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Targeting Mufti Their attempt is to sabotage dialogue THE hurling of grenades near the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Anantnag town on Tuesday is not the first attempt by terrorists to kill Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. He has survived a few previous attempts too, far more serious than the latest one.
Dealing with terrorists
A SITE to behold
Document Delhi Durbar
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UN needs a make-over India joining hands with Japan, Germany and Brazil to make a joint bid for permanent seats in the expanded UN Security Council is a step forward. This will strengthen their respective claims. These four are the natural choice for the Security Council seats for a number of reasons. There is no reason they should be denied their due, and yet they are having to lobby hard. That is partly so because of the entrenched interests in the world body which do not want any new claimant to come in. Those who are more equal than others do not feel comfortable with any change for the better. Yet, change the body must if it has to be relevant in the 21st century. At the same time, there is also the question of opposition to the candidature of these countries. If India’s boat is being rocked by Pakistan, China may be having reservations over the candidature of Japan. Similarly, Germany is facing opposition from Italy, a solid ally of the US in Iraq, for its stance against last year’s invasion. Mexico and Argentina are lukewarm to Brazil’s candidacy. All this smacks of petty regional rivalries, which deserves to be ignored. Now that the four strongest claimants have come together as G-4 nations, they have also made several other forceful contributions. The most important of them is the outright rejection of the move to set up a new category of semi-permanent or rotational permanent members of the Security Council. This proposal reportedly being considered by a high-level committee set up by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan goes counter to the goal of giving equal status to Big Five — the US, Russia, France, Britain and China. As the G-4 members have underlined, the United Nations needs course correction, now that it is reaching the ripe age of 60. It must be “representative, legitimate and effective”. Keeping countries like India, which is home to one-sixth of the population of the world, out of the Security Council is an anachronism. Similarly, the archaic rule of veto power is in urgent need of reframing. The UN can regain its lost glory only if it moves with the times. |
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PM’s roadshow HOW many captains of the US industry buy the India story marketed at the New York Stock Exchange on Wednesday only time will tell, but Dr Manmohan Singh did make an earnest effort. With the Central and state governments having combined budget deficits of 10 per cent of the GDP, private investment alone can finance new projects and push growth. The Prime Minister has offered a smooth road for foreign investment and technology in financial services, manufacturing, engineering, IT and BPO. But the road, as the Prime Minister knows it better than anyone, is full of hurdles. The foreign investor is sceptic of the Left influence on policy, an investment-friendly West Bengal notwithstanding. The Left’s public fault-finding sends a wrong signal. The Left will not let the government touch labour laws that many foreign investors want to be amended. Then India’s red tape scares away many an investor. Dr Manmohan Singh has tried to allay fears of bureaucratic bottlenecks, saying “bureaucracy is like a horse which can be taken to any direction. It depends on the jockey”. In practice, it is often the politician who is the horse and the bureaucrat the jockey. Poor infrastructure is a major deterrent to foreign investment. Power, ports, roads, airports all need funds for uplift. Mishandling of the Dabhole project has made US companies think twice before entering the power sector. Lack of reforms at the state level and bankrupt power boards are unlikely to improve the situation in the near future. The Congress’ own government in Andhra Pradesh is giving free power to farmers. Although there is political consensus on infrastructure building and the Prime Minister himself heads a committee to ensure faster clearance of infrastructure projects, the experience so far has hardly been positive. With the US interest rates rising and India’s growth rate slowing down, it will be quite a herculean task to attract $150 billion that Dr Manmohan Singh says the country urgently needs in the next few years. |
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Targeting Mufti THE hurling of grenades near the Deputy Commissioner’s office in Anantnag town on Tuesday is not the first attempt by terrorists to kill Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. He has survived a few previous attempts too, far more serious than the latest one. The man who came to power with his “healing touch” policy has, perhaps, become the terrorists’ target because he has been asking them to lay down their arms and get their grievances redressed through democratic and peaceful means. He told the separatist organisations on Independence Day “to grab this golden opportunity of dialogue offer (from the Centre) and help people in getting out of this morass….The gun is no solution.” But those who swear by violence have no interest in this sane advice. Terrorists have tried to kill Deputy Chief Minister Mangat Ram Sharma also. It seems they have been in search of a high-profile target to spoil the atmosphere of understanding that is sought to be created with the India-Pakistan dialogue process having been set in motion. Their support base in the valley has shrunk considerably, but the infiltration from across the border has increased during the past few weeks. Yet there is some decline in terrorist violence lately. Two reasons come to one’s mind immediately. There appears to be no let-up in the pressure on such elements from the security forces. The other reason can be the lack of support from the local people, who are fed up with killings and want peace. But the present situation may also be the proverbial lull before the storm. Militant groups might be trying to regroup themselves for a major strike. There are also reports that in June and July infiltration from across the border went up. Terrorists and their mentors must have realised by now that they cannot succeed in their designs. The world has no sympathy for them. The situation is slightly different in Pakistan, which is still allowing Kashmir-centric terrorists (jihadis) to keep their training camps intact. Once Pakistan adopts a no-nonsense attitude in accordance with what Gen Pervez Musharraf has been promising, terrorists will have no option but to give up killing others. |
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Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. — Henry Fielding |
Dealing with terrorists OF all the ghastly acts committed by terrorists like instantaneous killing of people, the one which affords an opportunity for negotiations should still be treated as a lesser evil as it involves damage-control efforts with a view to preventing the loss of life and property. Not only can further deterioration in the situation be arrested but also important information regarding the perpetrators of the most heinous crime against humanity be obtained and a pro-active approach to deal with any such eventuality in the future be adopted. Whether or not to negotiate with terrorists or hostage-takers can be a matter of policy to be decided by the government concerned. While some countries have a policy of “no negotiations at all”, there are others which go for it. While the policy with regard to the first category relegates to the background any damage-control exercise, even if the state can afford it keeping in view the people’s sensibilities, the approach gives a clear signal of an erect posture of a state to the perpetrators of the crime of hostage-taking. there is also the message that they would meet with a no-nonsense attitude qua their misadventure. Be that as it may, a scenario involving negotiations is all too welcome not only in the interest of the victims but also society and the state at large. While a country with a policy of “no negotiations at all” may take credit in the fact it interdicts the terror-spreading individuals, agencies and organisations, the truth that cannot be overlooked is that progressive societies do take care of their subjects and also adopt a positive attitude for being able to correct their own acts of omission and commission which generally give rise to discontentment among certain sections of society. Also it ensures that the information that would be available through negotiations would surely be useful in averting the situations that may crop up in future on the same issues which agitated certain people within the country concerned. It may still be possible that certain countries having a policy of “no- negotiations”, can treat hostage-taking differently. There can be criminals and not terrorists who take people hostage to demand ransom money. There may be people of a psychopathic disposition who because of their mental derangement take others as hostages without having any idea of the consequences. There may still be another category of hostage-takers --- for example, prisoners in revolt. It would be sheer absurdity on the part of the state to have a “no-negotiation” attitude towards such offenders since the impact of their crime falls in a different category, or it cannot in a big way threaten the sovereignty of the state or lead to overthrowing of the popular government. Such incidents, in their own peculiar way, deserve to be treated according to the prevalent local law. Any breakdown in the negotiations that follow should largely be because of the factors associated with the perpetrators of the crime and not with the threatened agency or the state. As it happened in Beslan, Russia, the commando action had to be launched following reports that the hostage-takers had started killings inside the targeted school. In such a situation, there is hardly any scope for the authorities to continue negotiations since the lives and property at stake face a direct threat of elimination. The best techniques to negotiate would involve purchasing time, not accepting deadlines, not meeting demands which cannot be fulfilled since these would affect the sensibilities of the people on this side of the fence. A mention of the art of negotiations, which involves a very alert mind and knowledge of the techniques that are time-tested, will not be out of place here. On the negotiations side, it needs to be borne in mind that every human being, even if he is a terrorist, has a desire to live until he is threatened to be eliminated instantaneously. The desire to live needs to be appreciated. And the best job a negotiator can do is to remind the hostage-taker of the value of his life — all his motivation to commit the crime notwithstanding. Thus, cashing in on the very biological need for survival, a negotiator can deliver the goods. The negotiator can assess the threat potential of the terrorist, hijacker or hostage-taker by studying his modulation in voice and the weapon with which he threatens. His position (whether near the door or elsewhere) along with that of his comrades can be known in the closed place of hostage-taking, which helps in storming or launching an attack, if that remains the last resort. The details about the group of terrorists can be known. The organisation they belong to, if it is made clear, their ideologies and warring tactics can also be found out and attacks planned accordingly. For example, some groups specialise in using bombs and other explosives, others in bullet spreading and still others in the use of gases, etc. The negotiator has to present himself as worthy of trust by the subject he is handling. He needs to ensure that the perpetrator of the crime is neither put to shock nor surprised through the movement of troops when he is about to release hostages or is likely to surrender. His demands for essentials like food, water, medicine, doctors, etc, can be met, and in the process of entering into the deal some bugging device can be taken inside surreptitiously. This can work wonders. Or if it is found out that the criminal is alone and his position is also known, the tactical teams can find ingress and contain him. A bargain can ensue if as a result of the negotiations the terrorist agrees to release some of the captives. The writer, an IPS officer, has received his training in the US in hostage negotiations |
A SITE to behold A LARGE group of tall, turban-clad villagers had assembled at the Panchayat Bhavan when we reached there early that evening. The long journey from New Delhi to Jaipur and then to the Rajasthani village had taken a heavy toll on our energy. At the village, an hour’s drive from Jaipur, excitement was writ large on the faces of the villagers, who chatted endlessly. In between their little conversations, they stared at the empty television screen. I could not help remembering my own visit to a science exhibition a few years earlier at a college, where the main attraction was an unplugged television receiver. I had to wait a few more years to see a functioning TV receiver when I landed in Delhi. Television had just made its advent in the Capital. Those days the only difference between radio news and television news was that you didn’t see the newsreader in the former while you saw nothing but the newsreader in the latter. News clips and the so-called “bytes” were a rarity those days. Though weary-eyed, my own curiosity level was as high as that of the villagers. We waited endlessly for the screen to come alive. A technician was busy adjusting a huge conical antenna erected on the panchayat building. The night had already fallen. Suddenly, there was a flickering on the screen and the emblem of Doordarshan became clearly visible. It cheered the crowd, which had already swollen to include almost everyone in the village. The screen came alive with a Rajasthani dance, so familiar to the assembled that many of them could be heard humming along. For the villagers it was difficult to comprehend that an American satellite in orbit, which belonged to the National Aeronautical and Space Agency (NASA) had been loaned to the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for a year. Every day, when it passed over India for a few hours in the evening, it would receive signals from a television production centre in India and beam the signals back around a large area in north India. Under the programme, the government had set up 2,400 satellite TV receivers in selected villages in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. We — a group of newsmen from Delhi — were in the village to watch the inauguration. The Rajasthani dance was followed by a group discussion in which the farmers shared their knowledge on how to save crop from rodents. The Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE), as it was known, opened the eyes of people like me to the immense possibilities of satellite. As we left the village late that evening, we all wondered when we would have our own satellite, which would not stop beaming after a year and thereby deprive the villagers of their entertainment and education. Little did we know that the country would have to wait for nearly 30 years before its first-ever Edusat could lift off spectacularly earlier this week. Satellites no longer excite us as Indian scientists are now toying with the idea of a manned mission to the moon. Whether we realise it or not, they have become a part of our daily life. Everyday, I adjust the portable antenna of my satellite radio receiver to hear in crystal-clear stereophonic sound Malayalam songs beamed from Dubai. But the excitement of listening to the classical Malayalam numbers in Chandigarh does not match the thrill of viewing the first satellite-based telecast in that Rajasthan village in the
mid-seventies.
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Document
The following is excerpted from a briefing paper on pesticide contamination and food safety prepared by the Centre for Science and Environment:
DIRTY water is the second largest cause of death in India. The public health implications of unclean water are enormous. On the one hand, water scarcity is growing; on the other, water is getting increasingly polluted, which hikes up its cost of treatment or leads to more deaths and illnesses. Clean water is a top priority for the country in terms of public health imperatives. We must realise that Indians do not have a ‘legal’ right to clean water in the country. This is because the standards that define what is ‘portable’ or ‘wholesome’ or ‘safe’ water-all of these are terms scattered confusingly in different sets of water quality-related norms-are only guidelines, which are not legally enunciated. The Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) Act was enacted in 1954. The Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is its implementing agency. When the Act was notified, water was not covered under it as ‘food’. It defined food under section 2(v) as “any article used as food or drink for human consumption other than drugs and water”. Various municipal laws include the need to supply water to their citizens. But these laws invariably leave large escape routes. The Rajasthan Water Supply and Sewerage Corporation Act, 1979 makes no explicit mention of the corporation’s duty to supply water to the consumer. Under section 42 of the Act, the department is absolved of not supplying water when there’s an accident such as electric power supply failure or leakage or burst of main pipes or obstruction or low pressure in the mains in summer, or a labour strike. The department retains the right to suspend water supply at any time and for as long as may be found necessary for repairs or for laying new lines. The Delhi Municipal Corporation Act, 1957 says that steps should be taken to provide, as far as possible, a supply of wholesome water. The Act also says that when it is not practicable to provide such supply at a reasonable cost, water must be made available at a reasonable distance from every house. We need regulation first to ensure that the source water is not contaminated further and secondly, to ensure that the enormous health burden of dirty water is avoided. The cost of cleaning up is important to consider, but it is equally important to consider how stringent, legally enforceable standards could enable agencies to look seriously at the cost-effectiveness of avoiding and minimizing pollution. After all, increased pollution and contamination will add to the cost burden of cleaning water. Currently most municipalities in India use, at the most, conventional water treatment which involves screening, pre-chlorination, clarifloculation, filtration and disinfection (using chlorine). This technology can remove conventional microbacteriological contaminants, but fails to deal with the ‘modern’ contaminants of the modern industrial world-heavy metals and pesticides. These require sophisticated and, therefore, more expensive technologies-granular activated carbon, membrane process and ozonation. There is no compiled information on the cost of water treatment in different municipalities of India. But assuming costs that are taken from different sources, the cost of capital investment in water treatment would be Rs 11-15 lakh per million litres per day, in case of conventional treatment plants based on clarifloculation, sedimentation and filtration. Assuming that each person requires 50-60 litres per day, the 1 million litres would serve 20,000 people each day. On dividing the capital cost per head, it would mean each person would pay Rs 55 to 75 for this capital investment. Most cities don’t charge for water and don’t invest in water services either. Take the economics of one of the most pampered cities in India, Delhi. The Delhi Jal Board makes an annual loss of Rs 249 crore on just its regular salary and maintenance bill. Forget what is has to invest for capital costs for drinking water treatment and sewage treatment. If the annual capital costs are taken into account, the city recovers just about 20 per cent of its total annual from consumers. But if one takes just the annual salary and distribution costs and wants to ensure full recovery, then the agency would need to charge each consumer Rs 4.7 per 1,000 litres for the water it supplies. This is assuming that the city supplies 2,900 million litres of water per day, which costs it Rs 500 crore in annual establishment costs. In Delhi, the charges are ridiculously low: Re 0.35 per 1,000 litres. Just compare this to what we pay for one litre of bottle water: Rs 10. In other cities, the cost varies from Rs 2.25 per 1,000 litres to Rs 6 per 1,000 litres (in Bangalore). We must realise that it is the rich who are taking advantage of the enormous subsidy today. The larger the consumption, the greater is the subsidy and the greater is the cost of pollution. But it can be argued that water should be free for all. Or free up to a certain amount for all. In this context, the South African model, which makes it incumbent on the state to provide 6,000 litre per month per household, is a possible model for India to adopt as well. Make water a right. Make the right to clean water a right. Legislation will only make it a right which will then require enforcement. But by mandating the quality of water that Indians have the right to, we can force agencies to take their business much more seriously. It will also give Indians the right to demand clean water-this again will provide for the necessary push for water quality improvement. |
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Delhi Durbar Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia appears to have Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s eyes and ears. Several recent government decisions have emanated from the Planning Commission, including the government’s steps to contain inflation. The Planning Commission wanted the government to go beyond reducing duties on commodities and bring down the money supply in the market. The Prime Minister also found substance in another suggestion that artificial barriers in the movement of essential commodities among the states should be removed. The Planning Commission surely seems to be one up on key nodal economic ministries, including Finance. The talk in the corridors of power is that Dr Ahluwalia is emerging as the Prime Minister’s strongman akin to Brajesh Mishra during Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s stewardship.
Pramod Mahajan and computers One thought the high-tech campaign chalked out by Pramod Mahajan during the general election would have been dropped after the BJP’s defeat. It is not so. Computers are now used for an assessment of each parliamentary constituency so that the BJP does not repeat the mistakes during the critical Maharashtra assembly elections scheduled for next month. With factionalism all too evident in the party, everyone wants to know who would be the Chief Minister if the BJP-Shiv Sena combine regains power in Maharashtra? A BJP leader with a mischievous glint in his eyes said he would prefer a Shiv Sena leader. One needs no guesses that the BJP leader was obviously hinting at Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray.
Shekhar’s anguish Chandra Shekhar is livid. In an editorial in the latest issue of “Young Indian”, the former Prime Minister notes that during the NDA rule, he felt on many occasions that he should seek Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s resignation. At the same time he had a lurking suspicion that the next government could be worse. Stressing that the change of government in New Delhi was a “welcome relief for me,” he regrets that the Congress-led UPA “is almost a political disaster for the country. In the current political turmoil people feel, and rightly so, that their basic problems remain unattended. The law and order situation is fast deteriorating. On the economic front, the situation seems to be of greater concern. The government can manage the increasing trend of inflation but how can it justify the presence of foreign advisers in the Planning Commission.”
Reliance funds think tank America’s oldest think tank, Brookings Institution, has coopted Reliance Industry on its council. Its head Strobe Talbott, is in India to sign a partnership agreement with the Observer Research Foundation. Chairman R K Mishra clarified that Reliance was only financing the ORF, but no strings were attached. Non-partisan in research, the ORF hopes to take policymaking out of the bureaucratic domain and ensure that the government of the day has alternatives available. Contributed by S. Satyanarayanan, Satish Misra and Gaurav
Choudury. |
Beware, O man, lest (in the midst of wordly comforts and merry-making) you forget the Beneficent God and remember not His gracious Name! — Guru Nanak Sacred books only point out the way to God. Once you have known the way, what is the use of books? Then comes the time for the culture of the soul in solitary communion with God. — Sri Ramakrishna Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you. — Saint Matthew |
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