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Games politicians play Another accident |
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Weather gods smile
Dealing with others
The cars I bought
Bandung recalled Antibiotics don’t prevent second heart attacks Delhi Durbar From the pages of
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Games politicians play IT is the right and the duty of the representatives of the people to make sure that bureaucrats stick to the right path and serve society. But that does not mean that they can also interfere in the administration to benefit a select group of people at the cost of society at large. Yet, unfortunately, in Chandigarh certain powerful politicians are out to browbeat officials, including the Punjab Governor and the U.T Administrator, so that certain encroachments can be made permanent. This is obviously being done to benefit an unscrupulous lobby – a group which politicians claim to fight in their numerous speeches. That is unfortunate to the extreme. This slugfest is taking the shape of a struggle over retaining or repatriating a particular Deputy Commissioner and the removal of the Chairman of the Market Committee. But the real bone of contention is the encroached public land which is worth crores of rupees. For once, the administration has adopted an upright approach, but instead of being lauded it is being hounded, so much so that the matter was reportedly even raised before the visiting Prime Minister. This is not the first time that politicians have been found on the wrong side of the law. They tend to support undesirable lobbies more often than it is revealed to the public. To take just one example, whenever the administration tries to remove illegal electricity connections, there are certain politicians who rise to the defence of the wrongdoers for the sake of votes. That is their way to garner publicity and support for winning elections. What is happening in Chandigarh is happening in other parts of the country also. It is often the politicians get away. They have thrived on this open loot of government property for far too long. It is high time they were stopped in their tracks. The Administrator, Gen S. F. Rodrigues, must not give in to pressures. He will set an example for the rest of the country. |
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Another accident THE head-on collision between the Varanasi-Ahmedabad Sabarmati Express and a stationary goods train at Samlaya near Vadodara in Gujarat in the early hours of Thursday is yet another sad chapter in the history of the Indian Railways. By all accounts, it was a major accident because over 20 passengers were killed (including two engine drivers) and 100 injured. Train accidents have become too frequent and the authorities are again on the mat for their poor safety record. The severity of mishap can be gauged by the fact that while the engine and seven compartments of the train bore the maximum impact of the collision, two of them were very badly mangled. Preliminary reports attribute the cause of the mishap, prima facie, to human and signal error. However, there will be more questions on how the accident took place. Western Railway General Manager M.A. Ansari has stated that the signalman and his helper were responsible for the mishap as both had meddled with the “data logger” (a device which diverts the train to another track as soon as it approaches the station). Since the Station Manager was unaware of this, he had given the green signal to the Sabarmati Express which caused the mishap. Surprisingly, at crucial moments, the operations, the signal and the safety wings do not work in unison. True, technology is not foolproof as the “disturbed” mechanical interlocking system for signalling at Samlaya proved. Yet, timely human interventions do help prevent accidents. The collision between the two trains suggests that there was no coordination between the Station Manager and the signal staff. The railway authorities do not seem to learn any lesson on safety even after so many avoidable accidents. The signalling system in most routes is outdated. Maintenance is absolutely poor. Moreover, successive governments’ response to the various reports of the Commissioners of Railway Safety has been one of apathy and neglect. These reports are never made public and only selective portions are released to the media. In the context of the increasing number of accidents, the people are entitled to know the fate of these recommendations and the follow-up measures the authorities have taken to prevent the accidents. |
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Weather gods smile THE forecast of a normal monsoon for the country as a whole during 2005 would be welcomed, and not only for reasons of a bountiful agricultural harvest. More than any other factor, it is good rainfall that determines the health of the Indian economy. In fact, even our markets are driven by the prospects of a good monsoon. That being the reality, the weatherman’s caution in opting for an interim prediction — to be followed by a more detailed, region-wise update in late June — is understandable. This is, perhaps, the first time that the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has resorted to phased forecasting. After the drought and rainfall deficiency of 2004, when the IMD’s predictions were wide off the mark, it was imperative to arrive at a basis for more accurate prognosis; and especially for the month of July, which is crucial for agriculture. The greater importance attached to the exercise this year is underscored by the Minister for Science and Technology, Mr Kapil Sibal, being present, along with IMD officials, at the news conference. The IMD’s model suggests a very high probability of normal rainfall (98 per cent) all over the country with an error margin of 5 per cent. This is based on six of the eight parameters being favourable and the unlikelihood of the El Nino effect. In a significant departure, this time the IMD collaborated with other Indian institutes and also reckoned with forecasts originating in the US and Europe. No matter what parameters are cited to reinforce the accuracy of the forecast, these have to be borne out by the rainfall when it comes. Cooperation with advanced countries is necessary and desirable, but it is not always that western institutions are forthcoming. Even in the matter of sharing meteorological data and forecasts, the West tends to be guided by narrow economic interests, such as their need to offload grain surpluses. Just as caution is called for in making our forecasts, care should be taken to rigorously scrutinise data from foreign sources. |
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Pain is only weakness leaving the body.
- Unknown
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Dealing with others GIVEN this country’s fixation on, indeed obsession with, Pakistan in general and its present military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf, in particular, it is no surprise that his undoubtedly productive talks with the Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh, have attracted the greatest attention, a wide welcome and a lot of hype. It is not sufficiently realised, however, that this India-Pakistan summit was linked intimately with what else has happened as a result of multi-directional, hot-paced international diplomacy of which India has lately been the focus as never before. Merely to recount the rapid developments would drive home the point and also help put the goings-on in perspective. In the middle of March the U.S. Secretary of State, Ms Condoleezza Rice, arrived in Delhi and briefed Dr Manmohan Singh about President Bush’s new policy towards India during his second term. Nothing was heard on this subject until March 25 when a somewhat mixed and therefore confusing message emanated publicly from Washington. At first Mr Bush telephoned Dr Singh to inform him that the US had decided to give Pakistan the famous F-16 multi-role fighter aircraft, and New Delhi lost no time to express its “great disappointment”. However, much else was happening in the US capital simultaneously that was highly favourable to this country. Therefore, the Ministry of External Affairs responded by acknowledging that the US was offering India even in terms of military sales and cooperation a lot more that it was giving Pakistan, and India would “consider these offers”. But because this statement was issued very late at night it went practically unnoticed. Thanks to the time differential between this country and the US, reports on the “deep background” briefing by three senior State Department officials confined to the American media leaked out in slow stages but when they did, they created a sensation. For, the officials had declared that the new Bush policy on South Asia was to “help” India — in America’s “own interest” — to become a “major world power” in the 21st century. The import of this historic statement has not yet fully sunk in here for a variety of reasons that include America’s own dubious record in the past, persistent disbelief in Washington’s word, and the Left Front’s pressure on the Manmohan Singh government to reject everything American out of hand. Official New Delhi has, therefore, been handling its relations with Washington somewhat gingerly but without losing sight of the enormous potential of cooperation between the once estranged democracies. It is rather ironical, if also altogether typical, that foreigners have caught on to the tremendous import of America’s new policy towards this country more easily than most Indians have so far. Nothing underscores this more vividly than the visit of the Chinese Premier, Mr Wen Jiabao, just ahead of General Musharraf’s arrival. Neither the Page two honoured guest from Beijing nor his hosts ever referred to the unseen presence of Mr Bush in close proximity of the negotiating table but the Chinese Prime Minister’s awareness of it was obvious. The opening sentence of the joint statement issued by the two sides bears witness to this. For decades China has been describing India as no more than “an important developing country of South Asia”. But this time around, Beijing recognised the global nature of India’s rising power and, therefore, the “global character” of India-China relations. From this has followed China’s need for a “strategic partnership for peace and prosperity” with India. The Russian media joined the analysts elsewhere in stating that China was “concerned” over America’s attempt to draw India to its side. In the interval between bidding goodbye to Mr Wen and welcoming the Pakistani President, the Foreign Minister, Mr Natwar Singh, made a quick visit to the US during which Mr. Bush did him the rare honour of receiving him in the Oval Office. Surprisingly, the Indian media’s coverage of this visit has been slipshod and hasn’t fully conveyed the Bush administration’s keenness to cooperate with India in the civilian nuclear energy sector and space. Behind the scenes, however, talks are continuing. It is in this context that the tremendous satisfaction of both sides with the outcome of the Manmohan Singh-Pervez Musharraf talks has to be viewed. The state-owned media here - All India Radio and Doordarshan — have used the expression “giant leap forward” in this connection, and they cannot be held guilty of being hyperbolic. Both Indian and Pakistani delegations constantly used expressions such as “positive and forward-looking”, “greater success than expected”, “sky is the limit”, “message of peace” and so on. The salience imparted to economic relations and trade both in the speeches of the principals and in the joint statement issued by them is a major advance, as is a series of measures for promoting further people-to-people contacts. Consequently, it is not at all an exaggeration to say that for 90 per cent of the complex spectrum of their relationship, the leaders of the two countries are at the same wavelength, and that is a very welcome sign. But then the remaining 10 per cent does represent a schism that cannot be overlooked. Described bluntly and briefly, the contradiction lies in Pakistan’s emphasis on finally resolving the conflict over Kashmir, not just managing this conflict, and India’s equally clear-cut stand that irreversible though the peace process is, the only thing that can derail it is a revival of cross-border terrorism. At one stage Dr Manmohan Singh illustrated his point by declaring that an outrage such as the attack on Parliament or an attempt to blow up the Indian Military Academy at Dehra Dun or the RSS headquarters at Nagpur could wreck all the gains achieved so far. Against this backdrop, careful observers of the scene have not failed to notice that in the utterances of General Musharraf — beginning with the Prime Minister’s dinner to the breakfast meeting with the Editors] Guild of India — there has been an undercurrent of a threat that violence in Kashmir could erupt again if a settlement of the Kashmir dispute could not be reached within a reasonable timeframe. But there is recognition in New Delhi that General Musharraf is using such rhetoric in order to contain his critics back home who had started attacking him sharply for having “gone soft” on the Kashmir issue. Under the circumstances, South Block has decided to judge the Pakistani President by his deeds rather than his words. All things considered, it is an eminently sound
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The cars I bought WHEN one becomes old and begins to recall the past wistfully, one often finds onself indulging in dreams of the past, happy “affairs” with women. However, before your imagination inveigles you into a “harms” of houries, let me add at once that this is not a story of my “affairs” with women of any cut or class. As it happens, the subject here is not love, romance, romantic or platonic, but the fairy on wheels which takes you to a whole world of adventures and sights. Now, there is no need for feminine critics or theorists to take offence, for, as the world knows, the entire car body is so designed as to feed the erotic fantasies of the male species, and, indeed, it’s a sex symbol down to its “vital statistics” and “tail”. It’s a tale of five floozies, if you like, the first two fairly frayed at the time of their advent in my house, and the other three coquettish in their new looks and charm. My first car, an old Morris Eight presumably left behind by a departing British subaltern, was a “sell” from the start. The English “memsahib” seemed to harbour uncharitable thoughts about India, and often grumbled when I took it out for an airing. It gave me enough trouble; so I had to give it marching orders. The next piece, a battered and overused Fiat, was all powder and paint, hiding her wrinkles, so to speak. But soon enough, the graftings and the grease were showing. Not all her ways and wiles, could put me at ease with her. And before long I knew that the old charmer was after my peace and purse. She preferred to remain more in a town garage than in my university house. In sum, she had the morals of a street-walker. Hence the marching orders. But, than, my folks and other thoughts. They had often seen me ogling the neighbour’s Padmini, and wistfully retire into the confines of my study. They wanted to do something for “poor Papa” who had once declared that he had no chance to possess a new car in this Janam. Well, the going deal for the Premier “princess” was an eight-year old wait, or a premium amounting to her full putative price. The Emergency, however, did put fear of God in the hearts of all kinds of wheeler-dealers, black marketeers, touts and trollops, and by jolly, the highborn was there now for the asking. And, then, came the Maruti “wave”, and we all got carried away. A four-year wait and an increase of Rs 40,000 on the book price well, that was enough to put me up against the pretty newcomer, a girl in green. And she remained with me just for a year or so. I had to leave for New York University on a year’s teaching assignment, and I had no desire to see this spendthrift idling in my absence. She was soon gone, snatched out of my hands, as it were, by another suffering soul. My next Maruti, a virgin in white, and simply a piece of oomph and nakhra. An arctic beauty, she was highly touchy and temperamental; A spirited filly, though, she started beautifully when her button was pressed. And then she was off to a dream-start. Well, that’s the car I still possess after nearly a period of 15 years. It’s still a piece of beauty, fresh from the shop, as it were. The fact is, I’ve been driven in it by my own house-keeper for nearly 12 years now, following my inability to drive a car. A wrong operation at a New Delhi hospital destroyed my health and my peace of mind. And so, she remains, perhaps, for
keeps.
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Bandung recalled THE 50th anniversary of the Bandung Afro-Asian Conference is being commemorated in the same city from April 22 to 25, 2005. The original Bandung Conference was dominated by Jawaharlal Nehru, Zhou-en-Lai and Sukarno and attended by 23 Asian and six African countries. Its main theme was decolonisation and consequently the conference was predominately anti-imperialist in its sentiment. The cold war was at its height and one of the 10 principles adopted in the conference emphasised “abstention from the use of arrangements of collective defence to serve the particular interests of any of the big powers. Abstention by any country from exerting pressures on other countries.’’ Subsequently because of this principle adopted by the Bandung meeting, that conference was often hailed as having given birth to the Non-Aligned Movement though the first Non-Aligned Conference came about in Belgrade in 1961. The Panchsheel principles had been adopted just a year back in the treaty between India and China. Those five principles and another five principles appropriate for international politics were put together as 10 principles of Bandung. As with most of such conference declarations a majority of those who adopted the 10 principles had no intention of abiding by them. The very first principle was “respect for fundamental human rights”. The majority of the countries which attended the Bandung conference were not democracies at that time and even in those countries where democracy prevailed it got extinguished soon after — as in Indonesia, Burma and Pakistan. Similarly, some of them — such as Philippines, Pakistan and Thailand — joined a military pact soon after the Bandung Conference. At the time the Bandung principles were adopted, China was a member of a military pact with the Soviet Union. It is that kind of double talk by a number of Afro-Asian countries which robbed the declaration much of its credibility. While Bandung was hailed as the harbinger of the Non-Aligned Movement, it also contributed to some of the major tensions in the developing world. It was at Bandung that the Pakistani Prime Minister contacted Chinese Prime Minister Zhou en Lai and laid the foundation for the Sino-Pak relationship which later resulted in the arming of Pakistan with nuclear weapons and missiles. Many scholars hold that Zhou en Lai resented what he perceived as Jawaharlal Nehru’s patronising attitude towards China. Soon after Bandung, South East Asia splintered into two, bringing in the US with its domino thesis leading to the Vietnam war. A little later, Malaya became free and the confrontasi developed between Malaya and Indonesia . No doubt, following Bandung, the decolonisation process accelerated, especially in Africa. While worldwide the anti-imperialist sentiment generated by the Bandung meet was a factor in bringing this about, yet the decisions of the British and French governments to carry out decolonisation were largely based on cold calculated economic considerations. Some of the signatories of the Bandung principles lent their bases to the American war on Vietnam and subsequently supported the genocidal Pol Pot regime in its membership of the UN General Assembly after it was overthrown by the Vietnamese. The decolonisation process is now complete and apartheid too has come to an end. The Soviet Union has collapsed. The cold war is over. The opposing military blocs are gone all over the world though the NATO continues and even expands. In a sense it could be said that most of the objectives of the Bandung declaration have now been fulfilled with the end of decolonisation,apartheid and the cold war. A new set of threats and problems faced by all countries, particularly developing countries has been focussed on by the UN Secretary-General and is to come up before the UN later this year. They are terrorism and terrorist use of WMD, pandemics like AIDS, human rights violations, including threats of genocide and ethnic cleansing, religious extremism, misgovernance and corruption. The high level panel of the UN Secretary General-presided over by former Thai Prime Minister Anand Panyarachun has recommended that if human rights violations cannot be dealt with by the government of the country concerned, then the international community should intervene. This is contrary to one of the Bandung principles of non-intervention in the internal affairs of a nation. This came about mainly because of gross human rights violations in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Rwanda, Burundi, Bosnia, Kosovo, Liberia, Sudan, Senegal, Democratic Republic of Congo and many other countries. When Bandung principles were adopted, the hope was that with decolonisation, the freed nations would adopt good governance, with democracy and human rights as their foundation. However, it turned out that the rulers in decolonised countries in many cases were more dictatorial than the colonial rulers. But there has never been any introspection among the decolonised nations about what went wrong in their respective countries. Since the majority of the developing countries do not have good and democratic governance their conclaves only lead to platitudinous declarations. In a sense the developing countries that have relatively good and democratic governance, by associating themselves with such platitudinous declarations, only legitimise the misgovernance and tyranny in those decolonised nations. This kind of trade unionism does more harm than good for causes of human rights and democracy. The events of the past 50 years since the Bandung Conference also demonstrate that the elite perceptions of their respective national interests have always prevailed over the concept of international solidarity. This was true of communist countries as well as Islamic nations. Bandung had its limited role in history. Let its significance not be exaggerated. Nor should there be much expectation of the assembled countries acting unitedly on UN reforms. |
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Antibiotics don’t prevent second heart attacks TREATING heart attack victims with antibiotics does not reduce the risk of having a second heart attack or dying, according to two large trials reported Thursday in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers had hoped the drugs would kill the common bacterium Chlamydia pneumoniae, which is found in arterial plaque in three-quarters of heart attack victims. Its presence has been shown to double the risk of subsequent attacks, and some small studies had suggested that killing it with antibiotics would reduce the risk. The new results confirmed similar findings in two earlier trials that treated patients for much shorter periods, finding no benefit from using antibiotics. All ongoing studies of antibiotics have now been completed. “The testing of these agents for the treatment of advanced coronary heart disease appears to be at the end of the road,” wrote Dr Jeffrey L. Anderson of the University of Utah School of Medicine in an editorial in the journal. Dr P.K. Shah of Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, who was not involved in the new studies, said: “The body of evidence is now in: that, regardless of whether it is acute coronary disease patients or chronic coronary disease patients, either a short or a long regimen of antibiotics has no impact.” In the first study, Dr J. Thomas Grayston of the University of Washington and his colleagues studied 4,012 heart attack patients who were given either azithromycin (trade named Zithromax) or a placebo weekly for a year. At the end of four years, those who had received the antibiotic fared no better than those who had received placebo but had a slight increase in gastrointestinal disorders. In the second study, Dr Christopher P. Cannon of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and colleagues studied 4,162 patients hospitalized for heart disease. Half were given gatifloxacin (trade named Tequin), an antibiotic thought to be more powerful than azithromycin. The other half were given a placebo for 10 days each month for two years. They also observed no benefit from the antibiotic. The results are a discouraging coda to what had once been considered a highly promising area of research. C. pneumoniae — a close relative of Chlamydia trachomatis, the common sexually transmitted microorganism —infects more than half the population at one time or another and is the cause of at least 10 percent of all cases of pneumonia.
— La Times-Washington Post |
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Delhi Durbar WHILE Sports Minister Sunil Dutt expressed his displeasure at not being invited to watch the last ODI cricket match between India and Pakistan at the Ferozshah Kotla stadium, DDCA officials claim that Dutt was personally invited on the phone while he was on the Dandi march in Gujarat. Thirty tickets were sent to the Sports Ministry which he personally distributed among his officials and staff. A little bird tells us Dutt was miffed over his non-entry to the bullet-proof box which was meant for Musharraf, Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi. Only one UPA minister, Natwar Singh was present in the sanitised enclosure.
Waiting for broadband The broadband service launched recently by BSNL and MTNL has been well received for its quality. However, it’s not keeping the on-demand delivery schedule and the waiting list is growing. Communications Minister Dayanidhi Maran knows the problem. Prospective subscribers usually work from 10 to five and prefer the service to be installed either after office hours or during a holiday. However, the telecom employees also follow the same work schedule and do not usually work on holidays.
MLA in high security zone When the two cricket teams were being introduced to President Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, BCCI President Ranbir Singh Mahendra, DDCA President Arun Jaitley and Pakistan Cricket Board Chairman Shahryar Khan were permitted to accompany the two dignitaries, but everyone was surprised to see a young man shaking hands with the Pakistan President and telling him that “I am an MLA from the area where your ancestral haveli is situated”. He was none other than Shoaib Iqbal, who represents the Motiamahal constituency. He had managed to slip into the high security zone.
Empowering rural women US-based NRI Nanak Singh Kohli is trying to make rural women in Punjab computer literate. With Rs 1 crore, he hopes to set up 100 computer training and business centres in the next two years. Ten such centres are already operational. Curiously, the endeavour is to correct the sex-ratio problem. Economic empowerment of rural women in Punjab will make the female child wanted in the state, is Kohli’s answer to Punjab’s bias against the fair sex.
Delhi’s freedom fighters During the one day international, the demand for free tickets and passes was so acute that Delhi is being given the dubious status of having the maximum number of “freedom fighters” which means “all those who fight for all that is free”. The only exception to this were Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Delhi Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit , who paid for the tickets for their near ones.
**** Contributed by Satish Misra, Gaurav Choudhury, R. Suryamurthy, Tripti Nath and Prashant Sood. |
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From the pages of
“UNEASY lies the head that wears a crown,” said the greatest poet of the world. How sadly true it is, we saw only the other day in the assassination of the Czar of Russia. But the new Czar-what crimes is he guilty of that the Nihilists should pursue him with their murderous designs? From Reuter’s telegrams we learn that several attempts have already been made on his life. There are people who profess not to understand this. The new Czar, they argue, is a man who has never, up to this time, up to this time, done the Nihilists any harm or injustice; why should they then attempt his life before giving him a few years of trial as Emperor? They attempt the lives of such men to make them understand that nothing less than the introduction of representative government and other popular reforms can even satisfy them. The Czar ought to be able to understand this, and try to introduce vigorous reforms in his Government. Half-hearted measures will never satisfy the Nihilists, and so long as they remain disaffected, the Czar and his Government will have a volcano seething under them. |
Speak the truth and realise the Lord within; for, He is not far from you. You have only to see Him intuitively. — Guru Nanak I will pray for that concord among people at home by which Devas do not separate nor ever hate each other. — The Vedas Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away. — Jesus Christ God is near; do not think He is far away. He ever cares for us and remembers us too. — Guru Nanak Knowledge of the self leads to instantaneous realisation here and now. The established proposition of all Upanishads is that final release results from knowledge. — Sri Adi Sankaracharya According to Karma Yoga, the action one has done cannot be destroyed, until it has borne its fruit; no power in nature can stop it from yielding its results. — Swami Vivekananda He who keeps my commandment loves me; and he who loves me shall be loved by my Father and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him. — Jesus Christ  |
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