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| Saturday,
April 14, 2001, Chandigarh, India    |
Spy plane compromise Advantage Jayalalitha Politics stalls Tehri |
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The political joint family Soldiers need more than lip service
Tavleen Singh
Team set to tidy up Mount Everest
Road map to perpetual army rule
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Spy plane compromise IT
was a befitting Easter gift for the families of the 24-member crew of the US spy plane detained in China. After 11 days of detention, the crew members are now back in the USA. It was a compromise all the way, but both sides are claiming major victories. China has projected the US movement from being "sorry" to "very sorry" (for the loss of the Chinese pilot's life and for intrusion into Chinese airspace) as a "moral victory of global significance". To an ordinary student of language, this interpretation may appear churlish, but in the Chinese lexicon, this type of regret indeed means a clear confession of guilt. President Ziang Zemin has thus not only kept the hawks in the army in leash, but has also managed to satisfy the general public to a large extent. Beijing knew all along that it would not be able to get a full apology. At the same time, it was not prepared to risk a new cold war either. So it scripted its response in a classic fashion. It upped the ante to begin with, threatening to try the crew like spies, and then backing off gradually, in the process showing "human considerations" and political sagacity. Interestingly, President Bush is also getting bouquets for his "firm and patient" handling of the first major international test of his presidency. There are critics who have panned him for being too deferential towards the Chinese and yet, his ratings have gone up by 6 percentage points. He knew that the USA was caught on the wrong foot and indeed dribbled dexterously. The admission of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that the reconnaissance plane indeed violated Chinese airspace and did so on behalf of the allies (read Taiwan) showed that the USA had limited options. The USA has made it obvious that this incident is not going to ensure that the spy planes will stay in the hangar in future. But Washington has had to learn a few bitter lessons. One of them is that despite its military power, it cannot conduct its international activities in such a brazen manner. There is no denying that China too does a lot of snooping. It has dozens of ground stations, truck-mounted systems and even satellite capability to collect intelligence. However, these are not operated in quite as intrusive a manner as the USA does. For instance, how would Washington react if Chinese planes start flying close to its airspace and even violating it? The actual conditions on which China has freed the crew may not become formally known but it is common knowledge that the threats the USA made like rearming Taiwan, going cold on free trade with China and even cancelling Mr Bush's October visit to Beijing did not evoke the kind of response it had been hoping for. |
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Advantage Jayalalitha EVEN 48 hours after the Madras High Court judgement, it is not clear whether Ms Jayalalitha can contest the forthcoming Assembly election or not. At one place the Judge has said that there is no disqualification arising from her sentence of three years imprisonment but in the same breath he has added that since the conviction is under the Prevention of Corruption Act, only the Election Commission can waive any infirmity. For good measure he noted that the Supreme Court is averse to showing any leniency to those accused of corruption. These observations have sent out contradictory, if not conflicting, signals. On the first day lawyers and media were unanimous that Ms Jayalalitha had won her appeal. Her lawyer, however, sought a clarification and at the last minute changed his mind, earning a mild rebuke from the court. This created an impression that she has lost the case. This was buttressed by unmistakable signs of approaching the apex court. There was a touch of mystery when the state government filed a petition in the Supreme Court requesting that it should be heard before deciding her appeal. Had she really lost? Not really. Doubts spring from the long and erudite exposition of the Judge on conviction, sentence, disqualification and the apex court’s determination to root out corruption. He has said that conviction and sentence are inseparable; the first is the court’s finding and the second is what flows from it as punishment. This is the key sentence that has set off the various interpretations. Since he has rejected Ms Jayalalitha’s request to suspend the conviction, many read into the order a similar rejection of the suspension of the sentence itself. (It stands suspended giving her an opportunity to appeal against it.) Others took the route backwards. Since the sentence has been suspended, the conviction too is suspended, freeing her from the taint of a jail term and the fear of disqualification. A careful reading of the judgement strengthens the second impression. He has clearly said that she can contest the election and that there is no bar on her. However, the court has expressed its inability to expressly suspend the conviction as there is no provision for it in the Indian Penal Code and also since disqualification is linked to sentence (more than two years) and not to conviction. It is this long-winded academic discourse that has blurred the real thrust of the judgement, forcing the former Chief Minister’s legal team to secure a firm approval from the Supreme Court. |
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Politics stalls Tehri THE
setting up of an “experts committee” for reviewing the Tehri dam project will surprise only those who are not familiar with the details of the controversy. Since the Ram mandir project has technically been put on hold the Vishwa Hindu Parishad has found it spiritually uplifting to oppose the construction of the Tehri dam. Its self-appoint chief Mr Ashok Singhal has found in the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance a willing partner for drastically altering the character of the project. Dr Murli Manohar Joshi wears several hats. When he goes public with his views on the importance of spiritualism he puts on the hat of the Human Resource Development Minister. When he wants to justify the introduction of Vedic astrology as a subject of study by scientists and to-be-scientists he becomes Minister for Science and Technology. Although the objections raised by the VHP for stalling work on the Tehri dam have nothing to do with the technical and technological aspects of the project, Dr Joshi has been asked to head the experts committee as Minister of Science and Technology. Mr Singhal had threatened to launch an agitation if work on the project was not suspended. That was in mid-March. The BJP government in Uttaranchal had absolutely no problem in giving Mr Singhal and his VHP supporters a patient hearing. Since the VHP had found a “holy reason” for raising objections the issue was referred to the Sangh mates at the Centre. Of course, the fact that Mr Singhal and his dedicated band of VHP activists have genuine reverence for the symbols of the Hindu faith was never in doubt. However, Dr Joshi, who has taught physics at Allahabad University, did not explain to the VHP activists that their fear of the Ganga losing its holy character because of the construction of the dam was not rooted in logic. So what if the cost of construction of the dam continues to mount for reasons which cannot be justified? Unhappily, the VHP was not even born when the decision for the construction of the hydro-electric project in Tehri was taken. Had it been around its defence of the holy character of the Ganga would at least have saved the nation the mind-boggling amount of money which has already been spent on the construction of the dam. |
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The political joint family MUCH has been written on the Tehelka expose, and in most of the comment so far there is this rather habitual tendency not to see the wood for the trees, to view the scandal in terms of the
malfeasance of a few individuals rather than as yet another symptom of the depravity of Indian politics as a whole. Even the popular sense of outrage has an E tu Brutus ring to it. The shock stems from the fact that involved principally, or most visibly, in the scandal was the functional pontiff of a party that always claimed to be the sole embodiment of sanctitude in Indian politics. The fault lies in our gullibility — in believing them, in believing that there can be pure springs in a cesspool, in believing that the BJP, if and when given the reins, would cleanse the Augean Stables, in believing Atal Behari Vajpayee’s pre-election promise of yug parivartan, a change that would end not only corrupt politics but the systemic rot it has spawned. Nothing has changed; in fact, given the system, nothing can change. The French have a saying which seemed to have been coined for Indian politics: Plus ca change, plu c’est meme chose — the more that changes, the more it is the same thing. In the context at hand, the more our parties differ the more they are the same. I have long held that no matter their different labels and pretensions, Indian parties and politicians across the spectrum belong to one kutumb. As in any joint family, they may look different and speak in different idiom, their genetic code is common, to the last chromosome. In other words, the more they differ, the more they don’t! India today has more political parties than ever before, or anywhere else in the world — all of nearly 700 of them registered with the Election Commission. And yet, for all purposes of precept and practice, they are indistinguishable from one another. It is not a question only of bribery and allied corruption, at the heart of the rot though that is; involved here is the entirety of being and doing. In the last 30-odd years all the major and not-so-major parties have singly or jointly ruled the roost at one time or another, at the Centre or in some state or other. Was there any difference in the style and substance of their governance, their sense of integrity and propriety and, especially since the nineties, their hypocrisy and skulduggery and, above all, the brazen dissonance between their promises and their actual policies, particularly those concerning the welfare of the common man.? It was not always so. The proverbial black sheep have been there all along in all parties; recent writeups have recalled the history of scams since the fifties. But in all those early cases it was essentially if not entirely individual malfeasance, not the collective culture of corruption on view now. The majority of polititicians and the average party functionary, certainly the top leaders in every party in post-independence India were by and large personally beyond reproach and politically imbued with both morality and ideology; also a sense of mission which was larger than his or her own aggrandisement and the party’s electoral fortunes. These now are the
leitmotif of our politics. Over the years analysts and sociologists have
preferred various reasons for the crass degeneration of the theory and practice of politics in India, including and chiefly the wholly specious and rather facetious reason of escalating costs of fighting elections. Whatever the roots of the rot, I believe there is a symbiotic connection between its exponential growth and the abandonment of ideological politics. Seeing the monochromatic West-dictated politics of capitalist fundamentalism today, the older generations must wonder if it is the same country where they once had the choice of a handful of parties with distinct ideologies — and leaders who had both a basic sense of morality and the strength of their political convictions. There was the Congress which — impossible to believe post-Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh — was left of centre, there was the Communist party firmly on the left and there was the Jana Sangh on the right (and the rest somewhere in between). This was the time when these terms signified something, when the centre was not the far right it is today, when the Congress was more left than the CPI/CPM are today. The point is that the people, the voter, had a definite choice. When he voted for Congress he knew what kind of politics and policies he was voting for. Ditto for those who voted for the other parties. Can the voter say the same today? Just look at the
identically (and malleability) of party manifestos, look at the permutations and combinations we are obliged to vote for. Witness how parties claiming to be as different as chalk and cheese, parties at daggers drawn one day enter into cohabitation the very next day and become passionate bed-fellows at the first sight of the bliss of power, and the alacrity with which they change partners at the next altar of elections. Could one imagine just a generation ago the kind of alliances one has seen in recent years? Hailed by its beneficiaries as a grand era of coalitions, this is nothing but political and ideological promisquity, entirely in aid of a common lust for power. Needless to say, there is no room for morality in lust and promisquity. Till the advent of this politics of carpetbaggers or more precisely till they too became its beneficiaries, the two parties that were considered genuinely different in their ideals and aims were the communists and the BJP. The less said about the communists the better; far from seizing the challenge and opportunity of the times, they chose to be perfectly content to rule in a corner or two of the country and for the rest play a sanctimonious second fiddle to the various dregs of Indian democracy. The loss of ideological manhood is more recent but not less pronounced in the case of the BJP. And far more tragic for the people who voted for it. Many of them may or may not have subscribed to the defining trinity of its pre-election pledges regarding the Ram temple, Article 370 and a common civil code; what they certainly believed were its other promises: swabhiman (national self-respect) and assertive sovereignty, su-raj (good governance), suraksha (security, swadeshi (economic nationalism) — and shuchita (probity in public life!). So, one might ask, barring the alliteration what was new in these promises — aren’t these the stuff of every party’s rhetoric and manifesto? Yes, but having been disillusioned with everyone else, the desperate voters persuaded themselves to believe that the untried, even if ideologically deformed, the BJP would certainly move measurably in the direction of fulfilling these promises. Unfortunately, the BJP in power has proved to be no different from the latter-day “Congress and its clones”, which it had roundly berated in its manifesto. In some cases, it has in fact outdone its predecessors: in tying itself to the apron-strings of the USA, in kowtowing to the Americans especially (and disastrously) on Kashmir, in outdoing Manmohanics in economic fundamentalism, in opening the floodgates to MNCs, in making budgets to benefit the rich and squeeze the common man, in resorting to the same machinations, the same hypocrisy, even adopting the style and pomp and ceremony of its predecessors, the same drill of nominating petty loyalists and out-and-out mediocrities, not to mention relatives, to positions in government and outside — and, as has just transpired, in observing the same “standards” of probity. So, where do we go from here? With the rot so very visible and mounting all around them, what are the people to do? Wait for the next election? No doubt, deep in their bosoms is still a faint echo of Walt Whitman’s battlecry: “Thunder on! Strike on! Democracy, strike with vengeful stroke!” But the problem is, strike at what, at who? With the last of the political species tried and found wanting, what is the choice, where is the choice? |
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Soldiers need more than lip service George Fernandes’s parting shot to the nation was that he quit to prevent ruining the soldier’s morale any further. What goes to make the soldier’s morale and how do men in uniform tide over adverse situations, fighting at odds with the enemy, weather and terrain? Why do men in uniform willingly give up their lives? Apart from morale, what do armies need more than good weapons and equipment? George Fernandes is accused of resorting to cheap popularity by usurping the role of the Generals by directly pandering to the troops a la trade unionism. But with his frequent visits to Siachen he did endear himself to the troops. Introduction of high-altitude warfare equipment, snowmobiles and upgrading of forward medical infrastructures impacted favourably on the men. Nothing cheers the soldier more than the knowledge that his difficult situation is understood at the political level. On the contrary, if the soldier gets a feeling of being “used” by seemingly endless commitments in counter-insurgencies and military situations like the Siachen impasse, a feeling of neglect sets in. This can’t be offset by visits to forward posts such as that George undertook. That rustic Indian soldier is only half literate, but he possesses a keen sense to discern the fake from the genuine. Studies of wars have proved that, ultimately, a soldier makes the supreme sacrifice not because he is courageous or more patriotic than his civilian fellowmen; he certainly does not do it for the pay packet he gets in the army. The only reason he dies without batting an eyelid is because he believes that he is a superior being and so cannot let himself down in the eyes of the nation. In Kargil, failure at the highest politico-military levels was set right by the brave jawans who captured inhospitable peaks in the most trying battle conditions. Not one General owned responsibility while politicians took cover behind the soldiers’ sacrifices. “It will amount to doubting the soldiers’ bravery and undermining their morale,” is how all criticism got deflected. Contrast the soldiers’ selflessness and unquestioning loyalty with how George Fernandes eased out a Naval chief who was proving to be inconvenient. Foisted under Admiral Bhagwat was a deputy with dubious background, and the hardening of stands that was bound to follow was made out to be “defiance of civilian authority”. A scheming George Fernandes pulled it out well, rounding off the political coup by flying into Delhi with utmost stealth a convenient replacement for the naval chief being hounded out. Unfortunately, the Kargil blueprint was being prepared by Pakistan all this while. It virtually rocked the country which backed those brave soldiers who went about evicting the intruders. In defence of the poor jawan, is he getting his due? Narrow vision will make us miss the point. Yes, the soldier needs good weapons and equipment and visits by ministers to forward posts. But more than the he needs the right politico-military thought to induce an environment that minimises the demands on him. Sun Tzu described the ideal strategy as one whereby armies could win without fighting and accomplish the most by doing the least. In India just the opposite is visible: enhanced commitments in counterinsurgencies and now the Siachenisation of Kargil. A favourable strategic environment can’t come without the right kind of leadership. Also, no political needling — including coercion for procurement of defence equipment — is possible if the top military brass don’t appear pliable. Obsequiousness within the top brass is not a new trend and has been debated in army circles. Why, in 1982 a premier defence journal devoted one issue to leadership. The commandant, a Lt-Gen, in setting the stage for this debate remarked that “sycophancy, an accepted value in civil life has percolated into the army culture and devastated our value system and effective leadership.” Another senior officer wrote that when the three service chiefs in full military regalia paid their last homage to a MP who happened to be the Prime Minister’s son, it was an unspoken act of sycophancy and contrary to conventions. Once when Hitler made a reference to honour of the army, Field Marshal Von Rundstedt brusquely interrupted him to say that the army needed no instructions from him in the matter of honour. Only a man of character and professional competence could turn around and say so. Military leaders are the link between the soldier and the politician, and good generalship fosters stewardship at the politico-strategic level, in turn ensuring that the forces win victories with minimum commitment in battle. Can we take the Indian soldiers’ commitment for granted? Yes, and if it is backed by generalship of a high order we won’t have any more Krishna Menons and George Fernandes. |
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Why is Bill Clinton so popular in India? THIS
is going to be a serious piece about Bill Clinton but at the risk of sounding like a gossip columnist I am going to begin by describing the dinner party Zee TV had for him in Delhi last week. How can I resist since it was the only event held in his honour that I have ever been invited to? When he was here as President, last year, everyone I knew in Delhi and Mumbai seemed to be having breakfast, lunch or dinner with him, everyone except me. It looked as if the same thing was happening this time, and I was beginning to fear that I had turned into some kind of social outcaste, until the invitation arrived from Zee. So, bear with me for a few paragraphs while I tell you about the dinner. Clinton was late. The rest of us were early but I only discovered how early after being metal detected and body searched by a grim-faced security woman who seemed convinced that since I did not have a mobile phone in my handbag I must have concealed it on my person. A minor inquisition followed. Where is mobile phone? No, mobile phone. You have mobile phone? No. Where is mobile phone? No mobile phone. Alright, no mobile phone, you can go. The first person I ran into at the end of this exercise was one of the managers of the Taj Palace Hotel (venue of bash) and he said, “You’re really early. Clinton hasn’t left Jaipur yet and even after he arrives in Delhi he has to first meet Sonia Gandhi”. This was bad news but as I had no other pressing engagements I decided to wander, mingle and observe. Drinks were in the hotel gardens and most of the guests had arrived on time because the invitation cards had been quite firm about us being there at 6.45 p.m. The first thing I noticed was that there was an extraordinarily large number of attractive, unattached women and that many of them were dressed like Bollywood starlets. They wore glittering ghagras with skimpy blouses or glittering saris with skimpy blouses and seemed to have come with the sole aim of attracting Clinton’s legendary roving eye. Their own eyes roved in search of him and if you came close enough to overhear conversations they went something like this: where is he, how can he be so late? Hai, he is so handsome, I just can’t wait to see him? Wonder who will be sitting next to him? As the evening progressed and there was still no sign of the big man you could see their expressions change from anticipation to glazed disinterest, this was a dull party by bimbo standards. There were no big movie stars and few sexy, young men. If Clinton was not going to come this seemed for them a wasted evening. By 9.30 p.m. when he still did not arrive even I was beginning to suspect that he may have changed his mind about coming. But, then a flurry of cars pulled up in the porch disgorging the American ambassador’s wife, Jacqueline Lundquist, and several members of the American India Foundation. This was clearly the Clinton vanguard. Subhash Chandra, Zee TV’s big boss seemed to see it this way too and ushered us in to dinner. ‘He is on his way’ we were told but he was not for at least
another hour which led people to speculate loudly on what he could possibly be talking to Sonia Gandhi about. We were well into our second course by the time he finally arrived causing so much excitement that TV camera crews fought each other to get close enough and several guests rose from their tables to rush towards him. So many, in fact, that Subhash Chandra had to make several appeals for people to ‘please sit down at your own tables’. They did not listen and once they had got close enough to speak to him or shake his hand or do whatever else it was they had come to do many left altogether leaving us seated with a vast expanse of empty tables between us and table 1 where he sat. In all my years as a journalist I have never seen an Indian political leader evoke this kind of adulation which brings me finally to the more serious aspects of this piece. Why is Clinton so popular in India? The adulation I saw at the Zee TV dinner is something Clinton has managed to evoke everywhere he has gone in India. Whether in the slums of Mumbai, among the earthquake victims in Gujarat, in the streets of Kolkata or the villages of Rajasthan he managed to touch a chord. Why? Could it be because he is the first modern politician Indians have ever seen? What I mean by that is he expresses a genuine concern about the real issues that affect ordinary people. He does not talk of caste or creed and other such irrelevant things but of the importance of bringing education to ‘every boy and every girl”. He talks of the human needs of people and how vital it is that they be met by ‘the government, their kinsmen and their compatriots in the United States”. In the village of Rampur-Maniharan in Uttar Pradesh he commented on how wonderful it was that the NRI billionaire, Vinod Gupta, had done so much for his home village and how much difference it would make if every Indian who had made it big in the United States would consider doing something similar. A businessman from the American India Foundation, which organised his visit to India this time, described how they had been driving along a road in Bengal and Clinton had stopped to speak to ordinary villagers. ‘Later on’ he said, ‘I asked them what they had thought of Clinton and they said they liked him because no Chief Minister or Minister they had ever seen had bothered to stop and talk to them the way Clinton had’. Jacqueline Lundquist who travelled with him in Rajasthan during his last visit told me that he had got quite angry that ordinary people had been ordered off the roads that he was travelling. ‘At one point he said if I don’t start seeing some people soon I’m going to ring the Prime Minister and complain’. Our leaders, on the other hand, are so terrified or ordinary people that they will not address a public meeting unless they can hide behind huge barricades of security. The result is there for all of us to see. Ordinary Indians feel nothing but contempt for politicians. They see them as people who are concerned only with their own needs and interested only in votes. Sadly, it has to be said they are absolutely right and their cynicism about politicians is going to grow unless netaji learns to change his ways. So serious is our disenchantment with our political class that people are already saying that Clinton should seriously consider contesting an election in India. After all, they say only half-jokingly, we have no problem with a foreigner becoming Prime Minister so why not Clinton instead of Sonia. Why not indeed. |
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Team set to tidy up Mount Everest IT is an epic task: to remove the rubbish left behind by hundreds of expeditions up the world’s highest mountain. When Japanese climber Ken Noguchi set off for Mount Everest last year to clean up the mountain’s Tibetan side he was startled by some of the things he found — not just discarded oxygen cylinders and tents but empty beer bottles, rusting tin cans, empty noodle packets, and, at 6,400 metres, an erotic Japanese magazine. Not in the rubbish category, his team also found the frozen corpse of an Austrian climber close to the summit, within Everest’s “death zone”. Noguchi, setting off for the Tibetan capital, Lhasa, on his second clean-up with a 40-strong team drawn from five countries, says he decided to remove the rubbish on Everest after his first visit in 1997, when he was appalled by the amount of junk. “I was so angry,” says the 27-year-old. “I had always assumed that Everest was in pristine condition. In fact it is very dirty.” Since the New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay first conquered Everest in 1953, 572 expeditions have tried to reach the summit. Over the years, the rubbish left behind has dramatically accumulated, to the point where the mountain has been dubbed the world’s highest rubbish tip. Environmentalists estimate that 100 tonnes of waste lie on Everest, despite recent attempts to retrieve some of it. Five years ago, the Nepalese government introduced a $ 4,000 bond payable by those wanting to climb the steep, glacial southern route — as well as a $ 70,000 permit fee, refundable only when teams brought their junk back down. As a result the Nepalese side became much cleaner. No such scheme exists on Everest’s more direct, northern approach in Tibet, which is controlled by the Chinese authorities. “The Tibet side is full of garbage,” Noguchi says. “One of the problems is human excrement. People just use the grass. There is no bacteria at this altitude so nothing decomposes. Lower down the valley people drink water from the glacier.” Over the next six weeks, Noguchi’s team aims to collect up to two tonnes of rubbish from the base camp at 5,200 metres and from the treacherous higher slopes. Base camp appears superficially clean, Noguchi says. But last year he found an “incredible amount” of debris buried beneath the surface. At the attack base camp (ABC) — 6,400 metres — the situation is even worse. “There are many oxygen cylinders, tents and ropes. There is much old mountaineering equipment.” People, he said, “are very tired when they come down from the summit and the weather is not always good. They leave a lot of stuff behind.” The rubbish retrieved from ABC next month will be stuffed into white sacks and taken down every week by 150 yaks. But rubbish from the highest camps, where the yaks cannot venture, will have to be brought down by hand. And then there are the many dead to deal with. Last year the team managed to spend a day at Camp IV, the last, perilously exposed staging post just before the summit at 8,300 metres. Here the team found a frozen corpse believed to be that of Austrian climber Reinhard Wlasich, who died in 1996 — the disastrous season when 12 mountaineers perished in a freak hurricane. Wlasich was found still wearing his red down jacket and hat. “We managed to get him down 50 metres and then we gave up,” Noguchi says. “He was simply too heavy. We found a small crevasse and put him in it. “In this area there are many bodies. It is very difficult to bring them down.” So far, 161 climbers have died trying to reach the summit. Noguchi thinks 80 per cent to 90 per cent are still up there. At Camp IV, the team managed to retrieve only 10 used oxygen cylinders because the site was blanketed in heavy snow. Thirty teams are expected to try to reach the summit next month from the Tibetan side, compared with 18 from the Nepalese approach. Some 1,000 climbers have already left Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, and are acclimatising at the two base camps. Noguchi, who four years ago became the youngest Japanese climber to reach Everest’s summit, says most teams are aware of the importance of retrieving their own detritus. He wants to encourage next month’s climbers to mark their full oxygen cylinders with “2001”, to distinguish them from the spent canisters which his team is trying to retrieve. By arrangement with The Guardian. |
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Road map to perpetual army rule IT
is now official. Gen Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s Chief Executive and the army chief, has no intention of quitting. He would like to be the President as well and retain his position in the army beyond October this year when he should retire. Also he has made it amply clear that he has no intention of holding the general election by March, 2002 as the Supreme Court has ordered. The people and the country will have a much longer spell of military rule than what some democratic-minded Pakistanis think. Self-perpetuation is the goal. Let people steeped in poverty suffer and let mullahs rule the roost sending the youth as jehadis to be maimed and killed. The General has drawn up a road map for himself if not for the country and its people. Step number one is that in the next two months or so, Pakistan signs the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, gets some immediate funding to pay back a part of the interest on the heavy loan which the country has taken from the World Bank and IMF. This will help win over some western powers and also take the help of Saudi Arabia which is scared of democracy. Once international support is assured, Musharraf would like to get the Constitution amended and become President. Recently the President’s salary was increased 200 times. Intriguing indeed for a poverty stricken country. For this he has already divided the Muslim League. What he needs to do is to revive the National Assembly. This is step number two. He could also get some of the amendments that strenghten his hold over the country and allow the army chief to be President of the country. The CTBT and some other measures like local body elections also need to be ratified by this Assembly where now the Muslim League of the ousted and exiled Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif has a two-thirds majority. He could also bring in another amendment to bar any leader being elected Prime Minister more than twice. This would keep even Benazir Bhutto who on April 7 won some reprieve from the Supreme Court at bay. The same in case of Nawaz Sharif. But this grand design now being debated by the leading newspapers like The Nation, Dawn, Pakistan Times, Jung and Pakistan Today and it may not have a smooth run. First the opposition would come from senior Generals who are itching to become the army chief. In the queue are Lt Gen Muzaffar Usmani who leads 5 Corps, Chief of General Staff Lt Gen Mohammed Yousf Khan, Inter Services Intelligence chief Lt Gen Mahmood Khan (he is all powerful) and Commander of 4 Corps Lt Gen Mohammad Aziz who could have succeeded Musharraf at the headquarters. But the Chief Executive could sort this out. He could elevate some of them, increase the tenure of others to mollify them. Their support is essential for his survival in power. He would be scared of a situation when the commanders next in line throw up any challenge. During the past 54 years Pakistan has been ruled more by army dictators than by elected Prime Ministers. It has a dubious history as far as democracy is concerned. Focus has been particularly on the attempt to have a pliant Assembly at the national level. In fact, Nation ridiculed the attempt to restrict the term of the Prime Minister to two. “It could be a valid argument that it could bring an end to dynastic rule... but it should be left to the people. Only vigilant public could ensure that leaders functioned within the set democratic parameters,” its editorial comment summed up. A major question, however, is how leaders have magnificently violated the mandate and paved the way for army rule. Musharraf is also keen to make the army an integral part of the formal political decision-making process. The idea of a national security setup has been revived. But what really threatens the present ruler is the anger of the impoverished people. There could be spontaneous, even anarchic and violent protests by the people as military rule has only added to their woes. Poverty, hunger, lack of any justice, exploitation by a nexus of feudal landlords, bureaucrats, mullahs and the military rulers could ignite a fire. The rulers have also failed to resolve either the Kashmir or the Afghanistan issue. Some analysts have estimated that at least 80 per cent of Pakistan’s external debt of $ 38 billion is because of heavy spending on arms — the F-16s, Mirages, MBTs, surface-to-air missiles, naval destroyers and frigates and countless other arms and men. Once the people take to the street as inevitably they would, the General’s bullets would not be able to end the anger. This is what should be frightening the military rulers. A sensible way as Dawn suggested is to allow democracy to take roots and the rulers should concentrate on transferring the power to an elected government. Not many think it can happen smoothly. Gobind Thukral |
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SPIRITUAL NUGGETS There is no river like the Ganges and no month like the Vaisakha. Just as Uma, Lord Shiva consort, is supreme among all women, the sun among all burning objects, service among all virtues, the Vedas among all scriptures, the cosmophonic sound ‘OM’ among all mantras, the reflection on one’s self among dhyanas, truth and the observance of dharma among acetic practices, self purification among all purificatory rituals, abhaya dana (giving protection to someone) among all forms of charity, and contentment among all virtues, so is the month of Vaisakha among all months. — The Padma Purana, Patala Khand *** Mental happiness, equanimity, silence, self control, purity of nature — this is called the austerity of the mind. —The Bhagvadgita, XVII.16 *** Who promises much and does little, dines a fool on hope. —A German proverb. **** We promise according to our hopes, and perform according to our fears. —La Rochefoucald, Maxims. **** A promise made is a debt unpaid. —Robert W. Service, The Spell of the Yukon. **** Speech causing no annoyance, truthful, pleasant and beneficial and the repetition of the Vedas, this is called the austerity of speech. —The Bhavadgita, XVII.15. *** All things are governed by speech; speech is the root, from speech they originate; that man verily who is dishonest in speech, he is dishonest in all. —Manu Smriti, IV.256 |
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