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Entry into the club Mission Horticulture |
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Software secrets
Drifting backwards
In search of horizon
Document Chatterati
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Entry into the club President Vladimir Putin's visit to New Delhi has, no doubt, brought India and Russia closer. As many as nine agreements between the two countries have been signed, covering several vital areas, from allowing India to use Russia's global satellite navigation system to direct banking relations. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has pointed out, Indo-Russian cooperation particularly in the area of defence production has special significance as it has brought about tremendous improvement in their relations. Their strategic relationship has remained unaffected by the changed world scene and power equations. Mr Putin has made more friends in India by making it plain that India's rightful claim for a permanent seat with veto power at the UN Security Council, like the existing permanent members, would get Moscow's support. Moscow has generally supported India at the UN — at times by using its veto to back India on Kashmir. Mr Putin fully understands that any arrangement minus veto power will not satisfy India — a long-term friend. External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh made it clear on Thursday that without a veto a permanent seat in the Security Council would have no meaning. The high-level UN panel report on "Threats, Challenges and Change", having two models for enhancing the credibility and effectiveness of the Security Council (its extracts are published on the Oped page), clearly reflects the intentions of those who have been using this important world body for promoting their own interests. They do not want any other country to join the club they have come to dominate. That is why this idea of increasing the Security Council membership with no new entrant getting the veto right. The Russian President's view that nothing should be done to "erode" the "existing tools" of the UN to reduce it to a "discussion club" deserves appreciation. His emphasis on retaining the instrument of veto under all circumstances was pregnant with meaning. Having more members, including India, with veto power will only reflect the ground realities, which cannot be ignored. |
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Mission Horticulture Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar, who was in Chandigarh on Friday to open the CII’s Agro Tech fair, made two significant statements. One, a National Horticulture Mission will be in place in a month with a Rs 15,000 crore Central grant to break the two-crop pattern and boost diversification. Growing fruits apart from vegetables, pulses and oilseeds is a welcome diversion from the wheat-paddy rotation. This will help reduce the farmers’ dependence on underground water in Punjab and Haryana. Despite government encouragement, diversification has not taken off. A farmer is, and has to be, pragmatic. He sticks to wheat and paddy because no other crop has ready buyers and assured returns. The second point Mr Pawar made was other states should try to become self-sufficient in foodgrains so that the Centre saves on transportation costs of wheat and paddy from Punjab and Haryana. That also means a gradual withdrawal of the FCI from the markets in the two states, leaving procurement work entirely to state agencies. The Centre, therefore, will not raise the minimum support price (MSP) for wheat and paddy even if the costs of inputs like diesel and fertilisers keep rising. The farmers feeling comfortable with wheat and paddy may have hard times ahead. To ensure that farmers take to horticulture, floriculture, pulses and oilseeds, the Centre as well as the state governments need to make their cultivation attractive enough. This can be done by effective state intervention in marketing farm produce, encouraging food processing industries, providing reliable infrastructure and exploring domestic and foreign markets for maximum returns. Farmers do grow grapes, kinnows, apples, cotton and flowers, but they often face a glut situation and get low prices for lack of sufficient processing, marketing and transportation facilities or pests strike and ruin their crops. They need expert help and guidance. Agricultural universities as also fairs like the Agro Tech currently drawing considerable attention from farmers and general people in Chandigarh can create awareness about latest farming practices and inputs available. |
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Software secrets
A company making a device based on an open code software has taken the initiative to give out its source code, the often zealously-guarded heart of any software programme, to any developer who asks for it. Why should a company that has developed a software give out its secrets? This is done to enable the developers all over the world to make applications like in word processors, diaries, office productivity tools, specialised data entry forms, etc, that would make such devices and the original software more popular. The idea here is if more programmers have access to the source code, there will be more improvement in the code, resulting in a better software being developed around this device. This is not a utopian dream — even big commercial software developers like Sun and Microsoft have started moving towards sharing their code, albeit tentatively. Over the years, two distinct kinds of software development has taken place — the high profile, well-funded corporate effort which has been the backbone of computers the world over, and an independent endeavour of computer software enthusiasts, bound together by their love of creating and developing software and sharing it for free. It has produced a number of successful products, including the Linux operating system (OS), which is the operating system of choice for Simputer. The robustness and efficiency of this OS have won many converts, including government organisations. Individuals in India, too, now have a choice of buying a personal computer that operates either with Linux or the vastly popular but pricey Windows OS. Thousands of applications are available in the open source model. They are inexpensive and software developers work on improving them. Every computer user will agree that he or she needs an inexpensive and robust system. All initiatives towards this move are welcome. |
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I never forgive but I always forget. — Arthur James Balfour |
Drifting backwards
Reports of Anil Ambani dashing to Tirupati while his mother rushed to her guru in Gujarat and of the new Union Labour Minister’s inaugural puja are a reminder that only a dwindling minority is concerned about the “scientific temper” that inspired the republic’s founding fathers. The triumph of India’s far from secular “collective subconscious” (as
K.M. Munshi called it) means the creeping advance of religion on all facets of life. Spokesmen of Hindu organisations retort that other communities are even more active. Perhaps. But Hinduism matters more because it alone can blur the distinction between Peeri and Meeri, religion and state. Some hold that the separation should be wiped out because the outlook and practices of the state should reflect the culture of 80 per cent of the population. Their case that no nation can hope to fulfil its destiny if it does not exalt its core identity is strengthened by the always present security threat from Islamic Pakistan next door and the global menace of Muslim fundamentalism, highlighted by the barbaric depredations of terrorist organisations. According to this view, the minorities — Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and others, no more than temporarily lapsed Hindus anyway — would have to adjust as best they can to a Hindu Rashtra. They accuse the westernised heirs of British rule of conspiring to deny India its rightful identity. Perhaps again. Secularism was foisted on India in the sense that the civil service, law courts, railways and a standing army were also foisted on it. Just as these are the physical accoutrements of modern statehood, so is emancipation from dogma and superstition essential if the individual mind is to keep pace with sophisticated developments in information technology. That realisation inspired some of Kemal Ataturk’s most daring reforms, including the ban on the fez which he saw as the symbol of a retrograde hierarchy. However, in spite of jibes against “secularists” and “minorityism”, few propagandists actually come out into the open and define their ideal state whose ideology and ceremonial will be in strict accordance with their understanding of the shastras. They regale us instead with all manner of sophistry to claim that Hindutva does not mean an exclusively Hindu rajya because Hinduism is all-inclusive. That is like Pakistan’s Ayub Khan arguing that parliamentary institutions could be dispensed with because Islam was inherently democratic. Hindutva proponents prevaricate only because they are uncertain about the politics of India’s collective subconscious, especially after the last Lok Sabha election suggested that however strong the appeal, religion does not take precedence over tangible demands. Moreover, the Hindu card is not anyone party’s prerogative. The Congress has played it repeatedly, most notoriously in first allowing idols to be installed in the Babari Masjid and then turning a blind eye to its destruction. The Labour Minister, Mr K. Chandrasekhar Rao, leads the Telengana Rashtra Samithi. Even communist leaders are known to nurse puja rooms for private worship. As for priests, whether the Shahi Imam of the Jama Masjid or the imprisoned Swami Jayendra Saraswati, Shankaracharya of Kancheepuram, they are steeped in politics, often playing all sides of every fence. Like his mentor, the 68th Shankaracharya, Jayendra Saraswati has also always sailed close to the political wind, at one time provoking his colleague, the Shankaracharya of Puri, to denounce him as “anti-Hindu.” The Puri Shankaracharya, whose political leanings were said to be behind Indira Gandhi being refused admission to the Jagannath temple, threatened a march on Parliament and a countrywide agitation to protest against the government’s “callous” attitude to Hindus. Lump these operators with Dhirendra Brahmachari, Chandraswami or the half-naked Deoraha Baba (to whom Mr Balram Jakhar, Mr Buta Singh and other luminaries flocked to be publicly kicked) and any sane Indian might echo a variant of the cri de coeur of Becket’s Henry II, “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest?” Of course, what consenting adults do in private is nobody else’s business, providing it hurts nobody else. But that stand on rights and privacy must be abridged when the consenting adults are public figures. Society’s leaders, whether rich industrialists or the Union Labour Minister, set an example when they broadcast their beliefs and bring their personal faith into their working zone. If Mr Laloo Prasad Yadav can do puja in his office, why Hyderabad’s man in the street who has no office might ask can’t he set up his altar against the pillars of the Char Minar? The shrines that are popping up on our pavements in such dense profusion or the relatively new profession of itinerant and presumably freelance priest who goes round city shops morning and evening scattering benediction and collecting coins are part of the trend. It is so strong that when a British-based multinational bank moved house the other day, it was to the tinkle of bells and Brahminical chants, with images of Lakshmi and Ganesha discreetly installed in the smart new premises. The primitive hordes must have been exultant when Mr Naresh Chaturvedi, a Congress general secretary, declared during the abomination of a chunri festival, “If the Rajasthani people did not support sati, why would lakhs of people gather?” Impeccably up-to-date in their own private life, many Bharatiya Janata Party adherents will encourage such distortions and fish for votes in murky waters. They can do so because instead of cleansing society, the accepted concept of secularism stands for the co-existence of every conceivable kind of bigotry. Far from being someone who places his faith in science, today’s secular Indian is someone who tolerates the piercing notes of azan or the boisterousness of a langar while drowning everyone else’s cacophony in his own incantations. The fiercely competitive religiosity that results from this live-and-let-live policy is dragging India into the dark ages. That recalls the time (which I have recounted before) when Nirad Chaudhuri took me out to the balcony of his Old Delhi flat to point out a cluster of huts across the road. He asked me what I saw and pranced in tiumphant jubilation at my innocent explanation that it was a temporary camp for labourers. Wrong, he shrieked. It was the return of Hindu India. The analogy he drew was of a heavy piston that the British had pulled out and held with brute force. Lacking the muscle, with nothing to grip, we were letting the shaft slip in bit by bit. One day our hold would fail altogether and the piston ram resoundingly home to engulf all in universal darkness. That was nearly 40 years before he developed the apocalyptic theme in “Thy Hand, Great Anarch”. The heirs to the Vedanta, spearhead of the movement for national enlightenment, are not expected to lead the regression to the medievalism that cassandras like Winston Churchill predicted was independent India’s fate. But they will do just that if Hindutva apologists cling to the cheap and shortsighted argument that Hindus must match the militancy of minority faiths. That would only dissipate and destroy the privilege of numbers. Jawaharlal Nehru’s biographer tells us that like Sartre, to whom the Jewish question was a gentile one, to Nehru the Muslim question was a Hindu one. “The fate of India is largely tied up with the Hindu outlook,” Nehru wrote. “If the present Hindu outlook does not change radically, I am quite sure that India is doomed.” But no future is beyond redemption. The majority must lead. It should be the exemplar of rational thought and pragmatic action. Warts and all, Dr Manmohan Singh’s Congress is not Mr Naresh Chaturvedi’s. As the party of the majority as well as the party of Independence, it has a special role in this context. Instead of pandering to the collective subconscious, which means society’s lowest, least informed and worst educated the common denominator, it is expected to rise above the folk passions that spark off mass hysteria. If
the Congress will not save India from obscurantism, no one else can. |
In search of horizon
“WHAT is a horizon, mom, my little one questions as she reads her geography chapter. I give her a scientific explanation. It is a line where earth and sky appear to meet but in reality they do not meet. As her brow creased at the inexplicable statement I tried to expand on the concept. “How can they appear to meet and yet not meet?” asked the eight-year-old innocently. I elaborated a little poetically. It is the joining of two mediums, the earthy earth and the heavenly sky, the pinnacle in which earth reaches after much strife and the sky stoops. I could have told her that it is like the joining of a man and a woman but discretion forbade, so instead I waxed my eloquence by saying it is like the meeting of the human spirit with the sublime. She looked at me as if I was babbling. “Show me the horizon,” said she. I took her out but when I stretched my eyes tall buildings intervened between us and the horizon. Where the brick structure was absent there tall trees waved their branches. I took her upstairs but the horizon eluded us there too for we could see the sky but not the earth. Then we sat in the car and drove out. Everywhere the concrete intervened and blocked our vision. This horizon had truly become the enigmatic God. Then we decided to drive outside the city. The green turned a shade brighter and the breeze cooler. The mind became restful and the scenery blissful. The landscape swept in an arc and we got out and stared solemnly at the curved line where the two joined hands. “That is horizon,” I whispered to her and myself. To view that which is otherwise elusive one has to enter open spaces... and let the vision travel to that point where it only receives without being conscious of its ego, to understand that in this giant eyelid the tree a little farther off, the ass bound to it and me are of the same stature. The horizon, it dawned, maybe all the things written above but besides those was the great
leveller.
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Document Koffi Anan’s panel proposes two models THE United Nations Secretary General, Mr Koffi Anan, had formed a panel of 16 experts a year ago in the midst of the Iraq crisis and asked it to come up with solutions for dealing with the challenges to global security in the 21st
century. The panel has come up with 101 recommendations, including a proposal to enlarge the 15-member Security Council to 24 nations. However, the panel members disagreed on the model for an expanded Security Council and have put forward two models. Here are excerpts from the report: (a) They should, in honouring Article 23 of the Charter of the United Nations, increase the involvement in decision-making of those who contribute most to the United Nations financially, militarily and diplomatically - specifically in terms of contributions to United Nations assessed budgets, participation in mandated peace operations, contributions to voluntary activities of the United Nations in the areas of security and development, and diplomatic activities in support of United Nations objectives and mandates. Among developed countries, achieving or making substantial progress towards the internationally agreed level of 0.7 per cent of GNP for ODA should be considered an important criterion of contribution; (b) They should bring into the decision-making process countries more representative of the broader membership, especially of the developing world; (c) They should not impair the effectiveness of the Security Council; (d) They should increase the democratic and accountable nature of the body. The Panel believes that a decision on the enlargement of the Council, satisfying these criteria, is now a necessity. The presentation of two clearly defined alternatives, of the kind described below as models A and B, should help to clarify - and perhaps bring to resolution - a debate which has made little progress in the last 12 years. Models A and B both involve a distribution of seats as between four major regional areas, which we identify respectively as "Africa", "Asia and Pacific", "Europe" and "Americas". We see these descriptions as helpful in making and implementing
judgments about the composition of the Security Council, but make no recommendation about changing the composition of the current regional groups for general electoral and other United Nations purposes. Some members of the Panel, in particular our Latin American colleagues, expressed a preference for basing any distribution of seats on the current regional groups. Model A provides for six new permanent seats, with no veto being created, and three new two-year term non-permanent seats, divided among the major regional areas as follows: Model B provides for no new permanent seats but creates a new category of eight four-year renewable-term seats and one new two-year non-permanent (and non-renewable) seat, divided among the major regional areas as follows: In both models, having regard to Article 23 of the Charter of the United Nations, a method of encouraging Member States to contribute more to international peace and security would be for the General Assembly, taking into account established practices of regional consultation, to elect Security Council members by giving preference for permanent or longer-term seats to those States that are among the top three financial contrib-utors in their relevant regional area to the regular budget, or the top three voluntary contributors from their regional area, or the top three troop contributors from their regional area to United Nations peace-keeping missions. The Panel was strongly of the view that no change to the composition of the Security Council should itself be regarded as permanent or unchallengeable in the future. Therefore, there should be a review of the composition of the Security Council in 2020, including, in this context, a review of the contribution (as defined in para. 249 above) of permanent and non-permanent members from the point of view of the Council's effective-ness in taking collective action to prevent and remove new and old threats to international peace and security. Neither model involves any expansion of the veto or any Charter modification of the Security Council's existing powers. We recognise that the veto had an important function in reassuring the United Nations most powerful members that their interests would be safeguarded. We see no practical way of changing the existing members' veto powers. Yet, as a whole the institution of the veto has an anachronistic character that is unsuitable for the institution in an increasingly democratic age and we would urge that its use be limited to matters where vital interests are genuinely at stake. We also ask the permanent members, in their individual capacities, to pledge themselves to refrain from the use of the veto in cases of genocide and large-scale human rights abuses. We recommend that under any reform proposal, there should be no expansion of the veto. We propose the introduction of a system of "indicative voting", whereby members of the Security Council could call for a public indication of positions on a proposed action. Under this indicative vote, "no" votes would not have a veto effect, nor would the final tally of the vote have any legal force. The second formal vote on any resolution would take place under the current procedures of the Council. This would, we believe, increase the accountability of the veto function. |
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Celebrities and charity by Devi Cherian IT’S rare to see Cherie literally blossom in the Capital. I am talking about Cherie Blair and the British delegates who were more professional at handling charity affairs than our desis. Two bicycles and a Champagne bottle were auctioned among many other things. Posing with her best weapon, her smile, with the likes of Richard Branson of Virgin airlines, Kamal Nath, Shivraj Patil and Shiela Dixit was Mrs Blair. India, anyway, is the flavour the world over. So saris, bindis, chicken curry and rice were all there. While Cherie and Richard charmed Delhi, they also made sure that the charity they had come for, which pays to educate children of widowed mothers in around six states of India, made enough money. Dressed in a sequined outfit, she was obliging all with autographs and pictures. Hey, you sure have not heard of bicycles going for six lakh, champagnes bottles for two lakh and a Maruti car for two lakh forty thousand. Wow! Now this is charity, our celebrity style. Of course, a bit of our rich NRIs and a couple of desi lords and ladies thrown in from England. Wish our filthy rich page 3 wannabes would learn something about charity from this rather than just pose to be photographed with them. Well a sum of Rs 4.5 crore was raised here.
Of delayed flights Recently our Civil Aviation Minister, the high-profile and high-flying Praful Patel, could not make a flying visit to Delhi from Gondia in Maharashtra. Nature and poor infrastructure are a great leveller, no doubt. A chartered aircraft was on call and as an aviation conference had to be addressed. This flying visit could not happen despite the best efforts of the civil aviation setup. Finally, a senior official had to fill in for Mr Patel. And an explanation was made to the representatives from various countries and the ICAO, an apex organisation for global aviation development. This, if nothing else, will hopefully shame the civil aviation chaps to step up the gas on development of the entire civil aviation infrastructure now. Which will no doubt help the common man too!
Vulgar display of wealth Fourteen thousand weddings solemnised in a single day in the Capital could not match the weddings of some of our ruling members’ kids weddings, where the most vulgar display of wealth was the high point. Well, if those in the limelight spend fortunes on what is essentially a private celebration, there is obviously going to be a trickle-down effect in civil society spending. Crores spent on flowers and tambu wallahs is appalling. After all Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka’s weddings were such simple and classy affairs. Members of the ruling party today indulge in this hedonistic exercise and are vying with one another to show off wealth rather than class. After all they trashed the “India Shining” slogan of the BJP and rode to power being a part of the “Aam aadmi”. Some measures now really need to taken by the government or competition in marriage arrangements and expenditure will end in disaster. We only hope and wish politicians are as generous in giving to charity too. |
Truth alone will endure; all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. —Mahatma Gandhi Guru, who is the centre of Sadh Sangat, is the divine personality to set bewildered jivs on the right path. —Sikhism Many wish to put on ochre and yellow robes and be venerated as ascetics. Neither the robe nor the colour makes an ascetic. The man who wishes to be an ascetic without first cleaning his thoughts of anger, greed, ego and vanity is chasing a mirage. —The Buddha No one can persevere in the search for Truth without having discarded worldly desires. After sometime, none of these desires will trouble the devotee. With a perception to show the way , correct knowledge of the way and with regular practise, the devotee will achieve his goal. —The Bhagavadgita  |
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We believe that reforms of the Security Council should meet the following principles: