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An exercise in futility Murder of a minister |
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Some realism Calamity can be turned into an opportunity AT last, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has realised that saving human lives is more important than bothering about the man-made LoC when people on both sides of earthquake-ravaged Kashmir are desperately seeking relief from wherever they can get.
Mitrokhin’s revelations
Attend “C”
Veerappan: victims of police cruelty await justice ‘Retired husband syndrome’ China’s growth to hit environment
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An exercise in futility NO wonder, the debate among the Congress, the Akali Dal and other political parties over terrorism degenerated into an inane blame game. The whole idea of discussing “roots and causes of terrorism” was an exercise in futility which would not have served any useful purpose. On the contrary, it had the potential of bringing bad blood into circulation once again. There is a general consensus among all sensible Punjabis that the terrorism days were among the worst that this vibrant state had ever gone through and sooner they are forgotten the better it is. Now is the time to make up for the lost time on the road to progress. A post-mortem at this late stage was uncalled for. In any case, the motive behind this exercise was highly suspect. The whole duel appeared to be staged with an eye on the forthcoming elections. Captain Amarinder Singh’s earlier plan to appoint a commission to examine the issue was dropped — possibly on the Centre’s advice. Even the debate remained confined to a settling of personal scores and did not generate any fresh insight. Just as both leading parties are ever willing to blame the other for the spread of terrorism, they are also keen to take credit for controlling the lethal menace. But the credit actually goes to the people of the state who saw through the game of the enemies of the nation soon enough and decided to subdue it with all the ingenuity at their command. The government would not have won the battle had it been operating without public support. What matters is that both parties have washed their hands off terrorism, at least publicly. Privately too, they must have realised the futility of having any truck with forces that swear by violent means. Those who kill and maim are loose cannons which can turn their fire towards their benefactors any time. The ugly history of terrorism should be read only for finalising steps necessary to ensure that there is no repetition of it. |
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Murder of a minister THE killing of Jammu and Kashmir Minister Ghulam Nabi Lone and the attempt on the life of CPM MLA Mohammed Yousuf Tarigami prove beyond a shadow of doubt that no human considerations weigh with the terrorists. At a time when everyone’s attention should be on bringing succour to the countless people who have lost their dear ones, homes and hearths on Black Saturday, these mindless killers have been gunning down innocent people. Earlier, they killed members of two families in Rajouri district and a CPM activist at Mattan in Ananthnag district. Obviously, they are exploiting the lowering of guard by the security forces in view of the earthquake. The ease with which the two terrorists penetrated the security cordon in the high-security Tulsibagh area in Srinagar and shot the minister and the MLA’s security guard is a warning that there can be no relaxation in security vigil. What’s worse, one of them could just throw away his overcoat and make good his escape. The killing shows that the announcement by some terrorist outfits that they were suspending their activities in view of the earthquake cannot be relied upon. The earthquake might or might not have destroyed some terrorist training camps operating on the other side of the Line of Control but to expect them to lie low because of the people’s miserable condition is not to know them at all. In fact, the terrorists thrive on people’s misery. One reason why they are terribly upset is the sterling performance of the Indian Army in providing relief to the quake-hit people in many inaccessible areas of the state, though the Army itself has lost some men and resources. How can the terrorists countenance a situation in which the common citizen feels gratitude to the Indian Army? Seen against this backdrop, it will be in the interest of the terrorists that attention of the administration is diverted to beefing up security, rather than providing relief to the hapless victims of the quake. It is with this intention that they have started selective killing of innocent people. It is a challenge the Jammu and Kashmir administration has to meet at any cost, while not slackening the earthquake relief work. |
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Some realism AT last, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has realised that saving human lives is more important than bothering about the man-made LoC when people on both sides of earthquake-ravaged Kashmir are desperately seeking relief from wherever they can get. His latest statement that Pakistan will allow any number of people from the Indian side of the LoC “to meet relatives and assist in the reconstruction effort” has evoked the expected welcome from India, which has been advocating greater movement of people across the LoC for speedy relief operations. The softening of General Musharraf’s attitude vis-a-vis India, though 10 days after the natural calamity visited the region, marks a significant departure from his initial stand reflecting baseless inhibitions on the question of aid from India. Had these inhibitions not been there, many precious lives could have been saved from the jaws of death with Indian assistance. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh too has responded positively to the appeal for establishing telephone links between the two sides of the LoC. Initially, four centres have been made operational for 15 days to allow the affected people to communicate with their relatives free of cost. Earlier, India had accepted a Pakistani request to allow its helicopters engaged in relief work to fly in the “no-fly zone” along the LoC on a “case-to-case basis”. This helped in supplying relief material to many inaccessible villages. Experts believe that it is easier to speed up the relief operations by using the road links from the Indian side of the LoC. This should be possible now when the LoC will cease to be a barrier. Pakistan should get rid of its reservations on the pretext of security considerations for greater cooperation in the massive task of rehabilitation of the earthquake-hit. Let good-neighbourly feelings overpower the decades’ old illwill and suspicions in this hour of crisis. Even the armed forces of the two countries can be made to cooperate to build bridges of hope. Some wayout can be found to take care of each other’s critical concerns. The challenge thrown up by the natural disaster must be transformed into an opportunity for promoting friendly relations. |
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There are several good protections against temptations, but the surest is cowardice. — Mark Twain |
Mitrokhin’s revelations
Vasily Mitrokhin, who died in 2004, was a KGB operative, who worked in the intelligence agency’s archives from 1956 to 1985. He copied documents and defected to the West in 1992, just after the Soviet Union disintegrated. The two volumes of the “Mitrokhin Archives” reflect the realities of Cold War rivalries in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The Soviets then funded political parties, politicians, newspapers, trade unions, journalists and front organisations like the Indo-Soviet Cultural Society to influence Indian policies. The Americans acted similarly, but in a more subtle and discreet manner. The more important question that arises from Mitrokhin’s revelations is not whether any individual, or political party received money from one or another super power, but whether their foreign links compromised national security and sovereignty. There were many who believed in the values, ideals and policies practised by one or other of the contending parties. There were ideological differences within the ruling Congress party. Those reflecting Sardar Patel’s thinking like Morarji Desai, S.K. Patil and Atulya Ghosh advocated liberal market economics and distrusted Soviet intentions. Others like Krishna Menon, Mohan Kumaramangalam and D.P. Dhar, labelled as “progressives,” admired Soviet achievements. Civil servants and advisers like B.K Nehru and L.K. Jha favoured economic liberalisation. Others like T.N. Kaul, P.N. Haksar and G Parthasarathy were left leaning. In a confidential assessment of Indira Gandhi’s Cabinet colleagues in 1967 the then American ambassador described Mr. C Subramniam and Mr. Sachin Chaudhury, in a communication to the White House, as competent and forward-looking persons. But it would be ridiculous to suggest that anyone of these people was beholden to any foreign power. The Indian diplomat (codenamed “Prokhor”), whom Mitrokhin claims was seduced by the Soviets, called their bluff and told them that his bosses at home were well aware of his interests after office hours! The differences among Congress leaders became public when the party split in 1969. The Soviet Union decided to back Indira Gandhi. Her opponents were dubbed as “reactionaries”. Congress leaders visiting Moscow constantly spoke of the need for the Soviet Union to support the unity of “progressive and democratic forces” in India. Lacking an absolute majority in Parliament, Indira Gandhi got Moscow to force the CPI to support a Congress-led minority government. The CPI soon lost public credibility and support. When Indira Gandhi returned to power in 1980, she dumped the CPI and told President Ronald Reagan in 1981 in Cancun that her main political challenge was from the Communists. Even in the heyday of Indo-Soviet Bhai Bhai she never allowed Soviet leaders to take her for granted. She rejected personal intervention by Premier Kosygin to accede to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and refused to endorse the Brezhnev Doctrine for “Collective Security” in Asia. Indira Gandhi believed that the CIA was trying to destabilise her government and that it had a role in the ouster of Sheikh Mujib in 1975 and of Bhutto in 1977. Her apprehensions were not unjustified, given CIA actions in Chile and elsewhere. When the Janata Party government assumed office in 1977, Moscow was anxious about the impact of the change in government on Indo-Soviet relations. A visibly anxious Andrei Gromyko was relieved when Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee assured him that Indo-Soviet relations were strong enough too transcend the fate of “any single individual or political party”. A senior American official, however, informed our Ambassador in Washington, Mr Nani Palkhivala, in 1979 that Moscow was working to bring down Morarji Desai’s government. Moscow was not too concerned about India’s improving ties with the US. Mr. Vajpayee’s 1979 visit to China and our tacit acquiescence of the genocidal Pol Pot regime in Cambodia, however, evoked concern in Moscow about India joining the emerging China-US axis directed against the Soviet Union. Morarji Desai received a very warm letter from President Carter when he resigned in 1979. Charan Singh, who was not similarly greeted, soon sought to invite Kosygin to India. But this did not stop Charan Singh from strongly opposing the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan . A sulking President Carter then had to be coaxed by former British Prime Minister James Callahan to congratulate Indira Gandhi, when she won the elections in December 1979. Political parties in India obviously have links abroad. They receive money when in office through defence and other contracts. While mainstream political parties benefited from such “deals”, they rejected proposals that would make India a client state of any foreign power. However, according to the diaries of former Soviet Ambassador to India I.A. Benediktov, CPI leaders met him regularly to ask for funds. One senior CPI leader thanked the Soviet Union for supporting China during the Chinese aggression of 1962 — an action tantamount to treason — at a time when Indian soldiers were sacrificing their lives to defend the country’s borders. The Communist movement in India split in 1963, just after the Soviet Union expressed support for and provided arms to India and changed course towards China. The CPI remained loyal to Moscow. The CPM aligned itself with Beijing. As the Sino-Soviet rift widened and led to violent clashes in 1969 on their borders, the CPI, which earlier backed China in its conflict against India in 1962, became stridently critical of China. Everything that Moscow said to condemn China was echoed by the CPI and the Moscow-backed newspapers in India. The move to upgrade diplomatic relations and send K.R. Narayanan as Ambassador to China was not welcomed by Moscow and the CPI. The CPM similarly did not know how to react when China invaded Vietnam in 1979, with Deng Xiao Ping vowing to teach Vietnam a “lesson” just as China had done to India in 1962. When Gorbachev decided to normalise relations with China in 1985, the CPI fell in line. These events are relevant, because both Communist Parties are implicitly advocating today that India should become a virtual camp follower of Beijing and accept China’s policies on our nuclear weapons programme and on its present differences with the Americans. They conveniently forget that both in the Nixon and Clinton years, the US and China colluded against India on crucial issues. This is their concept of “nonalignment” and an “independent” foreign policy. While one can ignore such views as flowing from ideological myopia, one naturally has misgivings when the CPM demands a reduction in our defence spending at a time when its ideological patrons in Beijing are not only increasing their defence spending, but also providing tanks, aircraft, frigates, missiles and nuclear weapons knowhow to
Pakistan.
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Attend “C”
DURING our batch reunions, when the spirits are high, conversation invariably veers around to stories involving the medical officers (MO) of the National Defence Academy (NDA). Perhaps because of many tales of lost skirmishes involving this memorable institution. The daily routine in the NDA was a gruelling one. The wakeup call was at six in the morning and lights out at 10 PM. The whole day was packed with rigorous dose of physical training, drill, weapon training, riding, academics and “puttee parades” (punishment parades). Even Sundays provided little respite. The only way to relax uninterruptedly the whole day was by getting Attend “C”. Attend “C” meant that the doctor on duty recommended that the cadet concerned was not fit to attend any parade and needed to be resting in his cabin. But for getting such an endorsement, the cadet had to be virtually dying or any of his limbs seen to be coming apart. It had to be genuine stuff. Years back when we joined the academy, we were around 16 years of age. There was no shortage of talent in any field, including ingenuity and histrionics. Thus every conceivable method was tried to get the elusive Attend “C”. Stomach, head and backaches were passe. Such complaints — sometimes even genuine — seemed to only annoy the medical wizard. Loose tummy was taboo as the cadet had to sit in the toilet and show the sample. One could go into a dead faint and produce froth from the mouth but the heartless medico would be unmoved. Getting past the doctor was considered a victory that became part of folklore overnight. It appeared that every MO posted in the NDA was a master in cadet psychology. Our batch retired a few years back. We are now in the senior citizen category. Most of us visit the Armed Forces Clinic that has the equivalent of MO, but as infrequently as possible. The situation has totally reversed. There is always a lurking fear that the MO will find some disorder and issue hospitalisation orders. The other day I saw the doctor on duty and explained that I was losing weight, feeling listless and excessively tired. He listened to my complaints patiently, checked my blood pressure and did an ECG. While I was dreading the multitude of other tests that I was likely to be subjected to, he pronounced that there was nothing wrong with me. He prescribed a few vitamins to pep me up and advised that I reduce my golf to nine holes in summer months and report back after a fortnight. I walked out feeling a lot better. Perhaps the MO was now a master of senior citizen
psychology.
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Veerappan: victims of police cruelty await justice
A whole year has gone by after Veerappan was killed. Veerappan had lived in the forests bordering Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and was described as a forest brigand by the police, a sandal wood smuggler and a poacher. He was also known to have helped the poor villagers in the region and in that sense a Robinhood! He was killed on October 18, 2004, and the event attracted the attention of the media not just in India but from across the world. The personnel of the Special Task Force (STF) that killed Veerappan were rewarded with housing plots and out-of-turn promotions by the government, of Tamil Nadu on October 30, 2004. The rewards, indeed, were in violation of the NHRC’s guidelines. Section G of the NHRC guidelines regarding encounter deaths in the course of police action, circulated to various state governments, explicitly states that “no out-of-term promotion or gallantry rewards shall be bestowed on the officers concerned soon after the occurrence. It must be ensured, at all costs, that such rewards are given/recommended only when the gallantry of the officer concerned is established beyond doubt.” This, however, was not raised anywhere in the media at that time because there was the general consensus then that anything and everything was fair insofar as nabbing the forest brigand was concerned. Even the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) did not raise its voice against the award ceremony held in Chennai on October 30, 2004. Meanwhile, hundreds of victims who suffered torture at the hands of the STF personnel between April 1993 (when the force was constituted) and October 18, 2004 (the day on which Veerappan was killed in the forests) await justice to this day. They include the 192 victims who deposed before the Justice Sadashiva panel of enquiry (set up by the NHRC itself to find out if there were any facts behind the several complaints about rights violation by the forces in the name of nabbing Veerappan) and their kith and kin. Women whose husbands were killed by the STF personnel in fake encounters continue to await justice and compensation. Then, there are hundreds of poor men and women (and some children) who were picked up, kept in illegal detention in torture sheds for days on end, subjected to electric shocks, tied up and beaten indiscriminately and also sexually assaulted by men in uniform. They had all deposed under the oath before the Sadashiva panel and given detailed accounts of torture and even named individual police officers. There are also hapless villagers and daily wage workers who were detained for several years from 1993-94 and detained in the Mysore Central Jail under various provisions of TADA (one of the special laws that was widely abused across the country before it was repealed in 1996) and set free in September, 2001, after the Special Court acquitted them of the charges. As many as 121 persons were detained under TADA from across villages on both sides of the Tamil Nadu-Karnataka border. The Supreme Court found the charges sustainable only in four cases. Simon, Gnanaprakasam, Meesakaran Madhiah and Bilavendran were convicted and awarded the death sentence. Even in their case, President A.P.J.Abdul Kalam is understood to have recommended against the death sentence now! They were all poor workers in stone quarries in the MM Hills and the evidence against them is that they were experts in the use of dynamite. They are accused of having assisted Veerappan in setting land mines in the forest tracts and killed policemen on patrol! But then, there are women who were picked up along with their husbands and children, tortured for a while and sent to the Mysore jail as TADA detenus. And while being there, they came to know that their husbands, sons and other men in their family were killed. There have been several such cases and some of them were presented before the Justice Sadashiva panel. In all these cases, the official version has been that these men were killed in different encounters. But their spouses have stated, under the oath, that these men were picked up, held in torture camps and done away with by the STF officers at different points of time. All these are now before the NHRC and warrant urgent follow-up action such as a directive to the two state governments (Tamil Nadu and Karnataka) to set up a special investigation team so that prosecution proceedings are launched against the guilty police officers without any further delay. The NHRC, however, has been sleeping over the Sadashiva panel’s findings and not even wanting to censure the two state governments for not responding to the panel’s findings. The Justice Sadashiva panel had submitted its report to the NHRC on December 3, 2003, after holding 10 sittings in the course of which it recorded evidence from 192 victims and 28 officers of the JSTF. Officers of the rank of Inspector General of Police from both Tamil Nadu and Karnataka were present throughout the sittings of the panel and the officers had cross-examined all victims who deposed before the panel. Rather than putting pressure on the two state governments to act on the report, the NHRC has been graciously extending deadlines for them to respond. The last instance a deadline was issued by the NHRC asking the two state governments to respond was February 25, 2005. This too has passed. All this leads to one imperative for the NHRC. Being a body set up under the guidelines of the Paris Principles of 1991, it is necessary that the NHRC functions as a transparent body and ensures that justice is dispensed with in a speedy manner. That the NHRC has not censured the two state governments ignoring its notices with impunity defies all rationale.
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‘Retired husband syndrome’ Sakura Terakawa, 63, describes her four decades of married life in a small urban apartment as a gradual transition from wife to mother to servant. Communication with her husband started with love letters and wooing words under pink cherry blossoms. It devolved over time, she said, into mostly demands for his evening meals and nitpicking over the quality of her housework. So when he came home one afternoon three years ago, beaming, and announced he was ready to retire, Terakawa despaired. “ ‘This is it,’ I remember thinking. ‘I am going to have to divorce him now,’ ” Terakawa recalled. “It was bad enough that I had to wait on him when he came home from work. But having him around the house all the time was more than I could possibly bear.” Concerned about her financial future if she divorced, Terakawa stuck with their marriage — only to become one of an extraordinary number of elderly Japanese women stricken with a disorder that experts here have recently begun diagnosing as retired husband syndrome, or RHS. Feeling chained to the tradition of older women remaining utterly dedicated to their husbands’ well-being, Terakawa said, she devoted herself to her spouse. Retirement cut him off from his longtime office social network, leaving him virtually friendless and her with the strain of filling his empty time. Within a few weeks, she said, he was hardly leaving the house, watching television and reading the newspaper — and barking orders at her. He often forbade her to go out with her friends. When he did let her go, Terakawa said, she had to prepare all his meals before leaving. After several months, she developed stomach ulcers, her speech began to slur and rashes broke out around her eyes. When doctors discovered polyps in her throat but could find no medical reason for her sudden burst of ailments, she was referred to a psychiatrist who diagnosed stress-related RHS. Terakawa began receiving therapy from Nobuo Kurokawa, a physician who is one of Japan’s leading RHS experts. Kurokawa coined the term retired husband syndrome in a presentation to the Japanese Society of Psychosomatic Medicine in 1991, leading to its use in books, journals and mainstream media here. Confirming Terakawa’s account in an interview, Kurokawa said he offered her the same advice he has given numerous other older women in the same position. “Come to therapy,” he said. “Then spend as much time as possible away from your husband.” In Japan, retirement has become a risky business for many wives, who are finding the stress of their husband’s presence at home unendurable. Though after-retirement stress is a common problem in most developed countries as husbands and wives try to balance relationships in their twilight years, analysts say Japan has become extraordinary for myriad reasons — including the fact that one-fifth of Japanese are now over 65, the highest percentage in the world. Even as gender roles have changed for younger people here, with women entering the workforce in record numbers, older Japanese have remained far more rigid. — LA Times-Washington Post
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China’s growth to hit environment Western politicians queue up to sing its praises. Economists regard it with awe and delight. Other countries are desperate to imitate it. Yet there is another side to China’s exploding, double-digit-growth miracle economy — it is turning into one of the greatest environmental threats the earth has ever faced. An ominous sign of the danger is given in a groundbreaking report from Greenpeace, published today, which maintains that China is now by far the world’s biggest driver of rainforest destruction. The report documents the vast deforestation driven by the soaring demands of China’s enormous timber trade — the world’s largest — as the country’s headlong economic development sucks in ever-more amounts of the earth’s natural resources. Citing figures from the International Tropical Timber Organisation, the Greenpeace study says that nearly five out of every 10 tropical hardwood logs shipped from the world’s threatened rainforests are now heading for China — more than to any other destination. Yet deforestation is only one of the threats to the planet posed by an economy of 1.3 billion people that has now overtaken the United States as the world’s leading consumer of four out of the five basic food, energy and industrial commodities — grain, meat, oil, coal and steel. China now lags behind the US only in consumption of oil — and it is rapidly catching up. Because of their increasing reliance on coal-fired power stations to provide their energy, the Chinese are firmly on course to overtake the Americans as the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, and thus become the biggest contributors to global warming and the destabilisation of the climate. If they remain uncontrolled, the growth of China’s carbon dioxide emissions over the next 20 years will dwarf any cuts in CO2 that the rest of the world can make. Even that, however, is not the ultimate threat from an economy which is growing at a rate the world has never seen before. According to Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute in Washington DC, the leading American environmental analyst, China’s scarcely imaginable growth in the coming years means that the world’s population will simply run up against the limits of the planet’s natural resources sooner than anyone imagines. Consumption: China growing at nearly 10% a year, already consumes more grain, meat, coal and steel than the US Wealth: China’s population will grow from 1.3 billion to 1.45 billion in 26 years when per capita income will be equal to that of the US today Oil: On current trends, China will by 2031 be consuming 99 million barrels of oil per day. Total world production today is only 84 million bpd Forestry: China is already the biggest driver of rainforest destruction, says Greenpeace. Half of all rainforest logs head for China Global warming: By 2025, China will overtake the US as the top emitter of the greenhouse gases causing global warming Cars: By 2031, China would have 1.1 billion cars if it matches current US trends — bigger than the current world fleet of 800 million. — The Independent
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From the pages of “Natural” leaders
England furnishes the best examples of the success of leaders. Benjamin Disraeli was not at all a natural leader according to the official definition in India. All circumstances were against him and yet he lived to be the leader of the aristocracy in England. Charles Bradlaugh was a poor man in humble circumstances, but he was a recognised leader of men. He was not a natural leader either. In politics, in literature and in public life a man becomes a leader by sheer ability and not with the aid of social position or wealth. Even in India it is the same, although officials look askance at such leaders. Kristo Das Pal came of poor parents and belonged to an humble caste, but he lived to be the recognised leader of the rich and aristocratic Zemindars of Bengal. Men like Surendranath Bannerjea and Gopal Krishana Gokhale are neither scions of the nobility nor rich, but what “natural leaders” in India exercise a tithe of their influence? They are natural and real leaders and the so-called natural leaders are no leaders at all for the simple reason that they are lacking in the qualities of leadership….
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Possession of wealth is to be praised if it is used to sustain many. — The Upanishadas The poor don’t need our sympathy or our pity. They need our love and compassion. — Mother Teresa Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it. — Book of quotations on success Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction. — Book of quotations on religion
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