O P I N I O N S

EDITORIALS

Prize catch
How was Hawara moving about freely?
A FULL-BLOWN controversy has arisen over whether Jagtar Singh Hawara and his accomplices were arrested from Patiala or Narela in Delhi. But that is just not central to the issue.

Shocking apathy
Playgrounds are to play, not to dump fly ash
REPORTS in The Tribune on June 8 and 9 on the disastrous consequences of industrial effluents among the children of Chehlan village of Fatehgarh Sahib district in Punjab are shocking.

Laluji vs Barbie
Dolls are more than child’s play
THERE is never a dull moment in Indian politics and it takes all kinds to keep the entertainment going. At best or, as many would argue, at worst, it is play. So, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with “political” dolls.

• Thought for the day

ARTICLE

Whither Musharraf’s Pakistan?
Only MMA playing opposition role
M.B. Naqvi writes from Karachi
CONFUSION is getting confounded over what President Pervez Musharraf is actually aiming at. The West looks upon him as a brave fighter against Islamic extremism and sectarian terrorism in Pakistan. He is apparently a trusted comrade of President George W. Bush in the war against terrorism and has acquitted himself in the role very well.

MIDDLE

The Love Strike
by Raj Chatterjee
AFTER an interval of 40 years I have been re-reading Eric Linklater’s novel, “The Impregnable Women”, not only because he happens to be one of my favourite authors but also because I think that his story carries a message for us.

OPED

Passionate for a cause
by Geetanjali Gayatri
HE is a crusader steeped in Indian traditions with roots in society. Whether it is the right-to-food campaign, the right-to-work campaign or the Employment Guarantee Act he staunchly supports, Belgium-born Jean Dreze, visiting Professor in Delhi University, who has made India his home, is guided by passion alone in whatever he undertakes for the cause of the common man.

Amnesty’s amnesia
By Anne Applebaum
A few years ago I spent several days sitting in the back of a library in London, reading through newsletters, pamphlets and other accounts of Soviet prison conditions published in the 1970s and ‘80s by Amnesty International.

Delhi Durbar
Books on Jinnah
THE whole controversy triggered by BJP President L.K. Advani’s statement on Jinnah has swelled expectations of some book sellers in the national Capital over the possibility of books on Jinnah registering fresh sales. The man who propounded the two-nation theory had strong admirers as well as opponents.


From the pages of

• MAD FOR NEWS!
  

REFLECTIONS

EDITORIALS

Prize catch
How was Hawara moving about freely?

A FULL-BLOWN controversy has arisen over whether Jagtar Singh Hawara and his accomplices were arrested from Patiala or Narela in Delhi. But that is just not central to the issue. What is important is that the prime accused in the Beant Singh assassination case who had tunnelled his way out of Chandigarh’s Burail jail is behind bars again. But instead of exulting over this prize catch, the police has a lot of explaining to do as to how the accused escaped their dragnet all this while. While the police had conveniently argued that the dreaded Babbar Khalsa militant and his colleagues had crossed over to Pakistan, it now comes out that he was very much in Punjab all this while. To the abiding shame of the police, he had not even changed his appearance and had reportedly been visiting his home town, re-organising his outfit. Could that only be a case of monumental ineptitude or did he have the tacit backing of someone highly influential? Given the audacity of his presence in Punjab after the sensational jailbreak, the second possibility just cannot be dismissed out of hand. The police has sullied its name badly and must come clean.

The range of arms and ammunition at the command of these militants proves that they were capable of causing much bigger mayhem than they actually did through the twin cinema blasts on May 22. Punjab DGP S.S. Virk claims that the blasts were only to make their presence felt. But the revelations by the arrested persons suggest otherwise. It was just a dry run and they had plans to kill many important leaders soon. Apparently, the peace that has prevailed after the end of those horrible terrorism days does not run very deep and big mischief is afoot. Lessons must be learnt from this intelligence failure.

So, can terrorism stage a comeback? Unlikely, considering that the public at large has seen through the militants’ designs and is unlikely to extend any support, moral or otherwise. But if the police continues to be as hamhanded as it was during and after the militants’ escape in January last year and religious leaders continue to stoke the communal fires, the nearly-dead embers may indeed flare up again. Pakistan is always there to act as a catalyst, loud claims of a heart transplant notwithstanding.

Shocking apathy
Playgrounds are to play, not to dump fly ash

REPORTS in The Tribune on June 8 and 9 on the disastrous consequences of industrial effluents among the children of Chehlan village of Fatehgarh Sahib district in Punjab are shocking. These are classic examples of the state government’s callous, indifferent and insensitive attitude towards industrial pollution and human safety. In the first place, how did the Chehlan panchayat grant permission to the industry to dump fly ash in the playground? Is the panchayat authorised to grant such permission and, if so, under which law? Dumping effluents in this manner is patently illegal and whoever has done it is guilty of committing a grave offence.

Clearly, fly ash cannot be openly dumped in the city or village limits. It is a hazardous substance as its particles consist of silica, alumina, oxides of iron, calcium, magnesium and toxic heavy metals like lead, arsenic, cobalt and copper. Being very minute, fly ash tends to remain airborne for a long time and thus causes serious health problems like bronchitis, lung cancer, eye and skin diseases. Not surprisingly, there are adequate guidelines for the industries on how to dispose of fly ash far away from the residential areas.

But the problem is that the industries care two hoots about the rules on effective disposal of industrial waste, including fly ash. Unfortunately, the Punjab Pollution Control Board has miserably failed in its duty to enforce the various anti-pollution norms in the state, particularly in industrial towns and cities. Its mandarins seem to feel that their responsibility is limited to the issuance of a notice to the industry. In the instant case, it is particularly strange that the villagers are not raising their voice against the inhuman attitude of the authorities towards industrial pollution. If the villagers themselves are not bothered about it for petty political reasons, who will save them? This, again, underlines the point that there is need to educate the people about the hazards of pollution.

Laluji vs Barbie
Dolls are more than child’s play

THERE is never a dull moment in Indian politics and it takes all kinds to keep the entertainment going. At best or, as many would argue, at worst, it is play. So, it was only a matter of time before someone came up with “political” dolls. The more ideological would assert that every doll, be it a Barbie or a teddy bear, is the product of a particular political culture. But, polemics apart, one can always tell the difference when a toy takes overt political form as announced by the arrival of Laluji in the doll’s house. The plump, plastic plaything, with a mop of white hair, in an oversized trademark kurta-pyjama has a flattering likeness to Railway Minister Lalu Prasad. Mantriji is flattered indeed. At a mere Rs 144 per piece, Laluji, produced by an imaginative Mumbai toy maker, is, if reports are true, a runaway success in the Republic of Bihar.

Children in blessed Bihar appear to be as much taken up with the doll as the man who inspired it. “See how popular I am. Sab koi ghar mein le ja kar khel raha hai”, gloats the Railway Minister, delighted to have found another track to make his presence felt. In fact, Laluji’s Rashtriya Janata Dal is said to be literally toying with the idea of using the doll for the upcoming election campaign in Bihar.

The birth of this doll is, no doubt, significant. For instance, whoever would have thought that Laluji could be “such a doll”. The term ‘toy-boy’, descriptive of human accessories that socialite women, who refuse to be arm candy, like to flaunt, has acquired new meaning. It would be crude to dub this as an infantile streak in our politics. More to the point, perhaps, would be that politicians are becoming more child-friendly. Just goes to show that not only the economy but politics, too, can be plastic.

Thought for the day

Laughter is pleasant, but the exertion is too much for me.

— Thomas Love Peacock

ARTICLE

Whither Musharraf’s Pakistan?
Only MMA playing opposition role
M.B. Naqvi writes from Karachi 

CONFUSION is getting confounded over what President Pervez Musharraf is actually aiming at. The West looks upon him as a brave fighter against Islamic extremism and sectarian terrorism in Pakistan. He is apparently a trusted comrade of President George W. Bush in the war against terrorism and has acquitted himself in the role very well. But how serious is his commitment to ‘’enlightened moderation’’ converting Pakistan into a moderate and modernistic state. He wants the world to accept him as an intrepid fighter against all Islamic terrorists.

The doubts arise because of his and the Americans’ behaviour. The argument used to be that Pakistan is particularly vulnerable to appeals of Islamic extremism thanks to its past, and it so happens that many of these extremists also turn out to be sectarian terrorists while doubling jihadis in Afghanistan or Jammu and Kashmir. These forces have targeted President Pervez Musharraf personally at least thrice. That no harm came to him is due to the technological devices that he now uses while travelling. The terrorists’ current intentions are anyone’s guess, except that they are against the Americans in their campaigns in Iraq as well as Afghanistan. Indeed, Afghanistan’s renewed war by Mr Hamid Karzai’s forces and Americans against the resurgent Taliban and other Islamists has now virtually spread to Pakistan. There have been public demonstrations, with some violence, during the burial of some of these Islamists in Afghanistan.

Extending this argument, many impartial observers have emphasised the fact that a vacuum exists in Pakistan’s political life. This happens largely because the political field has been left wide open mainly to the six-party religious alliance, the MMA. For, the largest and more popular Pakistan People’s Party of Ms Benazir Bhutto has been sidelined and is not being permitted to play its normal role in politics. Similarly, the Muslim League of Mr Nawaz Sharif has also been sidelined.

It is known that General Musharraf is personally bitter and angry with both Ms Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif. He is determined not to let their parties freely operate in Pakistan. Apparently, there is a period here. It can be contended: what about the ruling party and its allies? What is indisputable is that the present government looks as if it was a non-government. The less said about the parties, the better. Most of the legislators as well as ministers are yesterday’s turncoats: they either belong to the PPP or the PML (N), not excluding the President of the ruling party called PML (Q). They are more or less discredited people with virtually no following. Which is why no one disputes the fact that there is a political vacuum in Pakistan.

It was, therefore, recommended to General Musharraf by virtually everyone, including his own aides and colleagues, to arrive at some kind of a modus operandi with both the PPP and the PML (N). Doubtless, his aides have been negotiating with the PPP, though not so certainly with the PML (N). Mr Nawaz Sharif is averse to entering into a deal with the military regime. The President has himself confirmed, and there are many indications of what has been going on between him and the PPP leadership, including the release of Ms Bhutto’s husband, Mr Asif Ali Zardari, after eight years behind bars. But the government made sure that the PPP knew the limits of its freedom.

The administration has prevented even a formal public reception in honour of Mr Zardari. The police ensured that there was no public to receive at the time and place where he landed, and he was bundled off to his new home in Lahore and kept under house arrest for two days. The only people who are free to hold meetings and take out rallies are those associated with the MMA. The actual opposition is totally absent, except in the newspapers which are permitted to print all the news they want to, or so is the impression. Others think that the Press is also now being told to mind its limits. Anyhow, journalists were reminded with plenty of police batons falling on their heads that there were limits that should not to be crossed. Bringing the Press to heel may take time and more effort, though it will not be easy. The Press has acquired a degree of liberty after a long struggle and will not give it up so easily.

Have those negotiations with Ms Benazir Bhutto failed? Nothing can be said with certainty because Presidential aides remain in contact with her and other leaders of the PPP.

Meantime, what the government has done is to lay down its own terms in a language written with the help of police batons. The President has backed the police with the statement that this government shall not change; the elections are scheduled to be held in 2007; and there is no role for Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif, though it is hinted that the PPP and the PML (N) may be permitted to participate in the polls. But there is no firm promise.

Newspaper reports in Pakistan show that the US government is working very closely with the Musharraf regime. It is the Americans who have told Ms Benazir Bhutto to retire from politics and make way for new blood in the PPP who might be more acceptable to the President. It is apparent that the Americans are micro-managing most political moves by President Musharraf. They are trying to impress upon the opposition parties to let him continue to do what he is doing. The question is: where will all this lead to?

This is leading to the MMA making political gains through its opposition role — which many think is bogus. The MMA is being permitted to operate as if it was a true opposition party. There are no indications that the Americans think that such unlimited freedom to the MMA will be counterproductive. Whatever may be said about the MMA, it is certain that the alliance believes in extremist propositions, political as well as religious. That is why people get bewildered. Who is for what?

It is not difficult to believe that General Musharraf actually wants only the MMA as an Opposition, even if that involves its victory in the local bodies’ elections in July and the general election in 2007. The Americans too seem to prefer such a denouement. But why is it so if they are serious about their war against extremism?

MIDDLE

The Love Strike
by Raj Chatterjee 

AFTER an interval of 40 years I have been re-reading Eric Linklater’s novel, “The Impregnable Women”, not only because he happens to be one of my favourite authors but also because I think that his story carries a message for us.

Linklater writes of an imaginary war in Europe. The combatants on either side make strange bedfellows — Britain and Germany versus France and Russia.

The genesis of the war is equally bizarre. Britain gives a large loan to Germany which is resented by France, the traditional ally. A drunken captain of a British trawler rams and sinks a French corvette in the channel. This is taken as an act of war by France. Without an open declaration of hostilities, the French send their bombers over London where a completely unprepared and bewildered nation sees Westminster and the Houses of Parliament pounded to rubble with a heavy toll of human lives.

Britons, many of them in the upper-crust, Francophile to the core, reluctantly don khaki and go out to fight for king and country.

The war drags on for over a year. There is a shortage and then a complete stoppage of petrol. Both sides have to ground their planes and shelve their armoured vehicles. The hand-to-hand fighting is reminiscent of Word War-I.

Once again the flower of manhood in Europe perishes. Thousands are killed, many more are disabled for life. Almost every home in Britain has a widow or a woman deprived of the arms of her lover.

The war must stop, cry the women, but the bachelor Prime Minister, Lord Pippin, an octogenarian, is unconcerned, being immersed in the novels of Jane Austen and the Brontes.

Then the young and beautiful Lady Lysistrata, daughter of an Earl and married to Britain’s most decorated general, steps into the scene, partly because her lover, a captain in the army, has had his legs shot off somewhere in France and eventually dies of his wounds.

Lysistrata gathers round her an energetic (and love-starved) band of women, all of them married to the army top brass or cabinet ministers. Together, they exhort the women of Britain to deny their menfolk their conjugal rights till such time as Britain makes peace with her enemies. Thousands of them march into and take possession of Edinourgn Castle, the wartime seat of the government. The armies abroad receive no operational orders from the War Office because the Minister for War whose wife is one of the “crusaders”, has no office from where to send orders.

Successive attacks on the castle by the home army carrying padded truncheons are beaten back by the defenders armed with hockey sticks, staves and rusty halberds taken down from the walls of the castle.

There is danger of mutiny among the men in the ranks who, deprived on one of the joys of life, are driven to the point of frenzy.

Lord Pippin’s government resigns and Lady Lysistrata takes over with an all-women cabinet. The war comes to an end with neither side claiming a victory.

How does this concern us? We are unlikely to go to war any of our neighbours unless there is grave provocation.

Our greatest enemy is within our frontiers. Its name is CORRUPTION. Every other day we hear or read a fatuous pronouncement by someone in the ruling party that the government is determined to root out this evil. In the States no C.M takes office without declaring that his first priority will be a “clean” administration. But, as each year goes by, the enemy gains upon us, stifling public life with a relentless grip.

Our womenfolk know, or should know, what is happening. Some of them, I regret to say, are happy to share the spoils with their husbands but the vast majority would do anything to end this cancerous growth. No one, as yet, has shown them how to do this. Linklater’s story, fanciful as it is, shows the way.

The novel has an interesting sequel. Lysistrata’s petticoat government didn’t last very long though the peace did. Internal dissensions, rivalries and petty jealousies brought about its downfall. Once again, the King sent for Lord Pippin.

OPED

Passionate for a cause
by Geetanjali Gayatri

HE is a crusader steeped in Indian traditions with roots in society. Whether it is the right-to-food campaign, the right-to-work campaign or the Employment Guarantee Act he staunchly supports, Belgium-born Jean Dreze, visiting Professor in Delhi University, who has made India his home, is guided by passion alone in whatever he undertakes for the cause of the common man.

Every inch an Indian, in fact he is more Indian than most of us. He is less of the kind who fits into the straitjacket stereotype image of a professor, a vocation he has chosen to pursue on days his rigourous campaigns and exhaustive touring allow him to.

Clad in a khadi kurta, a faded pair of jeans, the Indian “jhola” slung on his shoulder, he loves being a part of the crowd. Dreze lives the life of an eternal traveller, given his many campaigns, stretching from one corner of the country to the other.

Preferring to stay amidst hoi polloi and known to travel in the second class, Dr Dreze is different from the conventional image of an academician. Not suited-booted and rather plain, he prefers the rough and tumble to the comforts life can offer him.

And it was this difference that went unnoticed when policemen, in civilian clothes, armed with lathis and guns, gave vent to their anger by lathi-charging the Rozgar Adhikar Yatra in Balrampur of Surguja district in Chhattisgarh recently.

It was here in this tiny village that economist, social worker, crusader, teacher and Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s associate Jean Dreze, a man revered by his associates for his commitment to the cause of employment, was given an altogether new identity——that of a Naxalite.

While the policemen spared none in their “brutal attack”, Dreze, who was making a phone call from across the road, was surrounded by four policemen who beat him up with lathis. Later, it came out that he had been “targeted” on account of mistaken identity as a Naxalite which he certainly wasn’t.

However, this full-of-beans activist knows no discouragement and is raring to go, to see his yatra to the end in Delhi on July 2. “We are on course and no, we are not disheartened by such attacks. On the contrary, the solidarity of support, both from inside our organisation and outside, has revivified us and we are looking forward to successfully completing our 10-state yatra,” he said, speaking over the phone from Chhattisgarh.

With the poorest of districts and the smallest of villages on its itinerary, the Rozgar Yatra is “fuelled” by the excitement it generates in the villages it passes through. “Employment is at the heart of everything for the villagers, primarily migrant labourers, without jobs for the better part of the year.

“We are only striving to create awareness about our mission on the right to work and the Employment Guarantee Act through this yatra. We have a feeling that we are striking the right chord. Since we started out in May, we have come across a number of interesting people who have been receptive to our talks. Really, it has been a very rewarding experience,” he says.

The distribution of badges, banners, posters and campaign material has further aroused the interest of people. And aren’t they a little skeptical about the Rozgar Yatra being another talk-a-while-walk-a-mile kind of exercise?

An emphatic no comes as response to the question from Dreze. “They do wonder how it will come about, how the right to work will become a reality and the Employment Guarantee Act will see the light of the day.

However, none of them feel our talks are an exercise in futility. They are interested, they hear us out and they absorb the information. That is, partly, an achievement. At least we see it as one,” Dreze states.

The aim of this yatra is to consolidate the campaign for a full-fledged, universal and irreversible Employment Guarantee Act. Beyond this, the yatra seeks to affirm the right to work as an aspect of the fundamental right to live with dignity.

The yatra will go through the states of Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Bihar, West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh before returning to Delhi on July 2.

Public meetings, state conventions, cultural activities, public demonstrations, press conferences, are taking place on the way. 

Amnesty’s amnesia
By Anne Applebaum

A few years ago I spent several days sitting in the back of a library in London, reading through newsletters, pamphlets and other accounts of Soviet prison conditions published in the 1970s and ‘80s by Amnesty International.

Sometimes these reports were remarkably detailed, testifying to the extraordinary ability of prisoners to smuggle out their stories. One included the memorable observation that on Sept. 13, 1979, the prisoner Zhukauskas ``found a white worm’’ in his soup. A more harrowing 1987 news release told the story of the hunger strike and prison death of dissident writer Anatoly Marchenko. His widow, denied a death certificate or a proper funeral, wrote his name in ballpoint pen on his makeshift grave.

But Amnesty also published more general information about the Soviet political system, the whole of which–the state-run media, the courts, the secret police – was geared to the suppression of political dissent. This was important work, not least because most Soviet citizens were too frightened to do it.

After all, during Joseph Stalin’s lifetime, still a recent memory, some 25 million people had been arrested in the Soviet Union, mostly arbitrarily, and placed in thousands of forced-labor camps and exile villages all over the country. Millions died of starvation and overwork. This prison camp system, known as the gulag, cast such a horrific shadow that people were still afraid of it, 30 years after Stalin’s death.

Amnesty, in other words, was an organization that once knew the meaning of the word “gulag.” Amnesty also once knew the importance of political neutrality. On its Web site, the organisation still describes itself as “independent of any government, political ideology, economic interest or religion.”

In the Cold War era, this neutrality was important, since it prevented the organization’s publications, whether on prison food or prison deaths, from being seen as propaganda for one side or another.

I don’t know when Amnesty ceased to be politically neutral or at what point its leaders’ views morphed into ordinary anti-Americanism. But surely Amnesty’s recent misuse of the word “gulag” marks some kind of turning point. In the past few days, not only has Amnesty’s secretary general, Irene Khan, called the U.S. prison for enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, “the gulag of our times,” but Amnesty’s U.S. director, William Schulz, has agreed that U.S. prisons for enemy combatants are “similar at least in character, if not in size, to what happened in the gulag.”

In an interview, Schulz also said that foreign governments should prosecute U.S. officials, as if they were the equivalent of the Soviet Union’s criminal leadership.

Thus Guantanamo is the gulag, President Bush is Stalin, and the United States, in Khan’s words, is a “hyper-power” that “thumbs its nose at the rule of law and human rights” just like the Soviet Union. In part, I find this comparison infuriating because in the Soviet Union it would have been impossible for the Supreme Court to order the administration to change its policies in Guantanamo Bay, as it has done, or for the media to investigate Abu Ghraib, as it has done, or for Irene Khan to publish an independent report about anything at all.

—LA Times-Washington Post

Delhi Durbar
Books on Jinnah

THE whole controversy triggered by BJP President L.K. Advani’s statement on Jinnah has swelled expectations of some book sellers in the national Capital over the possibility of books on Jinnah registering fresh sales. The man who propounded the two-nation theory had strong admirers as well as opponents.

Interestingly, Jinnah is particulalry attracting the attention of young college students. Observes a librarian: “Those books on Jinnah, which had no takers for all these years, have suddenly caught the attention of readers.”

South Block toilets stink

A couple of months ago a delegation of American journalists visited the Ministry of Defence headquarters. One of them happened to use a toilet in the haloed South Block. The journalist, after going back, described how South Block toilets were stinking and ill-maintained.

The ministry swung into action and handed over the job of toilet maintenance to Sulabh Shauchalaya. The toilets became spic and span but only for a short while. The situation is back to square one.

Dolphin or Shark?

The staff in the Prime Minister’s Office, including Ministers of State, have been given MTNL’s Dolphin mobile phones. The result: some officials are seething with anger, while others are taking it in their stride.

A PMO official observed: “I keep getting told by people that they tried, but could not get through to me.”

“So much for the efficacy of MTNL’s mobile phone. As a wag put it: How about MTNL changing the name of Dolphin to Shark?”

Jethmalani’s comments

Several senior lawyers of the Supreme Court have disapproved the action of former Law Minister Ram Jethmalani, circulating a letter among select advocates questioning the “intellectual” capabilities of some of the apex court judges, specially in the field of criminal law, of which he is considered a master.

The lawyers to whom Jethmalani sent his letter recently after he lost the case of a “swamy” from Tamil Nadu, sentenced to life imprisonment for raping a dozen women devotees.

A prominent constitution lawyer has gone to the extent of saying that like judges there should be a retirement age for advocates, apparently referring to the age of 
Jethmalani.

He says no one could take upon himself the mantle of “conscience-keeper” of the highest judiciary.

****

Contributed by S. Satyanarayanan, Satish Misra, Rajeev Sharma and 
S.S. Negi

From the pages of

August 24, 1889

MAD FOR NEWS!

Napolean would have been more correct in his description of the English character if he had described the English people, not as a nation of shopkeepers, but as a nation of news-hunters. We Oriental people simply marvel at the largeness and insatiability of their appetite for news. This hunger is keenest for racing news, so keen as if the world would come to an end if there was a moment’s delay in learning which horse won the race, which jockey broke his neck. But the appetite is keen enough for all kinds of news.

Here is a specimen. A short time ago the Police Commissioner of Bombay prohibited the sale of Vezetelly’s publications, which are translations from French novels, considered immoral by English people. A Bombay paper wrote the other day that a gentleman went to buy a copy of “Paradise Lost”. The bookseller told him that he had only French editions and he, produced “Piping Hot,” “L’Assomoir,” and “Nana.” Now this great news has been telegraphed to our local contemporary by its Bombay correspondent. These English people will some day go mad over news.

REFLECTIONS

— Mahatma Gandhi