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Right to Information King’s gambit |
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Mishap at Mumbai
Mishandling the North-East
Lonely in the village
New godfather of jihad ‘Flooding not caused by deforestation’ Delhi Durbar
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Right to Information THE Right to Information Act, which has come into force from October 12, is a significant development since Independence because the people can now exercise their right to know from the government. All that they need to do is just fill in a form to know about, say, the status of a ration card, a passport application or the power connection to one’s house. People should come forward to make best use of the Act. This will not only help them to have greater say in the day-to-day governance but also make the officials accountable for their acts of omission and commission. With the Central RTI Act having come into force, seven states will have to repeal their own laws — Karnataka, Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Assam and Goa. Maharashtra has already done so. The new Act will operate at two different levels — at the Centre and in the states. Each will have different sets of public information officers, appellate authorities and information commissioners. There are, however, doubts about the extent to which the RTI Act will help people in getting the information they seek, particularly because of the typical colonial mindset of the bureaucracy which, by denying information to the people, gains more power. Over the decades, the Official Secrets Act has given the officers enough protection and excuse to deny even basic information to the people. The Act has punitive measures to check errant officers, but they need to change their general attitude towards the people for the success of the new law. In all fairness, the citizens should also have access to the official notings in the files. This will ensure greater transparency and openness in the decision-making process as also make the officials accountable for their actions. Whatever its shortcomings, the new law can be used by citizens only if they use it. The more they use it, the more effective it will be.
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King’s gambit KING Gyanendra of Nepal is desperately in search of legitimacy he lost by staging a coup against his own country. He is under tremendous pressure from the political parties, the Maoists, the Press and influential world capitals to restore democracy. But before allowing political parties to function without fetters, he has announced parliamentary elections by April 2007 and municipal polls in February next year. This shows that the King is not bothered about the wise counsel he has been getting from various quarters — to relinquish the absolute power he has arrogated to himself and restore the suspended political process before embarking on any course such as holding the elections of his liking. Nepal’s seven-party alliance, which had nearly 90 per cent of the seats in the dissolved House, has decided to boycott the elections because it sees in the King’s plan a design to fool the people of the country and the world. How can the King go in for the polls when he has not bothered to create the appropriate conditions? A few days before announcing the polls he imposed crippling curbs on the Press. Newspapers can now be punished for publishing anything that amounts to showing disrespect not only to the King but also to his kin. The crisis in Nepal has deepened further with the political parties insisting that they will settle for nothing less than a constituent assembly for restructuring the political system. They are no longer in favour of retaining the institution of the monarchy. Earlier, only the Maoists stood for the abolition of the monarchy and adoption of a new constitution without the King playing any role in the governance of the country. The Maoist threat has been the main factor behind the failure of four governments in the past to hold parliamentary elections as sought by the King. Now when the Maoists and political parties are one on the question of abolition of monarchy, any such exercise appears unthinkable. The King obviously has no touch with the ground reality and seems to be unconcerned about the crisis his country is facing.
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Mishap at Mumbai MUMBAI has the country’s busiest airport, but how efficiently it is run can be gauged from the fact that it took three days for the authorities to clear a Boeing that got stuck on the tarmac. The airport, which normally handles 490 flights daily, has two strips and it is difficult for big aircraft to use the smaller strip. The Air Sahara plane that overshot the runway by 160 metres on Sunday night, fortunately, escaped a disaster. On Monday morning inconvenienced passengers saw scores of flights delayed by two to five hours. As the main runaway had to be used only during the day time, pressure on the smaller strip increased and a flight backlog built up. Air Sahara cannot be absolved from blame and has to assure that nothing was wrong with its aircraft or the pilot responsible for landing. Removing an aircraft thus stuck on a soft ground is a complicated task. It is not as simple as towing away a truck. The ground is strengthened, a temporary road has to be prepared, the fuel tank of the aircraft is emptied and the plane is lifted using a trolley. Mishandling of the situation is more than apparent. Technically, it is the airline’s responsibility to remove the plane from the tarmac. Air Sahara neither had the equipment nor the expertise for such an eventuality. Air India has the kit containing air bags required to lift the plane, but this was not made available in time. Other airlines may also be without such equipment and expertise. The Airports Authority of India, whose job is to ensure smooth operations of flights, should take up the responsibility of clearing stranded aircraft and pass on the bill to the airline concerned as is the practice in most airports worldwide. As media reports suggest, much time was wasted because of a poor assessment of the ground condition and half-hearted efforts made to build the 160-metre road. Since the AAI did not have strong enough planks, the Railway sleepers had to be requisitioned. All this mess strengthens the case for upgrading the airports. A growing India needs modern airports in keeping with its global reputation.
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A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution. — Jean-Paul Sartre |
Mishandling the North-East
MOST of our policy-makers have little sense of history and even less of geography. Otherwise, the North-East of the country would not languish in a state of neglect. They are advised to periodically look at the map, look beyond Kolkata, traverse through the Siliguri corridor sometimes called Chicken’s Neck and register the strategic importance and vulnerability of the region, especially from within. The North-East shares borders with four countries: China, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Myanmar (Burma). The distance between Delhi and Dimapur gets obscured by the proximity between Delhi and Srinagar, so obsessed are the Central authorities with the western frontiers. Even so, retired Generals who have been Governors in the North-East and had no political axe to grind were frequently reporting to Delhi about the chronic misgovernance of the states. All had recommended remedial measures to retrieve the situation but Delhi almost never acted in national interest. Manipur, the most lawless state in the North-East, is the finest example, and had the Central Government been vigilant and decisive in 1984-85, Imphal would not have been as ungovernable as it is today. The nexus between the underground trouble-makers, the bureaucracy, politicians and the authorities in Delhi has never been broken. In 1994, Chief of Army Staff Gen S.R. Choudhary and Eastern Army Commander, Lieut-Gen R.N. Batra had gone public over this and threatened to stop cooperating with the state governments as they were undermining the operations of the security forces against the underground elements. At least one Governor, Lieut-Gen V.K. Nayyar, resigned in protest, not surprisingly from Manipur. In 1997, Union Home Minister, Indrajit Gupta, and the Manipur Chief Minister signed a Memorandum of Understanding to investigate the “nexus” but the report remained underground. Earlier this year, the Manipur Governor, Dr S.S. Sidhu, had recommended President’s rule, a step endorsed by the Army and also by the PMO, but it was not implemented as the Congress president, clearly the highest political authority in the country, felt it was not prudent to dismiss a Congress state government. One must not forget that corrupt governments are the source of party funds. Manipur is the conduit for narcotics, small arms, HIV and dissidence. One of the main rebel groups in Manipur the PLA, had recently moved for higher training to Afghanistan via Bangladesh, such is their reach. The deadly ambush of 5/8 Gorkhas in Manipur last month shows that insurgency can strike at will. Manipur and Nagaland have to be viewed together, not just because there are Naga-inhabited areas in Manipur like Ukhrul, Senapati and others, but also owing to the Naga demand for Greater Nagaland, incorporating Naga-inhabited areas. Nagaland is the mother of all insurgencies in the North-East and the NSCN, the father. The NSCN (IM), according a high-ranking officer in the North East, is taking the Central Government for a ride. They have drawn huge capital from the seven-year-long ceasefire and have developed a parallel and more powerful government, gradually enlarging their de facto areas of control. The rival NSCN(K), with whom the government has a separate ceasefire agreement, has been marginalised and their cadres slowly eliminated. The ceasfire does not cover the rival Naga groups; it is between security forces and the two NSCN groups. The NSCN (IM) has built a strong force with new weapons and fresh recruits. The real state authority in Nagaland is the NSCN (IM). All contracts have first to be approved and initialled by them before the official seal is stamped. The NSCN (IM) General Secretary, Th Muivah, lives in Bangkok but belongs to Ukhrul in Manipur. For Muivah to become the Chief Minister of Nagaland, he would have to belong to Nagaland. In other words, Ukhrul at least would one day have to be integrated with Nagaland. The move for integration is gaining ground in Manipur though redrawing borders could open a can of worms. The Nagaland model — indefinite ceasefire, dialogue and political legitimacy — is wholly to the advantage of the NSCN (IM). Their bluff has to be called. The terms of the ceasefire as well as the composition of the monitoring team currently under Lieut-Gen (retd) RV Kulkarni (retd.) ought to be reviewed to prevent the NSCN (IM) from having a free run of Nagaland. Equally it should be deterred from exploiting the soft provisions of the ceasefire. The LTTE in Sri Lanka has managed to exploit a flawed ceasefire agreement. And the NSCN is doing the same. It appears that ULFA is trying to replicate the Nagaland model of ceasefire and peace process in Assam. The anomalies of the Nagaland model must be removed before any new ceasefire is attempted. National interests, and not those of the Congress party, should dictate the agenda. The modalities of a ceasefire is a military matter and should be left to the Army. The Tarun Gogoi government wants, by hook or crook, to return to power when elections are held next year. Under certain conditions, ULFA could be a useful partner. Not long ago, the Chief Minister had a public argument with the Governor, Lieut-Gen Ajay Singh (retd.), over the question of illegal migrants. The Governor merely stated facts: that 6000 migrants were crossing over everyday to Assam from Bangladesh, an assertion made more copiously by a previous Governor, Lieut-Gen S.K. Sinha (retd). Lieut-Gen Ajay Singh (retd) commanded 4 Corps in Tezpur at the height of military operations against ULFA in Assam in the early 1990s, and knows his beans. He will smell a rat if there is one. Try this for politics — last month the current GoC, 4 Corps, Lieut-Gen Hardev Lidder of Hilkaka fame, received frantic calls from Delhi to call off Operation Balwan against ULFA in the Tinsukia forests where more than 14 militants were killed and many more surrounded by security forces. It is believed that ULFA has managed to regroup after its camps in Bhutan were destroyed in December 2003 and an estimated 700 ULFA cadres are active in Upper Assam and Garo hills, with their leadership safe in Bangladesh. ULFA is believed to have formed a People’s Consultative Group to negotiate the terms and conditions for ceasefire and talks this month, with National Security Advisor M.K. Narayanan. Operation Balwan was called off late last month, but who from Delhi was making distress telephone calls to Lieut-Gen Lidder to stop the operations? Some time ago, during the siege of Hazratbal, the High Court in Srinagar gave directions to the security forces on feeding the holed militants and made military operations justiciable. Now we have political interference which is most dangerous for the future of civil-military
relations.
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Lonely in the village NO one goes to Chittisingpora,” a frail voice admonished us as we halted to enquire if we were headed in the right direction. “That village is cursed. It has nothing to offer except grief. I beg of you. Don’t go,” insisted a haggard old man struggling to balance on his back a bag congested with stuff. He looked weary and sad; his voice cracked at every utterance as though it had not been heard out in ages. My heart went out to him as he parked himself in the corner of a rutted road that led to Chittisingpora — South Kashmir’s ill-fated hamlet whose soul was scarred for life in the March of 2000. Hundreds of masked men had descended on the peaceful settlement and had left it bleeding forever. They had handpicked males-adults and children — and had shot them from pointblank range. The news shocked the world as it exposed for the first time the vulnerability of Kashmiri Sikhs — a community never targeted earlier by secessionists. As I stood steps away from the village, I felt a rush of chill down my spine. For a while, everything around me had blacked out. What remained was a gory visual of death and destruction, unparalleled in the history of Kashmir. Here was a village that had suffered untold damage in a single night that will never see its dawn. Overwhelmed by Chittisingpora’s grief, I walked past the old man, pondering over what he had said and wondering if the village had healed its wounds. At the village entrance, I saw some girls and a man well past his prime. Soon I was in the company of Chittisingpora’s women who had assumed charge of everything around them — from farms to hearths. They knew who I was and wasted no time in giving me what I was looking for — memories. The painful narration came from Jasbir Kaur, the eldest woman of the village who lost five men of her family that night. “They dragged out both my sons, my grandsons and my husband and shot them dead. We were locked inside the houses. The last we heard from our men was at around 11 pm. Helpless cries proceeded bullet shots and then there was an eerie silence that still haunts us in our sleep.” On the night of the massacre, the villagers could not tell the world what tragedy had befallen them. There were no telephone lines for 100 households. There still aren’t any! Close to Jasbir’s house I saw two memorials built in the honour of the dead. Inside the memorials, bullet marks and bloodstains were fresh as they were on the fateful night. The last piece of information I received from Chittisingpora that day pertained to the old man I had met down the hill. “He is a widower. He lost all five sons that night. Relief money of the government went to daughters-in-law. Jobs also went to them. They abandoned him and remarried. Ever since that day, he has not returned to the village,” said Jasbir Kaur. On my way back, I met the old man again. He was clinging hard to a photo frame that had just dropped from his overloaded bag. As I went closer, he held me by the hand and said: “This was my
family.”
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New godfather of jihad MOVE over Osama bin Laden. The new godfather of jihadis has emerged: Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the man responsible for suicide bombings, kidnappings, mass executions and televised beheadings in Iraq since 2004. It is not for nothing that the bounty on his head matches Bin Laden’s. The 1967-born Jordanian has almost single-handed brought about a transformation in the nature of insurgency in Iraq. Time reported in its July 5, 2004 issue the insurgency in Iraq had embraced terrorism. The situation changed from a mere guerrilla warfare in an effort to drive out foreign occupiers and reclaim power to a well-orchestrated attempt by the militants to turn the resistance into an international jihadist movement. Foreign fighters, once estranged from home-grown guerrilla groups, are now integrated as cells or complete units with Iraqis. A Taliban-type discipline has come about among the Iraqi insurgents. Many of Saddam’s former secret police and Republican Guard officers, who were drinking and whoring till 2002, no longer dare even smoke cigarettes. They now say that they are fighting for Allah. Their goal now has become broader than simply forcing the US to leave. They want to transform Iraq into what Afghanistan was in the 1980s: a training ground for young jihadists who will form the next wave of recruits for Al-Qaeda and like-minded groups. Nearly all the new jihadist groups claim to be receiving inspiration, if not commands, from Al-Zarqawi. Before the American invasion of Iraq in 2003, Al-Zarqawi was a fringe player of global terrorism. His rise from a small-time terrorism consultant to leader of Islamist groups in countries like Afghanistan, Iran and Georgia has been phenomenal. Before the Iraq war, he was known to have connections with Ansar al-Islam, a Kurdish-based militant group associated with Al-Qaeda. Today he is the pivotal force behind the Iraq insurgency, and, in many ways, deadlier than Bin Laden as far as the US is concerned. The jihad in Iraq is more potent than it was in Afghanistan in the 1980s because the insurgents today have better weapons and are developing new ones. An ominous sign indeed for the civilised world! The insurgency’s shift toward a religious outlook is partly driven by financial necessity: the capture of Saddam and his henchmen drained the insurgency of its former sources of funding. That forced Iraqi groups to turn to foreign financiers in places like the Gulf, and they have demanded that the insurgents adopt a more radical religious identity. The modus operandi of Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi is that he would call his lieutenants from a cell phone and then trash the SIM card after a single use to avoid giving himself away. This gives him an apparition-like existence. Even after two years of the Americans’ desperate hunting for him, Al-Zarqawi remains an enigma. Al-Zarqawi has promoted himself and his group through an aggressive use of the Internet. He is a hardcore Sunni and virulently opposed to the Shias. In messages intercepted by the US military and in public statements posted on websites associated with his organisation, formerly known as al-Tawhid and Jihad, Al-Zarqawi has voiced his contempt for Iraq’s majority Shias and his desire to provoke a civil war by slaughtering those perceived to be collaborating with the US or the fledgling Iraqi authorities. Al-Zarqawi’s conduct is starkly different from that of Bin Laden’s. Insurgents familiar with the inner workings of the Al-Zarqawi network say he is a mafioso godfather, maintaining control over the flow of money from Gulf states and Islamic charities and using it to influence activities of the insurgent groups that make up his network. He imposes discipline through an unsparing code of loyalty. Unlike Bin Laden, he has never granted an interview to Western journalists or appeared in public. He was ostensibly shown in one videotape in which he personally carried out the beheading of American Nick Berg, but Al-Zarqawi’s face was hidden behind a black mask. Al-Zarqawi does not direct day-to-day operations but guides strategy and is involved in the planning of major operations. He possesses an unmatched ability to persuade and indoctrinate. He has lured a large number of Islamists to join him by portraying Iraq as the new arena of global jihad, the proving ground for an epic war against the infidel. He pledged his allegiance to Bin Laden in a Web announcement but has cultivated a global profile of his own, forging links with terrorist cells across Europe and the Middle East. His group’s publicly stated goal is to turn Iraq into a fundamentalist state modelled on the Taliban’s rule. The Iraqi resistance has an amorphous nature about it. It has the potential to spread more easily into the Sunni heartland, where the US forces are still struggling to maintain order. Fallujah is already a terrorist sanctuary. Baqubah and Samarra are the next in line. A palpable fear which arises out of this is that the Al-Zarqawi-led jihadists may carve out their own fiefdoms across the country from which they can recruit and train zealots to join their struggle — a version of the northwest province in Pakistan, which Al-Qaeda has turned into a safe haven. The militants in Iraq are turning the resistance into an international jihadist movement. A fundamental change is now discernible in the Iraq violence. The conditions are ripening for the insurgents to turn their armed struggle into a political movement that aims to exploit the upheaval and turn parts of Iraq into Taliban-style fiefdoms. A potential leader is Sheik Mahdi Ahmed al-Sumaidai, a hard-line Salafi imam recently released from Abu Ghraib prison and now based in Baghdad’s radical Ibn Taimiya Mosque.
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‘Flooding not caused by deforestation’ Deforestation cannot be blamed for widespread flooding such as recent massive deadly inundations in Central America, according to an international research report released on Thursday. The study, issued by a U.N. agency and the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research, asserts that major floods tend to occur at regular intervals and are driven by major climatic patterns, rather than human activities such as logging. It notes that massive flooding occurred in northern Thailand in 1918 and in 1953 when lush forests were abundant. Catastrophic floods covering large areas of land almost always occur after prolonged rainfall saturates the soil and have little to do with the amount of forest cover, according to the report. “The simple explanation for large-scale flooding is that it rains a huge amount and that flooding is part of natural processes,’’ said David Kaimowitz, director-general of forestry research group, which co-authored the study with the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization. “There is a tendency to look for culprits when these natural events occur.’’ The report is based on a review of hundreds of published papers and is aimed at reversing policies that criminalize small farmers and loggers because of “the myth of the link,’’ Kaimowitz said. Officials have reported at least 652 deaths and 577 people missing in Guatemala after floods as a result of Hurricane Stan. “The flooding in Central America is a natural process that would have happened, no matter what,’’ Kaimowitz said. “Whether you had deforested, farmed, or logged, the amounts of water involved and the severity of these floods is just overwhelming.’’ The conventional wisdom is that forests prevent floods by acting as giant sponges, soaking up water during heavy rainfall and releasing water during the dry season, the study says. In the wake of last week’s floods in Central America, the environmental group Greenpeace International blamed rampant deforestation for worsening the disaster. Greenpeace International blasted the report. “I find this denial of a link between deforestation and floods quite dangerous — as dangerous as people who would be saying the only reason for floods is deforestation,’’ said Christoph Thies, the group’s forest policy coordinator, in Hamburg, Germany. “There is very, very broad acknowledgement in numerous scientific papers how important forests are in regulating water flow and protecting watersheds. So I think that to question that is not very credible,’’ Thies said. But Kaimowitz said that deforestation is a major problem for other reasons. The burning of forests to clear land contributes one-fifth of carbon emissions that cause climate change, he said. The loss of habitat leads to extinction of plant and animal species. Deforestation contributes to small-scale flooding. Each year, the world loses forest land that would cover an area roughly the size of Greece, he said. — LA Times-Washington Post
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Delhi Durbar President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was the chief guest at the 11th anniversary celebrations of the Indian Women’s Press Corps, which also served as a fund raiser. Interestingly, he agreed to answer questions which were made available to Rashtrapati Bhavan in advance. It was evident the First Citizen wanted to avoid controversial political topics. After the speeches, the scribes found it perplexing that Dr Kalam should read out the questions himself. This took Dr Kalam by suprise and it was decided that those who had sent in their questions can put it to the President directly. Only those questions cleared by Rashtrapati Bhavan were fielded. A wag observed it might have been advisable for the Press Secretary to the President to have called the scribes one by one whose questions had been cleared rather than making Dr Kalam go through the rigmarole.
Dissidence in BJP After Narendra Modi, it is the turn of Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje. The first woman Chief Minister of the state is under attack from her own colleagues over her style of functioning. It is not that they want her to be removed, but their main grudge is that the high-profile Chief Minister never consults them before taking major decisions. They are keen that there should be “inclusive governance” and not “exclusive governance” as they are also answerable to the people who voted them to power. Seeing the trouble brewing, BJP President L.K. Advani summoned the top leaders of the state to nip the trouble in the bud. Obviously, the party leadership has learnt a lesson from its Gujarat and Jharkhand experiences where dissidents went public about the style of functioning of Narendra Modi and Arjun Munda respectively.
It’s not ‘Azad Kashmir’ Contrary to the popular perception in India, not all sections of political opinion in PoK regard it as “Azad Kashmir.” Leaders of the All Party National Alliance, which is a multi-party conglomerate in PoK, have apparently no objection to calling that part of Kashmir under the control of Pakistan as PoK. Mr Arif Shahid, Chairman of APNA, who was in the Capital recently for a conference, said that their candidates were not allowed to contest elections in PoK as they refused to sign an undertaking which says that the state will become part of Pakistan.
Replicating London Anybody wishing to experience the sights and sounds of London in the national Capital must peep into “Piccadelhi” next to the PVR Plaza cinema complex in Connaught Place. The restaurant run by the former owner of Claridges bears impressions of London right from the entrance — the bright red London telephone booth, the tube map, the typical London bus, lamp posts, road signs to landmarks near Oxford Street and Covent Garden and instrumental music. One can catch glimpses of Madame Tusaaud’s wax museum in the statues of Sir Winston Churchil and Sherlock Holmes. The portrait of William Shakespeare, however, deserves a better place than the wall next to the men’s rest room. Contributed by S. Satyanarayanan, R. Suryamurthy, Prashant Sood and Tripti Nath
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From the pages of Lawyers and sedition BLACK sheep there are in every fold is a common saying and the lawyer fraternity may not possibly be without its quota of undesirables who, let us assume with the learned Chief Justice of the Chief Court, engage in the dirty task of spreading sedition and disloyalty. “If it is unfortunately true”, said the Hon. Sir Arthur Reid, “it is true of a minority which would be contemptible in its impotence for the evil but for the ignorance of those into whom it distils the poison of sedition.” We also unhesitatingly agree that if the evil does actually exist the vast bulk of the fraternity who must, doubtless, be admittedly
well-disposed, have a duty lying on them for the honour of their noble profession and for the good of the State, to minimise the evil by educating the ignorant and by dispelling misunderstanding and misrepresentation and to render this minority innocuous. |
Unalloyed love of God is the essential thing. All else is unreal. When one has love for God, one doesn’t feel any physical attraction to wife, children, relatives and friends. —Ramakrishna The flower of social success is delicious, though it is scorned by those, to whose lips the cup has not been offered. —Book of quotations on Success Objects we ardently pursue bring little happiness when gained; most of our pleasures come from unexpected sources. —Book of quotations on Happiness The passage of life is not always smooth. Sometimes everything works out well. At others, everything appears to go wrong. He who can face both with indifference is the self-realised one. He does not allow one to fill him with joy and the others with misery. —The Mahabharata While you live, there are many friends who surround you. When you die, all of them leave you. Your name is the sole identity which remains. It does not even —Book of quotations on Hinduism Pain and suffering do not ennoble the human spirit. Pain and suffering breed meaness, bitterness, cruelty. It is only happiness that ennobles. —Book of quotations on happiness Happiness is essentially a state of going somewhere, wholeheartedly, uni-directionally, without regret or reservation. —Book of quotations on happiness In order for us to be able to love, we need to have faith because faith is love in action, and love in action is service. —Mother Teresa A life not put to the test is not worth living. —Epictecus
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