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| Saturday,
April 21, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Akal Takht
on girl-child Freer hand
to banks The US
role in West Asia |
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Priorities
before Pant are clear-cut Equality
— a dream forever
How
drought cripples economy
Politics
has yet again been reduced to a tamasha Black
statue of Diana stirs controversy
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Akal Takht on girl-child ALARMED
at the increasing imbalance in the male-female ratio, as revealed by the latest census, in the region an NGO has sought the intervention of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The Voluntary Health Association of Punjab evidently believes that only judicial intervention can arrest the trend of the decline in the female population in Punjab, Haryana and even Himachal Pradesh. It is indeed true that the introduction of the Prenatal Diagnostic Techniques, [Regulation and Prevention of Misuse] Act, 1994, has failed in its objective of putting an end to the revolting practice of female infanticide. However, the judiciary can only express its displeasure over the tardy enforcement of the law against infanticide. It cannot play the role of an enforcement agency. It is the lack of political will to act which is responsible for the sharp drop in the number of females in the country. Private clinics not only in the region but elsewhere in the country continue to defy the law against conducting what in popular parlance is called sex determination test for finding out the gender of unborn baby. The female child, thereafter, is destroyed in the womb, putting in the process even the life of the luckless mother in jeopardy. However, there is now a ray of hope at least for the members of the Sikh community. In what is a path-breaking initiative, the five head priests of the Akal Takht have declared the practice of killing the girl-child as “bajjar kurahit” (unpardonable sin). What the highest spiritual seat of the Sikhs has issued is not a request but a stern directive to all the followers of the faith. Those found violating the order against infanticide would be excommunicated from the panth. The directive from the Akal Takht is likely to be taken more seriously than the threat of punishment under the provisions of the Act against sex determination tests. The five head priests deserve the gratitude of the entire nation for their positive stand on the issue. But the situation among other communities is as serious because of the centuries-old bias against women which is reflected in the sharp drop in the female population in the country. Community and religious leaders from among the Hindus and Muslims too should raise their voice against the pernicious custom of killing the girl-child. |
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Freer hand to banks RBI Governor Bimal Jalan is very cautious and combines it with a hands-off approach. This is starkly evident from the monetary and credit policy for the current financial year. One economic newspaper aptly summed up the package as “reassuringly boring”. Also shorn off any drama. Almost on the eve of the policy announcement, the Governor had ruled out any change either in the interest rate or in CRR (cash reserve ratio, a percentage of the deposit the banks have to keep in government securities). He had thus freed himself to finetune a few policies, enlarge the area of freedom to banks and repair the damage caused by the securities scam. All these are both predictable and welcome. Urban cooperative banks are banned from lending money against stocks, raise overnight credit and will soon be brought under a single supervisory authority. This is an echo of the Madhavpura Mercantile Cooperative Bank collapse in Ahmedabad. These banks pay a higher interest rate on the deposits out of the higher earning from such lending and if this is stopped, their viability will come under attack. There are several such banks, particularly in Gujarat, catering to small depositors and a radical surgery will hurt them. A major innovation is vesting banks with powers to charge interest at less than the prime lending rate (PLR) which at present ranges from 10 to 10.5 per cent. Only exporters and leading companies can hope to benefit. How the banks will generate the necessary income is not clear. Exporters will get refinance at a sharply reduced rate of 8.5 to 9 per cent. If they recycle their export earning, the effective interest rate will come down to about 4 per cent, the same as the inflation rate. This meets a major demand and will help maintain the momentum of growth, now estimated at over 20 per cent. Senior citizens or those above 60 years of age will receive higher interest if the deposit is over Rs 2 lakh and for a fixed time. To facilitate this banks are now in a position to allow premature withdrawal. The RBI and the Centre have realised that retired people have no safe place to parking their savings and also earn a reasonable return. The stock market has bombed, real estate is stagnant and gold price is sluggish and moving within a narrow band. Fixed deposit in banks is the only way out and it has been made somewhat more attractive |
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The US role in West Asia MONDAY night’s Israeli action in occupying a small chunk of Palestinian territory near Beit Hanoun, a border town in the Gaza Strip, and its reluctant withdrawal on Wednesday after the US expression of anger should be enough to convince the Bush administration that it cannot abdicate its responsibility in the volatile West Asian region. The policy of letting things happen on their own will not work as was realised by the previous Clinton administration, which had a proactive West Asia policy and played the role of a facilitator for establishing peace in the oil-rich area. The time has come for Mr George W. Bush to revise his policy because Israel listens only when the USA speaks. Peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority, which remain stalled since the demise of the Yehud Barak government and the establishment of a regime headed by Mr Ariel Sharon, who admits being a hawk, must be started quickly to revive the hope for better days among the people of the area. The Palestinians, in particular, are feeling greatly uneasy after the change of political dispensation in Israel. Their anxiety level is shooting up. In such a situation extremist groups like the Hamas are having an easy going. The Hamas mortar fire on Sderot, a small town about 8 km from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s sheep farm in the Nagev desert, which provided Israel a pretext to launch a major military action against the Palestinians, was in retaliation for earlier rocket attacks from the opposite side. Such attacks and counter-attacks have been continuing from both sides ever since the chain of violent incidents began nearly seven months ago after the suspension of the peace talks set in motion by the 1993 Oslo accords and the later agreements signed with the mediation of the Clinton administration. The recapture of the Palestinian territory, vacated by Israel some time ago, was considered intolerable by the Bush administration, which assigned Secretary of State Gen Colin Powell the sensitive task of handling Israel with firmness, though at the same time criticising the Palestinians for precipitating the crisis. He described the Israeli retaliatory action as excessive and unjustifiable, reflecting even-handedness in the Bush administration’s attitude for the first time. But this is not sufficient. The USA must do something to bring the two sides to the negotiating table and put the peace process back on the rails. Talks may force the warring parties to abandon the path of violence which will take them nowhere. |
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Priorities
before Pant are clear-cut THE course of unilateral ceasefire maintained by India in Jammu and Kashmir during these five months had looked uncertain so far because of the controversies emanating from the responses of the Hurriyat Conference, unabated depredations by the Mujahideen outfits and the total evasiveness shown by Gen Pervez Musharraf on India’s call to Pakistan to back off from its continued support to the cross-border terrorism in Kashmir. The Indian public is not aware of the strategy that the Government of India has apparently followed in adhering to the ceasefire which may at best have brought in some intelligible gain by way of a favourable international opinion but which has certainly cut against our security interests by letting the militants with a foreign umbilical cord dig in their heels in the valley and legitimising the pronouncements of the pro-Pak Hurriyat leadership that Kashmir is a disputed territory on which Pakistan also has a right. The induction of Mr K.C. Pant as the representative of the Central Government to hold a dialogue with various sections of the people in J&K as a followup on the unilateral ceasefire, lends a sense of direction to the government’s policy. It inspires confidence among the Indian public not so much because of any clarity of objective that the move establishes but due to the credibility that Mr Pant carries with him in view of his political status and vast experience of handling issues of strategic import. Mr Pant has been given a general mandate of holding internal discussions with various sections of opinion makers in J&K, but it is certainly to be presumed that this is meant to lay the foundation for the larger task of taking the issue of Kashmir to a satisfactory resolution. It is in this context that Mr Pant would be called upon to determine his priorities in Kashmir. The turbulent nineties have added to the complexities of the
situation there. The security environ in Kashmir has got inextricably linked with the change of situation in Afghanistan in 1990 following the demise of the USSR and the advent of a unipolar world. During this decade Pakistan has tasted the advantage of pumping in foreign Mujahideen in the valley and taking an open stand that the jehadi forces were engaged in a justified struggle for liberation in Kashmir. This line may not have made a significant dent among the Kashmiris yet, but it is necessary for India to ensure that all communities in J&K are united in their belief that they need good governance, that all sections of Kashmiris should live together in harmony enjoying full cultural and religious freedom and that they should not become a pawn in the hands of any foreign power. The priority of Mr Pant would be to address this triple task. There is no gainsaying the fact that good governance is a major issue for the Kashmiris. They need a government that brings development to their doorstep and protects the peace loving citizen from any harassment ensuing from counter-militancy operations. The security forces have tried to refine their ground level operations and increasingly based them on real time intelligence. But it has to be seen if the people have confidence in the capability of the civilian district administration to intervene and assuage their legitimate complaints. Talking to the representatives of the people should lead to a focussed attention to this all important matter. The cause of freedom and democracy in Kashmir has been gravely damaged by the unfortunate ethnic cleansing in the valley in 1990. It has become a historical necessity to undo the damage caused by this forced migration. There is still enough sentiment in the valley that Muslims and Pandits belong there together. A demonstrative recognition by the entire people of J&K, of the need to undo this wrong would be a very desirable aim of the talks. A total return of the Pandits to the valley may have been rendered impractical but the point has to be made that India looks upon J&K as the land of inter-community living. It is not clear what strategy the Government of India had in mind in helping to revive the role of the All Party Hurriyat Conference in any problem-solving exercise in Kashmir. Their track record has clearly established that the Hurriyat leaders were neither in a position to rein in militancy nor were they ever inclined to give up on their pro-Pak thinking. Institutional memory would have made it clear to the Government of India that the Hurriyat Conference would not be a party to an internal dialogue with Delhi and would lose no time in demanding tripartite talks on Kashmir between India and Pakistan, the so-called genuine representatives of Kashmir. This has been the theme song of the Hurriyat since the first announcement of the unilateral ceasefire by India. Not surprisingly, General Musharraf himself has taken to a vocal advocacy of Hurriyat leaders’ visit to Pakistan in this light. Mr Pant certainly should be talking to individual Hurriyat leaders as representatives of various sections of the people in Kashmir — the Sunni hardliners, the spokesman of the people wedded to the Kashmiriyat tradition of holding the saints, pirs and fakirs in reverence, and the Shias. The non-Muslim communities would also have their say. We should be confident that the overwhelming majority of the people of J&K would disown the Pak-inspired line that Kashmir should be liberated in the name of Islam and would disapprove of the call of jehad made by the Mujahideen outfits and their supporters from across the borders. Mr Pant has an opportunity of restoring the right perspective on Kashmir for any future handling of negotiations with Pakistan. His mission would be to strengthen the confidence of all Kashmiris in the unilateral ceasefire is holding only on the LoC. If some new politico-administrative steps become necessary to improve the governance in J&K, Mr Pant would be the right person to recommend these. The common Muslim and non-Muslim in J&K is looking for peace and prosperity and if these are ensured he would be quite willing to leave the tackling of the Kashmir problem as an issue between India and Pakistan, to the care of the government at the Centre. Mr D.C. Pathak is the former Director of the Intelligence Bureau. |
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Equality
— a dream forever “BY the end of 2001, there will be more billionaires, but many millions upon millions will be poorer than they were at the end of 2000. Liberty of sorts-yes, fraternity of sorts-yes. Equality-no. That is the brutal reality,” says Mr K. Natwar Singh, former Minister of External Affairs. Communists once talked about equality between the haves and have-nots, but today’s communists’ say “to get rich is glorious”. Equality is forgotten, because politicians the world over now realise that the poor will always be there. The question is: Are there more of them than there used to be or are there fewer? Answering that will be very tricky for both the politician and the economist. Whatever may their answer, the fact is that the policies aimed to reduce poverty the world over have not really helped to bridge the gap between the rich and poor, it got widened year after year. Today, the “haves” have more than at any time. Take the case of the billionaires of the world. The combined wealth of the richest 200 working people in the world is $ 1.1 trillion upwards. Bill Gates who ranked first in the world for richness is alone worth $ 60 billion. In 1999 his wealth stood at $ 90 billion. The depreciation is said to be due to global meltdown. Larry Ellison, the second richest man, is worth $ 47 billion and Paul Allen $ 28 billion. There are about 482 billionaires in the world. The crucial part of poverty eradication is creation of wealth, which is always left to the rich minority by the poor majority. It is in the hands of the rich. Science and technologies have placed enormous resources for creation of wealth. All dominant political ideas such as socialism, communism, marxism, and democracy have only played important roles in dividing people. But the daunting task that many nations with too many people face today is to bridge the gap between the rich and poor. Is it possible to bridge it? The following statistics will provide the answer. The combined incomes of the 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries of the world during 1999 are $ 146 billion. During 1999, the income of just 200 richest people exceeded $ 1 trillion. The amount spent globally to deal with Y2K — the greatest con trick ever played on humanity — is $ 400 billion. That is roughly the total debt owned by the world’s poorest countries. Three richest persons of the world (Bill Gates, Prince Alwaleed Bin Tala Bin Abdullaziz Alsaud and Philip F. Ansehutz) have assets worth more than the combined GNP of 26 of the world’s poorest countries. According to a new report on global food insecurity from the FAO, hunger haunts 826 million people worldwide and 95 per cent of them are in developing countries. That study further illustrates that the depth of hunger varies between countries. The undernourished in Haiti, for example, are 450 kilocalories short of the minimum dietary requirement for good health compared with a deficit of 200 kilocalories in Indonesia. “We think that the number of over-fed people on the planet is at the highest level” said Brian Halweil of the Worldwatch Institute in Washington. Data from WHO indicate that at least 1.1 billion people get too few calories to ward off hunger and 1.1 billion or more take too many calories and the rest of humanity gets enough calories. Shameful inequalities exist between rich and the poor in America — the genuine democratic superpower. In fact the USA leads the world in “inequality of incomes” and the USA is no different from the rest of the world as far as inequality between rich and poor are concerned. The rich get richer there too and the poor get poorer. The only difference is that the poorest American enjoys higher living standards than the poorest European or Asian counterpart. Americans enjoy the world’s highest living standard. On average, income per person in America is 45 per cent higher than in Europe and 26 per cent higher than in Japan. Even nature does not believe in equality. Take the case of availability of water, wealth, food, and rainfall. So skewed is their availability. Where it is most required, there it is least available. But rainfall varies. While the Thar Desert gets 20 mm annually, Chirapunji receives 11400 mm. Then the world produces enough food to feed all, yet many countries face food scarcity and many millions go starving. India produces enough food to feed its billion population, but poverty reigns in many parts of India. Asia, the largest continent with 58 per cent of the world’s population, produces only 36 per cent of the world’s food, while Europe with 16 per cent of the world’s population produces 31 per cent of the food. The USA and Canada with 6 per cent of the population produce 16 per cent of the food. Compare the disparity existing between countries in respect of density of population and GNP. While Australia, Canada and the USA have a population density of 2, 3, and 29 per sq km respectively, the UK, Sri Lanka and India have a density of 238, 273 and 349, respectively. Wide gap exists in their GNP also. While Australia, Canada and the USA have GNP of $ 20650, $ 19640 and $ 29080, respectively, the UK, Sri Lanka and India have GNP of $ 20870, $ 800 and $ 370 respectively (all 1997 figures). Brutal disparity exists between countries, and societies. The following statistics reveal that. In 1820, the distance between the richest and the poorest countries was about 3 to 1. It became 11 to 1 in 1913, 35 to 1 in 1950, 44 to 1 in 1973 and 72 to 1 in 1992. In 1997, it was roughly 727 to 1. Gaps between rich and poor are dramatically widening as the world’s economy is growing, in this world of unprecedented wealth. Nearly three billion — almost half of the world’s population-subsist on $ 2 or less a day. There are 1,199 million people in developing countries living on less than $ 1 a day. Society consists of the privileged and the under privileged, the educated and the illiterates, the rich and the poor, the property owners and the deprived. In today’s info-tech age, wealth can be produced and destroyed quickly. Humanity is producing lot of wealth and a lot of information. Even the distribution of information is skewed. In spite of producing 747,000 terabytes of information around the world per year-humanity does not consume it in any equitable manner. In the year 2000, American households spent reading, watching television or listening to music 3380 hrs. The average for the same for other nations is abysmally low. Amazing is the disparity that is existing in the case of GNP of 192 nations. It is as low as $ 80 and as high as $ 45’360 a year. However hard we may try; whatever initiative we may take, economic inequality between nations and people will remain and get widened year after year. The knowledge-based economy of today will only help to widen the gap because the gap between the literate and the illiterates is again so wide. |
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How drought cripples economy PAKISTAN'S water crisis is worsening day by day. The worst drought in many decades threatens to shake the already fragile economy by its foundations. An SOS from Sindh has forced Chief Executive Gen Pervez Musharraf to facilitate an agreement between this province and Punjab on sharing the Indus water. Punjab is upset because the accord deprives it of 50 per cent (5000 cusecs) of supply it used to get in normal course. It has to suffer at a time when the cotton growing season is approaching fast. The wheat yield is also expected to decline by at least 20 per cent. The other day the Pakistan government appealed to the G-7 nations, the European Union, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank to bale it out of the crisis as the cash-strapped country faces a $ 900 million balance of payment problem. It is burdened with $37 billion in foreign debt and interest liabilities. An editorial The News on April 17 says: “Pakistan’s economy may suffer a loss of $2 billion on account of drought. According to Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, a loss of $1 billion has been estimated for the rising import bill of furnace oil for power generation. Crop production losses will cost another $1 billion. The Finance Minister has moderated his remarks by saying that the situation may not turn out to be as bad as it is being presently perceived. But the fact remains that as the economy is still struggling to come out of the woods, any further strain on it can only worsen the situation. This will pose newer challenges for the budget-makers. “Though the real picture of the economy will emerge by the end of the current financial year, it is now quite clear that it will not be able to achieve the expected 4.5 per cent rate of growth this year. It may be somewhere around 3.2 per cent, which is just a little better than the annual growth of population. This means that real growth in the economy will at best be marginal. The impact of drought on the national income and the balance of payments has already been acknowledged. The slowing down of growth may also impact upon the government’s resource mobilisation and poverty reduction efforts. “In a series of remedial measures announced by the Finance Minister in Karachi on Sunday, the government has given fresh incentives to expatriate Pakistanis to remit their money through official channels. The income of overseas Pakistanis is being estimated at $ 60 billion which is equal to the country’s annual gross domestic product. The need to harness this source has been emphasised. But it is also necessary that efforts to generate exportable surpluses, conserve on avoidable imports and retire the expensive debt should not be allowed to slow down or falter....” Dr Ijaz Ahsan in his article in The Nation on April 10 argues that there is an urgent need for declaring an emergency to save the crippling agricultural sector. He, in fact, supports the demand made by a farmers organisation. Here are some of his arguments: “Mr Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Chairman of the Farmers Associates of Pakistan, (FAP) has called upon the government to declare an “agricultural emergency” by describing the agriculture sector as calamity-stricken in view of increasing scarcity of water. The government can say: what can we do if water is scarce? I would say: no, sir! You can do a lot. Apart from what you can do in respect of the water shortage, you can do a great deal that could make the pain a little more bearable. “Firstly, the FAP has recommended that as the supply of water diminishes, the government should reduce the abiana or water rate proportionately. Secondly, they should introduce the same flat rates of electricity for tubewells in Sindh and Punjab as already exist in Baluchistan. Thirdly, they could divert some of the poverty-alleviation funds to brick-lining of watercourses. This would save a great deal of scarce water by preventing seepage from kutcha watercourses. “Individuals as well as groups in Sindh are crying hoarse for Sindh to be given more water. At the same time they are demanding that no dams be built. It is difficult to see how they can reconcile their first demand with their second one.” The woes of the Pakistani farmers, particularly those in Punjab, also find reflection in the letters to the editor column of different newspapers. One letter writer, Brig Naseem Khan (retd), a farmer by profession, has this to say: “I am a cotton as well as wheat grower of South Punjab. Since the start of the wheat season I have not seen a drop of water in my area’s irrigation canal. Within a 20 km radius around my farm, as I know it, every farm has used tubewell water for irrigation till date. With a sinking heart I have observed my TW gradually reducing its output. |
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Politics
has yet again been reduced to a tamasha TWO days before Parliament reconvened for its Budget session I ran into a senior Congress Party leader at a Delhi lunch and the conversation turned to whether the Congress would allow Parliament to function or not. He said that the party had decided to allow it to function because most senior leaders agreed that the disruption was not going down well with the people. This seemed to me like an eminently wise deduction of the post-Tehelka aftermath but that same evening, while switching channels, I saw the party’s most famous loudmouth, Mani Shankar Aiyer, being interviewed on Aaj Tak he said loudly and clearly that it was the government’s responsibility to see that Parliament functioned, not that of the Opposition. We will allow it to function, he said, if the government agrees to our demands: a Joint Parliamentary Committee for Tehelka and legal action against those caught taking bribes on tape. Aha, I thought, trouble for sure and trouble there has been. Parliament was not only disrupted completely but Congress MPs like Renuka Chaudhry proudly went on television to shout out their case. These are thieves, she said, and the whole world has seen it and thieves always make a noise. “Chor machaye shor” she shouted at the camera completely missing the irony of her own raised tones. A more docile BJP MP who was being interviewed with her pointed out that the government had earlier offered a Joint Parliamentary Committee on Tehelka and this had been turned down by the Congress. This got our ever-excitable lady more excited than usual, ‘So, why don’t they give it now, why don’t they give it now’ she yelled imperiously. Well, for the simple reason that a government would not deserve to be a government if it worked constantly on the instructions, whims and fancies, of the Opposition and this, oddly enough, is what the Congress Party seems to want to achieve. They appear to believe they have a right to order the Prime Minister around since they have scaled down their demands from resignation to a Joint Parliamentary Committee. So, Parliament will continue to be disrupted until the Congress can make it clear to the country that shouting loudly and causing disruption achieves results. Like my lunch time friend there are several sensible voices in the Congress who are urging a more sensible course. The grapevine has it that these more sensible MPs urged the party leadership not to make too much fuss over Subramanyam Swamy’s charges against Sonia Gandhi. If we are describing them as frivolous then are we not dignifying them by making such a fuss? Sonia, alas, appears to hear less sensible voices, like that of Arjun Singh, more clearly so a huge fuss there has been. It is widely believed in Delhi’s corridors of power that Swamy’s letter requesting a CBI investigation into his charges that Sonia and family had links with the LTTE and the KGB was used by the party as a bargaining chip. You prevent a CBI inquiry, the government appears to have been told, and we will allow Parliament to function. So, the Prime Minister clarified upon his return from Iran that no inquiry was being considered and that Swamy’s letter had merely been acknowledged as received. This did not satisfy the Congress and it went straight into full disruption mode. So, instead of debating the nuances of Yashwant Sinha’s Budget and making valuable, democratic contribution in Parliament it preferred to resort to street-fighting and slogan-mongering. Delhi is plastered with Sonia hoardings and posters urging people to rally around the Congress to fight “this corrupt government”. Is the strategy working? In the humble opinion of your columnist it is not working at all. The average Indian is fully aware that the Congress is really in no position at all to talk about corruption and the government has gone out of its way to remind him of this. First came the Vincent George revelations. The CBI announced that it was in the process of investigating how Sonia’s closest aide acquired crores worth of unaccountable properties and wealth. Then from the Petroleum Ministry we heard that Lily George, wife of Vincent, had asked that she be given a petrol pump on “compassionate grounds”. Barely, did we recover from this than we heard that Ajit Jogi, Congress Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, had declared himself indigent in order to acquire a petrol pump for himself. Tch, tch, tch, this does not look good at all for a party that hopes to make corruption the biggest issue in next month’s Assembly elections. There are, unfortunately, more serious consequences of the politics of disruption and noise-making and we saw a glimpse of them in Delhi last week. The city’s taxi and autorickshaw drivers went on strike to protest against their being made to use electronic meters. Ask any commuter in Delhi and he will tell you that these are necessary because mechanical meters are easily tampered with and, in any case, Delhi’s taxi and autorickshaw-wallahs are famous for charging what they like from hapless commuters. The protest should have been firmly put down but two days of disruption and noise-making and the Delhi Government quietly gave in and agreed not to enforce electronic meters for another two years. It has been the same story with the Supreme Court’s efforts to reduce air pollution in Delhi which destroys the lungs not just of rich people but even the poor. But, the reaction of even the Delhi Government, to the Supreme Court’s order, has been disruption and noise-making. So, deadlines keep being postponed and we are told that all of this is being done in the interests of “the people”. Presumably it is also in the interests of the people that the Delhi Government has been unable to implement the city’s rent laws. Every time an attempt has been made to make rich shopkeepers and traders pay a halfway decent rent for the vast shops they occupy for a couple of hundred rupees a month they go into disruption and noise-making mode. Bazaars are forcibly closed down and the government invariably caves in. It is unlikely that the rule of law will ever prevail if law-breakers always have their way. But, how can any government deal firmly with law-breakers when the laws are being constantly and publicly violated by the law-makers themselves. The rot begins in Parliament and if the Congress Party thinks it is setting the country a fine example by resorting to disruption instead of debate then it is quite mistaken. But, you will say and you will be right to say, did the BJP not behave as badly when it was in the Opposition? Yes, of course it did, which is probably why it does not really know what to do now. So, politics has yet again been reduced to a tamasha and instead of doing something about the victims of Gujarat’s earthquake or about our hideous poverty and illiteracy, our inability to even provide clean drinking water to the average Indian, we are all forced to sit and watch our politicians reduce politics to a spectator sport, a
tamasha. |
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Black statue of Diana stirs controversy A
made-in-India statue of the late Princess Diana has stirred a controversy following strenuous objections from her brother, Earl Spencer, who does not like the black granite sculpture. The eight-foot statue is likely to end up in the rubbish heap of a Birmingham suburb after WalsAll Council, which commissioned the work, said it would not allow it into a city art gallery. At least one local critic in Walsall has expressed the view that the statue should have been white. When a public consultation document was published last week a man, who has not been named, said the statue “would look nicer if it was the proper skin color.” Another Walsall local told the local media: “I have heard various comments and threats, mainly from the younger set, to throw a bucket of white paint over it.” Such comments have prompted angry reactions from anti-racist activists. A spokeswoman from the Birmingham Racial Attacks Monitoring Group said that reactions to the statue’s black color shows how “we as a society still haven’t come to terms with racism and prejudice.” Council leader Mike Bird, who has described the statue as “demonic,” said it bore only a passing resemblance to Diana. He described how the sculpture “shocked” local families after it arrived in Britain from India last year. Objections from local families who wanted the statue banned from their sight led to three public consultations by Walsall Council. Local Labour member of Parliament (MP) Bruce George then added fuel to fire by declaring that the black statue looks more like the singer Diana Ross rather than the late princess of Wales. Last week the statue’s fate was finally sealed after officials said they would not permit it to be exhibited in the council funded New Art Gallery against the wishes of the Spencer family. Bird said: “In view of the fact that the Spencer family have been saying they do not approve, we have to respect their wishes.” In truth the council had little choice since naming royal statues requires the consent of the monarch. Bird confirmed that the council had received a letter from the Home Office that made it clear that such approval would not be forthcoming. The letter from the Home Office to Walsall Council, says: “The use of royal names and titles requires the approval of the Queen. The views of the Spencer family have been sought on this occasion. I am afraid it was not possible to make a favorable recommendation to her majesty in this matter.” A spokesman for Earl Spencer said: “We have been very careful to keep out of this one. If people want to commemorate the Princess of Wales we would always be delighted. The Walsall situation is a civil service matter.”
IANS |
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SPIRITUAL NUGGETS You may sit at your window watching the passerby. And watching you may see a nun walking toward your right hand, and a prostitute toward your left hand. And you may say in your innocence, "How noble is the one and how ignoble is the other". But should you close your eyes and listen awhile you would hear a voice whispering in the other, "One seeks me in prayer, and the other in pain. And in the spirit of each there is a bower for my spirit." *** They say to me, "You must choose between the pleasures of the world and the peace of the next world." And I say unto them, "I have chosen both the delights of this world and the peace of the next. For I know in my heart that the Supreme Poet wrote but one poem, and it scans perfectly and it also rhymes perfectly." *** Said a philosopher to a street sweeper, "I pity you. Yours is a hard and dirty task." And the street sweeper said, "Thank you, sir. But tell me what is your task?" And the philosopher answered saying, "I study man's mind, his deeds and his desires." Then the street sweeper went on with his sweeping and said with a smile, "I pity you too." —From Kahlil Gibran, Sand and Foam. *** Can anything be achieved without spiritual discipline? Do you not see what severe disciplines even the Avatars (incarnations of God) had to perform? Has anybody gained anything without labour? Buddha, Shankara and others — what tremendous austerities they practiced in their lives! What burning renunciation they possessed. —Swami Prabhavananda, The Eternal Companion |
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