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Dear George! Did God tell him to invade Iraq? Now we know why U.S. President George W. Bush ordered his troops to invade Iraq. God told him to do so. Seriously. No kidding. A BBC programme, “Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs”, quotes Palestinian leaders as saying that President Bush claimed to be driven by God to launch the attacks against Iraq and Afghanistan.
BJP groping in the
dark
Faith in quake time
How to make rural
job guarantee plan effective Dissent rocks Nobel
Prize community Booker Prize: a
wrong choice in a list of delights
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Callous attitude For
the common man they are idols in flesh and blood. But for the avaricious sarkari babus, even war heroes like Brig Kuldip Singh Chandpuri, who were instrumental in warding off the enemy’s challenge in various wars, are easy game. They have been deprived of the land promised to them for their war exploits. A grateful nation promised to give them land or monetary benefit in lieu of their exceptional bravery. But some government officials falsely declared that there was no land available and as such they must make do with cash grant. Coming from a disciplined force, these valiant men accepted the reward in good faith. It was only later that they discovered that the bureaucracy had adopted a pick-and-choose policy. While they had been denied land, others were being given it. Somebody should be answerable as to how when the land was not available for even those who had won Maha Vir Chakra, how come it was decided to give the land even to those who had won Vir Chakra. Indeed, both categories deserve them, but if no land is actually available none should get it. This is no way to treat the men in uniform who have done so much for the country. Ironically, the news about the shabby treatment given to the decorated officers has hit the headlines right on the day when the Punjab Government has announced the enhancement in the financial assistance to exservicemen and their widows over the age of 65 years from Rs 300 per month to Rs 500 per month. Just as the government is being alive to the needs of these exservicemen in their old age, it has also to take care of those decorated officers who have been deprived of their rightful due on flimsy grounds. A cash grant or a plot of land can hardly repay the debt that the country owes them. It is just recognition of their “izzat”, something that they live and die for. |
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Dear George! Now
we know why U.S. President George W. Bush ordered his troops to invade Iraq. God told him to do so. Seriously. No kidding. A BBC programme, “Elusive Peace: Israel and the Arabs”, quotes Palestinian leaders as saying that President Bush claimed to be driven by God to launch the attacks against Iraq and Afghanistan. While Mr Bush’s assertion of a divine mandate for going to war calls for suspension of disbelief, the fact that he claimed to be on God’s mission has gained much credence. First, because the programme is a BBC broadcast and, secondly, the source is former Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath. And lastly, the White House has not yet denied that President Bush did say what the Palestinian leaders attributed to him. According to Mr Shaath, Mr Bush came up with this extraordinary explanation four months after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 during the Israel-Palestine summit in Egypt. He is reported to have said: “I’m driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, ‘George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan’ And I did, and then God would tell me, ‘George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq’, and I did”. This is as good an explanation as any other, for those wanting to know why Iraq was invaded if it was not for weapons of mass destruction, which in any case, were not to be found there. It also answers those who ask why the war against Iraq and Afghanistan ended without Osama bin Laden being smoked out. So, these were not acts of war. They were acts of God. Whatever the American insurance companies might make of that, the clear message is: it does not pay to provoke President Bush. Perhaps God is on first-name terms with him. |
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The holiest of all holidays are those/Kept by ourselves in silence and apart;/The secret anniversary of the heart.
— Henry Wadsworth Longfellow |
BJP groping in the dark PRIMA facie, the Congress and the BJP today can be said to represent the core of a two-party system, the Holy Grail of Indian politics. The difference between them in terms of the number of Lok Sabha seats is only seven — the Congress has 145 and the BJP 138 — while their voting percentages (the Congress 26.69 and the BJP 22.16) are fairly close. Their partners in the respective alliances are also well defined, underlining a stability of political formations which is a refreshing phenomenon in a generally promiscuous political arena. Arguably, therefore, the two coalitions may battle each other in the near and distant future with virtually the same members on their sides, barring a few who may drift in and out. The possibility that neither the Congress nor the BJP will be in a position to form a government at the Centre on its own is to be welcomed, for it will compel them to follow the path of moderation. In the case of the Congress, the proclivity to authoritarianism, evident during the Emergency of 1975-77, will be kept in check by its allies, while the BJP’s communal inclinations, evident in the tragedy of Gujarat in 2002, will also be curbed. True, coalition politics can act as a brake on speedy decision-making. But, by and large, the consensual gains of such arrangements score over the dangers inherent in a single-party rule. However, any hope of a genuine Congress-BJP dualism may be premature. The reason is that it is difficult to see the BJP evolving as a major alternative in the foreseeable future. It has to be remembered that its present status as the second largest party in Parliament is an unusual one. Throughout its history, it has been on the periphery of Indian politics. Indeed, it reached its lowest point when its predecessor, the Jan Sangh, forsook its very identity in 1977 after a futile struggle from the time of Independence to secure any clout in the political field. The highest percentage of votes that the Jan Sangh secured during its three-decade-long career from 1947 to 1977 was a mere 9.4 in 1967 which dropped to 7.4 in 1971. As is known, the Ramjanmabhoomi agitation breathed new life into the Jan Sangh’s successor, the BJP. But the bubble, based on the heady appeal of religion, has burst and the party is now groping in the dark for a resuscitating agenda. The present indications are not all that cheerful. The chances are that the BJP will continue to lose ground because of several factors. One is leadership, which has come under attack from none other than the RSS, the head of the Sangh Parivar, which has also cast doubts about its ideological direction. Already, for all practical purposes, the parivar is split though not the BJP. But it is also clear that the party’s leadership has been hobbled by the RSS, which means that much of their influence has suffered a silent erosion. This doesn’t bode well for the BJP, not the least because virtually throughout its history the Jan Sangh-BJP has had to depend on the two individuals — Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Mr L.K. Advani — who are now under attack, not from their foes but from their supposed friends. And with no credible second line of leadership in sight, the party’s chances of retaining its cohesion after they pass from the scene doesn’t appear bright. The Congress, in contrast, has proved to be a lot more resilient. Whether by fluke or design, the party has generally been able to find someone who can lead it out of a seeming dead end. It happened in 1984 when an untested Rajiv Gandhi helped it to secure a huge mandate of 415 Lok Sabha seats and 48.1 per cent of the votes cast at a time when the assassination of so prominent a leader as Indira Gandhi would have been a severely debilitating blow to any other party. After Rajiv Gandhi’s death and the interregnum of Narasimha Rao, the Congress has found in Ms Sonia Gandhi and Dr Manmohan Singh leaders who have helped the party to recover from its recent setbacks. Considering that the Nehru-Gandhi family has been involved in both revivals, the dynasty’s rejuvenating role for the party is obvious. It is a peculiarity of the Congress which its opponents have no option but to accept even as they mock the dynastic principle. In fact, they might find it strange that the rest of the country doesn’t seem to mind such a feudal process playing an evidently crucial role in a major party in the modern world. The only saving grace is that it’s all happening in a vibrant democracy. But apart from the dynasty holding the Congress together, the party has also demonstrated its resilience by pursuing policies in tune with the changing times. Its initiation of economic reforms in 1991 showed that the party was capable of rejecting its favourite shibboleths if the need arose. The fact that the doctrine it chose to put aside was associated with one of its tallest leaders — Jawaharlal Nehru — confirms that the Congress doesn’t always allow cloying sentiments to stop it from making a bold departure from the past. It’s a trait which is bound to stand the party in good stead, for it underlines a clear-sighted acceptance of the existing realities instead of a blind adherence to dogmas which have lost their relevance. If the BJP appears to be in a cul-de-sac today, the reason is that it hasn’t been able to change with the times, like its principal adversary. Instead of reinventing itself, as the Congress has done, the BJP wants to reinvent the past. Since the party is unable to forget its brief tryst with political glory in the wake of the Ramjanmabhoomi movement, it and its paterfamilias want to stick with that agenda, not realising that the world, and India, has moved on. When the BJP made its first political gains in the 1990s, the more moderate among its supporters wanted it to evolve as a genuine conservative party, on the lines of the Christian Democrats of Europe or the Tories of Britain. Since the presence of a left-of-centre party — as the Congress was perceived before 1991 — and a right-of-centre one is deemed to provide the best alternatives in a democratic system, even the BJP’s opponents would not have minded the party evolving in that direction. It also had a leader in Mr Vajpayee — the right man in the wrong party — capable of taking it along that path with his belief in uncontrolled thought processes, as he has recently said. But the BJP fell into the trap of religiosity which is the bane of all conservative parties. Since the Republican Party in the US has also occasionally succumbed to that temptation, with sections of the establishment believing that God has put Mr George W. Bush in the White House, one can hardly blame the BJP. But its pronounced Hindu bias has made it a misfit in secular India. And as it retreats to the margins of politics, the chances of a two-party or a two-alliance system taking root in India are diminished. The gainer is the
Congress.
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Faith in quake time SATURDAY began like any other day — reading newspapers, a quick call to parents and surfing of channels to know if all was well with the world. It was a special day only to the extent that it was a dear friend’s birthday. I was sitting on the bed listening to morning news as I had my breakfast while my three-year-old daughter slept blissfully beside me. But all of a sudden everything around me swirled. I thought it had something to do with my Navratra fasts. Probably weakness? While I was still debating why my head was spinning, I heard the sideboard shiver and the fan sway. And then, it all came together. I threw my plate, grabbed my daughter and, barefoot, ran out of my flat on the second floor. An earthquake was “shaking” our entire housing society building and threatening to bring it down. Panic is all I knew as I ran down the four flights of stairs. What ordinarily took barely a minute seemed to take an eternity. It also took me back to the Gujarat of 2001, bringing back grim and gory pictures, which had given me sleepless nights for months. I was there to cover the aftermath of the quake for The Tribune. Tall buildings reduced to rubble in a jiffy. A head dangled out from one mound of debris and a hand from another. A picture of complete devastation. The fright on the faces of people every time the earth trembled in the aftershocks. The long cold nights spent in the open. Homeless people and peopleless homes, the omnipresence of death, the stench of decaying bodies, the misery of being alive to mourn one’s dead — the flashback to Gujarat sent a shiver down my spine. And it could have all happened here, all in a matter of a few seconds and right in front of my eyes. I relived the agony of the 25-odd days I had spent in Gujarat as I sat outside waiting for the earth to stabilise. I cuddled my shocked daughter, now awake and asking the how and why of things. While I sat speechless holding her a wee bit closer, my domestic help explained to her what a quake could mean. People huddled in small corners to discuss the intensity of the quake. In one corner, I sat with my little one, praying for I knew what could have happened. It hadn’t. We had been spared. My daughter answered why. “Don’t worry Ma. Goli’s house will stay intact. God stays in every room of ours.” This time round, God had kept her
faith. |
How to make rural job guarantee plan effective Will
the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme be able to provide 100 days employment as planned, to about 20-25 million job seekers at a cost of Rs 25,000 crore annually? One-third job opportunities are reserved for women. Starting from the selected 200 backward districts, the scheme will be extended to all the 600 districts in the next five years. The panchayats will play a pivotal role in the implementation of the scheme. If we look at the performance statistics of the ongoing wage employment programmes like the Sampooran Grameen Rozgar Yojana (SGRY) and the National Food For Work Programme (NFFWP), the new scheme may not achieve its objectives. During the last four years employment generation has been 52.30 crore (2001-02), 74.83 crore (2002-03), 63.74 crore (2003-04) and 42.55 crore (2004-05) mandays under the SGRY against the target to generate 100 crore mandays annually. During the first quarter of the current financial year only 7.31 crore mandays employment were generated under the NFFWP against the target to generate 15 crore mandays. The story of earlier wage employment programmes like the National Rural Employment Programme (1980), the Rural Landless Employment Guarantee Programme (1983), Jawahar Rozgar Yojana (1989), the Employment Assurance Scheme (1993) and the Jawahar Gram Samirdhi Yojana (1999) launched to provide assured wage employment to the rural people has been no different. If we look at the achievements of earlier programmes, the future of the Employment Guarantee Scheme appears to be not so bright. The only hope of the scheme is legal backing that it has got. But can the law alone do without the efficient and sensitive implementing machinery at the district, block and village levels? Doubts are expressed about the success as the objectives, rationale and strategy. Planning and modalities of the EGS are similar to the earlier programmes. The panchayats are given a pivotal role under the EGS. The responsibility of all the earlier programmes was also with the panchayats, except the NFFWP, with technical support of government machinery. The nature of suggestive works under the EGS is almost similar to that of the earlier programmes such as draught proofing, soil and moisture conservation, watershed development, minor irrigation, rejuvenation of drinking water sources and augmentation of ground water, traditional water harvesting structures, renovation of water bodies, desilting of village tanks, flood protection and drainage afforestation and wasteland reclamation, rural roads and other community assets. The contractors and labour displacing machines were too banned under the earlier programmes. The registration of employment seekers was required. Employment registers were to be maintained at the levels of gram panchayats, block samitis and zila parishads. The funding pattern was the same (except in case of RLEGP and NFFWP which were 100 per cent centrally funded). Cash and foodgrains were part of the wages. But the experience tells us that the implementation of wage employment programmes is problematic. There was lack of coordination and synergy among the implementing agencies. The selection of works was done by local influential persons without proper planning. Proper listing and prioritisation of works was not done. The registration of job seekers was not done. Employment registers were not maintained. The contractors were at work clandestinely. Machines were deployed in place of labourers. Muster rolls were fudged. The allocated foodgrains, in most cases, never reached the target group. No inventory of works was maintained. The same work was shown executed under different schemes in different years. Corruption was rampant. Leakages were very high. Multiple schemes were under implementation at one point of time. Despite its positive features such as applicability throughout the country and coverage of the non-poor, power with Parliament in case it is to be withdrawn and the role of panchayats, the EGS is bound to suffer from features of the earlier schemes, if proper operational preparedness like laying down the process of registration of employment seekers, mass awareness generation, capacity building and sensitisation of implementers is not done on a massive scale. The minimum wage rate of Rs 60 per day should be revised upward as the prevailing market wage rates are much higher than this. More over, it is too less for a day’s hard physical work. Locals should be involved in planning and prioritisation of works. The allocation of foodgrains should be made only as per the actual demand of the village, block, district and the state. Instead of appointing programme officers at different levels, the panchayats at all three levels should be given the responsibility for implementation along with the association of Self-Help Groups (SHGs) with only one coordinating officer at the district level. The EGS will prove more useful for overall development of the rural areas if the scope of the scheme is enlarged and all village lands, i.e. private, common, arable, non-arable and forest lands are brought under its ambit. Last but not the least, the revamped and strengthened implementing mechanism is the hope of this scheme or the employment guarantee will remain a pipe-dream and a major drain on the public exchequer. The writer is Assistant Professor, Haryana Institute of Rural Development, Nilokheri (Karnal). |
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Dissent rocks Nobel Prize community A loud crack of dissent on Tuesday rattled the secretive world that hands out Nobel Prizes. Days before this year’s literature prize announcement, a member of the Swedish Academy, which gives the award, resigned in disgust over last year’s unexpected winner, the Austrian writer Elfriede Jelinek. The highbrow scuffle in the august literary chambers of Stockholm came from the searing pen of a disgruntled 82-year-old academy member. Knut Ahnlund sent a missive to the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. He characterized Jelinek’s work as ``whining, unenjoyable public pornography’’ and said her prize ``has not only been an irreparable damage to all progressive forces, it has also confused the general view of literature as an art.’’ He added:
"After this, I cannot even formally remain in the Swedish Academy. ... I consider myself an outsider.’’ Ahnlund did not say why he waited so long to voice his disdain. Horace Engdahl, the academy’s permanent secretary, told the Swedish media that Ahnlund had not attended academy meetings for nearly a decade and was not involved in Jelinek’s selection. He suggested that Ahnlund timed his displeasure to spoil Thursday’s naming of the next winner. ``This very possibly has something to do with the fact that this week the academy will announce this year’s winner,’’ Engdahl said. ``He knows nothing about the discussion that led to the choice of Elfriede Jelinek, so what he says in this article of his is empty speculation.’’ The resignation comes during heightened anticipation of the 2005 prize. The academy was expected to name a winner last Thursday, but delayed the announcement. It gave no reason for the decision. It will be the first time in years that the literature recipient will be named after the first week of October, although the academy’s rules allow the discretion to alter the timing. Some European literati have suggested an ideological or political split among members over a winner. The academy has denied such reports. The prize carries a $1.3-million award. Public resignations from the 18-member academy are rare, offering a glimpse into a collection of intellectuals viewed as everything from curmudgeonly, eccentric, visionary, clueless, politically motivated and most often, unpredictable. In 1989, members Kerstin Ekman and Lars Gyllensten quit after accusing the academy of not supporting Salman Rushdie against death threats from the late Iranian leader Ayatollah Khomeini over the novel ``The Satanic Verses.’’ Jelinek’s prize revealed the academy’s sometime-preference for unconventional style and work that is not always widely translated. A tint of leftist politics, a charge the academy often faces but denies, also surrounded her selection: Jelinek’s most recent works were sharply critical of the Bush administration and the war on Iraq. The academy cited Jelinek, whose semiautobiographical 1983 novel ``The Piano Teacher’’ was made into an award-winning film, ``for her musical flow of voices and counter voices in novels and plays that with extraordinary linguistic zeal reveal the absurdity of society’s cliches and their subjugating power.’’ — LA Times-Washington Post |
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Booker Prize: a wrong choice in
a list of delights The
Man Booker judges have made possibly the worst, certainly the most perverse, and perhaps the most indefensible choice in the 36-year history of the contest. By choosing John Banville’s The Sea, they selected an icy and over-controlled exercise in coterie aestheticism ahead of a shortlist, and a long list, packed with a plenitude of riches and delights. The Dublin novelist, whose emotional rage is limited and whose prose exhibits all the chilly perfection of a waxwork model, must today count himself as the luckiest writer on the planet. This was a travesty of a result from a travesty of a judging process. The Booker Prize of 2005, which had an incomparably strong and diverse field of novels to consider, has been cursed from the start. The hex began with the appointment of Professor John Sutherland as chair of the judges. Professor Sutherland’s leaked and distorted reports of the 1999 prize grossly misrepresented the views of a majority of his fellow-judges (myself included). He and his colleagues nonetheless succeeded in delivering a long list that recognised the formidable performances in 2005 of many of the iconic figures in modern British fiction: from Ian McEwan and Julian Barnes, to Zadie Smith and Salman Rushdie. The shortlist that eventually emerged preserved a sense of the strength and scope of the year’s fiction. However, it unaccountably omitted Ian McEwan’s Saturday - a novel that fell victim to a staggeringly vicious and inept review in the New York Review of Books by none other than John Banville. Yet the 2005 shortlist did offer some of the best work ever by Julian Barnes and Kazuo Ishiguro. It included the most accomplished novels yet by Zadie Smith and Ali Smith, and a perfect, enduring gem of a First World War story by Sebastian Barry. Incomprehensibly the jury ignored all these excellent and variously admirable novels. Instead they plumped for Banville’s glacial evocation of Max Morden’s return to an Irish seaside town where, long ago, the grace of a seductive family had struck and shaped his life. This is undoubtedly “beautiful’’ prose, but it is lifeless, pallid work that plays predictable variations on themes of memory and identity in a style that may impress but can seldom engage. For the judges of the 2005 Man Booker Prize to have rendered down the precious wealth of fiction presented to them into this tinny medallion counts as an achievement of some sort. For the reputation of the Man Booker Prize, it may count as nothing less than a disaster. — The Independent |
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From the pages of Powers of Punjab Council
We are glad to note that Sir James Wilson thinks that the enlargement of the numbers and the powers of the Legislative Council of the Punjab will ultimately work out for the good of the province. He refers, however, to certain drawbacks and dangers. He says that “it will tend to keep the higher officials more closely to headquarters, and so less in touch with the people; it will necessitate their giving more time to talk and less to think and to action, and so tend to lessen efficiency or lead to a costly increase in their number.” The fears of Sir James are not justified. The Council has not been vested with any executive functions. Its business will be mainly deliberative. Again, there are not more than five officials in it who already are not chained to headquarters. We do not think the meetings of the Council will interfere with their touring. In the case of five or six of them the membership of the Council would not involve any increase in their duties. Sir James says further that “it may tend to weaken the authority of the local officials of all departments, and especially of the Indian officials, which would be disastrous to the interests of peace, order, and security, and especially of the poorer classes.” These fears are also groundless. |
The Dharma incomparably profound and exquisite. Is rarely met with, even in hundreds of thousand of millions of kalpas; We are now permitted to see it, to listen to it, to accept and hold it; May we truly understand the meaning of the Tathagata’s words! — The Buddha Self-knowledge is the king of all knowledge. It is the most secret, is very sacred, it can be perceived by instinct, conforms to righteousness (Dharma), is very easy to practice, and its timeless. — The Mahabharata Give up the pride of clan and caste and devote yourself entirely to God. Give up your faults (lust, anger, greed, etc.); don’t be an enemy to anyone. This is the basic principle of the saints. — Kabir If someone offers you a gift and you don’t accept it, the gift remains with him. Similarly if you don’t accept the abuses from someone, they don’t come to you, but remain with the abuser himself.
— The Buddha The charioteer guides the chariot but the horses think, “We make it move”. The wheels think “We make it move”. The charioteer smiles quietly. Just as God does when we boast our deeds.
— Book of quotations
on Hinduism Do not hesitate before doing good things. Always remember, that many others will look your example and at least some of them will follow you. In this way good will spread through the world like ripples in a river. —
The Mahabharata Learn to love everyone, human or animal. Animal life is as precious as human. Think how you would feel if someone killed you before killing any animal. Learn to feel its pain. — The Buddha |
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