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Killing spree Privacy for sale |
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Guilty at large SC order a blot on the Gujarat government THE Supreme Court’s strictures on the Gujarat Police for its failure to arrest the main accused in the Naroda Patiya riot case show how the Narendra Modi government has been trying to scuttle justice by protecting those involved in the 2001 riots.
Don’t forget the poor in Asia
Pound for pound
The Pappus of Kolkata ‘Men reduced to sperm donors’ Why the India deal is good
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Killing spree THE killing of a Congress MLA, his son, two officials and six others by Naxalites in Mahbubnagar district’s Narayanpet is the biggest such attack since the Andhra Pradesh government lifted the ban on the extremists. This happened the day the Prime Minister told the nation from the ramparts of the Red Fort that the government was determined to address the problem by tackling the socio-economic factors responsible for it. It was in May 2004 that the government of Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy opted not to extend the ban on Naxalites amidst optimism that talks would persuade the latter to give up the politics of the gun. However, after the collapse of the process towards negotiations, it was clear that the Maoists would revive their violent campaign. And they have struck a deadly blow, taking advantage of the absence of a ban to mobilise their resources. If the state government then was inveigled into the preliminaries for negotiations, subsequently it has been caught napping while the Maoists readied for a fresh onslaught. Less than two weeks ago the Union Government resolved to adopt a ‘zero tolerance’ policy towards Naxalites. While not rejecting negotiations, its unified strategy was explicit that laying down of arms by the Maoists would be a precondition for any talks. This was no doubt dictated by the experience in Andhra Pradesh where the People’s War Group insisted on retaining arms even amidst preparations for talks. Yet, if the latest burst of gunfire is any indication, the Rajasekhara Reddy administration does not appear to have learnt the lessons it ought to have. This is underscored by the fact that while the situation in some of the other states is improving, in Andhra Pradesh there is an upswing in Naxalite violence. In the first six months of this year there have been nearly 350 incidents of Naxalite action, which is close to the number reported for the whole of 2004. The figures suggest that the so-called ‘neutralisation’ of armed cadres touted by the government has done little to deprive the Maoists of their firepower and strike capability. Any policy that ignores the priorities of ending the violence and disarming them as a precondition for talks is bound to be self-defeating, if not an opening for more attacks.
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Privacy for sale THE Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corner programme has uncovered yet another instance of some unscrupulous call centre operators in Gurgaon who are willing to sell private details of their international customers, in this case, Australians. The industry is still recovering from the expose in June by the UK’s Sun magazine, about another case when a call centre operator offered details of British banking customers to an undercover reporter. The Australian media followed it up and found that the ground realities had, unfortunately, not changed since then. It is obvious that the industry has not learnt the lesson and tightened security. Privacy of individuals is taken very seriously abroad and most nations have strict laws to safeguard such data. One of the mainstays of offsourcing industry has been the call centres. There will always be unscrupulous elements who will seek to exploit their position for personal gains, but the industry, on the whole, must evolve transparent and effective safeguards to prevent any data theft. After all, it was not just a few names and addresses that were being offered for sale, it was information in batches of a thousand identities! Nasscom head Kiran Karnik is right in defending the overall performance of the industry, but more proactive measures should be taken to inspire confidence among potential clients. Of course, data theft is prevalent the world over. Such instances in India are minor when compared to a recent breach at a US company that processes credit card transactions, which exposed some 40 million people worldwide. The main attraction for the outsourcing industry is the relatively low cost and good quality of labour that India provides. Such security breaches damage the credibility of the entire BPO industry in the country. Security must be tightened and the perpetrators of such crimes must be identified and given deterrent punishment.
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Guilty at large THE Supreme Court’s strictures on the Gujarat Police for its failure to arrest the main accused in the Naroda Patiya riot case show how the Narendra Modi government has been trying to scuttle justice by protecting those involved in the 2001 riots. The court’s observations while rejecting the anticipatory bail petition of the main accused, Shashikant alias Tino Yuvraj, speak volumes for the government’s blatant attempt to shield the guilty. Despite repeated directions from the apex court, the Director-General of Police has failed to apprehend the culprit. Surprisingly, the DGP’s report to the court did not mention whether the police had initiated moves to attach the property of the accused to secure his presence. Significantly, the court has sought the intervention of the Prime Minister, the Union Home Minister and the Gujarat Governor to deal with the brazen manner in which the state government has been flouting its orders. It, perhaps, feels that as the state government cares two hoots about the rule of law, the Centre must force it to comply with the court’s directives. Naroda Patiya in Ahmedabad was the site of the worst massacre in which 110 people were killed. The witnesses had identified several accused but the police case names only seven persons. Till today none of the 46 accused in the case has been punished mainly because of the dilly-dallying tactics of the police. This is indeed deplorable because under the Constitution, the police is expected to investigate the cases properly and protect the life and property of all citizens. The manner in which the police has handled the riot cases shows its absolute failure to fulfil its constitutional duty to uphold the rule of law. Clearly, the police is either biased or incompetent. The Supreme Court’s observation that it is either “in connivance with the accused or thoroughly worthless” should goad the police to understand the incalculable harm it has been inflicting on the system and understand its responsibility and professional commitment towards a law-abiding society.
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He who would write and can’t write can surely review. — American proverb
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Don’t forget the poor in Asia
THE liberal elite in developed countries — such individuals include political leaders as
well as pop singers — have of late been talking a lot about the need to do something to improve the economic conditions of the poor who live in Africa. By way of contrast, Asia is perceived to be a “happening” continent that has China and India (together accounting for nearly 40 per cent of the world’s population and among the fastest growing economies) as well as the dynamic “tiger” nations of East and South-East Asia. What is often not realised is the fact is that Asia is also home to 14 of the least developed countries in the world in which live 260 million people. And this number excludes the poor living in “developing” countries like China and India. The United Nations classifies 50 countries as least developed countries (LDCs), of which 34 are in Africa, 14 in Asia and one each in the Arab states (Yemen) and the Caribbean (Haiti). The poor countries in Asia are a diverse lot — Bangladesh is the most populous LDC with more than 134 million people while the smallest is the island of Tuvalu with a population of less than 11,000, lower than the number of people who live in certain residential colonies in a typical Indian city. Over and above island-states like Kiribati, Maldives, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste and Vanuatu, the LDCs in the Asia-Pacific region include land-locked countries such as Afghanistan, Bhutan, Laos and Nepal — geography has created a special set of constraints thwarting development in these countries. The two other LDCs in the list of 14 not mentioned so far are Cambodia and Myanmar. The 14 LDCs in Asia and the Pacific (or 28 per cent of all LDCs) account for 37 per cent of the total population of all LDCs in the world. During the decade of the 1990s, the per capita income of these 14 LDCs went up by 1.5 times on an average while exports more than trebled. The adult literacy rate in these countries went up from 60 per cent in 1990 to 71 per cent in 2000, life expectancy rose from 58 years to 62 years and the infant mortality rate dropped from 77 (per 1,000 live births) to 52 in this period. Despite these significant improvements in indicators of the quality of life in these 14 LDCs, the per capita annual income of people living in these countries in 2003 stood at only $ 513. This figure is higher than the $ 310 average per capita income in other LDCs. However, this level of per capita income is one-fourth the $ 2,130 per capita income of the population of the entire Asia-Pacific region. This is a clear indication of the sharp inequality that prevails in the region and the relatively poor performance of the LDCs in the Asia-Pacific gets overshadowed due to the “tyranny of averages”. The statistics quoted are contained in a recent report entitled “Voices of the Least Developed Countries of Asia and the Pacific: Achieving the Millennium Development Goals Through a Global Partnership”, prepared by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP). (This writer was associated with the preparation of the report.) The economic and social development experiences of Asian countries vary widely. Even among the 14 LDCs in the region, some countries have made significant progress and stand at the threshold of graduation from the list of LDCs, others have stagnated for decades on end. None of the LDCs in the Asia-Pacific region have been able to graduate from their LDC status. In fact, the number of countries categorised as LDCs went up in 2003 with the addition of Timor-Leste. Samoa has been identified as eligible for graduation in 2006. While Maldives qualified for graduation in 2003, the December 2004 tsunami caused a major setback revealing the fragility of the progress made. The UN Millennium Declaration of September 2000 expressed the commitment of all countries in the world to eliminate extreme poverty and ensure the right to development for everyone. To achieve these objectives, eight goals on development and poverty eradication, known as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), were established, the last of which calls for a global partnership to help the LDCs come closer to achieving the MDGs. As Hafiz A Pasha, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Kim Hak-Su, Executive Secretary of the UNESCAP point out in the preface to the report: “In most of these (LDCs in the Asia-Pacific) …overall progress towards the achievement of the MDGs has been imbalanced, with success in some areas marred by failure in others.” The report states that the dynamism of Asia represents both a challenge and an opportunity — resources could be generated or inequalities could increase contributing to growing tensions. “Given the increasing marginalisation of the LDCs of Asia and the Pacific in the global development debate, the world’s attention needs to be refocused on them,” the report notes. It argues for extending tariff and quota-free access for the exports of these countries, programmes of debt relief and increasing official development assistance to improve the lot of the poor in these countries. The report highlights the chronic savings and investment gap in these LDCs and the need to foster political stability and institutional capacity building in many of these countries. The report contains many startling facts and figures. Income inequality has gone up in countries like Bangladesh and Cambodia despite a decline in the incidence of poverty. Import duties on apparel exported from Bangladesh, Cambodia and Nepal to the United States were three times higher than the net disbursed bilateral aid received by these countries. In Afghanistan, only 2.5 per cent of the land area is covered by forests and even these would disappear in 25 years at the current rate of deforestation. The tasks that lie ahead are stupendous. At present levels of progress, an estimated 40 million people in these 14 LDCs in the Asia-Pacific region will not have access to safe drinking water in 2015. That year more than 16 million people living in Bangladesh alone would be illiterate. The UNDP argues that the plea to help these poor countries “is not an argument for charity, but one for the mutual benefit of LDCs and their partners, on commercial and strategic grounds, apart from being morally right.” The argument for development assistance, the report says, rests on a “win-win partnership”. But is the developed world listening?
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Pound for pound
WITH girls all around vying for sundry crowns, it was hardly surprising that my cousin Angel had set her sights on joining the league of our extraordinary beauty queens. She made countless wishes on rainbows and even asked God during one of her daily talkathons with Him to show His love for her by making her win a crown. Now that was surely asking a lot from Him. It was not as if Angel was not a healthy mix of beauty and brains. But her figure told a different story altogether. It was hardly a shock when a precocious two-year-old, on making her acquaintance, excitedly told his mother he had spotted a cylinder. She later told me apologetically that her son was in the process of learning about shapes. A hankering for CDs (the drinkable, not the playable ones) and an addiction to fried delicacies had plumped her up. Cousin dear had brains and spirit in plenty but some urgent measures needed to be put in place if she had to contend for a crown. An hour-glass figure was only mandatory, we thought. But there was yet another matter weighing on our minds. The hopefully dejected girl had a skewed “centre of gravity”. With her habit of making wide, sweeping gestures, she swept off everything in her way. Angel was soon transformed into a picture of self-restraint. Ignoring delicacies and CDs, she heroically stuck to soups and salads. We awoke to the sound of her hops, skips and jumps. My cousin’s efforts soon bore fruit. Where there is an Angel there is God. Her transformation from a cow into a gazelle short-circuited those at home and in the friendly neighbourhood no end. But her “centre of gravity” still needed to be taken care of. She gradually learnt to hold her errant hands back from going into excursions in the vicinity. To polish her posture, she borrowed tomes on Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde, spending hours walking with the books on her head. With all this drama in our lives, she was soon moving around like a ship gliding in water. One morning, returning from an outstation trip, I came home to find a dreamy Angel lolling on the sofa, gulping down aerated drinks to the accompaniment of assorted snacks. She blurted out sheepishly, “Didi, I am engaged.” She would be flying to England “with him” after the sacred pheras. But was that reason enough to sink her resolve about load shedding, I queried. My wise cousin proclaimed in all seriousness: “Even if I put on a few pounds I guess they would only add to my stature as an NRI”. Oblivious of my shocked look, she broke into peals of laughter. At the indisputable logic offered, I could only nod my head in assent. After all, who can put up a fight against pounds. |
The Pappus of Kolkata It has always been a wonder how the hand-pulled rickshaw survived in the “City of Joy” for so long, when other cities and towns bade adieu to the contraption. More wondrous is that a “communist” government, which has been ruling the state uninterruptedly for three decades, has tolerated the reprehensible system of man pulling man. All that was necessary was to replace such rickshaws with cycle rickshaws as in other places. Surely, the West Bengal government did not need a World Bank loan to replace the 6,000 or so hand-pulled rickshaws. What was lacking was the will to do so. It was not that the rickshaw-puller was not ubiquitous. Remember any movie shot in Kolkata, there would invariably have been a scene where the bhadralok, attired in starched white dhoti and panjabi, moving in such a vehicle reading the latest on the Prague Spring. How is it that it did not strike the conscience of the people that the vehicle should have been banned a long time ago? Writers like Dominique Lapierre have made the hand-pulled rickshaw a metaphor for Kolkata. Why blame them when even for many Indians, the hand-pulled rickshaw symbolises the city on the Hooghly? It is a pity that the vehicle has its enthusiasts too, though none of them would have ever pulled one and experienced how dehumanising it is to pull a fellow human being to make a living. One of the strange arguments in its favour is that during rainy season it is easier for the rickshaw-puller to negotiate flooded roads and wade through manholes than if he pedals a cycle rickshaw. After all, man can walk so long as the water is below his nose level, while the best of vehicles — BMWs and Mercedes included — stop when water enters their spark plugs! Only the insensitive can defend the rickshaw on such specious grounds. The dependency of the Calcuttan (the city had not yet been officially christened Kolkata) on the rickshaw-puller was brought home to me when I visited the city for the first time two and a half decades ago. We stayed in a Bihar government guesthouse on Bishop Lafrey Road. The guesthouse, which had an old-world charm about it, was in a state of utter disrepair. But the caretaker found pride in pointing out that Satyajit Ray stayed in the adjoining building. It is not known whether the master artist, who showed the world that good films were produced on this side of the Suez also, personally patronised the hand-pulled rickshaws or not. But the rickshaw-puller was a permanent fixture in his films. For the rickshaw-pullers of Kolkata, rains bring good tidings. Half an hour of rains is sufficient to flood the entire city. It was pathetic to find them ferrying people trapped in buildings. They were in great demand. “Oh, they have a whale of a time”, I heard someone comment. Of course, rains did not affect them because they had makeshift plastic caps to wear! This must have been comforting to the conscience of the commuters using their services. Next day, who would bother to find out how many of them would have contracted cold, if not pneumonia. In any case, the rickshaws do not belong to them. They only hire them from their owners. If one man falls sick, there is always another to ply the rickshaw the next day. That is how the people have been “commuting” in Kolkata, I understand, close to two centuries. In the other Communist bastion that is Kerala, the hand-pulled rickshaw went out of vogue about four decades ago. This writer has a faint memory of seeing a rickshaw-puller in Kochi. But the memory of Pappu, a great character in P. Kesav Dev’s Odayilninnu (From the Gutter) is as sharp as ever. Pappu was a rickshaw-puller who in his prime commanded a price because he was both strong and swift. But within a couple of decades, he had become old and was suffering from tuberculosis. The novel ends when the tiny girl, whom he picked up from the gutter and painstakingly brought up, is happily married and spends her first night with her groom. In the distance she hears the cough of Pappu. And that is the cough that haunted me when I saw the rickshaw-pullers of Kolkata at work on that rainy day. Nobody ever bothered about the Pappus of Kolkata. The political parties were not interested in them because they were mostly migrants from states like Bihar and Orissa and they did not have votes in Kolkata. In any case, their life span was so limited that they could not have been cultivated as future vote banks, either.
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‘Men reduced to sperm donors’ THE veteran BBC newsreader Michael Buerk has complained that “almost all the big jobs in broadcasting [are] held by women,” and that men have been reduced to “sperm donors”. The former Nine O’Clock News presenter, who now reads the news on BBC World, also said that the “shift in the balance of power between the sexes” has gone too far, saying that “life is now lived in accordance with women’s rules”. Buerk, who was promoting a new channel Five series, said that when he started making the programme he saw that changes that have taken place in modern society were reflected in his own experiences. “Almost all the big jobs in broadcasting were held by women — the controllers of BBC 1 television and Radio 4 for example. These are the people who decide what we see and hear,” he said in an interview with Radio Times. In October last year, another former director general, Alasdair Milne, sparked a furious response when he said that the dominance of female executives was to blame for too many “dumb, dumb, dumb” lifestyle and makeover shows. Ms Heggessey has been replaced as BBC 1 controller by a man, Peter Fincham, while Radio 4 is still run by Janice Hadlow. Buerk said that social changes were not only felt at the BBC, and that the majority of middle management positions were held by women — a development which has “changed the nature of almost every aspect of the marketplace”. He continued: “Products are made for women, cars are made for women — because they control what is being bought. “Look at the changes in the workplace. There is no manufacturing industry any more; there are no mines; few vital jobs require physical strength. “What we have now are lots of jobs that require people skills and multi-tasking - which women are a lot better at.” Buerk spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent before becoming one of the main anchors on the BBC’s flagship news programme, but he is still best-known for his reporting from the 1984 famine in Ethiopia. In the interview, he said that typically male characteristics have been sidelined. “The traits that have traditionally been associated with men - reticence, stoicism, single-mindedness - have been marginalised,” he said. Buerk said that the result is that men are becoming more like women. “Look at the men who are being held up as sporting icons — David Beckham and, God forbid, Tim Henman,” he said. He admitted that some changes have been for the good, but asked: “What are the men left with?” He said that, while men measure themselves in terms of their jobs, many traditionally male careers no longer exist. “Men gauge themselves in terms of their career, but many of those have disappeared,” he said. “All they are is sperm donors, and most women aren’t going to want an unemployable sperm donor loafing around and making the house look untidy. They are choosing not to have a male in the household.”
— The Independent |
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Why the India deal is good THE White House decision to ease restrictions on the transfer of civilian nuclear technology to India has been criticised with two arguments: that the United States “secured so little in return’’ from India and that the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which India did not sign, has been irreparably damaged. Both of these arguments are fallacious. The geological reality is that India has 31 percent of the world’s known deposits of a rare radioactive mineral, thorium, in addition to its substantial reserves of uranium. This has emboldened New Delhi to embark on an exponential expansion of its nuclear power generating capacity, utilizing imported uranium-fueled reactors at first but shifting progressively to thorium-based fast-breeder reactors now under construction or on the drawing board. Fast-breeders, which Japan is also building, are the key to energy independence, since they continuously “breed’’ never-ending new supplies of plutonium alongside their production of electricity. What this means is that India will dramatically multiply its inventory of fissile material in the years ahead. The administration has wisely recognized that it is imperative for the United States to bind India tightly to the global nonproliferation regime in order to make sure that this fissile material is not transferred to others. Even though it is not an NPT signatory, India has in practice observed Article One of the treaty, which bars such transfers, and the Indo-U.S. agreement concluded on July 18 formalizes and reinforces the Indian commitment to abide by nonproliferation norms. The President did get important concessions in return for his pledge to seek agreement from Congress ``to adjust U.S. laws and policies, and ... to adjust international regimes to enable full civil nuclear energy cooperation and trade with India.’’ New Delhi agreed to continue its moratorium on nuclear testing, pledged that it would not transfer ``enrichment and reprocessing technology to states that do not have them’’ and initiated measures to make its export control policies conform to the guidelines of the U.S.-led Nuclear Suppliers Group. India already has an impeccable record of safeguarding its nuclear secrets, in marked contrast to neighboring Pakistan. But the July 18 accord was linked to the enactment of strengthened export control legislation. Equally important, India has agreed to place all of its existing and future civilian nuclear reactors under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards. Elementary arithmetic underlines the wisdom of the administration’s initiative. India has a population of 1 billion that is expected to reach 1.2 billion within seven years. With an economic growth rate of 7 percent, it is rapidly emerging as a major power with conventional military clout, in addition to its nuclear weapons. At the same time, rapid population growth drives burgeoning energy demands that threaten its economic and political stability. With or without U.S. cooperation, New Delhi must escalate its nuclear power capacity, as well as increase its oil imports. France, Germany and Russia can provide reactors if the United States does not, but as members of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, they have been barred from doing so by the United States until now.
— LA Times-Washington Post |
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From the pages of Our Museums
The educative value of museums is little understood even by our educated countrymen. We do not think that of the thousands of Indians who visit the Lahore Central Museum, even one goes there with the object of studying the collections in the various sections. There can be no more profitable a manner of employing their time for school-boys than spending an hour or so every now and then over the Natural History cases; the fragments of ancient Hindu, Buddhistic and Greek sculpture; the specimens of Punjab woodcarving and other handicrafts, old and modern; and so forth. But we have never heard of classes from any of the local schools being taken to the Museum by their teachers and shown the many interesting things. It is a common thing in Europe and America for rich people to give handsome pecuniary help, or contribute collections of rare and beautiful things, to museums. But in this country, among the hundred and one things that are admitted on all hands to deserve support, the claim of museums is never heard.
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It is as hard to take success as it is failure. — Book of quotations
on success There can be no doubt that the founders of the great religions have been among the greatest and noblest men that the world has produced. — Book of quotations
on religion It is the mercy of my true Guru that has made me to know the unknown; I have learned from Him how to walk without feet, to see without eyes, to hear without ears, to drink without mouth, to fly without wings. — Kabir Food is the fuel of life. From it comes energy which sustains life. — The
Upanishadas |
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A REMNANT of the Raj — the hand-pulled rickshaw — will soon disappear from the streets of Kolkata. That is if West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadev Bhattacharjee has his way. It is a big “if” because his predecessor Jyoti Basu had made such a promise only to find that neither the rickshaw-owners nor the citizens of Kolkata were ready to say goodbye to this shame of a vehicle.