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Minister bows out Street show |
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Delayed rain and
relief
Myth as reality
Youthful
indiscretions
Natwar Singh and
Volcker report Poverty and
exclusion blamed for Paris rioting Chatterati
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Street show Sit-ins and agitations have been some of the most potent weapons in the Left armour all along. These are utilised not as the last resort but as the very first line of offence. What the unending cycle of strikes has done to the industrial climate of the stricken state is there for all to see. With the advent of Mr Buddhadeb Bhatacharjee as Chief Minister it was expected that things would change for the better but hopes have been belied to a large extent. Old habits indeed die hard, it seems. Yet, it was thought that the usual tricks would not be tried out when it came to foreign policy matters. Unfortunately, CPM cadres still went ahead with their demonstrations against the joint exercises planned between the air forces of India and the US from November 7. Whatever the ideological justification for opposing such a joint venture might be, this is not a matter to be decided on the streets. The communists have legitimate forums like Parliament and the Assembly to register their protest. It is unbecoming to turn its protests into a road show. This has happened despite the fact that such joint military exercises are a fairly routine matter and the Chief Minister had even assured the Centre of adequate safety and security for the joint exercises. It will be interesting to watch whose writ runs in the state: the Chief Minister’s or party hoodlums’. The CPM ought to remind itself that even though it is not a part of the government, it is very much supporting it from the outside. It must shun the tendency to hunt with the hounds and run with the hares. Differences on international issues should be sorted out by discussions with alliance partners, not in the street. |
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Delayed rain and relief It is good that the Centre has relaxed the quality norms for the procurement of rice for the Central pool and allowed Punjab to accept rice of up to 4 per cent discolouration. Earlier, this concession was available till October 24 and many farmers would have failed to take advantage of it. So on the Punjab Government’s representation the deadline has been extended to November 15. Punjab had also sought a relaxation of 3 per cent in the “out-turn ratio” for rice millers, but the Centre has lowered it only by 1 per cent. These two concessions will put a Rs 90 crore burden on the Union exchequer. The Centre wanted the Punjab Government to share half the cost, but the latter has rejected the proposal. Paddy procurement, which had become quite smooth in the past some years, got derailed this year after the crop was hit by the untimely September rain. In 2001 too bad weather had forced the Centre to relax the quality norms. Why cannot there be fixed guidelines for procuring discoloured paddy in case of unseasonal rain? Precious time is wasted in making representation and sending replies. The regional office of the FCI can be empowered to take spot decisions. Crop insurance may be introduced to take care of farmers hit by any natural calamity. As the Centre-state dithering delayed a decision, paddy-growers were exploited in mandis by private millers and officials of procurement agencies. Many had to wait for long, others disposed of the produce at below the minimum support prices. Although newspapers have been highlighting the plight of farmers for the past some weeks, especially after one disenchanted farmer committed suicide right in the mandi, the decision-makers have taken their own time to provide relief. A bumper paddy crop had raised farmers’ expectations this season, but rain and official mismanagement have let them down. |
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Success in marriage is more than finding the right person: it is a matter of being the right
person.
— Rabbi B R Brickner |
Myth as reality Neither
of the two recent films, “Subhas Chandra Bose: A Forgotten Hero” and “Mangal Pandey: The Rising” was a resounding success at the box office. If anything, it confirmed that Indians do not care much for history. They may revere a hero, but are not interested in an unbiased study of his life and times. Scholars may be interested, but given some of the recent incidents concerning Bose, Pandey and Shivaji, they may be loath in future to undertake a dispassionate study of their subjects. The two films should have been a success, for they had much going for them. The Forgotten Hero was made by a distinguished director, Shyam Benegal, and much research was said to have preceded its shooting. The Rising, too, was the handiwork of one of India’s leading matinee idols, Aamir Khan, and its release coincided with the publication of two books on Pandey. Evidently, the publishers wanted to cash in on the hype surrounding the film. But even if the books sold well, the films did not attract too many viewers. Is the reason for the indifference the same as the one which made the Vedic Indians forget their place of origin, and their successors the reign of Mauryan emperor Asoka and the frescoes of Ajanta and Ellora — glorious epochs in Indian history which were discovered by the British ? The answer is not easy, but it may be possible to claim that, like Henry Ford, most Indians think of history as “bunk”. Ford believed that the “only history that is worth a tinker’s damn is the history we make today” — an assertion typical of a self-made man in a self-made country without a past. But it is not an attitude one can expect of a country and a people with a history going back to 5,000 years. Yet, strangely, it is an outlook which suits the Hindutva lobby to the hilt. It, too, believes that history is meaningless, but doesn’t reject it altogether. The saffron camp is only averse to real history and prefers to replace it with myth. The purpose is political. Myths, which can neither be proved nor disproved, can create an atmosphere which is conducive to adroit manipulation to serve a given objective. The most potent example is the Hindutva camp’s extollation of Ram. In “real” history, the place of Ram is uncertain. According to Romila Thapar, “the conflict between Rama and Ravana probably reflects an exaggerated version of local conflicts, occurring between expanding kingdoms of the Ganges Plain and the less sedentary societies of the Vindhyan region”. Thapar at least places Ram in present-day India. Rajesh Kochhar says, however, in his book, The Vedic People that “the Rgvedic Sarayu should be identified with the Avestan Sarayu (Haroyu) whose present name is Hariud. Rama’s Ayodhya must then be placed on its banks and Rama himself must have lived in Afghanistan. The conclusion appears to be rather drastic, but is inescapable if we try to reconcile Puranic history with archaeological evidence”. To the Hindutva brigade, all of this is sacrilegious, for it is not interested in history or genuine archaeological findings. Instead, it would like to go by the kind of fake evidence which its fake archaeologists unearthed at the site of the Babri masjid. From rejecting history, it moves to concocted history, inevitably laced with aggression in order to make up for its lack of acceptability in recognised academic circles. Thus, the attacks by the saffron cadres on the Sahmat exhibitions depicting Ram and Sita as siblings in accordance with a Buddhist legend. But it isn’t the Sangh parivar alone which resorts to violence if its views are challenged by history. The Forward Bloc, a party founded by Subhas Bose, similarly threatened to unleash its cadres if the portions depicting Bose’s marriage were not deleted from the film although the Bose family had no objections. Similarly, Mangal Pandey’s descendants threatened the same if the legendary sepoy’s relations with a woman were not excised from the film. The same mentality was behind the ransacking of the Bhandarkar Institute at Pune for its association with an academic who had written a controversial biography of Shivaji. The trail, therefore, is clear. From disinterest in history to distorted history and then to violence if attempts are made to put the record straight. The result is a free-for-all in the matter of history writing, which may well be India’s unique contribution to this academic discipline. As a result, the parivar’s “history” books are known to peddle the weirdest of theories, starting with the claim of India being the homeland of the Aryans. The basis of this assertion is the saffron brotherhood’s paranoia about the Muslims. Since many of the latter came to India from outside, the parivar would like to depict them as aliens and, therefore, ipso facto unpatriotic. But the fly in the ointment is that the Aryans or the progenitors of the present-day Hindus also came from outside, notably Iran. Although the difference between the two “arrivals” is more than 2,000 years, the central point of being aliens remains. The parivar wants to avoid this problem by the simple expedient of making India the Aryan homeland but, unfortunately, this claim is not accepted by anyone other than the academic kar sevaks of Murli Manohar Joshi. It is noteworthy that many of these controversies are of relatively recent origin. They are a direct fallout of the political transition from the virtual one-party rule of the Congress to the rise of the BJP and the appearance of regional parties. In the immediate post-independence period, the Congress’s overwhelming presence ensured the evolution of a tradition of writing history which reflected a broad-based consensus. If the contrary viewpoints, mainly those of the Hindu revivalists, were largely ignored, the reason was that few in this group had the requisite academic credentials to compel attention. To a large extent, this is true even today, except that the success of the revivalists at the political level has enabled them to present their arguments with much greater force than before. A clash of ideas is not to be condemned. What is unfortunate, however, is that much of the confrontation is in the form of assertion and denial, without an attempt for a scholarly evaluation. “The atmosphere of bigotry and intolerance, whose most shameful manifestation was the demolition of the Babri masjid, has hindered the process of isolating history from politics.” Encouraged by the Hindutva lobby’s partial success in challenging some of the earlier assumptions, others have now come to the fore to demand that history be rewritten according to their dictates. The demand of Suraj Bhan, chairman of the National Commission for Scheduled Castes and Tribes, to erase anti-Dalit sentiments from history books and even literary works is an example of this new assault on the subject. The forthcoming celebration of the 1857 uprising should offer an opportunity to restore a semblance of scholasticism to history since the event was one of the most intriguing in recent history, revealing new facets of the interaction between the Indians and the British. As is known, the Sikhs and the southern states stayed aloof during this period, as did Bengal although Mandal Pandey lit the fuse in Barrackpore. An unprejudiced examination of the complexities will highlight the real values of historical
studies.
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Youthful indiscretions There
is no knowing the length to which a young man (or an old fool) will go to show his devotion to the object of his desire. In this case, the “length” was a distance of 30 km, along which a boy of 19 crawled on his hands and knees to the house of the girl who had jilted him. It happened in Orlando, Florida, USA. It’s not surprising that the oddest exploits, like walking on the moon, are performed by Americans. Apparently, the young man, William by name, arrived at his destination with holes in his gloves and the knees of his jeans. Perhaps he shouldn’t have worn any gloves and should have appeared at his ex-fiancee’s doorstep with bleeding hands. Anyway, the girl, Robin by name, was neither impressed nor amused. In fact, she thought the caper rather stupid and called the police to remove her crawling suitor. While agreeing with her view of the incident, I do feel that she might have been a bit hospitable, like offering the poor fellow a glass of beer or applying a soothing ointment to those parts of his anatomy which had suffered damage in the course of his long and rough journey. It’s a long time since I was William’s age, but I remember with a slight sense of shame the stupid things I did on several occasions, having suffered the pangs of unrequited passion. There was an extremely attractive girl in my class to whom I had been making advances by means of little love notes hidden between the pages of the novels of “high romance” that I lent her from time to time. I regret to say that there were no answering notes from her when the books came back to me, but as the girl always gave me a beauteous smile whenever she saw me in the classroom I naturally assumed that she felt the same about me as I did about her. The lack of written response I put down to the (then) proverbial coyness of Indian girls. A few weeks before the dreaded B.A. exam, the girl borrowed my history notes. Why she did not have her own, I cannot say. Perhaps she wanted to save herself the trouble, knowing that she could rely on some diligent note-writer like myself. As you will have guessed, the history notes were not returned to me with the result that I did very poorly in the subject. What hurt me to the quick was that the girl did not even thank me for my timely assistance. In fact, I never saw her again but I heard, later, that all the time she had been bestowing her encouraging smiles on me she had been engaged to a fellow in the army. So much for the “coyness” of the girls of my
generation!
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Natwar Singh and Volcker report In
1996 the UN imposed trade sanctions on Iraq, which meant that no country could trade with it. However, it allowed an exemption to the embargo — it permitted Iraq to sell oil for money to buy humanitarian goods, to alleviate the misery and ease the hardship of sanctions on ordinary Iraqi people. So strict was the control that the UN determined how much oil Iraq could sell and at what price. Money was credited into a UN-controlled account and was to be used only for humanitarian purchases. However, it was left to Iraq to decide whom it would sell oil to and from whom it would buy humanitarian supplies. The money for such purchases was to be paid for and from the UN-controlled account of Iraq. The need for investigation arose as details of the scam started emerging in months after the US occupation of Iraq. After allegations of bribery against Kofi Annan and Benon Sevon, Administrator of the (Oil-For-Food Programme) FFP, were made, the UN Secretary General Annan appointed an independent committee to probe the accusations. The committee was headed by Paul Volcker, a former chief of the US federal reserve. Its final report was released on September 28, 2005. The Independent Inquiry Committee, looked into the indictment that Saddam diverted some $1.8 billion in kickbacks and surcharges. The report was prepared after one and a half years of investigation on how the Saddam Hussein regime abused the humanitarian “oil-for-food” programme started by the UN in 1996. The committee has concluded that the Saddam regime awarded lucrative oil contracts to individuals and companies across 66 nations to create a diplomatic and political environment against the sanctions. Such contracts by the then Iraqi regime helped individuals and companies get Iraqi crude at concessional rates, which they sold at the market rates. According to the report, from 1999 Iraqi officials maintained a policy requiring 10 per cent kickbacks on humanitarian contracts. The next year they began requiring surcharges of 10 to 30 cents per barrel of the oil sold. “Many companies freely went along with Iraq’s demands. Others made payments to third parties or agents, while disregarding the likely purpose of these payments” Iraq sold $64.2 billion in oil to 248 companies around the world and then spent $34.5 billion on food and medicine from more than 3,400 companies. In mid-1999 first kickbacks started — ostensibly fees for inland transport imposed on the suppliers of humanitarian material. By 2000 the regime wanted a flat 10 per cent “after-sales services fee” (ASSF) on all contracts to be paid to Iraqi embassies or Iraqi front companies abroad. About $1.55 billion of kickbacks were received — $1.2 billion as ASSF and $530 million as inland transport fees. From the late 2000 to the late 2002 the Iraqi regime imposed a 10-30 cent “surcharge” per barrel of oil. The price fixed for Iraqi oil was lower than the market price, hence buyers were willing to pay kickbacks for buying contracts. This money — estimated at $229 million — didn’t go to the UN-controlled account. “Non-contractual beneficiaries” emerged — people or companies without contracts but buying oil through fronts. More than 4,500 companies have been involved in the UN oil-for-food programme. The country with the most companies involved in the programme was Russia followed by France. The report also says that as many as 119 Indian firms, including several pharma majors, figure on the list of suppliers of humanitarian material to Iraq who either knowingly or unwittingly paid kickbacks to the Iraqi regime. The total amount paid by the Indian firms in the form of “after-sales service fees (ASSF)” and “inland transport fees (ITF)” — the two forms in which the kickback was collected — was $22.2 million. Among the names that figure on the list are companies like Cipla, Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy’s, Wockhardt, Ajanta Pharma, Alembic, Tata International, Godrej & Boyce, Thermax and even public sector Balmer Lawrie. However, the biggest amounts were shelled out by a relatively lesser known entity of our country, Priyanka Overseas, which supplied a wide variety of items including tea, sugar and polypropylene bags. The company reportedly paid a total of $2.1 mn as ASSF and ITF. In the same report names of Natwar Singh, the Congress and Bhim Singh also figure as the beneficiaries. The Volcker Committee’s 500-page report has named India’s External Affairs Minister K. Natwar Singh in two tables purportedly showing “non-contractual beneficiaries” of Iraqi oil sales. Under the head “Sources of Evidence” in tables 1 and 3 of the report for this section, there is an assertion that the information in the relevant tables is “broadly based on four sources”, which are (1); “databases and records” maintained by the United Nations; (2) records of the Government of Iraq, primarily from the Ministry of Oil and the State Oil Marketing Organisation (SOMO); (3) records from various financial institutions involved in the oil financing transactions; and (4) records provided by “certain entities involved in the purchase of oil from Iraq.” The allegations have been denied by the Foreign Minister. Assuming that what he says is true, how has his name figured in the documents of other countries is a question which needs to be answered. After all there can be no smoke without some fire. It is time that no reports of corruption even against the high and mighty are put on face value. They should be brought to a conclusion either by indicting, or clearing them, through our own independent investigation. The writer is a former Director of the CBI |
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Poverty and exclusion blamed for
Paris rioting Gangs
of youths have taken their turn to burn hundreds of cars, set fire to public buildings, or factories or warehouses, to storm buses or throw stones or shoot live bullets at the police Is Paris burning? From the centre of the world’s most beautiful city, you would hardly know anything much was happening. The tourists still crowd into the new Louis-Vuitton store on the Champs-Elysées. Well-heeled Parisians are planning their Sunday lunch with maman or making an early getaway for a weekend in the country. But beyond the Paris ring-road (the Boulevard Périphérique), especially to the north, east and south, there is a different world: a world of tower blocks, sink schools, 20 per cent unemployment, violent youth gangs, police brutality, and - it should be said - many thousands of people trying their best to make a living and keep their children out of trouble. Since Thursday 27 October, it is this twilight world which has been plunged into fire and destruction. Night after night, the violence has spread, leapfrogging from one suburb to another. Gangs of youths in five or six areas each night, mostly north and east of Paris, have taken their turn to burn hundreds of cars, set fire to public buildings, or factories or warehouses, to storm buses or throw stones or shoot live bullets at the police. The victims are, of course, other relatively poor residents of the banlieues, the double ring of often pleasant, sometimes grim, public housing estates that surround the French capital. These are not, in the classic sense, race riots. There are almost no mono-racial ghettoes in France. The gangs attacking the police, and their neighbours’ property, have a sense of exclusion from rich, white society. But they reflect the bizarre ethnic mixture of the banlieues. Maybe 50 per cent are of Arab or African origin, and 30 per cent are black, with a sprinkling of French kids and the descendants of European immigrants. Of five youths tried for rioting in a court in Bobigny on Thursday, two were of Arab origin, and three were white, one of Italian extraction. Only one of the five was not born in France. Despite the inflammatory rubbish written by some right-wing commentators in the French press about a “Paris intifada”, this is not an Islamic insurrection or a political revolution of any kind. If you speak, as I have over several years, to kids in the youth gangs in Paris suburbs, they have no political or religious sense whatsoever. If you ask them who they hate, they say: “We are racists. We hate the kids who live in that estate over there.” The gang members — a minority but often a large minority of kids in one area — are educational failures or unemployed or from fatherless homes. They can be charming to speak to. But their attitudes, dominated by violence, theft and contempt for women, betrays a complete breakdown of the French “republican” and educational model. The initial cause of the unrest was the still unexplained death by electrocution of two teenage boys at Clichy-sous-Bois last Thursday. Their companions insist they were chased into a power sub-station by police and left to their fate. All sides now agree the boys had done nothing wrong. The government insists that there was no police chase, but a criminal investigation has been belatedly opened. Is Paris burning? Not
yet. — The Independent |
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Chatterati With
Azad’s exit from the Union Cabinet, a lot of aspirants for the post have started making noises. A reshuffle is on its way. Young turks are waiting to be adjusted in with Rahul. Whatever may happen in the reshuffle, the man still to watch out for is Ghulam Nabi, a winner through and through. One of the best Youth Congress presidents the Congress can boast of. Slow, steady and delivers top class. During his time the Youth Congress literally spread out like the RSS. In every village he had his man who would die for him. Soft-spoken, he may be, but hard to the core about his mission. He is right when he says “ke jaan hatheli pe rakh kar aiye hoon”. Stars turn up for polo match Last Sunday we witnessed the finals of Halcyon Baroda Cup. The day’s play saw an amazing thriller on the grounds as Army reds of 61 Cavalry beat Jaipur Polo company by seven goals to three to win the Baroda Cup comfortably. The Army men showed great team work and effort. Well, they were not the only ones that afternoon who made an effort. Priya Scindia, daughter of Baroda royals and daughter-in-law of Madhavrao Scindia was such a gracious hostess. The high tea following the Polo match was done with care, taste and choice. The normally reclusive Baroda family now based in Bombay was out in full force to ensure that their three-year commitment announced for the game would take it to new heights of professionalism and crowd appeal. The turnout of Bollywood stars and starlets and the increased number of relaxed attendees made it an afternoon which balanced glamour with grace. Charity too this afternoon. Rohit Bal gave two of his creations to be auctioned and the proceeds went to the PM’s earthquake relief fund. Bhim Singh in limelight Those who believe that every man is entailed to his fifteen minutes of fame will be reassured that Bhim Singh has proved that this is true. Bhim Singh is the self-styled leader of an otherwise invisible Panthers Party. Not exactly enthused by wildlife, as the name may suggest. The party has been a great a’lay of Iraq. In return Bhim Singh claims he was among those offered a role in the oil-for-cash scam. All this is O.K except for the fact that Bhim Singh has also chosen to embarrass Natwar Singh. By suggesting that Natwar’s name was on the list of contracts he saw, one more nail is driven into the Natwar saga. Whatever emerges after the clean chit from Manmohan Singh and the coming furore in Parliament, you can be sure that Bhim Singh will be standing by, counting his minutes of fame.
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From the pages of The Hindu Polity
European writers are apt to assume on the basis of Indian medieval history that there was no representative system of Government known to the Orientals and that they have always been accustomed to personal rule or despotism. Such a belief would falsify the very existence of a higher type of civilisation, culture, learning and arts among the ancestors of the Indian people. It is hardly possible to suppose that if the people knew nothing but personal despotism, they could have evolved a type of civilisation and arts which at one time surpassed everything else in the world and which to this day is admired for its excellence through the literature of that period. Nor do we find in the European history, ancient, medieval or modern, any evidence of personal rule or despotism, however benevolent, having produced anything great and abiding as the product of national genius. India, however, has passed through a long period of arrested civilisation owing partly to its conquest by inferior people and partly to the degeneracy brought on by internal causes. If now there is a powerful impetus given to progress in all directions, it is because of the strength of her ancient culture and civilisation and subsequent period of stagnation being relieved by free development. |
Vying for more and more diverts until you go to the tombs. But you will know; indeed, on the contrary, you will know. But if you knew with certain knowledge, you would surely see hellfire; and you would see it with the eye of certainty. Then you will be questioned about comfort on that day. — Islam He is truly a man to whom money is only a servant; but on the other hand, those who do not know to make a proper use of it, hardly deserve to be called men. —
Ramakrishna Very often we doubt the Supreme Truth because our minds are not developed enough for it. We cannot appreciate it. As a result, we cannot use it either. Our ignorance makes us feel that it is so with knowledge, then we realise the fallacy of this supposition. —
Bhagvad Gita |
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