 |
|
The arms agreement Imrana under siege |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Pact with Singapore It’s certainly a good beginning Trade agreements between nations are usually so dryly worded and jargon-ridden with irritating details that their import is lost on the general public. India’s 739-page trade pact with Singapore, officially called “Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement”, is no exception. Many Indians admire Singapore’s disciplined, rule-based march to prosperity.
Anniversary
cacophony
Romancing superkids
Connecting villages
with low-cost technology ‘Expand G8 to
include India’ Delhi
Durbar
From the pages of
|
|
Imrana under siege On both sides of the Indo-Pak divide the plight of woman is the subject of a raging debate. While the cause in India is the sexual abuse of 25-year-old Imrana by her father-in-law in her village house, in Pakistan the reason is the rape of Mukhtar Mai by a group of men following a village panchayat’s verdict in a case involving her brother. Somehow, the Pakistani woman has emerged a human rights activist, a heroine of a kind, but Imrana’s fate is hanging in the balance. The beastly behaviour of the man, her father-in-law who is the cause for her trauma, is unthinkable in India’s social milieu. However, attempts are being made for only the victim to suffer. Besides her father-in-law, who raped her for a long time, many who have sub-leased religion to themselves, politicians and others are playing an irresponsible role as a result of which she may have to lead a life of loneliness. The mufti of Darul Uloom, Deoband (UP), who gave the controversial fatwa, should have realised that he had no role to play in a situation like this. What happened with Imrana was a criminal case, and should have been left to the law of the land to take care of it. The trouble, however, is that religious zealots rarely think on these lines. Such tragic situations also provide an opportunity to politicians to play their vote-bank card. That is why UP Chief Minister Mulayam Singh says that “dharma gurus” of Muslims are right. But the BJP is of the view that “the Imrana case gives Indian society an opportunity to pause, think and reassert the need for personal law reforms in Islam”. Surprisingly, the Congress has refused to comment on the social tragedy. It is better if the so-called religion leaders and politicians keep quiet on such occasions. No purpose will be served by indulging in policking. We must think coolly as a nation how to prevent the recurrence of what happened in the UP village and save the marital life of Imrana, who has the right to live with her husband. And if Imrana and her husband are willing to live together, no third party has a right to object to it. They should be told to mind their own business. |
|
Pact with Singapore Trade agreements between nations are usually so dryly worded and jargon-ridden with irritating details that their import is lost on the general public. India’s 739-page trade pact with Singapore, officially called “Comprehensive Economic Cooperation Agreement”, is no exception. Many Indians admire Singapore’s disciplined, rule-based march to prosperity. The city-state is known for its financial sector, which is world class. Petro dollars of oil-rich middle eastern nations that headed for the US prior to 9/11 now are now targeting Singapore from where these flow into emerging investment destinations like India and China. The FDI inflows to India can pick up substantially if the Reds and red tape are taken care of. The agreement aims to strengthen the banking sector. Three Singapore banks — DBS Holdings, Overseas Chinese Banking Corporation and United Overseas Bank — have been allowed to set up 100 per cent subsidiaries in
India. The State Bank of India, Indian Bank, ICICI and other Indian banks having a presence in that country will get national treatment. Singapore is known for its zero duty on imports except tobacco products, motor vehicles and liquor. Although Dr Manmohan Singh often talks of reducing import duties to the ASEAN levels, this country is hesitant to let cheap Chinese products flood its markets via Singapore. The wide-ranging agreement also focuses on investment promotion and its protection, avoidance of double taxation and a workable programme on cooperation in healthcare, education, science and technology, e-commerce and tourism. Visa restrictions have been eased to facilitate the movement of professionals. The visiting Singapore Prime Minister, Mr Lee Hsien Loong, expects India to come out of its preoccupation with South Asia, further open up its economy and play a greater role in East Asia. On its part, Singapore wants to spread out its trade beyond the US, China and Japan to India. This vast country has the potential and capacity to look eastwards and promote economic relations with economies of South-East Asia. |
|
Silence is the most perfect expression of
scorn. — George Bernard Shaw |
Anniversary cacophony
AS was only to be expected, the 30th anniversary of the Emergency last week became an occasion for a vast outpouring of words — in print, on highly competitive TV channels and, on a lesser scale, from the public platform. The only major protest tally in the Capital was that addressed by the BJP president, Mr L. K. Advani. Ironically, the presence at it of the National Democratic Alliance convener, Mr George Fernandes, instead of giving it a boost, had the opposite result because only a few hours earlier he had voiced his “worry” over the NDA’s “future” because of the convulsions within its largest member, the BJP. When asked whether he had spoken about this to any of the BJP leaders, the former Defence Minister had ruefully replied, “whom (sic) do I speak to”? Mr Advani also seemed to be unaware of the dual irony of his own oratorical performance. He gave the greatest credit for resisting the outrage to the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh, forgetting that only the other day the RSS chief, Mr K. S. Sudershan, had showered high praise on Indira Gandhi in spite of the Emergency. Moreover, the head of the Sangh Parivar hasn’t
realised a bit from his suggestion that Mr Advani, together with Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, should retire to make way for younger leadership. This having been said, one must hasten to add that whatever was said by whoever against the Emergency was perfectly justified. For the Emergency was a 19-month nightmare, as also a hammer-blow to Indian democracy. In my biography of Indira Gandhi, published in 1989, I had called the Emergency her “cardinal sin”. There is no cause to change the description even now. However, after the passage of three decades, it should be possible to put the Emergency in perspective and take a more balanced view of it than could be done in the earlier highly polarized atmosphere. Of the conclusions that a dispassionate study leads to the first is that ugly though the Emergency was, India during it was in no way comparable to Germany under Hitler, Russia under Stalin, China under Mao, Uganda under Idi Amin or Pakistan under Zia-ul-Haq. Secondly, if Indira was sinning, politically speaking, she was also being sinned against. No democrat could have supported the saintly Jayaprakash Narayan’s unwise call to the Army and the police to disobey the Indira government. But this was only a part of a wider malaise. Both Indira and her opponents had lost confidence in each other’s good faith. Both sides, therefore, stretched democratic norms to a degree that was bound to reach the breaking point. Thirdly, and more importantly, as abruptly as she had hit the country with the Emergency, Indira Gandhi announced the elections of 1977 and having predictably lost them surrendered power gracefully. Even more startling is the fourth point — that Indira Gandhi was triumphantly back in power in 30 months flat even though she had been “consigned to the dustbin of history”, in the words of Mr Vajpayee, then Foreign Minister in Morarji Desai’s government. Incidentally, how many Indians remember Morarjibhai today, while Indira’s name has tremendous resonance? A couple of other facets of the Emergency era merit attention. One, despite all the post-1977 claims of anti-Emergency heroics, the fact remains that there was hardly any resistance to it. No one has underscored this more emphatically than Nikhil Chakravartty, one of the all-time greats of Indian journalism who was also an unrelenting critic of the Emergency all through. On a famous occasion he wrote that even the Baroda Dynamite case was essentially “propaganda dynamite”. As it happened, Nikhilda’s seventh death anniversary coincided with the Emergency’s 30th. Two, doubtless, the institutions that underpin democracy were eroded to the point of being “damaged” grievously. But was Indira Gandhi alone responsible for this disaster? Did the worthies manning and heading these institutions have no responsibility for what happened? In a devastating article on Saturday last, the eminent jurist, Mr Fali Nariman, has pitilessly exposed how the then Chief Justice of India and his three colleagues sitting on the Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench changed their position 180 degrees in a matter of weeks. As Solicitor-General in April 1975, he had approached the apex court on a Friday with the oral request that a Delhi High Court judgment, delivered an hour earlier, be stayed. He had spelled out the negative consequences if the stay was not granted. The Supreme Court summarily rejected his advice, the Chief Justice remarking grandiosely that the “liberties of the citizen” took “precedence” over everything else. Came July 1975, and the same Supreme Court Bench instantly accepted an almost identical oral request by Mr Nariman’s successor, he having resigned on the morrow of the Emergency’s imposition. Mr Advani’s classic remark about the Indian Press that “crawled” when asked only to “bend” speaks for itself. One widespread theme last week was that the Emergency should be discussed periodically, if only to ensure that it was not repeated ever again. Mr Advani went much farther and implied that the Emergency Mark-II could become a reality sooner rather than later. The United Progressive Alliance’s “Emergency mindset”, he alleged, was being reinforced by its partnership with the Communists. Interestingly, Mr Chandra Shekhar, a former Prime Minister and the Janata Party’s president when both of them were members of it, has punctured Mr Advani’s claim. He says that the present state of affairs is “worse than the situation during the Emergency”. And for this he holds the NDA, headed by the BJP, and the Congress-led UPA equally responsible. That apart, the fundamental fact is that the Indian situation has changed so radically during the last three decades that anyone wanting to impose an emergency in the foreseeable future would need to get his or her head examined. Indira Gandhi was not only a towering and formidable leader but she also had a sweeping majority in Parliament. Moreover, in the mid-seventies, her party ruled all states except Tamil Nadu and Gujarat; she had no difficulty in dismissing the two non-Congress ministries. Today political power is thoroughly diffused. Furthermore, the Indian society just would not buckle under as it did in 1975. Mr Nariman testifies that the higher judiciary has redeemed itself. Even the media is likely to be defiant rather than pliant. And the instruments of state power Indira misused to cow down the country, such as the BSF, the CRPF, the police, the CBI and so on, are rusted to the point of being utterly ineffectual. |
Romancing superkids
The scene is picture perfect. A grinning 16-year-old is being hugged by his beaming parents. The mother is seen stuffing a laddoo into the mouth of the elated teenager. Plant a blissful grey-haired granny and a happy sibling on to the scene, and the picture would be superperfect. Just as “super” as the kids the media romances with at this time of the year. Their smiles are rated the scoops of the season. They are exalted as heroes and flashed as demi-gods. And, what more, they are even dubbed superkids. They are interviewed, admired, praised and looked up to. Who are they? What have they done to merit such publicity? No, they have neither performed any heroic deed nor have they showcased exceptional creativity and talent. If you have been reading the papers for the past month, you wouldn’t require three guesses. They are examination toppers. They are high scorers portrayed as superbeings. The scene shifts. A suicide is reported. The student couldn’t come to terms with his poor performance in the examination. He didn’t want to face the wrath of his parents and the ridicule of his peer group. The incident triggers a fresh media debate on our exam-centric and marks-focused education system. Again, come talks on the merits of grades, and the need to ease pressure on students. Again, attempts are made both by parents and school authorities with media making the right noises in the background to do away with examination stress. But, again, at the end of the day, a handful are eulogised like never before and rated the best of the lot. They are liberally bestowed the sobriquet superkids. Why? Because they have scored high in studies? Isn’t this a negation of all that the media stands up for all through the year, when it picks up the pen to write against our anxiety-causing pattern of assessing students. But, ironically, when the results come out, it conveniently sides with the winners: it uses them to makes headlines and push sales. By dubbing a handful super, what term would the media like to assign the rest of the kids who at this young age are yet to explore and experiment with their creativity? By giving the message that marks alone could determine your road to superstatus, isn’t the media sending confusing signals to students? And, do these marks assure these superkids a placement in professional colleges, which again would have a different method of gauging the students’ super status? To take note of the toppers, their academic feat and the hard work put in by them is understandable but to put them on a pedestal is incomprehensible. To splash them all over the page in order to promote the catch-’em-young marketing strategy is also hard to digest. Probably, it all calls for a further debate or redefinition of the term superkid.
|
Connecting villages with low-cost technology A
medical diagnostic kit with stethoscope, ECG, etc connects to a doctor far away for just Rs 10,000. A cash dispensing ATM costing only Rs 30,000. An entire village kiosk equipment with multi-media PC, digital camera, photo quality printer, fax, Internet, speaker, mike, power back-up, etc for only Rs 50,000. A software tool provides English tutorial at Rs 30 per month per head. These are some of the low-cost devices that a group of IIT professors at Chennai have incubated with techno-entrepreneurs in the lab of the Electrical Engineering Department of the prestigious institute. The TeNeT group under the inspiring leadership of Prof Ashok Jhunjhunwala, who heads the department, has become a major change agent in rural areas having established some 2,000 rural infocom kiosks in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Maharashtra and elsewhere. In these kiosks run by a locally trained person, often an eighth class to matriculate lady, villagers could get information about prices of farm products and inputs, contact local government authorities, download college and school admission forms or government application forms, the file complaints to district and state authorities, obtain emergency medical or veterinary aid and be warned about weather conditions, all for a low fee of Rs 10 and above. Some of the kiosk operators have obtained an astrological software and so act as the local astrologer giving information about auspicious days and times and even read a horoscope. The local operator could make at the minimum Rs 2,000 per month which is a comfortable income by rural standards. The enterprise of the operator can earn her even more by widening the services she can provide. The programme encourages enterprise while serving rural needs. The IIT group runs everything on business lines — and no subsidies are expected. In the 1980s itself Prof Jhunjhunwala realised that at the core of rural telephony was the low-cost connectivity so that village people could afford to make a call. The TeNeT group he formed with his colleagues was the outcome of this realisation. Its first product was CorDECT, the low-cost wireless equipment that could provide toll quality voice and data to the rural areas for promoting which the group launched a corporate entity Midas. The TeNeT group has launched another company n-Logue, as an internet service provider, for promoting village kiosks with bank loans and local enterprise. Some of the kiosks share space in a local tea stall or a temple premises. The connectivity is through the Midas’ CorDECT that provides fixed wireless linkage from an exchange to the village up to 60 km distance at a fraction of the cost that a landline would incur. With the arrival of networking technologies, the IIT group launched Banyan Networks, to focus on development of networks with higher bandwidth. Banyan is derived from the name of the common banyan tree at a village meeting place with its widespread branches and thick leafy canopy and reflects the aim of the group in bringing the benefits of low cost rural connectivity. The broadband equipment it has now developed includes routers and switches, enabling Midas to offer the complete broadband package. IIT, Chennai, and Banyan jointly won a national award of Rs 5 lakh recently from the Central Government for the successful commercialisation of indigenous technology. Banyan Networks has now been merged with Midas and is its networks division. Midas itself had earlier won other national awards, including the CSIR Diamond Jubilee Award 2004 for its technology excellence. CorDECT, incidentally, has found export markets in many developing countries. Midas Executive Director Air Commodore (retd) S. S. Motial says Midas was the first company to come up with a fixed wireless solution for the rural areas, the CorDECT, 35 Kbps for toll quality voice and 70 Kbps for data. “By setting up a small telephone exchange, we cover up to 500 villages around over wireless connectivity. This gives a low-cost connectivity to a large population as no other product in the market today can do.” A most useful device is the tele-medicine diagnostic kit. It can take the heart beat sound, record the ECG details, patient pictures and other diagnostic requirements and reach them to a doctor far away. A medical personnel is not needed to operate it at the village level— a locally trained person is enough to attach the various leads from the instrument and let the doctor examine the patient from far away. The doctor sends the prescription over fax or dictates treatment details. The cash dispenser for the rural areas brings the benefit of the ATM in a limited way to the village. Unlike the urban ATM, it dispenses notes of only one denomination — so that the cost of the equipment can be low. The authentication is achieved by using finger prints of the account holder — the biometric identification. The amount of currency its chest holds is also small compared to an urban ATM but it would be sufficient to serve the village needs for emergency cash. The entire equipment, including software for biometric authentication and customer command, is designed by Midas, says Motial. Video conferencing with voice on a separate channel has also been made possible. With the recent developments in broadband equipment that Banyan Networks achieved villagers would have voice, data and video simultaneously. |
|
‘Expand G8 to include India’ India deserves to have a permanent place in the world’s top political and economic forum, the global investment banking firm Goldman Sachs has said. “We would like to see India get representation as soon as possible,” Michael Buchanan, co-director of Global Macro Research at Goldman Sachs told a meeting of diplomats, investment bankers and strategic affairs experts in London on Tuesday. Buchanan and others, who were discussing ‘India: the next decade’ at a conference hosted by the Royal Institute for International Affairs, were asked how they thought India would react if it did not get permanent membership of the Security Council. With Goldman Sachs research showing India emerging as the third largest economy in the world in the next 25 years, Buchanan told the conference for India “not to have representation in any of these meetings would be very inappropriate.” Although Buchanan’s response was to a specific question on the Security Council, he later told IANS he meant a place in the Group of Eight. He said Goldman Sachs would like to see the G8 - the forum of the world’s wealthiest nations - expanded to include both India and China. Recent projections by Goldman Sachs on the so-called BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - had come up with “startling results,” Buchanan told the conference. “India will overtake Japan to become the third largest economy in 25 years,” he said. According to Goldman Sachs projections, the Indian economy is poised to overtake Italy in 2015, France in 2020, Germany in 2025 and Japan in 2035, when China will occupy the second place and the US the first. Just five years later, in 2040, BRICS countries will collectively overtake the economies of the what Goldman Sachs calls the G6 nations - Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States. Fuelling the Indian growth will be its rising middle class and strong demographic advantages. The proportion of India’s working-age population (15-60 years) is set to peak around 2020 at just under-64 percent of the country’s total population. Importantly, this peak looks set to continue for another 15 years before registering a decline - in common with other BRIC countries. However, even after the decline India will continue to lead other BRIC countries in working-age population. In 2050, China’s proportion of working age population is estimated to be 52 percent of its total population, G6’s 53 percent, Russia’s 54 percent, Brazil’s 56 percent and India’s around 60 percent. By 2030, India’s labour force will “dominate” today’s G6 as well as BRICs. The projection shows the growth of the middle class in BRIC countries could be a key market dynamic. The middle class (defined as per capita incomes of more than 3,000 dollars) in these four countries is set to double in three years and increase four-fold in a decade. Asked by IANS how Goldman Sachs’s projections squared off against the fact that India was home to at least 200 million poor people, Buchanan said: “Real takeoff (in consumer demand) doesn’t happen when the bulk of the population is below the key threshold (of middle class earnings).
—
Indo-Asian News Service |
|
Delhi Durbar The talk gaining ground is what kind of responsibility should be given to Amethi’s MP, Rahul Gandhi in the upcoming reorganisation of the Congress party. His mother and party President Sonia Gandhi had hinted at giving the youthful brigade more responsibility. There are several young leaders waiting in the wings like Sachin Pilot, Milind Deora and Jatin Prasada. However, the debate in Congress circles is whether Rahul should be brought into the organisation and given charge of a large and volatile state like Uttar Pradesh or not. The Uttar Pradesh Congress Committee is all too keen that Rahul gets cracking as the AICC pointsperson for Uttar Pradesh. However, strategists in the Congress high command believe that it might be better to put Rahul in the vanguard of the Youth Congress rather than an unwieldly and politically turbulent Uttar Pradesh.
Indian focus
on Africa In a first of its kind, President A P J Abdul Kalam provided a demonstration of the proposed Pan African Network to the envoys of 26 African countries in Rashtrapati Bhavan on Tuesday. Kalam had thrown up the idea as part of India’s “focus Africa” at the Pan African Parliament in September 2004 during his state visit to South Africa. Under the delivery system 53 African nations are to be connected through satellite and fibre optic links. The network will primarily provide tele-education, tele-medicine, Internet, video conferencing and voice over Internet protocol (VOIP) services while supporting e-governance, e-commerce, infotainment, resource mapping and meteorological service connectivity. A budget of $ 50 million has been provided by India for the installation, initial operations and maintenance for the first three years. The project will work through a VSAT network connecting the hub to 53 learning centres with five universities, 10 super
specialty hospitals in 53 remote hospitals. The project will make it possible for providing virtual classrooms in outlying areas in 53 countries where a teacher can deliver a lecture to multiple locations in real time.
Chhatra Janata The Chhatra Janata Dal (U) has dropped the name of the party and renamed itself as Chhatra Janata in the hope of attracting more students across the country. The new name for the youth wing of the Janata Dal (U) was approved at its national convention at Dhanbad recently. The National President of the Chhatra Janata, Pratush Nandan who had made the proposal for changing the name of the youth wing, is confident that they would be able to double the existing membership of 50,000 by the beginning of the next academic session. Nandan says that most students are averse to politics and an apolitical identity can convince them to enrol as members. He feels that it will be important to tell students that the youth wing will not be a rubber stamp of the party but represent their interests and
concerns. Contributed by Gaurav Choudhury, R. Suryamurthy and
Tripti Nath. |
|
From the pages of DIVISION AND UNITY
Since historical times in India the spectacle of a united India is unknown. There must have been a time when India was a free country, governed by her own princes and regulated by her own laws. But that time goes back beyond the province of history and ranks among traditions and myths.... The greatest among the Moghuls never ruled over the whole of India from one extreme limit to the other. The experience of past history is bitter and humiliating; we were divided and we fell easy victims to foreign power; we divided province from province and the whole country fell into a state of helpless decadence. If now we are finally on the path to progress we can only go forward as one country and one nation. Perish the tongue which seeks to sow jealousies among the peoples that call India their common mother and the hand that comes between them! |
No battle can be won without commitment of the troops and the leader. Each and everyone must be fully dedicated to the cause. The side which is thus will certainly emerge victorious. — The Mahabharata Many say, that wealth, power and position corrupt men. Surely they are wrong. By themselves, wealth, power and position can do nothing. Our attachment to them causes corruption. — The Buddha Trust the man who dares speak unpleasant truths on your face. Bear his words in your heart. Remember them. Improve on them. He does a great favour by speaking thus. — The Mahabharata Shreya (beneficence) is sought for liberation. —
The Upanishads  |
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
