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Best, nay worst, witness Arafat’s war Oil price goes up |
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Fallacy of nuclear deterrence
Cop at large!
What Bush victory means for India Need to have 9/11 type reports
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Best, nay worst, witness THE Best Bakery massacre in which 14 people were roasted alive was one of the most horrendous incidents in Gujarat ’02. And when all the accused were exonerated by the court at Vadodara, it shook the foundations of the justice system in the country. Even more shocking was eye-witness Zaheera Sheikh’s statement that she was forced to lie in the court so that the accused could escape scot-free. The apex court took cognisance of her statement and ordered retrial of the case in Maharashtra. Now the same witness has not only recanted but accused human rights activist Teesta Setalvad of pressurising her. The circumstances in which she met the Press — at a five-star hotel — and the role played by the police suggest that the whole purpose was to discredit the NGO that has been moving heaven and earth to bring justice to the riot victims. Unfortunately, Zaheera Sheikh has become a pawn in the hands of those who want to ensure that justice is derailed and the guilty are not punished. She will be guilty of perjury whenever she makes her statement before the court. Her about-turn will be a great setback for those who have been hoping against hope that the killers who struck at Best Bakery will be punished. Be that as it may, the case is not all that hopeless even if the main complainant retracts. There are other witnesses, who have shown courage to tell the truth in the court. Depositions by senior police officers before the Nanavati-Shah Commission inquiring into the riots show to what extent the politicians in power had gone to fan violence, instead of nipping it in the bud. The bureaucrats and police officers, who have the security of tenure and are considered the custodians of law and order, became willing tools in the hands of hate-filled politicians baying for blood. The state stood fully compromised when the innocents were butchered for no fault than that they belonged to a particular religion. Far from bringing the guilty to book to retrieve the common man’s faith in the justice system, it did everything to help those who took the law into their own hands to influence witnesses like Zaheera Sheikh. What a pity, their game is still not up! |
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Arafat’s war HISTORY seldom speaks the language of the vanquished. Yasser Arafat’s struggle for a patch of land that the Palestinian people could call their country will be projected as an act of sustained terror. The US and its cronies will make sure that cry for justice of an oppressed people is ignored by the international community, for “terrorists” do not deserve to be heard. The western media is already in the act of demonising him and discrediting his movement. Perhaps, there is some substance in the charge that he never allowed a second line of leadership to grow. However, it would be unfair to hold him solely responsible for the faultlines in the liberation movement. He had no option but to wage a singlehanded struggle, often bloody, for his people because he received little or no support from the Arab nations. He came close to achieving his goal of a Palestinian homeland in 1995. The peace process started at the initiative of Yitzhak Rabin in 1994 saw the creation of the Palestinian Authority. Unfortunately, an Israeli fanatic assassinated Rabin. Ariel Sharon who engineered the current phase of violence against the Palestinian people put the clock back. Western propaganda would have the world believe that Arafat escalated the crisis by refusing an arrangement under which he could have had a part of Jerusalem and 95 per cent of the West Bank. The Intifada he started, however, was an unmitigated disaster for the Palestinians. The suicide bombings destroyed much of the sympathy that the outside world once had for their cause. The Palestinian economy is in ruins. Thousands of Palestinians and Israelis are dead. The Israelis, far from being exhausted, have developed a “bunker mentality” and are disinclined to negotiate. Should Arafat have drawn inspiration from Nelson Mandela and used peaceful and democratic tools for achieving his goal? Perhaps. His legacy would have been that of a peacemaker, a nation-builder, and a statesman. Who will now take charge of Arafat’s war? There are several names that are doing the rounds. The real issue is will his replacement be an honest broker or just an Arafat clone? |
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Oil price goes up THURSDAY'S petro price hikes will hit everyone. Keeping the kerosene rate unchanged will not spare the poor the brunt of soon-to-rise prices of all transportable goods, including groceries. The continuous LPG price rise to wipe out subsidy must have come as a shock to the housewife. Schoolchildren will have to pay higher bus charges. Bus journeys will cost more. Truckers will raise their rates. To control inflation, banks will hike the interest rates. This, in turn, will slow down demand for housing and goods leading to lower employment generation and industrial production. As a result, the government’s tax revenue will fall. The economy is in for a definite slowdown, if not recession. It is not just the oil that has hardened, the whole cost of living has. Was there no alternative? If the government had not raised the prices, its oil companies would have lost Rs 20,000 crore during 2004-05.The almost 70 per cent rise in global crude prices this year has benefited the government in no small way. About 45 per cent of the Central revenue comes from the oil sector. The government imposes 10 per cent customs duty on crude
imports. The price rise has earned it a 60 per cent higher revenue. Besides, a Rs 6 per litre surcharge was imposed in 2002-03, apart from a Rs 1.5 per litre cess for funding the highways. The states too have their own taxes, including sales tax and octroi. Instead of cutting the taxes, controlling their wasteful expenditure and bearing the oil burden collectively themselves, the governments have passed it on to the citizens. Global oil politics is also exploitative. The oil cartel of OPEC supplies Americans and Europeans oil at cheaper rates than it does to fellow Asians. The US-inflicted conflicts have kept the region on the boil and hurt its growth. Demand for oil has risen fiercely in China and India, but the world oil giants have not deliberately invested sufficiently on capacity expansions so as to keep their prices and profits high. |
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Let us not envy others’ knowledge but strive to learn from them.
— The Upanishads
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Fallacy of nuclear deterrence RECENTLY Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee disclosed that India had “credible nuclear deterrence in place”. The Defence Ministry is now engaged in raising “specialised forces to tackle nuclear threat in all its dimensions”. The minister, however, did not give the details of this high-tech nuclear-deterrence as how credible it could be in a nuclear war theatre. Notwithstanding any scientific assessment of feasibility, the minister’s loud speak was at best a costly impracticable shibboleth. Admittedly, we are committed to the No-First Use doctrine, but that does not prevent some reckless enemy to strike first with nuclear bombs. It appears prudent, therefore, to go for credible nuclear deterrence, and be prepared for a retaliatory nuclear strike. New Delhi had for this reason planned to construct nuclear shelters, equipped with electronic networking, separated at different locations inside the country and for installing some hundred of nuclear warheads on long range surface-to-surface ballistic missile systems. These will be digitally linked to a central command of Nuclear Defence War Council (NDWC). In case of a nuclear attack, the NDWC, using the secret electronic codes, is expected to protect the country, by ordering instantly retaliatory nuclear strikes. Earlier, NDA Defence Minister George Fernandes had confirmed that such a nuclear command chain, including alternative “nerve centres”, were established for giving the country retaliatory nuclear capability. Credible N-deterrence means to survive a surprise nuclear attack, and retaliate with massive overwhelming nuclear warheads for a total obliteration of the enemy. Our Defence Research and Development Organisation is constructing 12 prototypes of nuclear shelters costing Rs. 70 lakh each. These are self-contained units with sleeping bunks for 30 top personnel, equipped with captive power and water supply systems. Toilets and decontamination module, including waste disposal and fire-fighting systems, are also installed within the underground shelters. These prototype radiation-proof shelters are meant to protect only a few of the specialised N-force personnel for a short-term survival in a near-miss situation. Because, in the case of a direct nuclear hit, it is going to be instant vaporisation of the entire nuclear war zone. Moreover, construction of nuclear shelters is only a small side of the long-drawn nuclear war games. Stockpiled radioactive material poses serious technical problems of safekeeping and management. No amount of money can return all the land and water to their original purity for civic usage that had been contaminated by long-lived radioactive waste generated either from “peaceful purposes” or from dismantling of nuclear warheads. Meanwhile, 10,000 nuclear warheads with 1000 tonnes of weapons grade stockpiled plutonium pose serious problems for the former Cold War warriors. Over the next 50 years, roughly $70 billion would be required for just safe-keeping management of valuable and yet useless life-threatening radioactive materials. There is also a very high societal cost to pay for acquiring the credible nuclear war capability. Possession of nuclear weapons requires an extremely complex and secret backup infrastructure, for which we need specially trained technical manpower confidentially kept in secret establishments. In the credible nuclear deterrence, in fact, we are repeating the folly of the Cold War pundits who in the 1950s regarded nuclear weapons as the currency of power. India’s defence pundits who designed the credible N-deterrence must be asked: for how long would the credible nuclear command survive a nuclear attack? How long would they survive inside the shelter and how would they ever come out alive or would they simply evaporate in the nuclear holocaust? We know now for certain that after a nuclear detonation the heat flare within 20-30 kilometres of the hypocentre rises to the intensity of thousands of Celsius within two-three seconds. The primary fires partially offset by a powerful air wave, issued from the hypocentre, in turn, will raise scattering sparks, blazing debris, splashes of burning and short-circuits in electric mains which would produce extensive “secondary fires” causing blast waves, demolishing constructed structures, exploding entire inflammable materials and fuel tanks and storages in towns and cities. Thus disrupting and destroying instantly the entire electromagnetic communication systems. The concerned scientists had estimated that an average baseline scenario in a nuclear conflict would produce about 200 million tonnes of aerosol, 30 per cent of which being the sunlight absorbing elemental carbon. Consequently, the sunlight would be totally obscured from the vast region as a result of the fires caused by nuclear detonation. The basic issue, then, is not the cost of the nuclear weapons or the nuclear shelter but the threat the nuclear war systems pose to our biological existence. The credible nuclear deterrence would deter whom? And what would they defend? And if the concerned scientists’ warnings about the nuclear night and nuclear winter are correct, nuclear weapons pose a potential threat to the entire civic society. For us Indians, therefore, the question is not of our national security but the survival of entire life-support eco-system on the Indian subcontinent. A nuclear conflict would lead to irreversible calamity for the whole SAARC region, a clear possibility of total obliteration of the great civilisation extended all the way from the Hindukush of the Karakoram Range of the Himalayas to Kanyakumari and Rameshwaram. It would be practically impossible for any life to escape the unprecedented eco-devastation. “Travelling the slippery slope towards a nuclear arms race will keep us perpetually on the edge of a nuclear abyss,” says retired Air Marshal Brijesh Jayal. From any scientific analysis, the credible nuclear deterrence is an obsolete paradigm. In the 1950s the nuclear-weapon states had built shelters to hide and fire the missiles with nuclear warheads. Americans had constructed tens of thousands of underground shelters and even homes were stocked with essential supplies of food and fuel. When 9/11 took place, President George Bush was taken inside such a shelter equipped with the digital communication system. But the high cost of the shelters notwithstanding, their efficacy in a nuclear theatre had never been tested. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1945) we have witnessed no nuclear war. The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (1968) had received widespread popular support and many countries, including Japan, Germany, New Zealand and South Africa, have constitutionally declared themselves nuclear-free. Evidently, there is strong popular appeal for creating a nuclear-free world order in the 21st century. There is still time for us to cease the mad nuclear arms
race.
— The writer is Director, Centre for Science Policy Research, Dehra Dun. |
Cop at large! THESE are liberal times. If you don’t talk about liberalisation you are oldfashioned. Post-dinner conversations invariably end with the oftrepeated conclusion — ‘To improve things we need to reduce the stranglehold of the Sarkaar and get rid of the damn Sarkari Naukar’. But believe me folks —Sarkari Naukri is still the most sought after thing for most of us. Before you condemn me as a relic please read on. I remember a powerful politician telling me about a tour of his constituency when he met a young, educated man. This chap wanted a job. The benevolent politician listened to him patiently and then used his influence to arrange a job with a private company that began paying the young man a handsome Rs 3000 a month. A few months later during a subsequent tour the same young fellow reappeared with another request. This time he wanted his politician benefactor to help him in getting a job as a part-time employee in a sarkari department. If he got this job it would fetch him 800 rupees a month. The politician asked him: “Isn’t your present job better paid”? The reply is a classic. The young man said, “Yes!! But they make me work”!!!! Now I am one of the lucky few who have a sarkari job. My job provides me with a fixed salary, a khaki uniform and aura in generous measures. Yes, I am a cop. And talking about sarkari - we are the most visible avtaar of Sarkaar. You would think that life for my kind is laid out on a golden platter. I wish it was like that. Let me cite you an example. Last month we caught a gang of chain snatchers. These two young boys snatched a gold chain from an unsuspecting lady and rode away. The lady raised an alarm. The police swung into action and after a very filmi chase we caught the two boys two hours later and 60 km from the scene of crime. Before the men in khaki could overpower them the one who had the chain in his pocket pulled it out and swallowed it! Now this was a situation we had not anticipated. But my valiant colleagues were undaunted. They made the two march back to the police station. We had been troubled by these two in the past on several occasions. They were a prized catch and for once the thieves had been caught and we were not bothered about the stolen property! Our joy was
short-lived. Within an hour his stomach began to swell. We rushed him to a medic who x-rayed the patient and told us that all we can do is to wait and we shall eventually get our reward — the case property and the vital piece of evidence!! We fed him two dozens of bananas and checked him every hour. We placed a sentry, not to guard but to humour the rogue. The chap was tough and he knew how to feign extreme discomfort! But he just wouldn’t oblige. The next day’s newspaper carried the story headlined “Chainsnatchers giraftaar. Police ko unke Shauch ka intezaar”. After 18 hours of agonising, humiliating wait we finally got what we waited for. Having read this piece would anyone like to trade his job with a
cop? |
What Bush victory means for India
THE positive side of George W. Bush’s re-election for India is obvious. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any negative aspects. To take the plus points first, New Delhi will not have to undertake the tedious task of explaining its policies to a new administration in Washington. It can simply continue to build on the understanding that is already there between the two capitals on a number of issues. These include the menace of terrorism and, more important for India, an appreciation of New Delhi’s position on Kashmir — that a redrawing of the map on religious lines will be tantamount to playing into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists. In addition, India will expect the US to persist with its dual policy towards Pakistan even if New Delhi doesn’t approve of it. This policy comprises the tactic of overlooking the Pakistan establishment’s reluctance to sever all links with jehadi outfits via the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) outfit and rogue elements in the army in return for an attitude of restraint in Kashmir and, of course, cooperation in the battle against the Al Qaeda. A Kerry administration might have wanted Islamabad to crack down harder on the militant organisations in Pakistan, thereby further inflaming the prevailing anti-American sentiments and fuelling bigotry and terrorism in Kashmir as a consequence. A major reason why India benefits from a Bush White House is that the latter is more pragmatic than the more ideological Democrats who would have continued to chide India for having tested an atomic device and for the alleged violations of human rights in Kashmir. In contrast, the Bush administration is likely to continue turning a blind eye to these supposed transgressions in western eyes presumably because it is aware of the possibility of India becoming a counterweight to China in Asia. It may be remembered that prior to 9/11, China was a major foreign policy concern for the US and that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice was scheduled to deliver a speech on China and the missile defence shield on the morning of 9/11. Apart from these advantages for India from a second Bush presidency in the field of diplomacy, New Delhi will be pleased that the controversy over the outsourcing of American jobs to India created by Kerry will be put to rest. In the WTO also, a pro-free trade Bush regime (at least in the formal sense) will be of help to India. But even if India expects to feel more at ease with the sense of continuity which the re-election of Bush provides, it cannot be oblivious of the negative sides. First and foremost, his return will exacerbate the already volatile anti-American sentiments in the Muslim world, including Pakistan and Bangladesh. The resultant impetus to terrorism can affect India, although the present prime targets of the fundamentalists are America (and Americans wherever they are) and Israel and Jews. Since there is little chance of an immediate improvement of the situation in Iraq or of a definitive forward movement on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, conditions in West Asia will verge on the explosive. Added to this will be the tension and uncertainty caused by Iran’s now virtually open move towards the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Because of India’s large Muslim population, it has to be extremely sensitive to any sharp deterioration of the situation in the region. India will also have to be mindful that its traditional cordial relations with Iran and the Arab world, as well as the more recent improvement of its ties with Israel, are not undermined by the unpredictable developments in West Asia. So far, India has managed to tread carefully through the minefields of the region. But the implications of an election in Iraq whose legitimacy might be in doubt, or of the aftermath of a post-Yasser Arafat era, are yet to be carefully assessed. In this context, the first Bush regime might not have made much of a fuss about India’s refusal to send troops to Iraq. But it might not look kindly on a similar noncommittal Indian approach to the question of an ‘elected’ government in Baghdad since the US would like to showcase it as a sign of the success of its plans to bring democracy to the region. Much will depend, therefore, on how ideologically driven the new team led by Bush will be. If it continues to be guided by the messianic neo-conservative concepts of pre-emptive strikes and unilateral action, there is bound to be much discomfiture in the decision-making chambers in New Delhi. While there is no question of a return to the virtual anti-American position of the non-alignment days, as the Indian communists would want, India cannot also go along whole-heartedly with policies which undermine the UN and denote a certain arrogant ruthlessness in dealing with international affairs. India will have to tread a fine line, therefore, to balance the pros and cons of the new administration, a task made all the more difficult by the realisation that it is dealing with a hyperpower without a challenger in the world and with a presidency which is likely to regard its electoral success as a popular endorsement of its policies.
— IANS |
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Need to have 9/11 type reports THE National Book Award finalists have just been announced here in the United States, and quite naturally, this is a unique literary event that the publishers and the readers alike await eagerly every year. These awards, cutting across a wide genre of writing in fiction, non-fiction, poetry and young people’s literature often contain a welcome surprise or two for readers who look for the unexpected and the critical, yet true accounts of events that have rocked the country. One such finalist this year is the current best-selling authorised edition of, “The 9/11 Commission Report”, a definitive final report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States. In India our government appoints such commissions by the dozen, but rarely publishes their findings (as these could be critical of their stewardship), I picked up a paperback copy of the commission report for 10 dollars to see what was so earth shattering about a mere report that has found its way right to the top. After reviewing more than 2.5 million pages of documents and interviewing over 1,200 individuals in 10 countries, the commission has brought out a book whose aim is not to find fault with any individual, but to identify lessons for future in case such a horrendous event is repeated. What happens in India is not so. First the events. In recent years, the Babri mosque demolition, Operation Bluestar, the 1984 killings of Sikhs, the death of Rajiv Gandhi and Beant Singh in bomb blasts, the 1962 Indian debacle, the attack on
Parliament, the Mumbai bombings, and the part played by the British, the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League and the Nehru-Jinnah — Sardar Patel combine in the partitioning of the country in 1947 stand out. We could go on with the Indo-Pak 1965 and the 1971 wars where both sides say that they won, the Kargil fiasco and an unnecessary occupation of the Siachen glacier, just to name some events that very much need to be dissected thoroughly. After 57 years of independence where is the true and definitive account of why Partition took place, and who including Mahatma Gandhi, were directly or indirectly responsible for the largest migration in history? Has any government set aside the money, the facilities and a body of intelligent, capable and independent-thinking nationalists, to find out what really happened in the higher echelons of the political and military leadership at the time. Should not the Henderson Brooke’s Enquiry Report ordered after the 1962 war be released to the public, at least now? Possibly, if there had been such a report in the mid-1960s, the higher command and security failings of the 1971 and the Kargil wars could have been avoided. In our case even if an inquiry is ordered, a new government hurries to scuttle it, lest skeletons should start peering out of the cupboard. The Sahitya Akademi of India can set the ball rolling by instituting special awards in the non-fiction category of writing, giving this genre an equal place, with simultaneous translations from English into regional languages. This is one way that troubling issues can find their way to the general public in book
form. Newspapers and magazines are read and then thrown away, but not books. The print and electronic media also have an equally important role to play in discovering and then safeguarding truth. Can we all rise to the
occasion, with the government putting its best foot forward by giving this aspect as much importance as they do to their diplomacy and economic affairs? Here is awaiting one of our own kind of 9/11 commission-type reports on one of the subjects enumerated earlier, long hidden from public view. |
There are three features of the Absolute — the impersonal Brahman effulgence, the localised Paramatman (Supersoul) manifestation and the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Krishna is the origin of all these forms, and he has an infinite number of personal forms, such as Vishnu, which are eternally existent in the spiritual sky. These forms are also found on this planet and within this universe. — Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu It is possible for the human soul to attain the condition of absolute union with God; and it is then only that a person can feel and say, “He is the same as myself”. — Sri Ramakrishna Pray let the calf of my mind suck the milk of equanimity of the milch-cow of patience, forgiveness and forbearance. Please bless me with the clothes of Your praise and humility so that I could ever dwell upon the praise of Your merits. — Guru Nanak God is not external to anyone, but is present with all things, though they are ignorant that He is so. — Plotinus Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man. — Swami
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