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No troops for Iraq ‘Taint-free’
Judeo |
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Jailbirds Meant for PR effect If you have nowhere to go, just break the law to ensure a free meal and shelter for some time as a state guest. If you are enterprising, like the Amritsar undertrials, you can even create a life of five-star splendour for yourself, your fellow inmates and the jail staff.
Fighting AIDS
‘Stoning’ in
public interest
The politics of
language in Pakistan People
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No troops for Iraq External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh’s clarification that there is no move to send Indian troops to Iraq under the prevailing circumstances should end the controversy caused by his statement made in Washington. The reports quoting him as having said that India would take a “new look” at the question had aroused great concern back home. But his statement to clear the air has come after strong protests from the ruling United Progressive Alliance constituents and Opposition leaders like former External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha. India’s consensual stand, as reflected by Parliament’s resolution on Iraq, is that it can spare its soldiers for Iraq only if they are a part of a peacekeeping force under the UN flag. The latest Security Council resolution endorsing the plan to transfer Iraqi sovereignty to a new government by June 30 has it that the multinational force there will stay put under the US command. These troops will also run the prisons and detention camps interning thousands of Iraqis. This means that it is the US, with its nearly 1,40,000 soldiers, and not the UN, that will be calling the shots. The arrangement cannot suit India. Moreover, there is no formal request from the interim government in Iraq. Even if such a request comes, India will have to take so many factors into consideration before taking a final decision. The new government is composed of mostly those people who have been working with various US agencies, and there is the likelihood of the interim regime being treated by the Iraqi public as a new version of the discredited Governing Council it is replacing. The multinational troops helping such a government are bound to be targeted by resistance forces. Why should Indian soldiers be made to die in such a situation? Ideally, the deployment of Indian troops should wait for the installation of a truly elected government after the polls scheduled for January 2005. In the meantime, it can offer its services for the reconstruction of war-ravaged Iraq. The two countries have had a long history of friendly relations and that is why there is a tremendous amount of goodwill for India in Iraq. Under no circumstances should this be allowed to be lost. |
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‘Taint-free’ Judeo There is an old apocryphal story about a preacher who would pronounce harsh judgements on the residents of his village if they so much as missed keeping a fast. One day, his son killed a cat, which was considered a cardinal sin in those times. The repressed villagers looked forward to the ultimate punishment. The preacher consulted his books minutely and gave the verdict: “If this crime is committed by the son of a preacher, there is no punishment at all”. This story may be made up but what is happening in Delhi is not a figment of anyone’s imagination. The BJP disrupted the whole session of Parliament on the issue of tainted ministers in the Manmohan Singh government. And yet, it has included Mr Dilip Singh Judeo in the list of Rajya Sabha nominees. Public memory may be short but it cannot be that short that it can forget the stunning visuals of last year in which the then Union Minister of State for Environment is seen drinking in a five-star hotel and accepting wads of currency notes (even comparing money to God for good measure). Perhaps the BJP’s memory is shorter than that of the public. Either the party sincerely thinks that a crime is not a crime if it is committed by someone within its ranks or it is hell-bent on demolishing its own case against the tainted ministers. After this incident, its campaign against them stands badly compromised. But then, it had no qualms about supping with Mr Sukh Ram either. All this leads to the unfortunate conclusion that no party is serious about probity in public life. If the BJP is so indulgent to Mr Dilip Singh Judeo, the Congress party is not going to be a passive watcher. It can be safely expected to reward Mr Ajit Jogi—an equally illustrious figure in Chhattisgarh’s great sting operations—before he starts complaining. |
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Jailbirds If you have nowhere to go, just break the law to ensure a free meal and shelter for some time as a state guest. If you are enterprising, like the Amritsar undertrials, you can even create a life of five-star splendour for yourself, your fellow inmates and the jail staff. Amitabh Bachchan's sidekick Anu Kapoor, in "Hum Azad Hain", broke a shop window right in front of the beat constable for a free meal in jail. In Amritsar, the District Magistrate noticed the five-star cell while nipping a jailbreak by the alleged killers of an Akali leader. The Amritsar gang was less fortunate than the Beant Singh murder accused who fled the Burail jail near Chandigarh. They had both managed to create a life of luxury for themselves within the four-walls of the high security prison. However, while the alleged killers of Beant Singh managed to escape, the district authorities somehow got wind of their intention to breath free again. According to criminologists, there would be no challenge for the law enforcers if only idiots were picked up for trail. Give both Dawood and the Devil their due for what they managed to do in defiance of the established order. The famous conman Natwarlal was, of course, as at home inside the prison as he was outside. Crime statisticians have lost count the number of time he has managed a jailbreak. He used to do it as skilfully as would justify a special prize for the most non-violent yet efficient escape from jail. The jail staff usually provided him the creature comforts and when he wanted to taste freedom, they helped him escape. Human rights groups which often complain about the living conditions in Punjab prisons can easily be shown the Amritsar jail where prisoners and their jailors enjoy the best of comfort and relations. May be the Amritsar jail has been designed for PR effect. |
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The truth is rarely pure, and never simple. — Oscar Wilde |
Fighting AIDS The
UK’s prestigious Economist magazine provided unprecedented four-page coverage to India (April 17) — not because of the then forthcoming elections, but “the subject not figuring in election issues” and proposed as the new government’s “first priority”, AIDS. It appreciated a curious mix underlining the Economist club’s mindset — the BBC’s role in Indian TV/ radio (women’s groups/ state legislators forced Prasar Bharati to backtrack); a Mumbai NGO (controversial history, including medical ethics); and Andhra Pradesh’s then CEO, Mr Chandrababu Naidu, for sterling leadership through “insisting that all ministers should make a mention of AIDS in their speeches, no matter what the topic…. also pressing for all advertisements to include a line about the disease and for condoms to be made available at official functions and handed out free wherever alcohol was sold.” Ironically, this is conceding alongside “old hat in places like Africa and Thailand” where huge numbers are devastated. The sum of the unusually verbose argument: more political leadership, unshrinking public discussion of the unsavoury and more public money for “committed interventions” because “Aids is an expensive disease, expensive to prevent and expensive to treat - but India cannot afford the alternative.” No one disputes that the killer disease must be tackled. But it is arguable whether AIDS prevention must be expensive, disproportionately eat into scarce public resources; as crucially, disregard social costs of “committed interventions”. But questioning this appears a taboo to those leveraging power in politics, the media or NGOs. Examining Mr Naidu’s debacle in Andhra should prove useful for a meaningful public debate on Aids-prevention alternatives that actually work. Considerable media analysis is there on Mr Naidu’s ignominious defeat. But none factoring in his Aids-fighting style. A serious political omission. For, like family planning in the seventies, the nineties style Aids prevention is a subterranean political issue capable of surfacing at heavy political costs. An un-shirking look is required at the World Bank-IMF -G7 diktats on HIV/Aids, followed assiduously by the previous government(s). Like market economics, does globalisation style Aids prevention too requires reframing? Post-elections, media channels — and the country — awoke with disbelief to the major disconnect between the TDP and the Andhra electorate and the extent and impact of the drought. The suicides by over 3000 farmers in the last five years — are now noted as a telling indicator of the level of desperation in the Andhra countryside. But still unconnected by the election-dissecting media — and certainly never noticed by the clever advertising gurus flying in-and-out-of-Cyberabad who should have alerted the CEO they photo-oped besides the eight-feet-high-condom-icons on the front of the state legislature as an appropriate backdrop to Bill Gates’ welcome — are extremely unsavoury facts about the tenor of life in Mr Naidu’s Andhra. Chiefly, that something has got to be very rotten in the state of Andhra if buying commercial sex has become such a routine way of life that one in five older boys/men- the highest level anywhere in the country — is enumerated by the sexual behaviour surveillance surveys as frequenting prostitutes. This is surely a virulent symptom of deep mal-development that required more than political condom promotion. Equally, a large number of women from Andhra are reduced to such desperation and penury by the drought, the closure of small industries and the complete absence of alternative employment opportunities, that for years now they have augmented incomes by prostituting at roadside brothels — not just in Andhra, but in neighbouring Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Maharashtra, accounting for significant percentages of women in Mumbai’s Kamathipura cages, Delhi’s GB Road or Kolkata’s Sonagachi. These facts are openly documented in the glossy Aids-research publications. Mr Naidu’s condom-capers were not confined to photo-ops. Restaurants, in his once and still largely conservative capital city, impudently called Condoms and Chocolates with flavoured condoms on the bill-plate in place of the traditional saunf and misri may have delighted Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt or Thailand’s Mechai, who has lent his name to the prophylactic rubber in that country with just such gimmicks, but it certainly left the common populace aghast. And women with the message that the state had only one type of “protection” to offer them. Nor did it prevent Aids infections from rising. It happened to the contrary. Such outrageous happenings and their reporting desensitised vast ranks of men — and some women — fuelling growth of deadly macho-sexuality in which guilt-free promiscuity culture grew with dire consequences to the health of the people and the state. The increase in Naxalite/PWG activity and the personal hatred of Mr Naidu expressed in the reprehensible attacks on his life are not unconnected to such lifestyle endorsements. But any voices of sane warnings were ignored in the
HIV/AIDS debate. The hoopla increased and the HIV/AIDS virus multiplied — aided and abetted by the rising levels of promiscuous behaviour in societies from which traditional social controls eroded with mindless support from the powerful elites for inanities that trivialise adultery and make licentiousness ordinary and possible. Andhra’s HIV/Aids infection rates zoomed during the last few years, making it the state with the highest rates in the country. The over 1 per cent released by NACO masks a frightening 2.5 -3 per cent figure from which level a wildfire explosion is possible. Why and how did Mr Naidu not think about the socio-economic ramifications of this problem, depending solely on the crude, mechanistic strategies the smart alecs of the advertising world offered?
The corruption and degeneration signified by the Andhra figures and its condom-centric prevention antics is self-evident. Now there are reports of a British parliamentary commission probe on the extensive charges of corruption in the entire UK/DFID-sponsored Targeted Interventions (TI) operations in this state. (Andhra is one of the five states in the UK-DFID’s bilateral grants package with which the World Bank pushed HIV/AIDs prevention efforts focused exclusively on narrow behaviour change communication aiming only for greater condom use and STD drug regimens called Targeted Interventions to high risk groups — women in prostitution, clients, truckers, homosexuals and drug addicts — as the critical strategy of choice for its loan to the NACO (Phase 11) programme.) The DFID TI-final evaluation points to a very flawed implementation and results. It also raises serious questions about fund utilisation and procedures, most particularly in one state, urging investigation and correctives before further expansion. But this flawed TI strategy — predicated on an enunciated basic premise that law and order agencies would not interfere in the unlawful commercial exploitation of women and other vulnerable segments, allowing workers to focus on supplying condoms and drugs to treat the sexually transmitted infections arising from such casual/ commercial sexual exploitation — found a totally unexpected political ally in BJP leader Sushma Swaraj, very conscious of Indian
sensibilities.
(To be concluded) The writer, a noted journalist, has been specialising on AIDS and population issues. |
‘Stoning’ in public interest There is a 500-feet long tunnel at Lower Bazaar in Shimla which used to be 10 feet wide. It runs North and South and was constructed during the Raj for diverting the mule and coolie traffic from the sacrosanct Mall. It was completed in October 1905 and had started functioning in February 1906. The “Raj runners” believed that the mules and Indian coolies required no lighting so it was kept dark and dingy. After Independence it became a thoroughfare for beauties and cuties; louts and touts. Under the cover of darkness, bottom pinching and softly slipping smut interjections within earshot of the hearer became the note of this segmental arched structure. The “old bald cheater, Time”, on the other hand, started playing the cheat with its masonry. It badly required rejuvenation pill to have a presentable face. The Municipal Corporation awoke from its slumber to take corrective measures in 2000. The work on it started. It was in public interest that the pass remained closed for about a year. We assume that reduction of the width of the tunnel by two feet was also in public interest. We also assume that badly wired electric fittings were in public interest. We, the responsible citizens of the country, also accept that making vendors selling all sort of things within already squeezed tunnel is also in public interest. But was it also in public interest that two Ministers “re-dedicate the tunnel to the people of Shimla” — one the North End and the other the South End and affix thereon marble stones with their names? If yes, then let me throw an idea for consideration of the bigwigs to inaugurate a cricket ground and have six stones with six different ministers’ names engraved in the boundary line of the long on, long off, mid wicket, cover point, third man and the long leg positions. I am sure that they would love to have their names in stones at slips and silly positions too but then the ground would look more like a cemetery than a Chepauk or Eden Gardens. And that may probably be not in public interest according to the Rule Books. Worry not. These books can always be “Telgied” to suit the requirement of the
day.
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The politics of language in Pakistan
A
recent literary column in The Dawn, the leading paper of Pakistan, by Mushir Anwar has caused ripples in the Punjabi literary and intellectual circles in Punjab for it once again defends the imposition of Urdu as the official language of Punjab. In response to the very provocative statement made by Anwar — "Punjabi is an undeveloped form of Urdu" — Maqsood Saqib, editor of Pancham, a Punjabi monthly published in Pakistan, argued in a letter to the editor responding to the column. The letter titled 'Punjabi is Punjab's mother tongue', Saqib says, tongue in cheek, that if Urdu is being described as the language of the people of Punjab, then by that logic it may soon also be called the language of Japan! Saying that Urdu should be seen as the federal language of Pakistan, linking the Baluchis, Sindhis, Pathans and Punjabis, Saqib goes on to say that it should not be thrust upon the Punjabis. He further adds: "The demand for the Punjabi language as a medium of instruction in Punjab is as old as the birth of Pakistan and it is not a new thing for all of us. We should all endorse this demand, as the dropout rate of school-going children in Punjab is very high. One of the factors of this deplorable situation is that children are denied their basic human right to read and write in their mother language." However, the newspaper did not carry this letter as the politics of language in Pakistan is biased in favour of the Urdu language. Circulating this letter online, Saqib says: "I wrote this letter in response to that column but the paper has not carried it. The reasons for this are all too obvious." When Saqib says that the struggle for getting Punjabi its due status in Punjab is as old as the birth of Pakistan, it is not an exaggeration. And the situation today is not happy for a language that is the mother tongue of the majority of the people in Pakistan. As the census figures go Punjabi (including Saraiki, Hindko and other varying dialects) is the “commonly spoken in household” language of 60.43 per cent Pakistanis, followed by Pushto for 13.4 per cent, Sindhi for 11.7 per cent, Urdu for 7.60 per cent and Baluchi for 3.02 per cent. In spite of this Punjabi has no official status either in Pakistan or in West Punjab. The medium of instruction in the schools in West Punjab is Urdu, and to a lesser extent English. A study conducted in 2001 shows that there is not a single Punjabi medium school in the country. On the other hand there are 36, 750 Sindhi medium schools in Sindh and 10,731 Pushto schools in the North-West Frontier Province. While the people of East Punjab in India too have had to struggle for getting Punjabi its due official status, the situation has never been so bad. This so especially because of the Sikh Punjabis whose sacred text, Guru Granth Sahib, is in Punjabi in the Gurmukhi script. If we are to study this phenomenon in the context here to East Punjab, Punjabi was often seen as the poor rustic cousin of Urdu and Hindi. Punjabi parents often speak to their children in Hindi and that is often the peer-group language. To some extent the Sikh identity has been able to reverse trends. In Punjab we find people choosing to speak in English and Punjabi and rejecting Hindi. However, the Punjabis living in metropolis, by and large still suffer from low self-esteem as far as their lingual identity goes. However, it is heartening to meet a group of committed writers, artists, teachers and other intellectuals who have been working ceaselessly as language activists. In the forefront is the name of a senior poet-playwright of Punjabi called Syed Najm Hosain, who was the founder head of the Department of Punjabi in Punjab University at Lahore. Every Friday there is a Sangat held in his home on The Mall in Lahore and the practice has been going on for three decades. Writers, painters and others get together to read and sing Sufi poetry as well as the verses of the Sikh Gurus. Many of them have learnt the Gurmukhi script to bridge the Shahmukhi-Gurmukhi gap between West Punjab and East Punjab. For Shahmukhi is the name for the Persian script used to write Punjabi in Pakistan. Zubair Ahmad, a Punjabi writer who also takes care of the Kitab Trinjan Trust that publishes books in Punjabi, says: " Punjabi language has never been encouraged by the media and the establishment but the writers have done their bit and are still doing it. We have had fine poets like Munir Niazi and Ustad Daman. Ustad Daman was a true product of the oral, a poet of baaghs (gardens). Put behind bars by all rulers for reciting his poetry in public places, his only book was published posthumously by his friends and pupils." Punjabi fiction has some prominent names like Mansha Yaad, Fakhar Zaman of the World Punjabi Conferences fame, Anwar Ali and Ahmed Salim. And now Saqib has taken the lead and started printing books in Gurmukhi too. The struggle for getting the mother tongue its due has been a long one and still very little has been achieved for there are forces that will even shy away from publishing a letter to the editor in favour of Punjabi. So when Eric Cyprrian, a Pakistani communist leader and an early language activist in Pakistan called Punjabis in Pakistan, 'A people without a language' he was making a scathing comment on the establishment. Otherwise, Punjabi continues to be in vigorous use in homes, bazaars, teahouses, mazaars of the Sufi poets and saints as well as the streets. When will the Pakistani officialdom wake up to this reality? |
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People
Remember Bobby Jindal, the Indian-American, who lost a high-profile gubernatorial race in Louisiana last November? Well, he is leading in the US congressional race again even as his family battles a private crisis. A poll conducted May end by Florida pollster Verne Kennedy shows Republican Jindal — contesting from Louisiana’s 1st District — commanding a lead of 68 per cent, confirming earlier polls that predicted similar results in the overwhelmingly conservative district, according to the campaign office. The Verne Kennedy poll showed his opponents Steve Scalise receiving just 6 per cent and Tom Schedler just 5 per cent. The congressional race is hotting up for him even as Jindal’s newborn son Shaan Robert was admitted to hospital for an accelerated heart rate and loss of appetite.
Ekta-brand films Ekta Kapoor, the queenbee of TV pulp, is all set to make a feature film starring brother Tusshar Kapoor, which she clarifies is not a “sex film” but a “sex comedy”. She launched “Kya Kool Hain Hum” last week on the day she celebrated her 28th birthday. The film, starring Ritesh Deshmukh alongside Tusshar, will be directed by Sangeeth Sivan, brother of cinematographer-filmmaker Santosh Sivan (who incidentally is busy making “Navras”, a film on the life of transvestites). Ekta is also busy supervising plans for her next television project — a fiction programme for MTV! It’s a first with the music channel never having shown a fiction programme before. “The MTV serial will be called ‘Kitni Mast Hai Zindagi’. It will basically be the story of three small town girls from Nagpur following their dreams in Mumbai,” says Ekta.
In Jackson’s
footsteps
If you wondered where Farah Khan, choreographer of some of the most popular contemporary Bollywood dance numbers, picked up such intricate steps, look westward. She says she never formally trained but picked up steps by watching Michael Jackson on the television. Khan, daughter of actor and filmmaker Kamran Khan, has to her credit Bollywood box office hits like “Kaho Naa Pyaar Hai”, “Dil Se...” and “Kuch Kuch Hota Hai”. Khan, who received a nomination for a Tony for Best Choreography jointly with Anthony Van Laast for “Bombay Dreams”, visited New York for the American Theatre Wing’s 58th Tony Awards ceremony at Radio City Music Hall on June 6. She is the only Indian to be ever nominated for a Tony.  |
When you give alms, let your left hand not know what your right hand does. Your alms be in secret and your Father who sees it in secret shall reward you openly. — Jesus Christ Reading the Vedas, making offering to priests or sacrifices to gods, self-mortification by heat or cold, and many such penances performed for the sake of immortality do not cleanse the man who is not free from delusions. — The Buddha We call him a Brahmin who remains unaffected by objects of sensual pleasures even while surrounded by them like a lotus which remains unaffected by water though living in it. — Lord Mahavir God’s servants are they who serve Him with the offerings of good deeds. — Guru Nanak Where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise. — Gray |
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