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Terrorists’ target Scrap MP’s scheme Talking to insurgents |
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The heights of contention
Eat’n Sleep Memorial to Bluestar Opium wealth is a potent force Selling trivia as news
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Scrap MP’s scheme
The National Advisory Council (NAC) has rightly advised the Centre to scrap the MPs’ Local Area Development Scheme (MPLADS) and instead divert the funds to the panchayats for effective implementation of development programmes, judicious spending and greater decentralisation of power. Undoubtedly, the MPLADS, launched by the P.V. Narasimha Rao government in 1993, has miserably failed to serve the intended purpose. In most states, the stories of failure of the scheme are more telling than the stories of success. The NAC’s criticism comes close on the heels of a comprehensive study made by New Delhi’s Institute of Social Sciences which has recommended the abolition of the scheme. Over the years, several other assessments made by the CAG, the Planning Commission, the Centre for Budget and Governance and the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution also inferred that the MPLADS was a drain on the exchequer and hence should be scrapped. Considering the fact that the recommendation for the abolition of the scheme will meet with stiff resistance from the MPs, the NAC’s alternative plan to empower the panchayats with the same funds merits a fair trial. As it is, most panchayats are facing the problem of finances. This has affected development and welfare activity in villages and towns. The NAC is of the opinion that fiscal devolution from the Centre is the most practical and effective route to local government empowerment. At present, the MPLADS is being implemented through District Collectors. There would be effective local area development if the panchayat raj institutions, instead of District Collectors, were involved in the exercise. There will be no dearth of funds and development can be hastened. The NAC has suggested that the MPLADS funds may be deposited with the Zilla Parishads as “untied funds” and MPs may indicate their preferences for schemes or programmes to the Zilla Parishads, Block or Gram Panchayats which should, then, be implemented at the local level as part of the overall village, area or district plan. In view of the bitter experience with the MPLADS, Zilla Parishads will have to exercise greater caution on spending. |
Talking
to insurgents
After the recent cease-fire pact signed with the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB), hopes have risen of reaching a similar agreement with the other main militant group in Assam, the outlawed United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA). ULFA leaders have been insisting that top cadre members who are in jail be released so as to have a `quorum’ for the talks, and in the meantime, violent attacks continue, as do attempts to regroup and consolidate their strength. Like the NDFB, ULFA is also a considerably weakened entity. Militant groups in the North-East, however, have shown a worrying capacity to bounce back after a lull. The NDFB itself did not hesitate to launch various attacks after talks were mooted, some in conjunction with ULFA, but quickly came around to the negotiating table for a comprehensive, one-year cease-fire pact. The formal invitation for talks from the Prime Minister’s office went out to ULFA in December last, and since then several bomb explosions, attacks on civilians and security forces, and killings like those of a Congress worker in Jorhat district have taken place. While a pact with ULFA would politically benefit Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi with elections round the corner in 2006, ULFA’s intentions are not clear. It has played double games before. Even the NDFB has not exactly given up its demand for a separate Bodoland. A sustained effort will be needed to keep these groups neutralised. Any agreement ending violence will benefit the people of Assam, and will be welcomed. The same goes for initiatives aimed at addressing the aspirations and concerns of the people of the state. Political gains should be kept secondary however, and effective policing will continue to be needed. As for talks, the only way to negotiate with terror is without relaxing vigilance and with a readiness to tackle any future mischief. |
Politics are almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics — many times.
— Winston Churchill |
The heights of contention
The resumed India-Pakistan Siachen talks appear to have stalled on India’s insistence that its Actual Ground Position Line along the Saltoro Ridge that forms the western wall of the Galcier (all of which it controls) be duly authenticated before mutual withdrawals to agreed positions. India argues that this is consistent with the facts on the ground and necessary to preclude future contention. Pakistan is unwilling for fear this will legitimise the Indian position. The Indian reasoning flows from the concept of a Line of Control, of which the AGPL has been a de facto extension after 1984, the LoC itself being a post-1971 derivative of the original Cease-fire Line of 1949. The AGPL is aligned along the Saltoro watershed and follows the natural southeast to northwest alignment of the Indus, Shyok, Nubra and other valleys. In this sense, the AGPL conforms to the logic of physical geography and well-established cartographic principles, which, however, are often bent by war and politics. However, India has tended, as in 1990-92, to sidestep the basic position on which its case essentially rests while harping on an important but nonetheless secondary matter of AGPL authentication. This stance has undercut its de jure position to create a “dispute” where none exists. The problem arises from not starting with the facts. The mother accord that gave birth to the LoC is the Karachi Agreement of July 27, 1949. Signed by the military representatives of India, Pakistan and the United Nations, it established a cease-fire line in Jammu and Kashmir from south to north up to the last-named site, “Khor, thence north to the glaciers” through the last cited grid reference, NJ 9842. Boundary formation is a three-phase process of delineation (broad definition), delimitation (more specific detailing) and demarcation (marking on the ground). The Karachi Agreement demarcated the CFL all the way up to NJ 9842. The portion beyond was delineated, “thence north to the glaciers”, but left undemarcated for the moment. It was probably assumed that the J&K question would soon be settled and it might not, therefore, be necessary to undertake the difficult and laborious task of demarcating the line beyond NJ 9842 which lay in an unpopulated, difficult, and treacherous glaciated region of the High Karakoram that was yet relatively unexplored and had witnessed no fighting. But there was no mistaking that from Khor, the line as demarcated went due north for 20 km to NJ 9842 and was thereafter delineated to proceed along that same northward axis (“thence north to the glaciers”) up to the international boundary. This is not a unique direction. At several places along its 740 km length, the descriptive narrative of the Karachi Agreement names a demarcated feature and then directs that the line shall proceed “thence north to ..” or “northwest” or “northeast” or “southeast” or “thence east”, etc. In all these instances the line faithfully follows the directive and moves north, northwest, northeast, southeast or east as the case may be. Why, therefore, should it deviate from a similar prescriptive directive to continue “thence north” beyond NJ 9842. Any ambiguity was removed by the subsequent paragraph in Section C of the Karachi Agreement. This reads: “The ceasefire line described above…”, which unambiguously includes the section “Khor (NJ 9842), thence north to the glaciers”, shall be drawn on a one-inch map (where available)….so as to eliminate any no man’s land”. This injunction is critical. The Karachi Agreement positively precluded gaps and ambiguities in defining the Cease-Fire Line, placing its completeness and integrity beyond question. If such a line is drawn, the Siachen snout, from which the Nubra river issues, and by far the larger part of the entire body of this 75-km-long glacier falls on the Indian side of the line. Under the auspices of the United Nations’ International Geophysical Year in 1956-58, the Geological Survey of India led a series of major inter-disciplinary scientific expeditions to the Siachen region and, among other things, took extensive glacier measurements in the Nubra and Shyok Valleys. This is recorded in the book “Himalayan Endeavour” by this writer published in 1962 and, of course, officially and far more elaborately by the GSI, relevant citations from whose memoirs are contained in the Annexure 2.4 of the Kargil Review Committee Report of 1999 that inexplicably continues to be treated as confidential! After the 1971 war, it was agreed that both sides keep the territory captured across the CFL. Thus, in the north, India gained 254 sq m in the Turtok sector west of Khor and NJ 9842. These changes in the CFL were duly recorded in the Suchetgarh Agreement of December 1972 under the terms of the Simla Accord. The new line was accordingly demarcated and certified by the two military commanders in two elaborate sets of maps and was re-designated the Line of Control. Things had, however, started changing earlier. In 1963, Pakistan unilaterally conceded the Shaksgam area of J&K, north of Siachen, to China. Thereafter it started extending its lines of communications eastwards. Then, around 1967, the United States Defence Mapping Agency gratuitously started drawing the LoC beyond NJ 9842 as running northeast to a point just west of the Karakoram Pass (possibly by hardening the earlier dotted lines marking air defence information zones, ADIZ, that demarcate the jurisdiction of specific air traffic controllers). Pakistan followed suit, cartographically establishing a new “LoC.” All of this depicted India as being in wrongful occupation of 250 square km of its own territory. This was cartographic aggression, in the manner of successive “claim” lines earlier drawn by China in Ladakh before physical occupation. Pakistan followed up by licensing foreign mountaineering expeditions to climb in the eastern Karakoram. Finally, getting intelligence that Pakistan planned to occupy Siachen, India took pre-emptive action in 1984 and established the AGPL as it obtains today. It is against this background that India needs to determine its negotiating position. Surely, reassertion of the LoC, “Khor-NJ 9842, thence north to the glaciers” must remain paramount. The AGPL represents the de facto but not the de jure position. What was the alignment of the CFL-extension beyond NJ 9842 between 1949 and 1984? The moment India pleads interpretive justification for a line that follows the Saltoro contour/watershed, rival interpretations will be advanced by Pakistan and the Siachen issue will move from the realm of fact to that of opinion and speculation. It will be open season. Once “thence north to the glaciers” is firmly re-established, the case for authentification of the AGPL can be argued. But it is “thence north to the glaciers” that provides primary de jure legitimacy. If, as India would wish, the LoC is a (soft) boundary in the making, it must be anchored in a firm, legal terminus. Else it will, like the Indian Rope Trick, hang free in mid-air and could begin to unravel. Given a legally defined line, India could propose declaration of the entire glaciated region from the west of the Karakoram Pass to K2 as a demilitarised High Karakoram International Peace Park jointly managed by the two sides. Pakistan needs to correct its erroneous maps and India to extricate itself from a powerful
muddle. |
Eat’n Sleep
Recently on a weekend trip to Kasauli, I noticed quite a few wayside dhabas with signboards such as “Eat’n Sleep — Punjab Hotel” or “Eat’n Sleep — Shere Punjab Hotel” and such other typical names. But the essential service of “Eat’n Sleep” was always proclaimed with a hearty flourish. The owners do seem to have a good business sense and know what is dearest to their Punjabi clientage from the plains below. Hearty eating and sound sleep comes naturally to us Punjabis. And there is something in the nippy mountain air that gets us. Perhaps it has something to do with the hill walks or beer guzzling that builds up a ravenous appetite followed by a natural state of torpor when all you want to do is doze off. No wonder you find us in somnolent states even in the most scenic spots: be it river banks of Manali, snow passes of Rohtang, deserts of Jaisalmer or even at the family weekend picnic to Pinjore Mughal Gardens. We can be always caught napping anywhere, anytime. The picture-postcard sceneries can wait a while. The usual suspect is the menu of tandoori chicken, aloo parathas with aam-ka-achaar or puri-channas for the odd veggies of our species. This must be the deadliest natural sleeping pill invented by humankind. Wonder, who no American university has undertaken research on it as yet! The after-effects of hearty eating can be witnessed even more intensely during travel. Shatabadi Express to Delhi from Chandigarh leaves early in the morning. Although, initially there is animated chit-chat among fellow passengers or reading of newspapers, as soon as the sumptuous, mouth-watering breakfast is served; there is hushed silence. Afterwards, the only audible sound is of blissful snoring, with the “champion-eaters” falling on the shoulders of their fellow passengers in sweet slumber. Sleep is a great social leveller. The seat-mate whom you gently nudge to uncoil you; could be a sleep-starved corporate executive, a haughty civil servant, an academic or the fat, corpulent freebie getting most out of the on-the-house breakfast. In fact, I know of one friend notorious for his napping, who while on return journey from Delhi on the train — after the heavy food — slept his way through the seven-minute halt at Chandigarh and come to his “senses” only when the train terminated its run at Kalka. Later, I had to drive all the way there to get him back. But quite candidly my favourite summer weekend is to build up a large appetite with an early morning walk, followed by a king-size brunch of assorted parathas topped by frothy glasses of lassi. And then just snooze off. I know no shorter route to nirvana.
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Memorial to Bluestar
The Shiromani Akali Dal Badal, it seems, has made it into an art to go for a tight rope walking in public affairs in Punjab. SAD threw open its doors to Hindus only recently. Perhaps the move upset some Sikh hardliners. Now the SGPC has come forward with a proposal for a memorial to those who died during Operation Bluestar in 1984 after 20 years of the tragedy. I do not know if the new proposal is intended to cover its earlier lapses when its leaders said nothing to the killer gangs operating from within the Golden Temple complex. Tragedies like Operation Bluestar or even bigger than that had taken place in Sikh history earlier too like the two “ghalugharas”. It is said that more than 20,000 Sikhs died during “wada ghalughara” perpetrated by Ahmed Shah Abdali in 1762. When some Sikhs tried to make a bit too much of what the then small community had suffered, a Nihang Singh, according to Ratan Singh Bhangoo, got up to chide them declaring that what the community had lost was only the dross whereas what was left was pure gold. The Khalsa, thereafter, chalked out a programme to confront Abdali instead of crying over what can be called as the spilt milk. The memorial to the ghalughara was the reconstruction of the Golden Temple and cleaning of the holy sarovar through the sangat and the captives from among soldiers of Ahmed Shah Abdali. The Khalsa became the wall of concrete, as described by the late Prof Hari Ram Gupta, that permanently blocked the route of attack of the Muslim adventurers against India for ever. The Khalsa came to rule Punjab after only about 30 years of the great tragedy but no one went for putting up a memorial to the ghalughara victims. There is one more great difference between the ghalugharas and the Operation Bluestar holocaust. The Sikhs were victims of totally unprovoked attacks in both ghalugharas whereas in Operation Bluestar leaders of the Sikhs had a contributory role in generating various events that brought about Operation Bluestar. The Sikhs under Guru Hargobind had picked up a fight with the Mughal faujdar over a hunting falcon that made the faujdar attack Amritsar. Guru Hargobind had so arranged that when the Mughal army entered Amritsar, the moved out of the town so that their fighting did not cause any harm to the innocent citzenery of Amritsar. He fought the faujdar outside the city. The Dharam Yudh Morcha of the SAD had started from outside Amritsar but the SAD moved to the Golden Temple complex to make common cause with Sant Bhindranwale, who soon came to assume the position of a frankenstein calling the shots, pushing the SAD to play a second fiddle to him. Sant Bhindranwale moved to Akal Takht. There would have been no Operation Bluestar, if at any time till even the 5th June, Bhindranwale had moved out of the Golden Temple complex. The SGPC has to share responsibility for everything that happened in the Golden Temple complex during those murky days and also for permitting Bhindranwale to occupy Akal Takht as his abode. The alliance of the SAD with Bhindranwale for the dharam yudh morcha for the first time invited questions about non-violence as a strategy for the Akali agitation. Progressively Bhindranwale was able to ridicule the Akali strategy and commend his alternative of motor-cycle mounted armed Sikh youths as more effective weapons for achieving the perceived Sikh goals. He could get away with challenging Badal and almost silenced Sant Longowal from questioning him. The result was that by the time Operation Bluestar was mounted in 1984 the SAD stood isolated in India. The carnage was worse than what had been perpetrated by General Dyer in 1919 but it invited no anger or even anguish from the rest of India other than the Sikhs. The anger that got generated among the Sikhs over the destruction of the Akal Takht and other excesses that got committed during Operation Bluestar alienated many Sikhs, particularly abroad, from the mainstream which even the appointment of Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister has failed to assuage fully even now. The construction of a memorial Operation Bluestar would keep the old wounds festering without any benefit to the Sikh community. One of the bitter lessons that Punjabis seem to have learnt after a decade of bloodshed and violence has been that their destiny stood linked together and that they had to turn their back to the separatism and violence being preached by self-seeking leaders and pseudo-intellectuals, in order to take Punjab further as the vanguard state of India. It is in this that Mr Prakash Singh Badal had taken the lead to stand for Punjabiat only a short while ago. He had refused to merge his faction of the SAD with others who stood more for separatism although they tried to take shelter behind the authority of jathedars like the Jathedar of the Akal Takhat etc. The whole of Punjab, cutting across all communal boundaries came out to back Badal on his platform of Panjabiat. I believe that the call for putting up a memorial has been given by the SAD leaders who do not share the vision of Punjab as has all along been supported by Mr.Badal as a sort of trial balloon for political fireworks without being very serious about it. Still I think that it would be appropriate for Mr Badal to nip the idea in the bud before it leads to any tension or misgivings in the minds of the people of
Punjab. The writer is a former Chief Secretary of Punjab |
Opium wealth is a potent force Three and a half years after the United States led an invasion of Afghanistan to oust the Taliban regime, the United Nations and the U.S. government warn that the country is in danger of becoming a narco-state controlled by traffickers. The State Department recently called the Afghan drug trade “an enormous threat to world stability.” The United Nations estimates that Afghanistan produces 87 percent of the world’s opium. For decades, poor farmers trying to make a living in Afghanistan’s mountain valleys have harvested the opium poppies that feed the world’s drug pipeline. Now the trade is booming, partly the result of the U.S. strategy for overthrowing the Taliban and stabilizing the country after two decades of war. U.S. troops forged alliances with warlords, who provided ground forces in the battle against the Taliban. Some of those allies are suspected of being among Afghanistan’s biggest drug traffickers, controlling networks that include producers, criminal gangs and even members of the counter-narcotics police force. They are willing to make deals with remnants of the Taliban if the price is right. The U.S.-backed Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has brought some of those warlords into his popularly elected government, a recognition of their political clout and a calculated risk that keeping them close might make it easier to control them. “Drug money is absolutely supporting terrorist groups,” said Alexandre Schmidt, deputy head of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime in Afghanistan. And regardless of their allegiance, Schmidt said, most suspects are released within 48 hours because of intervention by higher authorities. Kunduz, in northeastern Afghanistan, is one of the front lines in what Karzai calls a holy war on drugs. It is just a 90-minute drive from the border with Tajikistan, where low-grade smack starts the next leg of its journey to the streets of Europe. U.S. allies are not the only ones reaping the drug bonanza. Taliban guerrillas also have a share in the opium and heroin trade, which the United Nations estimates is worth $3 billion a year. Warlords who once fought them collect a tax on drug shipments heading to Iran, Pakistan or Tajikistan. As long as the Taliban pay cash, they are pleased to let bygones be bygones, said police and two drug traffickers who claimed to have done business with the militants. Still, the United Nations and the Afghan government predict that this year’s opium harvest will be at least 30 percent smaller than the record 4,200 tons in 2004, partly because of a more aggressive eradication effort. The law of supply and demand has helped too. A glut has driven down prices and profits. But this year’s smaller harvest is expected to push prices back up and encourage more planting and trafficking. It is crucial for the Afghan government and foreign donors to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to farmers before the next planting season this year to make it unnecessary for them to grow opium poppies, said Schmidt, the U.N. official.
— LA Times-Washington Post |
Selling trivia as news To survive the onslaught of the corporate world and other moneybags who often own newspapers and
magazines, the Indian Press will have to have its icons to look up to. We had Chalapathi Rau, Frank Moraes, B.G. Verghese, Madhavan Kutty and Kuldip Nayar, to name a few. Today unfortunately, newspaper writing is market driven. What can one say when 85 per cent of the space is reserved for advertisements, leaving little room for news and other editorial content. Regrettably, determined and truth-seeking journalists are often edged out or browbeaten by the corporate owners into following the party line, which is so often out of tune with the reality on the ground. In place of analysis and debate, today we have food and wine columns (and that too written by editors), page 3 news of models and actresses, and parties held and who all attended. Is a newspaper a high-society page tabloid or wallpaper? Is it a promoter of a particular business house selling its wares like an ordinary shopkeeper? Today with a few exceptions, where are the editors who only once in a while (and when that happened, the ground literally shook), did a signed editorial on page 1, and for months later everyone was talking about it? Today I am afraid that there appears to be a deliberate attempt to take the attention of the nation away from issues that intimately concern
them, and steer them away to trivia, that is supposed to pass off for sobre editorial content and investigative journalism. If the owners of papers and magazines continue to be just market driven, then why not have trusts like The Tribune (a public trust) or The Hindu (a family trust) to run newspapers? What we need is news, views and investigation. What we do not need is titilation, keyhole gossip, trivialisation and interfering in the private lives of people with unsubstantiated “sting” operation kind of journalism in print or on the telly screen. The television channels, with so many in competition, have hardly any time to check or confirm a story, and many a story has hit the headlines only to be corrected later on. The young and brash journalists and anchors on their rolls are more concerned about stealing the limelight themselves or talking away, without even giving a chance to the expert to have his say. More dangerously, especially in crime stories or where a scandal is to be
exposed, with their immature reporting and unfounded deductions, they often spoil the whole case. Everyone cannot be a writer or a TV journalist, and it is experience and indepth knowledge of the subject that will ultimately carry the day. In all this, radio broadcasting with its instant reach and personal touch of the speaker, has a bright future in India. Multi-lingual programmes and an affordable initial outlay in buying the equipment portend well for this medium of the masses. Yet radio programmes and content leave a good deal to be desired. More independent private radio stations which afford competition to the government owned stations, is the need of the hour. But be it the newspaper, television or radio, the bottomline will always be the integrity in content selection, and a rigorous, self-imposed discipline on the editorial staff and the proprietors. |
April 2, 1890 Much-abused
s. n. bannerji
We cannot describe here the endless work Surendranath has done in the cause of his country. There is no Bengali who takes interest in politics who does not know how ceaselessly the Indian Association has worked in the cause of the country ever since its birth in 1876… Not satisfied with creating a deep and widespread sentiment of nationality among the enlightened classes in and out of Bengal, Surendranath began to hold what are now known as mass meetings — meetings of the cultivators and artisans and labourers…. As an educationist he is one of the three men who have provided Bengal with independent colleges where high education is given at much lower cost than in Government College. As a journalist and leader of the Indian Association his work for the people has been priceless. As a Municipal Commissioner he has been one of the most active and earnest workers. He edits “The Bengalee”, leads and writes memorials for the Indian Association, manages and teachers in his college, attends municipal meetings, presides and makes speeches at a dozen meetings a month, and we are told by his opponents he is a talker; a mischievous talker. We wish India had more such talkers.... |
He who will bow before Shri Ramakrishna will be converted into purest gold that very moment. Go with this message from door to door, if you can, and all your disquietude will be at an end. — Swami Vivekananda Integral Yoga aims at the plenary perfection of the embodied soul in its triple term of existence — individuality, universality and transcendence. — Sri Aurobindo All reality is consciousness, but the measure of reality of anything is determined by the nature of consciousness that is revealed in it. — Sri Aurobindo Atman is the core of your personality. It is the prime mover of your mental equipment. — Swami A. Parthasarathy In the Ramakrishna Incarnation, there is knowledge, devotion, and love — infinite knowledge, infinite love, infinite work, and infinite compassion for all beings. — Swami Vivekananda |
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