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| Saturday,
July 21, 2001, Chandigarh, India   
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Koirala
goes, problems remain Unemployment
on the rise |
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ICSSR
in turmoil A controversy every three months is the norm in the Human Resource Development Ministry. The latest, so close to the astrology teaching, is the unceremonious sacking of Prof M. L. Sondhi as chairman of the ICSSR (Indian Council of Social Sciences Research) on Wednesday. This arbitrary act was very much on the cards but the timing is, as usual with the BJP-led alliance government, dismal. The dismissal order came when he was interacting with media men and women after a workshop on the aftermath of the Agra summit.
Education
as a form of investment
The
(In)security Officer
After
the summit: as newspapers look at it
Journalists
and journalists, but little information flow
|
Koirala goes, problems remain NEPAL'S Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has been swept off his perch by a political storm that had been brewing for the past several months. His mishandling of the Maoist rebel crisis only provided the immediate trigger. In the latest incident guerrillas abducted 71 policemen in the western Rolpa district and yet, the much-touted rescue operation has not even started in the absence of a proper order. He had earned the ire of the Opposition as well as his party men much earlier who accused him of not only not being forthcoming on the palace massacre but also castigated him for failing to protect King Birendra and his family members. Then there were numerous allegations of corruption, including about the hiring of an aircraft from an Austrian company, Lauda Air. While the rebels had made his resignation a precondition for talks, the opposition had given an ultimatum for his ouster, before the expiry of which he tendered his resignation. To that extent, his resignation will bring about restoration of tenuous political peace in the Himalayan kingdom. However, that may not translate into political stability, given the fractured mandate and extreme fragmentation among various political parties. The murder of King Birendra and the resultant chaos has further complicated matters. There are at least four claimants to the post he is vacating. Mr Koirala himself is in favour of Foreign Minister Chakra Prasad Bastola or the Nepali Congress secretary, Sushil Koirala, a nephew of his. His opponents want former premier Sher Bahadur Deuba or Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Paudel who resigned from the Cabinet last week following differences with Mr Koirala on the handling of the rebel crisis. Whoever gets the job will find it extremely difficult to come to grips with the situation because too many crises have broken out almost simultaneously. At stake is Nepal's multi-party democratic system itself. Mr Koirala was not trying to justify his own shortcomings when he warned: "If all of us do not work responsibly and honestly for national consensus, then Nepal's democratic system and the achievement of the people's movement will suffer." Maoists are going allout to establish a communist regime and, ironically, there is no consensus among the elected representatives on how to tackle the common threat. As a result, the killers who take their cue from China are on the rampage. The upheaval bodes ill for the Hindu kingdom that is among the poorest countries in the world. |
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Unemployment on the rise THE rate of
unemployment among rural youth, both male and female, in the 15-24 age group has increased between 1993-94 and 1999-00, reveals a study of the National Sample Survey. The rate of unemployment is the highest in eastern states (Orissa, West Bengal) and North-East followed by the four southern states, all rice growing. Another interesting finding of an NCAER survey is that the unemployment rate progressively increases with higher education among rural
youth. Though higher education is supposed to reduce chances of unemployment, it appears youth with higher degrees tend to be more choosy about available jobs unlike their illiterate counterparts who are forced by poverty to do whatever work is available. The educated unemployed obviously come from comparatively better-off families which can afford to support them
until they find a job matching their status and living standard. Statistics do not, and cannot, tell the whole truth about unemployment. For instance, in the agriculture-dominated states there is hidden unemployment or under-employment. Where do you put women partly engaged in household work and partly in agriculture- related activities? It is only in the case of the educated unemployed who make the effort to get themselves registered at employment exchanges that a reliable figure of unemployment can be reached. What about school or college dropouts -- and there are many in Punjab and Haryana -- who have never heard of employment exchanges or who are not eligible for any government job? No wonder, there is a move in Punjab to close down the employment exchanges. Unemployment is not just an economic problem. it carries a social stigma, It brings about emotional turmoil, saps all energy and an individual often resorts to desperate steps to escape it. As Punjab has already seen it , it can breed militancy. An unemployed youth can fall an easy prey to anti-national agents’ designs or can be exploited by an unscrupulous travel agent. The level of unemployment in comparatively well-off states like
Punjab and Haryana may not be as high as in other parts of the country, but expectations of youth are much higher. With land-holdings shrinking and agriculture getting mechanised, traditional family work is no longer available. Besides, returns from agriculture itself are inadequate. Near bankrupt state governments are spending most of their finances on
maintaining the existing staff. Large ministries eat up a great part of the resources. Whatever little is left for spending on development work is partly gobbled up by sharks in the
system. The reform process has not yet percolated to the state level. There is ban on recruitment off and on. Government jobs are almost unavailable. The unemployment situation is really grim, far more that any statistics can reveal. The worst part is there is no effort at the state or national level to seriously address the problem. There is demand for Indian skilled workers abroad, but there is no official effort to send trained youth aborad through a proper channel and at affordable
rates. The nation’s youth are left to fend for themselves. |
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ICSSR in turmoil A controversy every three months is the norm in the Human Resource Development Ministry. The latest, so close to the astrology teaching, is the unceremonious sacking of Prof
M. L. Sondhi as chairman of the ICSSR (Indian Council of Social Sciences Research) on Wednesday. This arbitrary act was very much on the cards but the timing is, as usual with the BJP-led alliance government,
dismal. The dismissal order came when he was interacting with media men and women after a workshop on the aftermath of the Agra summit. In fact, his dismissal has a lot to do with Indo-Pakistan relations. His troubles with the hardline faction in the BJP started when he initiated several moves to reassess bilateral relations and, if possible, come up with realistic ideas to improve them. His determined pursuit of the theme did not, and could not, please the hardliners within the BJP. Thus he unwittingly encouraged his ideological critics to gang up and plot his ouster. There had been a long string of provocations from him as also his rivals in the governing council of the ICSSR. But the immediate provocation, or the trigger, was his successful organising of an Indo-Pakistan seminar to thoroughly review the relations on the eve of the Agra summit. His idea was to prepare and provide specialist inputs to commentators, analysts and editors on the various aspects of the turbulent ties. The trouble really started here. The Home Ministry issued a directive that its prior clearance was necessary before any foreign academic or journalist could be invited to take part in any discussion. Many linked this draconian order to Prof Sondhi’s seminar and felt that the BJP hardliners would succeed in sabotaging it. But they did not reckon with his dogged determination and his direct approach to Prime Minister Vajpayee. He got the necessary clearance and trained his gun on those he thought were his detracters — Home Minister Advani, HRD Minister Joshi, External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh and Finance Minister Yashwant Sinha. The last two do not actually fall in this category as they are not true blue saffronites while the other two are. These leaders and a few disgruntled members of the governing council of the ICSSR received generous help from a minor character flaw in Prof Sondhi. He had failed to observe procedural niceties, and academicians are loathe to be prisoners of accountants. But his frontal attack and demand for the resignation of the four Ministers and giving them wide publicity made him a marked man. And the sacking on Wednesday is a logical culmination. The hounding out of one of the most prominent faces of the liberal stream of the BJP and a tireless votary of better Indo-Pakistan relations do send a wrong signal to the academic community in India and abroad. |
Education as a form of investment THE study of economics does not seem to require any specialised gifts of an unusually high
order.
— Lord J. M. Keynes John K. Galbraith, who was recently awarded Padma Vibhushan by the Government of India, has been frequently mentioned as a likely Nobel winner but perhaps never got beyond the shortlisting stage. Another great name missed among the Nobel laureates in economics is Lord Lionel Robbins. Both would have greatly enhanced the reputation of the Royal Academy of Sciences which awards the Alfred Nobel Memorial Prize in economic science instituted by the Bank of Sweden in 1968. Robbins died in 1984 at the age of 86. Galbraith at 93 is happily still in good health and has all the good wishes of his admirers for many more fruitful years. Robbins believed in ethical neutrality of economics, Galbraith did not. Yet both made outstanding contributions to issues of contemporary social concerns and purposes, particularly in the field of arts and higher education. As is well known, Robbins was the Chairman of the Committee on Higher Education whose report in 1963 led to reshaping of higher education in Britain. He was also one of the main consultants to the Kothari Commission whose report in 1966 gave a new direction to the education system in India. Galbraith co-authored with M.S. Randhawa an innovative book entitled Indian Painting (1968) which instead of talking about the paintings that were selected, as is usual with such books, tried to tell “of the rulers, courts, countryside and legends that gave them being.” During his tenure as the US Ambassador to India (1961-63) he lectured extensively on development, focusing on education and technology. Both, Robbins and Galbraith interrupted their academic career for a while to enter public service during World War II, Robbins as Director of the Economic Section of the War Cabinet in Britain and Galbraith as Deputy Administrator in the Office of Price Administration in the USA. This gave them valuable insights into the overall requirements of economic progress. The experience they gained with controls is to be found in Robbins’ The Economic Problem in Peace and War (1949) and Galbraith’s A Theory of Price Control (1952). Both these monographs are beneficial reading for those who are concerned with shaping of economic policies in India. Much of the reputation of London School of Economics in the discipline of economics owes to the personal reputation of Lord Robbins. He was a great teacher known for his exceptional felicity of expression and cadence, a quality shared by Galbraith whose frontal attack on traditional economics for leaving out the role of power in economic matters gives him a unique place among those who did not see economics as a self-contained discipline. His book The Affluent Society has acquired the status of a classic for effectively raising questions about the validity of “more is better” approach. Published in 1958, it has since been translated into many languages. At a time when the Indian State is withdrawing from the field of higher education, Galbraith’s ideas will enhance understanding of the relationship between education and economic development and contribute to informed decision-making in this important field. The basic question whether education is a form of consumption or a kind of development investment is not debatable. Education is both. The question that does not admit an easy answer is, where does one draw the line? According to Galbraith, “To look at education as a form of consumption ... is to risk assigning it an unduly low priority.” He laments that some developing countries have done so and have attached relatively much greater importance to building physical capital, such as steel mills, dams and fertiliser factories, than to building human capital. Galbraith thinks this is a grave error and quotes Prof Theodore Schultz’s pioneering work on the importance of human resources in economic development to show that outlays on investment in education yield a higher return than on physical capital. (Professor Schultz is the first economist to systematise the analysis of the influence of investment in education on productivity for which he was awarded Nobel Prize in 1979). Stress on education as a form of investment leads Galbraith to point out that “planning of education output” is not only “desirable” but also “imperative”. Speaking specially of university education, he says: “Attention must be accorded to the distribution of talent between engineering, science, medicine, agriculture and other needed specialities.” He does not mention how this has to be brought about but underlines the role of “incentives” in this regard. He is not a votary of educational planning by public officials. He once wrote: “Public officials do not always admire men who say what the right policy should be... Their frequent need ... is for men who will find persuasive reasons for the wrong policy.” Conscious of the act that “the planning of university specialisation is an exceedingly difficult matter”, Galbraith assigns a central role to the faculty which must have a community orientation and be capable of translating the community’s needs “into curricular, courses and good academic discipline”. Interestingly, he is not in favour of democratisation of the system and wrote: It is hard ever to take a stand against democracy. But the school master, at his best and in the most democratic countries, has always been a rather authoritative figure. I doubt that a university can be wholly successful unless it reposes strong and responsible power in those who teach and unless those who teach delegate as needed to their own representatives. In recent times Latin American universities have been experimenting with highly democratic direction in which students, graduates and faculty all participate more or less equally. Democratic or not, it is a formula for deterioration, incoherence and chaos. I believe the university is by nature an oligarchy of its faculty. Galbraith’s advice to developing countries is not to take a lofty view of university education but to test it by its productivity; in other words, to purposefully regard it as an investment “from which the most of what is needed must be obtained.” But his concept of productivity is not restricted to disciplines which directly or immediately lead to production of material goods and services, such as science, engineering and medicine. Even esoteric and exotic forms of knowledge can have surprising returns. The linguist, for example, “maintains the avenues to the technology of other cultures,” Similarly, literacy among farmers not only endows them with the ability to read and write but “it is also a first indispensable step to any form of agricultural progress.” With a poetic turn of phrase he notes: “Nowhere in the world is there an illiterate peasantry that is progressive. Nowhere in the world is there a literate peasantry that isn’t.” Galbraith may have overstressed his point of view. But the policy makers in developing countries like India cannot ask the universities to assume wider functions that have become necessary in face of unprecedented explosion of knowledge and at the same time leave the system to fend for itself. The system of higher education in India has already descended into complete chaos and is unlikely to survive as a viable organisation without an ungrudging liberal support of the state. The writer is Emeritus Professor of Economics, Punjabi University, Patiala. |
The (In)security Officer MOST people have heard of Security Officers. Large sized institutions generally have to have somebody with that designation. No wonder when I joined Patiala as the Vice-Chancellor, somebody with that designation was already in position. He was a retired army Colonel. Some years before I joined he had been engaged as a Security Officer and was performing reasonably well. The general approach of most administrators is to avoid creating a situation. Sometimes it means accepting even unreasonable demands of certain sections of the university population. In the interest of “peace”, that is regarded as the right thing to do. Within a couple of months, I found out for myself that his wavelength was very different from mine. He was used to giving in even to unreasonable demands whereas I would not do so. On a number of occasions, I had to disregard his advice. Sometimes even some minor commitment that he might have made had to be turned down. Owing to this difference of approach, things between us remained undefined, to put it no more precisely. He was quite cheerful even when he was overruled about certain matters. In one or two cases when I disagreed with him totally, he eased the situation by saying something like, “If you choose to overrule me, that must be in the interest of the university.” I did not wish to be more explicit in any case and the situation continued to drift. Something like a year went by. During this interval, I had a prolonged confrontation with the students over certain issues and this lasted for approximately two months. In the end, the battle was won. It became clear to the students within a few months that nothing unreasonable could be obtained by being difficult. He had a role to play in several such situations and on the whole he acquitted himself reasonably well even though he tended to be soft rather than tough. A little later, a confrontation developed with the teachers. They too were used to having their own way. But I was not prepared to accept a situation where they could dodge their duties and at the same time demand things which in my eyes were unreasonable. Before the situation with the teachers could be resolved, the non-teaching employees too went on the warpath. They had hardly any demands, so to speak. They were trying to prove that they could not be taken for granted and did count for something. Considering the fact that the number of students was almost twice the number of non-teaching employees, I was not inclined to give in just because they chose to assert themselves. In this situation, one day he walked up to me and said that he wanted to discuss something important. “What is that” I asked? He replied: I know that you have quite often overruled me in regard to certain matters. In the end you had your way. There is one thing, however, which puzzles me now.” “Can you be more precise”? I enquired. He said: “I fail to understand one thing. You had a confrontation with students and, even though things are quiet just now, anything can erupt at any time. For the past several months, there has been an ongoing confrontation with the teachers. Though it is not yet resolved, now you have taken on the karamcharis too. Is it right to confront everyone at the same time?” He had a look of genuine concern on his face as he said these things. I looked at him intensely for a while and said: “You are right. It is tactically unwise to fight on a number of fronts. But what you do when things are forced on you?” After a pause, I added: “At the same time I want you to remember that, in any university campus, the only unpredictable element are the students. They are at a stage of life when they do not bother about the consequences.” “I agree”, he observed. I explained my point of view further. “Whether it is the teachers or the non-teaching employees, they are governed by certain rules and they find it difficult to evade or defy them beyond a point. Rules are there even for students. But they are always prepared to defy them.” We discussed this issue for a few minutes more. He conceded that the battle against the students had been won. At the same time, I was not prepared to share his apprehensions, somewhat genuine though they were. When he tried to paint a gloomy picture, I asked him: “Are you the Security or the Insecurity Officer of the university?” We both laughed at this pun over words and let the matter rest there. However, I further explained my way of thinking in these words. “There was no battle against the students. Accustomed as they were to having their way through the sheer force of intimidation, they were not prepared to be challenged. I decided to do so. Anything that was reasonable was accepted but whatever was unreasonable was not accepted. It was this message that I sought to convey and it has worked.” He agreed with this reading of the situation. Years later, when I chose to write my book, Asking for Trouble: What it means to be a Vice-Chancellor Today, I chose to dedicate it to the students of that university. Looking back, I am very clear in my mind that I could not have done anything other than to dedicate my memoirs to them. They had been my biggest source of strength and had made it possible to confront others as and when they chose to be unreasonable. As to the description — Security (or Insecurity) Officer — that remained a private joke between the two of us. |
After the summit: as newspapers look at it IT is indeed a divided media that has returned home after covering Indo-Pak summit at Agra. It is natural since media is not a monolith institution by itself. But the upshot is the sharp divergent opinion. For the last four days, there has been a flood of articles, editorial comment in most of the newspapers, English as well Urdu. While English language newspapers like Dawn, The News and to some extent even the Nation have been making sober comments, suggesting another summit and the American involvement and the proposed visit of former US President Bill Clinton with some agenda to make India and Pakistan sit together again and sort out the tangled issues, the Urdu newspapers have taken a more strident line. Jung is a sister publication of The News, yet the two differ in tone and temper. Jung says that it was the capricious conduct of the Indian side that led to the failure of the talks.’’ It was the Indian rigidity on Kashmir that foreclosed the peace process’’, it said. The News was cautious when it said: “The Indo-Pak summit went so far as possible against the backdrop of ongoing distrust and tensions between the two countries. Both sides purposely refrained from describing it as a failure. The summit was not expected to produce instant results’’. Pakistan Observer took a hawkish position and put the entire blame for the failure on to the hardliners in the ruling BJP. “The development was not unexpected”, it said. Business Recorder advised the President that he should not expect to negotiate with the present political set-up in India.’’ For Pakistan it was just another lesson that it is a bit too early for the Kashmiri movement and India’s far-sighted American mentors to temper its megalomania with some sanity and respect diplomatic norms... The present leadership believes in the annihilation of the Kashmiri freedom struggle militarily.’’ But it was left to Dawn to bring some sanity. It had earlier warned against the media hype. “For the people of Pakistan and India, the Agra summit has been unique experience in one important sense: never before has an event of this nature been played out under the glare of so much media attention... live coverage by dozens of TV networks and the 700-odd journalists watching from the sidelines made it an obsessive event.’’ There was certain risk involved in this kind of media overkill. There was danger of the contentious issues constantly dredged out, setting parallel agenda and encouraging hawkish tendencies on both sides. This clearly happened, the newspaper noted. An article by Syed Talat Hussain in Dawn of July 20, 2001, summed up the real issues. Hussain said: “A diplomatic success is a prodigy that many claim they have fathered. A diplomatic failure is an orphan everyone disowns. But how to characterise an event which falls in neither category?’’ He further said: “It can be called a summit meeting in Agra. Three-days of intense discussions, capped by nail-biting final hours of the talks between the teams of President General Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had an inglorious anticlimax. The two sides came very close to clinching an agreement, but then moved apart, going back to their traditional positions.” “In the midst of the vows to meet again and keep talks going, lies the hard fact that Agra has little to show for itself by way of tangible foreign policy results. For the time being, therefore attention has to be focussed on the failed summit’s domestic impact. And that too for President General Musharraf. About the fallout in Pakistan, Mr Hussain wrote: “The most notable domestic impact of the summit is that General Musharraf by getting engaged with India has changed the parameters of at least one issue of national political debate: what should be the posture governments adopt towards India, the arch enemy. Civilian governments have always faced a big problem deciding how far they could go in being soft on India in order to find some breathing space to concentrate on pressing domestic concerns. It is fair to say that most of them tried to keep Pakistan’s all-powerful civil-military establishment on their right side by being conservative in dealing with India.” His other assessment ran like this: “This also explains why, whenever a bold initiative was shown by a civilian government, it had to constantly look over its shoulder for a backlash from the establishment. Inevitably, in case of a civilian government getting too soft, the first salvo of this backlash came from the so-called hawks in the media, who decried any such move as a “sell-out” and a compromise on national security issues. General Musharraf’s Agra visit has bridged this divide. For the doves, it has set the standard of engagement with India for future governments in Pakistan. Musharraf, who represents the core part of the establishment in Pakistan, has established that it is alright to visit India to seek peace and take a stroll in the gardens of Taj Mahal. He has also established that it is not a sin or a sell-out to say that durable peace can only be found by showing flexibility and open-mindedness in dealing with India — a phrase which in the past could be mouthed by a civilian leader only at the risk of being lambasted as weak in commitment to the national interest. The other domestic impact of the Agra summit that needs to be seen in terms of how it affects the political position of General Musharraf himself. The Opposition leaders, particularly those in the Pakistan Muslim League of Nawaz Sharif, think that General Musharraf by going to Agra and coming back with nothing in hand, has added another failure to what they perceive is a growing list of his government’s domestic failures. The General’s supporters, however, think that he has come back unscathed, and even with an enhanced moral standing. Both views assume that the Agra summit will necessarily impact on Musharraf. This is in part because historically Pakistan’s foreign policy and domestic politics often intertwine. Both impact on, and reinforce, each other. A development in the one realm has its spillover effect on the other. Accordingly, many of the national political turning points are usually external factors and developments. However, disappointing as it may be, both for Musharraf’s detractors and backers, Agra is unique in the sense that it does not have any substantive effect on General Musharraf’s position at home. His domestic challenges and tasks are not any tougher or easier in the wake of the Agra summit. The opposition to his rule is not any stronger now than it was before he left for Agra. Apart from Benazir Bhutto getting an opportunity to take swipes at Musharraf’s sherwani, there is little advantage that the opposition has gained out of the Agra debacle. And finally, at home he is still the man in charge because in Agra he gained nothing and lost nothing.” |
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Journalists and journalists, but little information flow AGRA. And , what can I tell you about the event billed for so many weeks as the greatest moment in Indo-Pakistan relations since the bus ride to Lahore. Well, with-wall-to-wall coverage that began weeks before the General arrived on our side of the border there is a certain fatigue even for us who have to record its acrimony and its nuances for history or so we like to believe. There is something awesome about the word history which makes the most cynical of us hacks react with a certain
excitement. This is not always a good thing as you would have seen from the ‘hype’ we added to the Agra Summit. So much hype that many ordinary people were led to believe that something extraordinary was likely to happen when Pakistan’s self-appointed President met our Prime Minister. I realised that we had gone too far when in the lobby of Agra’s Moghul Sheraton hotel I met a Kashmiri bar steward who said, “I am now convinced that a solution will emerge from these talks”. What solution did he have in mind, I asked a tad warily, and he said effusively that the only solution was independence for Kashmir. “It’s not going to happen, I explained gently, but he was not convinced. Why was I talking to a bar steward in the Moghul Sheraton lobby? Because, sweet readers, for us of the print media that was where we spent the entire summit. All the action was taking place elsewhere so, like you, we watched it on television as our brethren from the electronic media brought us pictures — at least what pictures they were allowed to bring — from the Jaypee Palace Hotel where the action was. It was deeply frustrating to be kept so far away from anyone who could tell us anything made even more frustrating because our “sources” were suddenly unavailable even on their mobile phones. Sushma Swaraj was the only person with access to the summiteers to whom we had any access which is why it was she who was called upon to make her comments to hungry TV networks and which is why Pakistan’s General got his chance to have his breakfast show. But that came later. On day one of the mighty summit all we did was hang around the Moghul Sheraton lobby. Every journalist you can think of was in that lobby and there was so little work, so little to report, that we took to interviewing each other and giving each other “expert” comments. The TV networks had their work made easier because of the presence of so many “experts” in such a small area so their reporters would sweep in from time to time and swoop one or the other of us up to express our views on their channels. I was swept off as well, willingly since it made a change, to express my views on Aaj Tak. We were taken to a makeshift studio on rickety tables at the Taj Khema Hotel that has the most magnificent view of the Taj M.J. Akbar and I were on together with a reporter in between and there was so little standing room that there were moments when I was sure one of us would fall out of the “studio” in full view of live TV cameras. We did not but in the few seconds I had to say my humble piece I ventured to suggest that India needed to take some unilateral measures where visas for Pakistanis were concerned. When I returned to the Moghul Sheraton lobby I was accosted by colleagues who wanted to know why I said this and I explained that, as someone who knew Pakistan relatively well, the most disturbing thing was the impression of India that the average Pakistani had. When I was there, two weeks ago, doing street interviews I met any number of people who said that they thought of it as a country overrun with Hindu fundamentalists. Only those who manage to come here discover that it is very far from being that and is never likely to be hence easy access to India could be our best weapon against the evil propaganda the average Pakistani has been bred on. Tension and hostility were evident even the Moghul Sheraton lobby with Pakistani journalists keeping much to themselves and we Indians looking at them with a certain wariness and suspicion. All part, I have to say, of having nothing better to do far that whole first day. That night I went to the banquet the Governor of Uttar Pradesh gave for General Pervez Musharraf and his delegation. It was an evening of music and delicious food but there was little information to be had. I managed a brief conversation with L.K. Advani, who said that he had indeed mentioned to the General that we were concerned about the terrorists he was sending into Kashmir and the ones he was sheltering in Pakistan. But, he was evasive when I tried to dig out more details. With Jaswant Singh I had even luck and got nothing at all except that they were trying for a joint declaration and, perhaps a joint press conference before the General left the next day for Ajmer. So all was well till later that night when the General appears to have watched poor Sushma make her relatively harmless remarks on television and decided that she had deliberately let out Kashmir. So next morning there came the Musharraf Breakfast Show. The editors who had been invited had no idea that he was going to use their meeting as a forum to announce that the only thing he wanted to discuss was Kashmir, Kashmir and Kashmir. What other issue is there? We have fought wars over it and it is the main reason for enmity between our two countries. He is right, in a way, but our side felt that it would have been better for him not to have involved the media as participants in the summit. Well, we in the lobby of the Moghul Sheraton watched that Breakfast Show in total fascination. It was the only news we had been dished out in two long, boring days and we were riveted. Foreign correspondents from distant parts took down every word, some pulled out their tape recorders and placed them in front of the television screen and we all concluded that this was the beginning of the end of the summit. So it was. The General went off to meet the Prime Minister and there were many hours of discussion between them and their delegations but it was clear that a joint statement was now going to be a tricky business. We did not realise, though, that it was going to be impossible and it was shocking to see the General, all glum and unsmiling, driving off in his black stretch limousine shortly before midnight. No detour for the pilgrimage to Ajmer, straight back to Islamabad. Do we conclude then that the whole exercise was a waste of time, a total failure. Not yet, if we are to believe the Foreign Ministers of India and Pakistan, a disappointment, according to ours, inconclusive, according to theirs, but not a failure. Perhaps not, perhaps a subtle, little step towards peace has been taken but I have to say that it is hard to see it yet. |
All, Truth is paradoxical. We must know both sides before we comprehend it. Truth is round. All time = now All distance = here All thought = God consciousness ***** Civilisation = Immensely busy, rushing crowds doing really nothing. No time, no time and no work even. ***** What is property? That which is proper to a thing, or right for a thing. ***** In the accursed state of civilisation material objects represent money, instead of money representing them. ***** Materials are not to be worshipped, they must be commanded. ***** Be yourself, enjoy all, possess nothing. — Swami Ramatirtha,
In Woods of God Realisation Vol. I: "Notebooks of Swami Rama" ***** In Tibet they say if you are angry, then just run.... If you run fast your breathing changes, and when your breathing changes your thought pattern cannot remain the same, it has to change. But there is no need to run. You can simply take five deep breaths exhale and inhale, and see where your anger has gone. — Osho, Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol. I ***** The prevalent fear of poverty among educate classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilisation suffers. — Sir William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience ***** Let not poverty and misfortune distress you. For as gold is tried in the fire, the believer is exposed to trials. — Imam Hazarat Ali, Maxims ***** Control anger by pure reason. Why do you feel offended when a man calls you a dog or a donkey? Have you developed now four legs and tail like a dog? What is this abuse? Is it not mere vibration in the other? ***** If you find it difficult to control anger, leave the place at once. Take a long walk. Drink cold water. Repeat Om shanti, a hundred and eight times. Do japa of your personal god (ishta) or count from one to thirty. The anger will subside. — Swami Shivanada, Bliss Divine |
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