal more aggressively with Russia and China. Mr Bush will probably oppose CTBT ratification, although Mr Gore is unlikely to accomplish it. However, what divides them far more sharply is their approach to the Supreme Court, where nominations must be made to replace at least three judges, including the highly conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The nine-member court’s fate will be decided in radically different ways by Mr Bush and Mr Gore. Mr Gore will probably nominate moderates or liberals (much like Mr Clinton’s Stephen Breyer and Ms Ruth Bader Ginsburg). Mr Bush is certain to nominate hardcore conservatives in the fashion of Judges Atonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, who have recently led the assault on individual freedoms and the social justice agenda. Today’s US Supreme Court is the product of more than 30 years of nominations largely by Presidents Nixon, Reagan and Bush (Senior). It tends to be narrowly divided, with a frequent conservative majority (led by Rehnquist), but sometimes a somewhat “liberal” 5 to 4 or 6 to 3 line-up. A couple of reactionary appointments would tilt that balance and consolidate a hard 5 to 4 majority which is consistently right-wing, totally pro-corporate, and which systematically tears down the court’s own past rulings in favour of freedom, justice and equality, including Roe v Wade (abortion rights), environmental protection, health care and so on. Regrettably, in the US system, the Supreme Court can often be the first among equals in the different branches of government. In the past, it played a progressive role — ending racial segregation, promoting affirmative action, expanding women’s rights, etc. In the future, it could do just the opposite. What happens in the US Supreme Court has important consequences not just for the USA but for the whole world. For instance, a further tightening of patent laws in favour of corporations, or removal of restrictions on biotechnology research will affect all of us. The crisis of leadership in the USA and further growth of conservatism there will aggravate the crisis of leadership everywhere. That crisis is global. And yet, because America occupies such disproportionate political and economic weight in the world, its own crisis — so stark today — is uniquely menacing. Today’s world is not unipolar in the real sense. But America’s economic and technological pre-eminence is as unchallenged as its military might or its clout in the UN. This was not the case a decade ago when the Cold War was about to end. Then scholars like Paul Kennedy (“The Rise or Fall of the Great Powers”) were forecasting US decline vis-a-vis Japan and other East Asian states, and especially the European Union. It was by no means guaranteed that the USA would emerge the world leader in technology, itself heavily dominated by informatics, or that the general economic policy model of the US Right, viz neo-liberal market fundamentalism, would hold sway so long over the world as it has done. It wasn’t inevitable that NATO would get more powerful, active and aggressive under US leadership a decade after the Warsaw Pact disintegrated. Where does US dominance leave the world today? How might it be challenged and moderated to promote a less skewed global order? How can its most harmful consequences for the world, especially for the Global South, be mitigated? There is no easy answer. But, logically, the main challenge to American domination must come from Western Europe. That is where there was a lot of hope, owing to the break in the region’s rightward evolution with the coming to power of Social Democratic or Liberal-Left governments in the 1990s. Last year, 11 out of the European Union’s 15 governments fell in that category. (Since then, Austria has moved rightwards). Within the EU, the French and the Germans held out the most promise — partly because of Mr Lionel Jospin’s relatively radical programme, and partly because of the Greens’ presence in Germany’s Social Democrat-led coalition. Today, that hope remains unfulfilled. The Third Way, which New Labour and the New Social Democrats promised as an alternative to US-style global capitalism, is itself in crisis. It has failed to challenge US economic hegemony. The euro has lost over a quarter of its value in 20 months. There have been US-style mergers and acquisitions and mindless privatisation of basic sectors like railways and telecom. The emerging entities tend to look across the Atlantic (the USA still absorbs a quarter of global FDI flows). Indeed, the Third Way’s proponents have not even been able to re-create the “capitalism with a human face” which was the hallmark of the Golden Age of Capital (1945-75), which witnessed the construction of the social infrastructure and the welfare state on a historically unprecedented scale. At the political and strategic level, the EU has been especially timid in asserting autonomy. Kosovo demonstrated that starkly. Although the EU is now creating an armed force of its own, its function will be far narrower than NATO’s. Politically, there is no stiff resistance to the USA no bold autonomy moves. Political autonomy will be hard to achieve unless Europe develops an altogether new social and economic model of its own, one that is defiantly and assertively dissimilar to the American. The time has clearly come for The Fourth Way, a radical new approach to society, politics and economics which challenges corporate capitalism, and stops talking glibly about the inevitability of globalisation, rather takes it on frontally. There is a ray of hope as I write this on the first anniversary of the spontaneous Seattle revolt against globalisation, with all its inequality and injustice. Seattle proved that the struggle of labour unions, environmentalists, human rights activists, turtle-savers, campaigners against child labour, as well as those fighting for debt cancellation and the reduction of North-South inequities can be knit together; that a new vision is possible. The Fourth Way, premised upon that vision, is our greatest hope of success against the tyranny of capital. |
|
Power shortage and costly investment FOREIGN investment in the critical power infrastructure is stalled because of the acute problem of recovery of its cost. The latest demand of foreign investors is sovereign guarantee for all payments, including the cover for the rise in the prices of petroleum feedstocks for power generation and depreciation of the exchange value of the Indian rupee. The payment for the one and only foreign power station built so far by the Dabhol Corporation of the USA has already gone up to nearly Rs 5.5 per unit of electricity generated. The cost for the final consumer is higher to cover the cost incurred by the Maharashtra State Electricity Board for transmission and distribution. In this light, the Maharashtra government is reported to be contemplating withdrawal from the joint venture with the US corporation for the expansion of this power station. The plan for the production of 7500 MW by foreign companies during the current Five-Year Plan period has, in fact, already collapsed. Any attempt to revive it is bound to be foolhardy. The reason for this is not the lack of attractive terms for foreign investment in the electric power sector. The foreign companies have, in fact, been given far too generous fiscal concessions and incentives. The reason as alleged by them is the “absence of structured payments guarantees” for the high priced electricity that they are willing to produce in India. The truth is that foreign power producers, which work under cartel arrangements, want special terms such as Enron was able to extract in a negotiated deal for setting up a power plant in Maharashtra. The negotiated deal with Enron had, however, provoked sharp public objections and the government was forced to go for competitive bidding for more foreign power projects. The foreign power producers were not pleased with competitive bidding norms which would restrain the gold-plating of their investment. They do not seem to be satisfied with guarantees of payments by state electricity boards only. They want to enter into arrangements for the marketing of electric power to the final consumers directly. In addition, they want exchange risk to be covered by the government. They seem to be keen on trading in power rather than the generation of power in India. The terms for setting up the Dabhol Power Project in Maharashtra not only guaranteed returns on investment as high as 30 per cent, which will also be exchange risk-free. The inflated capital cost and the guaranteed high return for this project when compared with similar projects constructed by Indian agencies with indigenous equipment was bound in due course to result in an intolerable increase in the price of electric power for the state electricity boards as well as the final consumer. The purchase price for the Maharashtra State Electricity Board for Dabhol power has gone up to Rs 7 per unit of power. The board is also required to ensure full utilisation of the power generated by Enron by even shutting down the less costly power generated by its own generating stations as well as other domestic producers in Maharashtra. This was an extraordinary arrangement violating all norms of competition and fair trade which TNCs blithely swear by and the so-called economic reformers in India vociferously applaud. This position was untenable and unsustainable. The compelling reason for caution for the construction of large infrastructural projects under turnkey arrangements is that their cost is bloated on account of imported equipment and services from tied sources rather than on a competitive basis. Successive governments in India started accepting turnkey arrangements in the name of achieving plan targets. But the desired targets have never been achieved. On the contrary, there have been delays and increases in costs. A totally false alibi has been the stringency of rupee resources to build infrastructural projects, especially electric power projects with indigenous equipment and engineering skills. In India, BHEL is able and willing to undertake the manufacture of power plant equipment of high and globally competitive standards. The NTPC has demonstrated its efficiency in the construction and running of power stations. As matters stand, BHEL and the NTPC can put together additional 6000 MW of power generation capacity annually. If this capacity had become available and optimally used, the power supply situation in India would have been comfortable. But the switch to turnkey construction by foreign interests in the name of liberalisation-globalisation-privatisation of the Indian economy has not only retarded the growth of the power sector but was also mischievous as it could have impaired the working efficiency of BHEL and the NTPC. The dedication of their work force and managerial cadre has, however, been exemplary and performance praiseworthy. Disconcerting, however, are the moves to privatise their management. The excuse that the government had no option but to go in for turnkey construction for the power projects in particular has been not only misplaced but also curious when the so-called economic reforms were initiated ostensibly to improve the balance of external payments position of the country. |
|
|
It is a steal RECALL the case of the Indian actress who threw a couple of lipsticks in her yawning handbag in a London store and was caught. It was a classic case of opportunity creating a thief. Dr Lawrence Zeitler, Professor of Psychology at New York City College, has forwarded a strange theory that stealing makes us all happy. “Stealing”, he says, “makes dull jobs more interesting. It lifts morale; it makes workers happy; it serves as a safety valve for office frustration. The only rule, he adds, “should be a tolerable stealing limit”. Apart from theft being wrong and indefensible, what is a “tolerable stealing limit”? When the firm goes bankrupt? One self-proclaimed honest father’s child had entered for a newspaper competition for children only. He helped him with a prize! In our younger days, we think even deliberate “dishonesty is fun”. In a cricket match at Jalandhar, which I happened to be umpiring, our spinner repeatedly foxed the opposition star batsman who played and missed but to my surprise our bowler did not appeal. As we were crossing the ends, I whispered to him; hit his pad and appeal loudly. He did. Up went the fatal finger. That was the only ball the batsman had “played” with the bat. I still carry the burden of dishonesty! Though the incident took place about four decades ago. |
|
This
year’s Big Idea has been the idea of how Big Ideas spread. The germ of it came from the New Yorker writer Malcolm Gladwell, whose book The Tipping Point, published last spring, investigated the process by which particular products became crazes, and who argued that these social trends mirrored the behaviour of diseases (in particular, happily, venereal diseases) — in that they were spread in the first instance by a promiscuous and energetic few, and, once they gained a hold in a small population, they grew exponentially. (At one moment, for example, a handful of goatee-bearded systems analysts in San Francisco took to riding to work on prototype silver micro-scooters designed by a Swiss eccentric; within a few months they were on the Christmas lists of the whole world.) Gladwell was fascinated by the precise moment at which a local outbreak of such ideas or trends “tipped” and they became an epidemic, and by the optimum environment in which this “tipping” might take place. Like all the best Big Ideas, this one came armed with a pseudoscientific rhetoric borrowed from a variety of sources that included Richard Dawkins’s evolutionary biology (a fertile idea was a “meme”, an organism that grew stronger as it spread) and Yiddish folklore (a propagator of new ideas was a “maven”). This nomenclature gave Gladwell’s thesis a compelling kind of contemporary authority — but, still, anyone who can describe the intimate sales history of a particular kind of flip-flop in Los Angeles (or the curious trajectory of a word-of-mouth bestselling novel) in terms of the spread of syphilis in downtown Baltimore, is likely — in our brand and health-obsessed times — to give their idea, again to use Gladwell’s term, “stickiness”. One place where Gladwell’s word-of-mouth treatise stuck was under the bald pate of Seth Godin, a 40-year-old Californian who, in his own words, has been on the “cutting edge of internet marketing since before there was an internet”. Godin, formerly a marketing vice-president at the dominant online portal Yahoo!, was a man who had long been in search of a Big Idea -his previous books had included The Ultra Secrets of Game Boy Games and The E-Mail Addresses of the Rich and Famous as well as the bestselling Permission Marketing. When he read The Tipping Point, he says, many of the thoughts which had preoccupied him about the growth of new technology suddenly coalesced into a one large contagious-feeling idea: an “ideavirus”. In 30 days he had written a book, Unleashing the Ideavirus, which gave practical application to Gladwell’s theorising. Godin posted his book on the internet in August: it has since been downloaded by more than a million people — many of them, you imagine, alarmed publishers — making it the fastest-spreading virtual book ever, and, probably, extraordinarily, one of this autumn’s best-read book of any kind. One of the selling points of Godin’s idea — which differentiates it from most other business books — is that it puts its money where its mouth is. Godin’s notion of the ideavirus suggests that our future will resemble one vast global Tupperware party. Products (which in his terms are interchangeable with “ideas”) will be sold less and less through traditional means of advertising and more and more by word-of-mouth recommendations and gossip. His book, launched with no advertising budget, is a paradigm of that process; it offers readers easy ways to send the book to their friends.
(Observer) Monkey arrested A monkey has been “arrested” for disrupting studies and causing havoc in a college near Bhubaneswar. The monkey was nabbed from Tirtol, a small town in Jagatsingpur district that was devastated in the supercyclone that hit coastal regions of the state last year. Tirtol is situated about 70 km from Bhubaneswar. The owner of the monkey said that the simian used to regale crowds by mimicking humans. “He would sip tea, smoke cigarettes and pretend to read a newspaper,” his master said. However, he was shocked by the devastation caused by the supercyclone and since then he has been behaving abnormally,” he said. Over the last few months the monkey has injured as many as 75 people, the police said, adding that 45 of the victims were college girls. “He would disrupt classes by roaming in the local college,” police said. As a result of the monkey scare the college, Adikabi Sarala Das Mahavidyalaya, had to be shut down for three weeks. College students even organised a demonstration to press the authorities to put an end to the monkey menace. “As no steps were taken, we had organised a road blockade on the Cuttack-Paradip road for a day last week,” a college student said. Eventually a special squad of the police and forest personnel was put together which nabbed the monkey.
(IANS) Ginger advantage Presence of ginger in diet may curb the oxidative damage which is associated with diseases like cancer, atherosclerosis and some neurological disorders. Scientists have found that ginger is as effective ascorbic acid as an
antioxidant and may be included regularly in the normal diet for therapeutic purposes. As antioxidative agents inactivate the free radicals, their inclusion in diet assumes enormous importance. Rhizomes of ginger or Zingiber officinale are consumed worldwide as a spice and flavouring agent. In India, it is used extensively in both vegetarian and non-vegetarian diets. Oral consumption of ginger has been shown to result in relief of pain and swelling in patients with rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis and muscular discomfort. Ginger oil has been shown to possess antiinflammatory properties.
(PTI) |
|
Taliban: will joint siege work? India has every reason to rejoice at the success of its initiatives to bring the USA and Russia on a common platform on the issue of countering the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Our present preoccupation with the Ramzan ceasefire and peace talks offer should not be allowed to overshadow the significance of this breakthrough. For, caging of the Taliban monster is crucial to India's anti-terrorist operations in Jammu and Kashmir. At present over 90 per cent of Afghan territory is under the control of the Taliban rulers in Kabul. The Northern Alliance led by Ahmed Shah Masood is trying to desperately hold on to its last pocket of resistance. Once this too falls, the Taliban elements would be free to turn to other targets. The security implications of this will be too strong for India to ignore. A decisive victory for the fundamentalist Taliban elsewhere would mean a strengthening of the militancy in Kashmir and an added edge to what the experts call Pakistan's goal of ‘‘strategic indepth’’. Therefore India attaches considerable importance to the success of the three-way understanding reached between itself and the USA on the one side and with Russia on the other and between the USA and Russia to take on the fundamentalist Taliban regime. The new UN sanction is its most effective outcome. The Taliban rulers and the Pakistani establishment have always been working in tandem to perpetrate terrorism in the entire region. At one stage, there have been evidences of the presence of large Afghanese Taliban elements in Kashmir. Some time back there have been reports of well equipped 700 Islamic mercenaries crossing over to India through the Pir Panjal mountains to establish bases in the Kashmir valley. They were all trained in camps maintained by Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan. Incidentally, they were directed to move over to the Kashmir border just a few days before the US attacks on the Laden camps. Seized documents had later revealed that the Taliban elements had Bin Laden's pictures and cassettes containing his explosive speeches inciting
the sentiments of the Kashmir Muslims. This infiltration had taken place at a time when the local terrorists were losing heart due to the combined results of their own isolation from the peace-loving local population. There were indications that outside armed Islamic forces, especially Afghans and Arabs, were wresting control of the terrorist activities in Kashmir. Political parties had also expressed concern over this dangerous process which might have added a new dimension to separatism in Kashmir. A large-scale induction of foreign elements into Kashmir failed entirely due to pressures on the Taliban and the Osama elements to shift their forces elsewhere. It was a time when Osama bin Laden, though on the run due to the US threats, was fighting on too many fronts around Afghanistan. Taliban-Osama watchers in Delhi do not even rule out the possibility of those outsiders taking charge of the terrorist operations even if Pakistan is forced to suspend them. India does share the concerns of both the USA and Russia about the joint Taliban-Pakistan moves to export Islamic fundamentalism through terrorism. Like India, Russia has been the direct victim of Taliban terror, including retaliatory bomb blasts in Moscow. Laden has been directly supervising the supply of arms and men to the separatist Chechans in Russian territory. Russia has been forced to mobilise huge resources to counter the Taliban-backed rebels whose real aim is to spread their control in a vast area beyond Afghanistan. The Taliban elements are also busy spreading fundamentalism among the Muslim communities in the neighbouring CIS countries which otherwise have a liberal tradition. Using such elements and through threats, patronage and material aid, they have been trying to win over certain CIS countries. Turkmenistan broke the CIS sanction code to supply fuel and food to the Taliban military machinery. All efforts to persuade them to stop it have failed. Russia was also forced to retaliate against Georgia for its collusion with the rebels — again for narrow gains. Like the USA Russia also fears that if allowed unchecked the Taliban militia would be a threat to the entire region and beyond. Kabul derives much of its strength from Pakistan which provides it the military trainers, part of the arms and the madrasa-recruited jihadis. Western estimates put the number of such madrasas at 6,500. They give free ‘‘education’’ with boarding in a land where many cannot afford alternatives. The Taliban and Laden have their own exclusive sources of arms supply, financed by the drug trade and Islamic donations. Pakistan facilitates both in addition to their own share of supply. The USA had tried its best to persuade the Pakistani rulers to cut off their supply links of all types to the Taliban. Apparently, the US disillusionment with Pakistan has been the result of its own miscalculations. Both Pakistan and Kabul have deeper mutual interests and inter-dependence. Both wants the support of each other for survival. Laden symbolises fundamentalism and this inspires influential sections in the two countries. If Kabul cannot despise Laden at US requests or Pakistani rulers cannot shut off the borders, it has been due to the hold of this destructive ideology unleashed by the madrasas over a period of time. It has been a movement to enforce outdated Islamic norms in a crude manner on millions of men and women. But this does command a mass base fired by the religious fanatics. Such mass frenzy — Islam in danger — had got activated when the USA recently tried to force Pakistan from associating with Kabul. The Pakistani rulers too realised that if they disowned Laden or Kabul on US bidding, there would be a fierce fundamentalist backlash from the mullahs which they might not be able to withstand. Thus Pakistan itself had faced the threat of a Talibanisation of society. This has been an eye opener for the USA too. Initially its interest was confined to eliminating Osama bin Laden for his role in a series of determined attacks on the embassies and a naval vessel. Hence it tried to prop up a pliable regime in Kabul which could be used to serve its emerging geopolitical interests. But the Taliban, which itself was earlier armed and trained by the USA against the Soviets, became a deadly Frankenstein. The joint strategy — by the USA, Russia and India — against the Taliban and its allies has three components. First, to isolate the rulers in Kabul, denying them any outside help of any kind. This is to dry up the arms and fuel supplies. Second, to force Pakistan, Turkmenistan and certain Islamic regimes to keep off the Taliban elements. Third, to liberally help the Northern Alliance of Ahmed Shah Masood, the only force fighting in Afghanistan against the Taliban regime, leading to the installation of a broad-based government in Kabul. Tony Black, a senior US official specialising in the region, has been in Tashkent and around from October 5 to 10 to discuss the necessary help for the Masood forces. Encouraged by the new developments, the Northern Alliance forces have been regrouping for a renewed assault southwards some time after the snow melts after the winter. There have been reports of Russian arms aid and training for Masood troops. The USA also seems to divert such assistance in consonance with its new policy. The hopes of a successful military initiative against the anti-Kabul forces are based on the deadly effect of the UN sanction on the Taliban forces. Russia's 11 CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) allies have formed an anti-terrorist centre to coordinate actions. Apart from Russia's own renewed assault on Islamic separatists in Chechnya, it is providing military assistance to the former Soviet central Asian states to fight the Taliban. All this has the nod of the USA. Unlike in other recent cases, a UN-sponsored sanction can have a crippling effect on Kabul. War-torn for two decades, its infrastructure is in a shambles. It looks to the outside world for everything and get them — initially due to the cold war pressures and then Islamic aid. The main sources of supplies to the Taliban is well identified. The new UN sanction will force it shut all its offices abroad, freeze foreign accounts, restrict travels by its officials and ban all international flights to and from Afghanistan. Once formalised, the combined influence of the USA and Russia can turn it effective. Pakistan had lobbied hard to persuade China to obstruct the UN decision. But China itself has been a victim of the Taliban-led terrorism in its neighbouring Xinjiang province. Of late Iran and Yemen have also joined hands against the Taliban. Pakistan finds itself in a precarious position with regard to the UN sanction which binds it to immediately end its military supplies and political role in Afghanistan. Pakistan will have to withdraw all its nationals — military advisers or jehadis from the madrasas — from Afghanistan. (The ban, significantly, will not be applicable to the supplies to the anti-Taliban forces in the north.). Islamabad will also have to shut down all terrorist training camps within its territory within a month and allow the UN to monitor the compliance. This will specially benefit India as it can cut at the very roots of the recruitment, training and despatching of the terrorists from across the border to Jammu and Kashmir. If Islamabad complies with the UN sanction, it is bound to invite the ire of the Taliban which, in turn, will ruin its elaborate machinery for terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. Its political repercussions for the rulers in Islamabad will be enormous. In case it ignores the sanction and continue to help the terrorist groups, it will cripple its economy. Just this week, the USA helped Islamabad by allowing the IMF to extend urgent aid to salvage it from a serious payment crisis. Unlike India, its resilience to withstand outside economic and defence pressures is limited. India's unique advantage is that it has every thing to gain and nothing to lose from the present joint moves against the Kabul-Islamabad combine. |
|
An uncompromising intellectual quest for understanding life cannot satisfy itself if it is thwarted at every corner by 'observed irregularities;. We cannot for long ignore them all as mere' chances. The prodigy Mozart is a spectacular instance which cannot be explained away; to be logical we must accept the idea of the continuity of the embodied souls. This genius wrote Sonatas at the age of four, played in public at the age of five, composed his first Opera at the age of seven! Without the reincarnation theory we will have to label this wondrous incident as an accident and throw it into the dustbin of chance and bury it there. —Swami
Chinmayananda, The Holy Geeta, chapter 2 *** Man is not a creature of a day, here today and gone tomorrow, but an unborn immortal being, growing into a knowledge of his true nature and powers. Everything is within him, the fulness of divine wisdom and power but this capacity has to be unfolded, and that is the object of living and dying. —An Advanced Text Book of Hindu Religion and Ethics, chapter III *** The union of the soul with a particular body is known as birth, and its separation therefrom is called death. When the soul leaves its physical sheath, it transmigrates into another body, human, animal or even vegetable, according to its merits... The progress of transmigration continues — we cannot say through how many lives — till the soul, being purged of all its impurities.... attains the final emancipation. —Swami Shivananda,
Bliss Divine, chapter 49. *** O Kama (sensuality), thou landest people in hell and makest them wander through many births, enticest all minds, swayest all the three worlds and undoest one's meditation, austerities and restraint. The pleasure is ephemeral and thou afflictest high and low alike. —
Sri Guru Arjan Dev, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, page 1358 *** When lust envelopes the heart of man, Truth, Justice, compassion and peace flee from it. —From the discourses of Sathya Sai Baba |
 |
| Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir | Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs | Nation | Editorial | | Business | Sport | World | Mailbag | In Spotlight | Chandigarh Tribune | Ludhiana Tribune 50 years of Independence | Tercentenary Celebrations | | 120 Years of Trust | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
