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Child soldiers They should imbibe values, not fight wars The UN Security Council, by approving of measures to prevent children from serving as soldiers, has brought into sharp focus the issue of misuse of youngsters in “war zones”. Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, Colombia, Sudan, Uganda, Congo, Somalia, the Philippines, Burundi and Ivory Coast are among 41 countries where at least 2.5 lakh children earn their living by performing the duties of a combatant.
Policy and public
opinion
Buchman’s crusade
Dateline
Washington Mumbai
shows urban India’s decay Delhi
Durbar
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High fire The
business of drilling for oil is a hazardous operation on the best of days, making safety a critical factor at oil rigs. The accident at the Bombay High - North (BHN) oil rig off the Mumbai coast once again exposes a niggling safety gap at ONGC. Fires are actually a routine occurrence at oil fields, and BHN itself had a big one three years ago. Staff are trained to contain most with minimal damage. There are some that get out of hand – the present accident was evidently caused by Shipping Corporation vessel MVS Suraksha, which set off the fire after a collision with the rig. How much the heavy rain and high tide was a factor is yet to be ascertained. While no cost can be put on the lives lost, production of a staggering 110,000 barrels of oil and gas a day, 15 per cent of the country’s output, has been curtailed. The Indian Coast Guard and the Navy have once again proved their mettle by battling bad weather and darkness to rescue over 350 people of the estimated 384 who were on the platform. While the platform was completely destroyed, the ONGC has claimed credit for containing the fire, by a combination of “automatic actuation measures and manual interventions.” The nightmare of `hell-fighting’ a prolonged oil well fire, particularly challenging in an offshore rig, has thankfully been averted. Also, encouraging is the ONGC’s promise of re-establishing 70 per cent of the capacity in four weeks’ time – one would expect that from a public sector behemoth that is India’s only company to cross the Rs 10,000-crore profit mark. The economic losses are going to be high, with estimates exceeding Rs 10,000 crore (over $ 2 billion), and the insurance amounts of US $ 195 million for the platform and $ 60 million for the MVS vessel will prove inadequate cover. The BHN redevelopment project, which was originally set to be completed ahead of schedule in December this year, will now be set back. The country can ill-afford a high cost accident of this nature.
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Child soldiers The
UN Security Council, by approving of measures to prevent children from serving as soldiers, has brought into sharp focus the issue of misuse of youngsters in “war zones”. Sri Lanka, Nepal, Myanmar, Colombia, Sudan, Uganda, Congo, Somalia, the Philippines, Burundi and Ivory Coast are among 41 countries where at least 2.5 lakh children earn their living by performing the duties of a combatant. There is a significant drop of one lakh from the peak 3.5 lakh earlier. But this is no consolation. Why should any child be allowed to be misused for fighting wars, which is legally the job of those who are above 18 years in age? Children should be in schools and colleges wielding the pen, instead of the gun. Children are recruited not merely by non-state groups like those involved in insurgency activities. In many countries, they also serve as a part of the regular armed forces, as messengers, porters or sentries. They even do duties for laying landmines. They are sometimes preferred over grown-ups because child recruits do the same combat duties as anyone else does but at a far less remuneration. Since they mostly come from poverty-stricken families they easily accept even hazardous assignments. Any work is good enough for them if it enables them to earn their living. That is why most girl-soldiers —- whose number is nearly 50 per cent of the child-combatants —- with little persuasion agree to serve as “comfort girls” also. Surprisingly, the world has spared little time so far to end this human tragedy. Now that the Security Council has adopted a resolution, though after a long wrangling, to stop this crime against humanity, efforts should be speeded up to save the youngsters from such exploitation. Fears are being expressed that they can easily be indoctrinated to undertake suicide “missions” by religious extremists. The situation may take a turn for the worse if the issue of child soldiers is not taken up with the urgency it deserves. The world will have to concentrate more on the resolution of persisting conflicts and the eradication of extreme poverty, the two basic causes for the continuing abuse of youngsters as soldiers.
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Music is spiritual. The music business is not. — Van Morrison
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Policy and public opinion
IF the overheated and ongoing debate on the nuclear deal between India and the United States has proved anything it is that in this country even the most sensitive national security issues become almost instantly a football of partisan politics. As after the Shakti series of nuclear tests in May 1998, so now, partisanship and acrimony have distorted the public discourse. Both the trenchant critics of the July 18 agreement between the Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, and the US President, Mr. George Bush, and the somewhat staid defenders of it have had their say elaborately and repetitively, generating far more heat than light. Ultimately, the collective judgment of Parliament would prevail. But the problem is that even a majority verdict loses its shine if the gulf between the majority and the minority is wide and their schism bitter, especially on nuclear policy that calls for, in Dr. Singh’s own words, “consensus and continuity”. It is in this context that some aspects of the current contention deserve the attention they haven’t yet received. The first is the reaction in the US to the Bush-Manmohan deal that so many here — including those who had personally negotiated inconclusively a similar though not identical arrangement with Washington — have denounced so vehemently. Intriguingly, the American reaction has been a mirror image of that in India. The ink on the deal was not yet dry when reports from the U S capital spoke of a “firestorm” of protests against President Bush’s decision to “relax” the existing super-strict nuclear regime in India’s favour. However, the protesters were known “Ayatollahs of nonproliferation”, entrenched in the US Congress and more so in the cloistered corridors of the State Department. More noteworthy was a subsequent newspaper article by Mr. Strobe Talbott, Deputy Secretary of State during the Clinton years, who held marathon discussions with the former Indian Foreign Minister, Mr Jaswant Singh, and can, therefore, be counted as the authentic voice of the Democratic Party. He had been confidently predicting that whatever the Bush administration’s rhetoric its policy towards India on the nuclear issue would be no different from that of President Clinton. Now that he has been proved wrong and President Bush has shown a healthy respect for the Indian point of view, he has launched an all-out attack on the present occupant of the White House. Indeed, Mr. Talbott has levelled against Mr. Bush of exactly the charge that Dr Manmohan Singh’s critics — particularly from the BJP camp — have hurled at the good doctor: that he has “sold out” on the nation’s nuclear policy. Surprisingly, he is not alone in saying this. Mr. Walter Andersen, an Old India hand who has headed the South Asian section of the Intelligence and Research (INR) Bureau of the State Department and now teaches at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced Studies, in his article, has made the same point but very differently. Personally, he is supportive of the India-America nuclear deal. But he does add that the majority view in the US is closer to that of Mr. Talbott than his own. Most Americans, he adds, believe that India has somehow inveigled Mr. Bush to “abandon” America’s established nuclear policy. A bilateral deal in which both sides are guilty of a sell-out is a strange conundrum. The second point that is recognised by many but is articulated by only a few is that the strident and, at times utterly untenable, attack on the Manmohan-Bush deal has less to do with its merits than it has with the deep and lasting distrust of the US in this country among various sections of the people, not just among those politically motivated. An American administration that believes it to be in American interest to befriend and build up India into a major world power must ponder this seriously. The Indian distrust and suspicion of the US is not without basis. Over the years the US has let down this country so often that few accept its bona fides. Leave alone the rebuff Jawaharlal Nehru got for his overtures to Washington for cooperation, including in the military field, in 1949. The instant and welcome military and economic aid that John F. Kennedy offered this country after the border war with China in 1962 had evaporated very fast. In 1965, the US was expecting Pakistan to win the war it had launched to wrest Kashmir. During the war for the liberation of Bangladesh, it had tilted towards Yahya Khan. In 1978, President Carter reneged on America’s contractual commitments to supply fuel for Tarapur. The 1985 Rajiv-Reagan agreement on cooperation in science and technology remained a dead letter, and so on and on. In a TV programme on the present issue, while the participants screamed at one another, the audience gave nearly 80 per cent support to the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement. At the same time, 60 per cent of the same audience also voiced its complete disbelief in American promises or good faith. The other side of the coin is that the Indian government and the ruling party (or combination of parties) also have a duty, indeed a need, to educate public opinion about the changing circumstances and consequent changes in policies of various countries so that the present is not held hostage to the past. Unfortunately, nothing of the kind happens most of the time. In the present case, the Manmohan Singh government is unable even to convince its Leftist supporters that the agreement is in India’s best interests. To his credit, Dr. Manmohan Singh did take the leaders of the BJP - including Mr. Vajpayee, Mr. L. K. Advani and Mr. Jaswant Singh — into confidence about the broad contours of the cooperation agreement in the works. All the details he could not have disclosed. The Prime Minister extended the same courtesy to the CPM General Secretary, Mr. Prakash Karat, evidently to no avail. However, the problem is much deeper. On an issue on which the public at large is disturbed, it has to be addressed, either by the leader or through cadres that have been adequately informed themselves. Briefings to opinion makers in the privacy of the PMO or the Foreign Office are not enough; nor are televised excerpts from Press conferences adequate, never mind the sound bites. It is time to hark back to the era of Jawaharlal Nehru. He ruled India not by the formidable weight of his personality alone. He governed it principally by the microphone.
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Buchman’s crusade
When
I was in Cambridge in 1951, I used to come across a pleasant English undergraduate from Trinity Hall. Austin Arnold had an earnest face and had the stances of a professional do-gooder. Quite a few times he wanted to know why I was looking peaky and if he could offer me any pills to improve my condition. He used to accost other people as well with the same anxious look on his face. Later on it transpired that he belonged to the Moral Re-Armament Movement, which was then in vogue. After a few discreet enquiries certain facts came to light which seemed rather intriguing. The movement was founded by Frank Buchman after he witnessed a miracle in a church in Keswick. Mr Buchman claimed that he experienced a vision of Christ and we also know that he was at the time tottering on the edge of a nervous breakdown. Even if it was the product of a fevered imagination, Mr Buchman himself genuinely believed in what he saw and from then on acted like a man inspired to work for a “Christ-led world untrammelled by sin.” Those who had seen Mr Buchman could not get over the fact that neither in appearance, manner, utterances and judgement does this man conform to one’s normal idea of a holy man. In fact, Mr Buchman had a taste for high society and was a master of pomp and platitude and even when conversing in homelier terms, he could be terribly banal. According to him religion was like a nice, thick, juicy steak with onions and French fries which one simply could not help liking. Somehow, one got the impression that he was a self-sanctified humbug who took advantage of the despair lurking inside human beings and propagated a religious movement which believed in instant perfection. The MRA was authoritarian in its methods. It rejected free discussion and practised the dangerous and deadly doctrine that the end justified the means. By seeming to proclaim the possibility of instant perfection, it raised hopes that could not often be fulfilled. The MRA gave the impression that there were superior beings who, in some areas at least, could be trusted to think for us. One can imagine how this attitude can lead to harsh obscurantist excesses. Don’t we all know that where blind faith flourishes, intellectual vigilance often decays? Goodness knows where Austin Arnold is today and whether there are people like him who look for recruits to their movement by putting on an air of solicitude and asking personal questions often bordering on impertinence. I presume the movement faded away long ago like cults that suddenly become fashionable and lose their bearings once the founder disappear from the scene. When established churches fail to inspire their flock and abandon their responsibilities, MRA- like movements step into the breach. It was not handicapped by any sense of humility and somehow was able to pursue its aims with every kind of salesman’s gimmick. Its too late to know now whether Moral Re-Armament became a shield against the vicissitudes of this world - was it just a chimera?
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Dateline
Washington To
the casual observer, India might seem to be a “weak link” in the international non-proliferation regime. But New Delhi has compiled a track record of controlling proscribed dual-use exports that compares favourably with most signatories to the export control regimes, according a new report published by the Centre for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia. Noting that India is a significant potential source of advanced dual-use technologies, which has also refrained from joining the Non-Proliferation Treaty or any of the multilateral export control arrangements, namely the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Australia Group, the Missile Technology Control Regime, and the Wassenaar Arrangement, the report’s authors — Anupam Srivastava and Seema Gahlaut — point out that India nevertheless has a “decades-old” system of export controls. With the exception of a few cases in which forbidden dual-use items were transferred out of the country without government approval, India’s track record compares favourably with most advanced countries that are members of the multilateral regimes. “The explanation for this seemingly anomalous behaviour is straightforward: India thinks of itself as a responsible international player whose domestic capabilities must never contribute to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or undermine regional or international security,” the report says. Dr Gahlaut, Director of the South Asia Programme at the Centre for International Trade & Security at the University of Georgia, said U.S. concerns are founded on the possibility of diversion of U.S. technology from civilian to weapons of mass destruction programmes in India. This is “because different divisions of the DAE (Department of Atomic Energy) and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation), for instance, work on both civilian projects and India’s WMD projects,” she told The Tribune. “This is where the issue of firewalls - separating civilian from WMD projects — comes in.” Dr Srivastava, Director of the Asia programme at the Centre for International Trade and Security, said the possibility of the growing dual use sector in India “trying to beat Indian export control laws and/or trying to step in where A.Q. Khan’s network left off,” was worrying for the Americans. Dr. Khan’s nuclear black market was discovered to have proliferated to rogue nations across the globe. “If the IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency) and others are to be believed, the A.Q. network was just a tip of the iceberg — it is a lucrative business, which will become more lucrative as supply gets limited [more countries institute laws and procedures to control sensitive technologies],” Dr Srivastava told The Tribune. Indian Customs procedures, while extensive, focus on revenue collection and import controls rather than export controls and interdictions. By training and equipment, interdictions today do not go much beyond stopping explosives and hazardous materials, he added. Both Dr Gahlaut and Dr. Srivastava noted the urgent need for product-identification training to Customs officials to eliminate or reduce the risk of an unscrupulous exporter deliberately “mislabeling” a prohibited item to get it past the Customs, a risk that will only grow with the rising share of dual-use items in India’s exports. And, there is also the possibility that some end-uses and end-users that are of concern to the U.S. may be deemed OK by the Indian authorities. “These are partly political issues,” Dr. Srivastava said. “India’s control list does not mirror the U.S. list or the lists of multilateral regimes because (1) India does not produce some of the items and (2) India is not a member of these regimes, so is not obligated to adopt an identical list.” Similarly, Dr Gahlaut added, “India and the U.S. do not see the same countries as countries of concern - or at least to the same extent. There is, in principle, a possibility that even
when India may see country X as of concern (like the U.S.) it could go ahead and approve of export of items to a particular civilian project in X whereas the U.S. might deny all exports to X.” The international community has been concerned about the possibility of proliferation of WMD-related technology from India, especially since the second round of Indian nuclear tests in May 1998, which ended the moratorium India imposed on itself following its first round of tests, in May 1974. The U.S. administration insisted on adding export controls to the U.S.-India agenda as one of five benchmarks toward which India had to show progress in order to assure the international community that it is a responsible state. The focus on strengthening export controls has continued in subsequent U.S.-India agreements, including the High Technology Cooperation Group that was started in 2003, and the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) that was initiated by President Bush and then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2004. The NSSP envisages incremental and reciprocal steps by each side leading to bilateral cooperation in four areas — civilian space programmes, civilian nuclear activities, high-technology trade and missile defence — with export controls as the “enabling mechanism” for this cooperation.
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Mumbai shows urban India’s decay The
torrential downpour that devoured Mumbai, killed innocents and crippled life, leaving India’s financial and entertainment capital gasping for breath, is symptomatic of the growing urban decay amid glitz and poverty. Mumbai’s unprecedented flooding reveals all that has gone wrong with a country that is an IT and nuclear power but lacks a basic, working drainage system. Right from the days when New Delhi discarded four decades of semi-socialist policies to embrace a free-market economy, it became a fashion among the chattering classes to assert that India was poised to become another Singapore. For many of us who had the opportunity to live in that city-state, this was always amusing, to say the least. But the Mumbai that failed its citizens is also a municipality! So why does one municipality succeed where another collapses? Why do people in Singapore walk or drive without much worry during torrential rains while those in Mumbai wade through waist deep water (if they can walk) or are forced to put up on rooftops and in buses and trains that won’t move? Without exception, Indian cities and towns, both old and new, have over the decades become hell-holes thanks largely to unplanned growth, unending migration from villages and the complete lack of discipline - epitomised by the Indian male who doesn’t bat an eyelid before peeing along the pavements although he would never dare do this in Dubai, Singapore, London or New York. No wonder, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh remarked: “I am convinced that Indian cities cannot continue to develop in the manner in which they have done in the past few decades.” The world’s population has doubled in the last 40 years, but the urban numbers have jumped by five times. Mumbai, already choking, will become the second most populous city with 22 million souls by 2015. How will it cope? The myth in India, even among those who are educated and should know better, is that a Singapore is built with shopping malls, classy cinema halls, beauty shows, long-range missiles and satellites and, of course, the world of computers. But no progress will have any meaning if people end up living in homes that get no potable water, cry for uninterrupted power supply, when residential areas are considered privileged if they receive water supply for two hours a day, or where roads in even upscale neighbourhoods are not cleaned for days or when even drains are encroached upon without realising the long-term consequences. Mumbai may be home to the rich and beautiful, but it figures very low on the quality scale. A Forbes analysis ranked it 163rd among 218 cities. Another survey, called the Hardship Index, put the city at number 124 out of 130. The local Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is among the world’s richest municipal bodies but that does not get reflected in the quality of life! Can Mumbai ever become a Singapore?
— Indo-Asian News Service
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Delhi Durbar Lok
Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee is dismayed that the assurances given to him by the political parties
on the smooth conduct of the House were just lip-service. When agitated parliamentarians castigated the lathi charge in Gurgaon with the Left parties were in the lead, the Speaker kept observing that discipline was completely lacking in the
House. At one point he was compelled to warn the parliamentarians that if they continued to behave in this manner, he would be compelled to take disciplinary action against them. Free for all in Gurgaon Dr Manmohan Singh and Ms Sonia Gandhi were highly perturbed by the Gurgaon incident and told the Haryana Chief Minister in no uncertain terms to get his act together. It became a virtually free for all after the spark had been lit by the
agitators. The overzealous and ill-equipped police sought to teach the agitators a lesson. The media (read TV news channels) has been lambasted for being highly insensitive and partisan in its approach. Jaya’s house flooded Rajya Sabha MP Jaya Bachchan, who raised in the House the issue of disruption of normal life in Mumbai due to rains, appeared extremely anxious about the well-being of her family members. In the course of a chat with a Tribune correspondent in the Parliament House complex, Mrs Bachchan said that her house in Juhu had been flooded and her mother-in-law was not well. Abhishek had to wade through waist-deep water.
“If Abhishek had water till his waist, it must be more than four feet,” she exclaimed. Naqvi meets UP CM BJP Vice-President Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi’s recently interface with Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav had some tongues wagging in his own party. This meeting happened at the residence of Naqvi’s new neighbour, Amar Singh, who was having a house warming party. Naqvi’s exchanges with Yadav, considered the darling of Muslims in Uttar Pradesh, added a new dimension to the meeting. Naqvi is embarrassed and hard put to explain that his face-to-face with Yadav had no political significance. Meira Kumar’s work style Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Meira Kumar takes a lot of her ministerial colleagues into her confidence in finalising proposals which get cleared quickly by the
Cabinet. Sources say that she organises meetings of ministers to decide on policies in her ministry. While formulating issues pertaining to the Scheduled Tribes, she sought the advice of Tribal Affairs Minister P.R. Kyndiah and Power Minister P.M. Sayeed. Contributed by Satish Misra, S. Satyanarayanan, Tripti Nath and Prashant Sood.
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From the pages of EXODUS TO SIMLA
Custom consecrates many an abuse, but it has never reconciled public opinion to the monstrous system under which the responsible rulers of 300 millions systems under which the responsible rulers of 300 millions of people deliberately get as far away from their charge as possible for as long a time as possible. The original intention of Lord Lawrence was to take to the Himalayan station a small staff only of each office, for the purpose of carrying on the more important details of the business of administration during the six hottest months of the year. Even in that modified form the scheme was almost wholly objectionable. But as all India knows, what has happened since the days of Lord Lawrence is that year after year more and more offices and officials have been added to the Simla list.... Was ever such a system evolved or tolerated outside India? And this is called Government!
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And if you fear you may not be able to do justice by the orphans, then marry women who please you, two, three, or four; but if you fear you may not be able to treat them equitably, then marry one, or a ward in your custody: that would be more fitting, so you do not go awry. — Book of quotations on Islam It is not easy to live among material objects and give up all attachment to them. The wise person is not disheartened by failures. He tries again and again till he masters the art. Perseverance and determination are facilitators to the way of success. — The Mahabharata Good leaders make people feel that they’re at the very heart of things, not at the periphery. Everyone feels that he or she makes a difference to the success of the organisation. When that happens, people feel cantered and that gives their work meaning. — Book of quotations on success Fearful of the consequences of his deeds, man goes to many refuges — to sacred trees, to holy rivers, to remote ice-capped peaks. But none of these can deliver him from pain. None of these are safe refuges. — The Buddha
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