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EDITORIALS

Zahira’s lies
Will help the killers instead of nailing them
T
HE turnaround could not have been more stark. Zahira Sheikh was one of the biggest sufferers of the Gujarat riots with almost her entire family burnt to death before her eyes. But when it came to giving evidence in the infamous Best Bakery case, in which 14 persons were burnt alive, she changed her statements repeatedly.

Gains of cooperation
Common sense dawning in the North-West
T
HE Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana shared a common platform after jointly inaugurating the new Bhakra-Beas Management Board building in Chandigarh on Monday and, luckily, talked of cooperation in power and irrigation.



EARLIER STORIES
Commitment to Kabul
August 30, 2005
Crisis deferred
August 29, 2005

Consult NGOs before FMCC Bill is enacted
August 28, 2005

The Ken-Betwa message
August 27, 2005
Onus on parties
August 26, 2005
No confrontation, please
August 25, 2005
Law’s reach
August 24, 2005
Carrot and stick
August 23, 2005
Buta does a Lalu!
August 22, 2005
Partisan Governors won’t  preserve dharma
August 21, 2005
THE TRIBUNE SPECIALS
50 YEARS OF INDEPENDENCE

TERCENTENARY CELEBRATIONS

Rule of law violated
Punjab is not a banana republic
P
UBLIC pressure forced the Punjab Police to release Indian Express reporter Gautam Dheer within a day of his arrest. It is for the courts concerned to decide whether the police have any case at all against him or not.

ARTICLE

Emerging ‘Maoist corridor’
Government on the horns of a dilemma
by P.V. Ramana
T
HE presence and influence of the Naxalites are increasing dramatically and rapidly in various parts of the country while we remain engaged in endless debates on how to address the problem.

MIDDLE

Tryst with Urdu
by Samir Mukerjee
I
fell in love with Urdu in the year 1946 when the communal riots were ravaging Calcutta. My neighbour, Kaiser Morshed, used to visit us regularly with his elder brother, Akhtar. It was Kaiser who started reciting Urdu verses with a wealth of feeling and that was my very first introduction to this beautiful and musical language.

OPED

How Andhra was duped
by Ramesh Kandula
T
HE Volkswagen affair in Andhra Pradesh, nicknamed Hoaxwagen scam, is a classic case of what can go wrong when there is mindless competition among politicians to attract FDI into their states.

Dealing with terror in Sri Lanka
by Arup Chanda
S
ri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga now has no option but to choose between the devil and the deep sea. After the assassination of her Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, she can only ask her ministers to scramble for cover the next time an assassin takes a pot shot.

Asia feels heat of oil prices
by Evelyn Iritani
T
HE global economy has shown few ill effects from rising oil prices, but the latest surge is starting to exact a toll on Asian economies. In Thailand and Indonesia, where high fuel prices have sparked political protests, governments have slashed growth estimates for the year.


From the pages of

November 12, 1903


 REFLECTIONS


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Zahira’s lies
Will help the killers instead of nailing them

THE turnaround could not have been more stark. Zahira Sheikh was one of the biggest sufferers of the Gujarat riots with almost her entire family burnt to death before her eyes. But when it came to giving evidence in the infamous Best Bakery case, in which 14 persons were burnt alive, she changed her statements repeatedly. It appeared that instead of nailing the culprits, she was out to help them. Things did not stop at that. She even accused her saviour, Ms Teesta Setalvad of the Citizens for Justice and Peace, of keeping her in confinement for several months and compelling her to give false statements! Everyone knew that Zahira was being made to tell lies by someone. Now even the high-level committee appointed by the Supreme Court to look into the matter has come to the conclusion that it was likely that Zahira was induced to turn hostile. The word inducement has been carefully chosen by the committee. It has to be read in the light of recovery of unaccounted money from her account. Lies are clear from her repeated turnaround.

The report has also noted that when Zahira addressed a Press conference, BJP MLA Madhu Srivastava was present at the venue and he fired with his licensed firearm in front of reporters and the media. Although the committee has said that despite best efforts, it could not identify the person/persons responsible for the inducement, in the absence of concrete evidence, it has held that Ms Zahira, who once earned public sympathy out of her tragedy, had made concerted efforts and “has engaged herself in having cash/comforts from every possible corner”.

Whatever the inducements that made Zahira sell her soul for greed, her deed is not only making a mockery of the trial but also helping the very people who targeted her and hundreds of others. Her testimony can no longer be relied upon by the court while deliberating punishment for the Best Bakery killers.

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Gains of cooperation
Common sense dawning in the North-West

THE Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana shared a common platform after jointly inaugurating the new Bhakra-Beas Management Board building in Chandigarh on Monday and, luckily, talked of cooperation in power and irrigation. This is commendable, specially after the bitterness generated by the lingering water dispute between the two states and the unilateral scrapping of the inter-state water agreements by the Amarinder Singh government. The two leaders suggested interlinking of rivers and power grids to ensure better infrastructure in the region and wanted Himachal Pradesh to build upstream storages to improve irrigation and drinking water facilities. Hydel power being a cheap source of energy, such cooperation is the region’s need of the hour.

Although the Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister also recognises the need for a regional approach to development, he nurses the grievance that the hill state has been denied its share of free power from the projects executed by the BBMB due to the “negative attitude” of Punjab and Haryana. The two states have also opposed the tax holiday granted as part of a Central industrial package for Himachal Pradesh and other hill states. Mr Virbhadra Singh has publicly blamed Punjab for pressing the Centre to get the tax holiday curtailed to March 2007 from the original March 2010.

All inter-state issues will have to be addressed in the spirit of give and take by rising above petty politics and in the light of the advantages that can accrue from regional cooperation. Apart from power and water, the three states can also join hands in wooing private investment, promoting tourism, building roads, providing healthcare and developing IT and biotechnology facilities jointly instead of wasting their limited resources on separate ventures. If the European nations can form a union and Asian countries can come closer through ASEAN, why can’t Punjab, Haryana and Himachal Pradesh join hands and reap the gains of cooperation.

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Rule of law violated
Punjab is not a banana republic

PUBLIC pressure forced the Punjab Police to release Indian Express reporter Gautam Dheer within a day of his arrest. It is for the courts concerned to decide whether the police have any case at all against him or not. The public perception is that the police had acted in a vindictive manner against him for following up an alleged rape incident. What is of concern here is the manner in which he was arrested. The police virtually barged into his house at night, bundled him into a vehicle and drove away without as much as telling him why they were doing so. In the process, the police flouted every rule that governs arrest and detention of a citizen. No courtesies were extended to him or his family, who were even kept in the dark about his whereabouts for a long time.

The Mohali police behaviour was reminiscent of the days of militancy when, vested with extraordinary powers, they would pick up those who happened to cross their path. There are a large number of cases of human rights violations against the police still pending in various courts in the state. Sunday night’s episode is yet another proof that the mindset of the police that they are not answerable to anyone has not changed so far. In fact, what the police did to the reporter is what they routinely do in such cases. Imagine how Mr Dheer would have suffered if he was an ordinary citizen with no organisational might to fall back upon. He would have been suffering all kinds of indignities in the police lock-up with, perhaps, no escape in sight.

The performance of the Haryana police, which initially refused to register an FIR in what amounted to “abduction”, was no better, either. At the root of the problem is the police’s refusal to accept the fact that the rule of law has to govern their conduct. Otherwise, the police would have abided by the norms that govern questioning and arrest of persons, whom the police believe are guilty of some offence. Unfortunately, in Mr Gautam Dheer’s case, the due process of law was given a go-by, shocking not just journalists, but the entire citizenry. Steps must be taken to ensure that the police change their attitude.

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Thought for the day

(I) had rather be first in a village than second at Rome.

— Julius Caesar

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Emerging ‘Maoist corridor’
Government on the horns of a dilemma
by P.V. Ramana

THE presence and influence of the Naxalites are increasing dramatically and rapidly in various parts of the country while we remain engaged in endless debates on how to address the problem.

The Union Home Ministry conceded in its annual report for 2004-2005 that while the “over all quantum” of violence remained nearly unchanged, “the problem, however, has affected a larger area, in varying degrees”. At a meeting of Chief Ministers of Naxalite-affected states, on September 21, 2004, an official note circulated by the ministry said that 125 districts in 12 states are affected by Naxalite violence to varying degrees, while 24 more were being targeted. Strikingly, in 2003 the presence and influence of the Naxalites were limited to just 55 districts.

The Naxalites of the CPI-Maoist, according to well-informed sources, are making fervent attempts to penetrate into virgin territories in Uttaranchal — Nainital, Almora, Champawat, Pittoragarh and Udham Singh Nagar — in the North, Dharmapuri, Salem, Coimbatore and Madurai in the South, as well as areas such as Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri in West Bengal, from where they had once been completely ejected.

A disturbing, if not frightening, pattern emerges if, on a map of India, one were to look at the districts currently under the influence of the Naxalites, or being targeted. They might soon gain a continuous presence along the length and breadth of the country and thus carve out a north-south and east-west corridor; the later both below and above the Tropic of Cancer. It is in the intersection of these two corridors, Bastar in Central India’s Chhattisgarh, that the Maoist central leadership is said to be in hiding.

If the Maoists were to ever launch coordinated, simultaneous attacks along the east-west corridor, they would be able to nearly cut off peninsular India from the rest of the country. On the other hand, the north-south corridor can “virtually drive a wedge through the vital areas of the country, cutting off the rich north-eastern part of India from the rest of the country. This very large zone will have control over huge deposits of minerals, oils and industrialised territory”, and give the Maoists “a powerful bargaining chip”, as noted by Ranjit Kumar Gupta, who fought the Naxalites in West Bengal in the 1970s.

Also, Rajya Sabha member and former Army Chief Gen Shankar Roy Chowdhury, said on December 15, 2004, in the Upper House: “The Naxalite movement is the main threat which is menacing the state today. It is more dangerous than the situation in Jammu and Kashmir or the situation in the North-East. You won’t be able to go from Delhi to Kolkata or from Mumbai to Chennai if this movement ever catches on.”

On the other hand, fatalities in Naxalite-related violence across the country have been high. The Union Home Minister said on July 27, 2005, replying to a question in the Lok Sabha, that 251 persons and 101 Naxalites were killed in the first six months of the current year alone in 10 states while Parliament was earlier informed that a total of 566 lives were lost in Naxalite-related violence in 2004. If the now-failed peace process was not on in Andhra Pradesh for the greater part of 2004, the fatalities would have been higher during that year. In 2003 the number of fatalities stood at 515 while in 2002 the figure was 482.

On the one extreme, the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh, Mr Raman Singh of the BJP, has repeatedly called for a national policy to address the Naxalite issue while, at the other extreme, CPM leader Sitaram Yechury said in Hyderabad on August 21, 2005, that “it is not possible to have a national policy”. On its part, the Congress had appointed a “Task Force on Naxalite Violence” with Mr M Shashidhar Reddy as the convener. The report was submitted in April 2005 and nothing was heard of it later. The difficulty is that different political parties are in power in the various states affected by the Naxalites and at the Centre. Therefore, a national consensus and a broad national approach — within the framework of the country’s approach to internal security — prescribing guidelines on addressing the Naxalite issue, while leaving the specific modalities and measure for individual states to formulate, has been acutely elusive, and urgently needed.

Moreover, the difficulty is further compounded when political leaders at various levels, cutting across party lines, strike opportunistic deals with the Naxalites for their selfish ends. For instance, one former Telugu Desam legislator Paritala Ravindra actually used the Naxalites to liquidate his rivals. Over-ground Maoist supporter P. Vara Vara Rao admitted this on February 2, 2005. Besides, on August 23, 2004, some Naxalites were arrested from the residence of RJD MLA Dinanath Yadav in Paliganj, Bihar. The situation is no different in the other affected states.

On the other hand, the Naxalites of the CPI-Maoist are working methodically towards fulfilling their objective of “capturing state power through protracted armed struggle”. On the occasion of the merger of the PWG and the Maoist Communist Centre of India, on September 21, 2004, they had adopted a “constitution” and various documents relating to the political resolution, party programme, domestic situation, and strategy and tactics.

Moreover, the Maoists’ lethal capabilities and daring attacks on the security forces have doubtless grown enormously. They now field sophisticated weapons like the AK rifles and SLRs. They have innovated and fabricated rocket launchers. They have also loudly “demonstrated” their skills at manufacturing and successfully exploding improvised explosive devices (IEDs). Mercifully, they have yet not gained access to the deadly RDX.

In fact, on February 6, 2004, the Naxalites launched the biggest ever attack of its kind in the history of Naxalite movement in the country. They looted the District Armoury in Koraput, Orissa. The entire weaponry — an estimated 500 in number — and ammunition in the armoury were looted in an extraordinarily meticulously planned and executed operation, which included snapping telephone and power lines and blocking the highways and roads leading to Koraput town in order to prevent security reinforcements from rushing in. They had laid siege to Koraput, brought it to a complete halt and held the town, including the district headquarters complex, under their grip for a few hours.

Indeed, it is not merely a question of body-count and the sophistication of weapons, but the sheer loss of physical territory which is the more alarming feature and is, perhaps, a chilling reminder that the state has simply failed to govern in nearly 150 districts.

Especially because the Naxalite movement is not secessionist, and as there is no external involvement, including of the cadres, the government has thus far failed to realise the dangers of a “Maoist corridor”. To this extent, a hard-line military solution, which would involve killing one’s own people like in Nepal, cannot be initiated. Thus, there are real dilemmas for the government. The Naxalite problem needs to be tackled in a more “sensitive” manner.

Nevertheless, nothing has stopped the political leadership from formulating a national policy on the issue. One can easily arrive at broad parameters and leave it to the states concerned to rationalise the nuances at a more local level.

And while we continue to debate about, and grope for, a policy, the Naxalites are gaining from strength to strength.

The writer is a Research Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.

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Tryst with Urdu
by Samir Mukerjee

I fell in love with Urdu in the year 1946 when the communal riots were ravaging Calcutta. My neighbour, Kaiser Morshed, used to visit us regularly with his elder brother, Akhtar. It was Kaiser who started reciting Urdu verses with a wealth of feeling and that was my very first introduction to this beautiful and musical language. There was some kind of resonance left behind well after the poems had been completed.

When I entered St. Xavier’s College after completing my school in 1948, I ran into Abdul Ali Fughan, the Urdu teacher. Without anyone’s permission I went to his lectures. Imbued with a mild streak of eccentricity and shabbily attired , he kept his students spell-bound in the class. His rolling eyes made his performance more theatrical.

His quips and jokes added to everyone’s fun. He used to quote ad-lib from Ghalib, Faiz, Firaq, Iqbal and Momin. These names had the sonority of church bells for me and I was all agog for more ravishing lines.

A couple of mushairas were also held in the college where Abbas Ali Khan Bekhud and Raza Ali Wahshat participated.

In the seventies I happened to meet some old friends who were steeped in the language and used to break into poetry at the drop of a hat. By then my desire to make some progress in conversational Urdu was roused again. These friends allowed me to enter a magic kingdom.

Suddenly there was a surge of energy in my life and I was surrounded by a panoply of young men who were delighted by my love for Urdu. They promised to polish my language and expose me to Urdu ghazals. Tanweer Mazhari, Parwez Hafiz and Firoze Sultan Ejaz became my mentors and a tremendous source of inspiration. I was caught up in a flurry of exciting words and phrases and images, dripping with colour and romance. At last I was making some headway in spoken Urdu, however haltingly.

At this juncture of my life, when I was moving slowly in a recognisable direction, the sudden advent of Moinuddin Rahi was like an earthquake. He was brought to me by my friend Gholam Nayeem who knew how besotted I was with Urdu, longing to speak it well as if it was mother tongue. The tall and gangling Rahi Sa’ab endeared himself to me in a matter of minutes and fired his first salvo: “Marne ke baad bhi meri ankhen khulee rahin Adat jo par gayee thi tere intezar ki.”

He had taught Urdu to the progenies of nawabs in different opulent households. Where he scored over all my other Urdu mentors was in the time he could spare for me. He insisted on speaking in Urdu all through our conversation and did not allow me to bring in one single English word even if I was floundering and behaving like a drowning man. This method of teaching gave me immense confidence and brought about an indefinable sense of excitement.

Rahi sa’ab was drenched in romance and whenever my wife entered the room with his tea and snacks, his voice and body language would change at once. He would fall back on Kaifi Azmi with these melodious lines:

“Ab tum aaghosh-e-tasawwur mein bhi aya na karo

Meri aahon se yeh rukhsaar na kumla jaaen

Dhoondti hogi tumhen ras mein nahai huee raat

Jao, kalian na kahin sej ki murjha jaaen.”

These lessons will continue indefinitely and my exhilarating journey will only bring more surprises.

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How Andhra was duped
by Ramesh Kandula

THE Volkswagen affair in Andhra Pradesh, nicknamed Hoaxwagen scam, is a classic case of what can go wrong when there is mindless competition among politicians to attract FDI into their states.

In their eagerness to bring in the big-ticket industry to the state, the government leaders and officials in Andhra allowed themselves to be duped by a cunning foreign businessman and his Indian acolytes. The Congress government fell head over heels to please the glib-tongued VW India boss Helmuth Schuster, who smooth-talked them into transferring Rs 11.7 crore of public money.

The government was left red-faced when the scandal broke out and nobody in the administration could even explain how such a large amount was deposited in a dubious concern and how did the money vanish without a trace from the supposedly joint account.

In a face-saving move, the state government wangled an assurance from the VW management that it would make good the loss suffered by Andhra Pradesh on account of Schuster but the question remains over how could a government so blatantly indulge in kickbacks to attract investment.

A Volkswagen car-manufacturing unit at the port city of Visakhapatnam has been a dream proposal vigorously followed up by the earlier Chandrababu Naidu government. Ever since the Volkswagen AG Germany, one of the largest car manufacturers in the world, announced its intention to set up a facility in India in 2002, the AP government has been making a serious bid for the project.

Dr Helmuth Schuster, a member of the Board of Skoda Auto, Chairman of the VW Pension Trust and head of the VW India project, led a number of delegations visiting India since 2002 and held negotiations with various state governments like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh. Ministerial delegations comprising TDP ministers K Vidyadhar Rao and Y Ramakrishnudu twice visited Wolsberg, the headquarters of VW and met senior officials of the company.

The TDP government was so enamoured by the project that it issued orders to purchase 50 ambulance vehicles of VW make at Rs 25 crore to convey AP’s commitment and interest in the project.

The Tourism and Culture Department, on the advice of the government, also appointed Mr Ashok Jain, the chief adviser to the VW India project, as a member of the AP State Tourism Promotion Board. Schuster and Jain received a royal treatment, including dinners at the CM’s residence, whenever they visited Hyderabad.

The Congress government, which took over in May, 2004, expressed the same interest and extended similar privileges to the duo after which things began to move.

Schuster and Jain visited Hyderabad on January 7 this year and conveyed in writing to the state government that a decision had been taken by the VW AG to set up the project in Visakhapatnam and urged the government to consider taking a nominal equity position to affirm its commitment.

The government readily agreed and conveyed that it would participate in the equity through the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation (APIIC) to the tune of euro 5 million out of which euro 2 million would be released immediately.

It was from this stage that everything moved suspiciously fast. Three days after he wrote his confirmation letter, Dr Schuster shot another missive on January 10 informing in writing the details of the new company formed, its head of bank account and other details. It required just three more days (January 13) for the government, notorious for sitting over important files for months and years, to authorise HSBC Bank in Delhi to release Indian currency equivalent of 2 million euros to a front company called Vashista Wahan (P) Limited.

Clearly, the then Major Industries Minister B Satyanarayana showed personal interest and undue haste in releasing the money.

Finally, a joint protocol was signed between a visiting VW team and the government of AP on the implementation of the project on May 27, 2005, more than four months after a part of the so-called equity was deposited.

Nobody would have known about the deposit or what happened to the Rs 11.7 crore but for the unflattering developments at the company’s headquarters in Germany.

The cat was let out of the bag when VW communicated on June 22 that Dr Schuster had resigned from the services of VW and consequently, the services of Ashok Jain were also withdrawn. There was no mention of the money paid to Vashista Wahan, or for that matter even any reference to the “joint venture.”

The state government still chose to keep the dubious transaction under wraps till the local media picked up news reports from Germany and questioned about the money.

After news broke out about the unauthorised deals of some of its employees, VW had initiated action against several of its staff, leading to speculation in local papers here on how Schuster had taken the state government for a ride by floating a company, which had no sanction of the VW board.

By the time, Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy and Industries Minister B Satyanarayana returned from a foreign trip, the Congress government’s credibility suffered a major blow.

A day after on July 11, Reddy called for a press conference and made feeble attempts to defend the government saying that the money was deposited in good faith.

To preempt further damage, he also announced the government’s decision to request the Centre for a CBI probe into the scam.

While the state government managed to obtain an assurance from the VW that the company would pay up the money that AP had lost in the murky transaction, those guilty of siphoning off the money were yet to be brought to book. The CBI had already arrested Ashok Jain in Delhi and kept him in judicial custody in Hyderabad.

While the CBI probe is limited to finding out who stole the money, the state government’s role in entering into a dark deal with a foreign company remains outside the purview of any investigation.

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Dealing with terror in Sri Lanka
by Arup Chanda

Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga now has no option but to choose between the devil and the deep sea. After the assassination of her Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar, she can only ask her ministers to scramble for cover the next time an assassin takes a pot shot.

While the LTTE certainly wants a full-fledged war, Ms Kumaratunga has no option but suffer fools gladly because of the international pressure on her government. Any other state would have gone all hog against an organisation, which killed its top functionary but such is the situation in Sri Lanka that the government just does not have the guts to do it.

Mr Kadirgamar was one of the rarest breed of Sri Lankan politician who was not corrupt. Yes, he was a hawk as far as the LTTE was concerned and he dearly paid for it. Known for his penchant for swimming during a trip to India, he had gone for a swim in a pool but was warned by Indian intelligence agencies not to repeat it in his motherland as he would be a sitting duck in a swimming pool. And that was exactly what happened.

The brave dare and die and so did Mr Kadirgamar unlike another Tamil Minister in the Sri Lankan Government, Mr Douglas Devananda, who once revolted against the state power but is now a minister and carries a pistol while accompanied by armed guards.

The planning and execution reminds one of the novel “Day of the Jackal” written by Fredrick Forsyth. The meticulous planning certainly exposes the LTTE. Spent cartridges of an 8.33 mm sniper rifle complete with a steel stand to elevate the assassin beyond the confines of a toilet’s ventilation room and a jettisoned rocket propelled grenade launcher nearby gave the game away. Till date the LTTE has never admitted any assassination, including that of Rajiv Gandhi.

Like all terrorist murders, this one has been timed to perfection. Sri Lanka will go to the polls soon. All mainline political contenders from the Sinhalese side – be it the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP), its main opponent United National Party (UNP) or the latest upstarts – the Jatika Hela Urumaya whose main constituency is the Buddhist hard-line faction – have been told bluntly that they need to toe LTTE’s agenda or perish.

The existing ceasefire agreement between the government and the LTTE was signed in February 2002. Both sides agreed that they would not disturb the other’s turf. But Sri Lankan government fired the first major salvo last year by helping a hardcore LTTE terrorist called ‘Colonel’ Karuna to break the LTTE ranks and exist in a political vacuum. Mr Devananda openly tried to enlist Karuna by helping him organise a political party to oppose the LTTE but failed.

Recently, Mr Shivaram, the media consultant of the LTTE who ran its website tamilnet.com, was assassinated. Those who follow developments in Sri Lanka knew that the LTTE would strike and it would be something big.

Sadly it happened to be Mr Kadirgamar killed by a sniper’s bullet as he was walking down the poolside in his home after a swim.

It seems it is time for President Kumaratunga to learn that politics is the art of gaining power but a craft of retaining it. And she better try to copy the other world leaders while dealing with terrorists.

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Asia feels heat of oil prices
by Evelyn Iritani

THE global economy has shown few ill effects from rising oil prices, but the latest surge is starting to exact a toll on Asian economies.

In Thailand and Indonesia, where high fuel prices have sparked political protests, governments have slashed growth estimates for the year.

Other countries, including Japan and the Philippines, are employing energy conservation programs to blunt the effect of oil costs.

India faces the prospect of political instability from expected price hikes, and analysts say high energy costs could soon become a drag on China, which relies heavily on cheap fuel and other raw materials to prime its manufacturing growth.

Skyrocketing oil prices are “a heavy tax on most Asian economies,’’ said William Overholt, director of Rand Corp.’s Center for Asia Pacific Policy.

Oil has doubled in price since the start of the year. That’s worrisome news for Asia Pacific economies, which rely on imports for 67 percent of their oil needs.

Not only do they face unexpectedly high oil bills, but they fear that high energy costs, coupled with rising interest rates, will spook consumers in one of their largest export markets, the United States.

As US companies trim their energy consumption and consumers pare their spending, the slowdown is already being felt across the Pacific.

“Some of these countries are facing some real issues,’’ said Kenneth Courtis, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs Inc. “Their trade numbers are going bad, inflation rates are moving up and people are grumbling’’ because governments are being forced to let energy prices rise.

The World Bank predicts that the global economy will slow to about 3 percent this year from 4 percent in 2004, but the effect on individual countries will vary widely.

Oil-rich nations in the Middle East and Central Asia will reap an extra $100 billion this year in oil exporting receipts, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Asian governments are taking steps to cushion the economic effect of energy costs. Some have imposed emergency energy restrictions in hopes of avoiding more draconian, and unpopular, price hikes.

Filipino workers have been ordered to take three-day weekends. Japanese salarymen are wearing short-sleeved shirts and abandoning their ties so they can turn off their air conditioners.

Ifzal Ali, chief economist at the Asian Development Bank in Manila, said those steps had simply delayed the pain for countries such as Thailand and Indonesia, which will experience much slower growth in 2006.

As oil prices have risen, many Asian governments have spent billions of dollars to avoid raising prices for kerosene and other fuel. But those expensive subsidies are eating away at governments’ reserves and forcing them into debt to maintain them, said William Belchere, chief Asia economist at Macquarie Securities in Hong Kong.

“At some point, that will begin to grind into their economies,’’ he said.

In India, where state-owned energy companies are running huge losses, the government will soon be forced to raise fuel prices, said Amitabh Dubey, an analyst at Eurasia Group in New York.

He predicted that energy would be a hot issue in next year’s elections in the communist-controlled states of Kerala and West Bengal. “There will be political instability,’’ he warned.

— LA Times-Washington Post

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From the pages of

November 12, 1903

Sectarian universities

THE Central Hindu College, Benares, is to be congratulated on its affiliation for the B.A. standard. Mrs Besant’s ambition is to develop it into a Hindu University. It is good to aim high: if you cannot have a University, you may at least have a good college. Aligarh and Benares, and where are the Christians going to locate their University? Collect the necessary funds to endow, a self-contained University, the time will be ripe to consider the pros and cons of sectarian Universities. We note that Mrs Besant has at last captured Bombay, and a large contribution to the funds of the College has been secured from the loyal Hindus of this city. Mrs Besant wishes also to found a college for girls in Benares. If a lady of Mrs Besant’s learning and influence does not succeed in laying the foundations of a Hindu Girls’ University, who else will?
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The creator made life and then inspiration without inspiration, evolution would not be possible.

— The Upanishads

God can be seen. One can talk to him as I am talking to you.

— Ramakrishna

It is not the end to life that is happiness. Character is happiness.

— Book of quotations on Happiness

Men judge us by the success of our efforts. God looks at the efforts themselves.

— Book of quotations on Success

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