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Natwar as an extra Why Paris burns |
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Pleasing the boss Simple ways to go up in armed forces A stunning and incisive indictment of the system of assessment and selection for promotion in the armed forces, among other things, has been published in the War College Journal of the Army War College in Mhow.
Evolving a new foreign policy
The road to N(i)rwana!
Retain death penalty Shoddy state of Russian communists Delhi Durbar
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Natwar as an extra PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh’s decision to take away the External Affairs portfolio from Mr Natwar Singh and retain him as a minister without portfolio is the best option he could exercise under the circumstances. Ideally, Mr Natwar Singh should have resigned on his own and waited till he was cleared of the charge of being a beneficiary in the oil-for-food scandal. He did not do so and ignored taking what would have been a proper course of action. He has not been thrown out of the government, but has been simply divested of his portfolio to which he could not have done justice, having landed himself in the thick of the controversy. Clearly acting in concert with the Congress President, the Prime Minister has disarmed those in the Congress party who were backing Mr Natwar Singh. Besides, taking away foreign affairs from Mr Natwar Singh, the Manmohan Singh government has appointed a former Chief Justice of India, Mr Justice R. S. Pathak, to enquire into the whole gamut of issues raised by the Volcker Committee report. Earlier, it appointed veteran diplomat Virendra Dayal to get all the relevant documents, suggesting that Mr Natwar Singh and the Congress were “non-contractual beneficiaries” in the scam. Whatever information Mr Dayal is able to get from the UN is likely to be available to the Pathak commission. That both of them are well versed in the functioning of the international system—Mr Justice Pathak being a former member of the International Court of Justice and Mr Dayal having worked at a senior level in the UN—will stand them in good stead as they take up their crucial assignments. The Volcker Committee report has raised many questions. However, it can neither be rubbished as a fictional document nor considered as gospel truth. It is easy for a political party, particularly in the Opposition, to demand the scalp of a minister because his name happens to figure in the report. And when the name of his party also figures in the report, it acquires an additional ammunition for attack. But a government cannot act in haste, more so when there are no answers for several questions the report throws up. Under the circumstances, the UPA government has decided to find out the truth about the scandal. In this regard, it could not have chosen more respected and independent-minded men than Mr Justice Pathak and Mr Dayal. The Manmohan Singh government’s decision will certainly enhance its credibility and possibly deny the BJP an opportunity to block the proceedings in the winter session of Parliament. It has taken away a few days for evolving a coherent strategy to face the opposition onslaught, but with detailed consultations with the party leadership the Manmohan Singh government has tried to seize the initiative from the Opposition. Mr Natwar Singh now can attend Cabinet meetings, but in the absence of a portfolio has to depend on an occasional piece of work the Prime Minister might pass on to him. It is certainly a messy situation for him and politically uncomfortable.
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Why Paris burns THE rioting and arson, which has gripped Paris and spread to scores of towns, including Normandy, Dijon and Marseille, puts to severe test France’s avowed values of tolerance and faith in cultural diversity. The riots, raging for over 10 days, were triggered when two teenagers, who were being chased by the police, died of electrocution. The fact that despite the circumstances of their death being unclear, it was spark enough to set off such prolonged arson and attacks on police and public property suggests that something has gone wrong in the state of France. The most unegalitarian of European democracies, France, for all its vaunted cultural refinement, has a dismal record in the treatment of identifiable immigrants and ethnic minorities. In fact, it has few codified provisions for the protection of minorities though France has the largest – an estimated five million – Muslim community, including a high density of North Africans, in the European Union. A majority of this population, confined to ghettos in the poorest quarters of French cities, is forever seething against deprivation and discrimination even as the anti-immigrant tide has been rising. Such conditions are but a powder keg ready to explode at the slightest provocation and that is precisely what has happened. Rumours of the police lobbing teargas shells into a mosque may or may not be true. Yet if the disaffected minorities give credence to such reports, it is because the French authorities, in the past, have been guilty of transgressions into their places of worship. And, when the deeper malaise erupted, the authorities, even at the highest level, were not only divided – on whether they should opt for dialogue or enforce “zero tolerance” – but also high-handed as well as insensitive. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin and Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy are at loggerheads over how to deal with the situation even as Paris, and other towns in France, are burning. Mr Sarkozy, a hardliner with ambitions to run for the presidency in 2007, added fuel to the raging fires with intemperate remarks that betray his contempt for the poor and minorities. As a result, the authorities have been unable to either address the causes of the riot or control it.
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Pleasing the boss A stunning and incisive indictment of the system of assessment and selection for promotion in the armed forces, among other things, has been published in the War College Journal of the Army War College (AWC) in Mhow. The forces as well as the defence ministry would do well to take serious note of it. The paper, by Col D.S. Goel (retd), a former Senior Adviser (Psychiatry) in the Army Medical Corps and National Consultant in the Directorate- General of Health Services, is sweeping in its critique of “a cancer of ethical turpitude” that has spared “no aspect of military life.” It has, of course, been published with the customary disclaimer that the views expressed are those of the authors and not necessarily of the AWC or an Army department. But it is clear that an important introspective exercise is taking place, for which the forces need to be commended, and urged to take it to its logical conclusion. While noting that deserving individuals are generally assessed fairly, Colonel Goel has stressed that a significant chunk of “clever crooks and sycophants” also get promoted. Commanding Officers (COs), he notes distressingly, have to “look after/get illegitimate things done for senior officers”. Most COs, he says, behave as if they are in popularity contests, creating an “effete and ineffective command structure.” He traces the roots of this situation to a culture of opportunism and one-upmanship that starts in the academy. He is careful to situate military deficiencies in the larger society, and stresses that dishonesty is not as widely prevalent as perceived. But the rise of “a decadent counter-culture that has eroded traditional military values” cannot be disputed. The paper also makes some constructive suggestions, starting from the sacking of “generals and other equivalents with dubious reputations, inappropriate lifestyles and disproportionate assets,” as the “rot always starts from above.” He argues for objective, quantified, and independently verifiable parameters for evaluations, and an on-line administrative audit of postings, assignments, and nominations. Such steps are vital, and will be welcomed by every good man and woman in uniform, of whom there are many.
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A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. — Virginia Woolf
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Evolving a new foreign policy ARE we witnessing the end of India’s famed bipartisan consensus on foreign policy? The July 18 Indo-US agreement certainly represented a departure point in the country’s professed policy of non-alignment, in today’s circumstances to denote its independent nature. For the Left, as for many others, it came close to a pronounced tilt towards Washington as the Indo-Soviet Treaty in 1971 represented a tilt to the then Soviet Union. But the pro-Soviet bias of the 1971 treaty was subsumed in the Bangladesh war and the useful purpose it served in achieving India’s political and strategic goals on the battlefield as well as in the meetings of the United Nations Security Council. On the other hand, the burgeoning perceived pro-American tilt has been exacerbated by the beleaguered External Affairs Minister, Mr K. Natwar Singh, employing ideology to seek Left support in his efforts to remain in the Cabinet following his alleged complicity in underhand deals in Iraq’s Oil-for-Food programme detailed in a UN report. While the Bharatiya Janata Party is agitating for the resignation or sacking of Mr Natwar Singh, the Communist parties have give him conditional support and are mounting a major set of demonstrations against the Indo-US air exercises centred around an Air Force base in West Bengal. Further, the Left has been vehemently opposing India’s vote in favour of threatening to refer Iran’s nuclear programme to the Security Council. Outside the confines of political parties, there remain serious doubts among experts and in the ranks of intellectuals about the wisdom of putting all eggs in the American basket. And there is concern over the nature of the July 18 agreement on cooperation in civilian nuclear energy. The sequencing of steps and the separation of civilian from nuclear installations present problems, which could lead to the permanent capping of India’s military programme and a new level of intrusiveness by the international watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, into the country’s civilian installations. The United States has made it known that these agreements are in perpetuity. The government’s argument, now meeting fresh problems, is that after the end of the Cold War, there is for the first time an opportunity to advance the country’s interest by accepting to an extent the George W. Bush administration’s offer of making India a major power in the 21st century. Obviously, the US administration is seeking to serve its national interests with an eye on China’s growing military muscle and power, but that does not preclude India from arriving at a certain convergence of interests, not in containing China but in using American benevolence to grow in importance. What has not helped change Indian perceptions of the United States is the manner in which the George W. Bush administration has been behaving in its efforts to reorder the world in line with American interests. Its strategic doctrine of 2002 was an exercise in arrogance of power in its declaration of the right to invade any country of its choosing in a pre-emptive act. And the Bush administration tore up the Kyoto protocol on global warming and other treaties and agreements not to its liking, including the setting up of the International Court of Justice. This blatant exercise of unilateralism, symbolised above all by the invasion of Iraq, was totally in contradiction to India’s concept of multilateralism. President George W. Bush has softened his rhetoric somewhat in his second terms, having learnt a few lessons from the deep anti-Americanism his persona and policies has provoked around the world and the fact that after nearly two years after the invasion of Iraq, it is hopelessly bogged down, paying a heavy cost in men and treasure. But the neoconservative leanings of President Bush and his advisers continue to show, the unfurling of the banner of democracy in West Asia notwithstanding. The Manmohan Singh government’s argument is that it is time for India unabashedly to practise the art of realpolitik, that it is within the realm of possibility to differ with many of America’s objectives while taking advantage of Washington’s new perspective on India. It is a balancing act that calls for a high degree of diplomacy, and Mr Natwar Singh has botched up the game plan by employing non-alignment — whatever it means in today’s circumstances — to serve his own ends. The policy-making establishment remains divided on this pro-American twist to non-alignment fearing that India would lose its standing in the world as a country that pursues a largely independent policy. Unlike China, which became a strategic ally of the United States during the days of Deng Xiao-Ping to serve its larger interests with an eye on economic progress and as an insurance against a then hostile Soviet Union, India’s democratic structure prevents a sudden reversal of policy without debate and convincing a wide section of influential opinion about the need for a drastic change. Thus far, the government has not succeeded in evolving a new consensus. For one thing, a distrust of US policies virtually since Indian Independence and particularly during the Cold War remains a factor in popular perceptions. Second, the American attempt to arrogate to itself the role of the Second Roman Empire sits ill with most Indians. Third is the feeling that if India were to do US bidding on important matters, it would suffer a diminution of status among many countries of the developed and developing world. On the plus side are the close interactions between Indians and Americans, with an estimated 1.8 million Indian Americans living in the US. Besides, the US remains the Mecca of cutting edge technology (witness the number of Nobel prizes it bags each year in the sciences) and an unsurpassed market for consumer goods, as the Chinese have discovered to their advantage. And America’s clout in international organisations can help India. The government’s work, therefore, is cut out for it to convince the people about the need for a change in Indian policies. India must perforce make compromises but they should be compromises worth making in return for tangible and quantifiable advantages. The Natwar episode makes the government’s task a little more
difficult.
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The road to N(i)rwana!
A
weekend visit to Sirsa with a driver new to the route turned out to be a bittersweet experience. On a Google search before the trip the best we got was a skimpy road map on Haryana Tourism website which did not give distance or any navigational help; other websites were less helpful. On a phone call to Haryana Roadways enquiry at Chandigarh we got a list of towns enroute. Asked about distance the friendly sounding man checked his resources and came out with an exact sounding 228 km. Balkar Singh, our driver, suggested we keep five hours for the journey. We left in the wee hours to reach Sirsa by 10 am. Making use of traffic-free pre-sun rise roads we reached Kaithal (about 150 km) in two hours flat. The next town enroute was Narwana. Roadsign outside Kaithal said Narwana, Jind, Hisar, Sirsa and we took the route. After travelling 10 -12 kilometres and having taken the left branch of a fork we decided to confirm the route, as we did not notice any milestones or direction board. We asked a young man if this was the road to Narwana? No, this is the road to Jind, go back to fork, take the right branch, he advised helpfully. We had moved 100 metres on the suggested road when a fair-sized board told us this was the road to Narwana. Balkar became cautious and confirmed the route at every turn if there was no direction board. Barring ubiquitousspeed breakers and frequent rough patches the journey was smooth. The same, however, cannot be said about the return journey. Moving from Narwana (again!) we got mixed up. It was already dark. The milestones were either not visible or not legible. We realised (a little too late) that we had taken the road to Ludhiana, not Kaithal. We went back several kilometres to get the right road. Our trip-metre said total distance covered was 605 km, and the exact sounding man was off the mark by over 50 km. The lesson is obvious. Travelling on Haryana highways is just not for outsiders. Tourist, businessman or journalist going to Haryana must never depend on his own driving prowess or on a driver not familiar with Haryana backwaters. Do not hope to be guided by common navigation aids like milestones or direction boards. It will be quite like driving blindfolded. Forget that world is moving to GPS assisted navigation which gives you not only the exact distance between your car and the next turn, the road condition and the traffic flow, in real-time detail, possibly by someone in nearby Gurgaon! Surely S K Mishra, father of “highway tourism” in Haryana, or Bhupinder Singh Hooda would not be amused. If you cannot get self-navigating drivers please wait for the GPS nirvana to reach Narwana. As of now Dr Kalam can forget his fears related to Google maps.
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Retain death penalty FOR the past few days a legal controversy has been razing in the media: “should the death penalty be abolished in India?” The legal aspect of this proposition has been examined several times by the Supreme Court and the apex court has held that the incorporation of the death penalty by way of punishment in various laws of the country is not unconstitutional. This controversy has again been highlighted in the media on account of the pendency of several mercy petitions before the President of India, who is supposed to act on the advice of the Council of Ministers. The comments of the Union Home Ministry in majority of the cases is against those who are facing gallows on account of commission of heinous offences. On the judicial side, the punishment of the death penalty has been confirmed in those cases even up to the Supreme Court. Article 72 of the Constitution gives powers to the President to suspend, remit or commute the sentence of any person convicted of any offence. In 1973 the new Code of Criminal Procedure came into force. Prior to that, the death penalty was ordinarily the law of the land and life imprisonment was an exception. After 1973, the general rule is that the offender, who has been convicted under Section 302, IPC, or with the aid of Section 34, IPC, should be awarded life imprisonment and death penalty has become an exception. Further elaborating the concept of death penalty, the Supreme Court in various judgements has held that the death penalty should be awarded in “rarest of the rare cases.” Which case is the rarest of the rare is always a question of fact depending on the facts and circumstances of each case. The number of murders, the manner of committing the murder, the weapons used, whether the offender has taken the benefit of defencelessness of the victim etc are some of the guiding principles which have been laid down by the Supreme Court for the courts below. It may not be wrong on my part if I say that with the passage of time the Supreme Court has crystallised the cases in which the death penalty should be awarded. It has also been reported that the President of India is personally of the opinion that the extreme penalty may be modified in the present delivery system of India. Even the new Chief Justice of India in one of his interviews to the Press, has given his personal opinion that he was opposed to the death penalty. The trio would agree that the awarding of the death penalty is horrifying to a victim who is put in a condemned cell. A serious thought is required to be given by the nation and the legislature to the question whether the incorporation of the death penalty in the penal laws should be abolished, diluted or retained as such. This writer has a small experience of 33 years of service. I remained as Prosecutor for 13 years and for 20 years I discharged the judicial duties in one capacity or the other. I conducted hundreds and hundreds of murder trials in the capacity of Additional Sessions Judge/Sessions Judge and decided hundreds of appeals, including the death references, as a Judge of the High Court. I have pondered over this issue in an impartial manner taking in view the social background of this country. Unfortunately, in this country, ghastly murders are committed for taking vengeance and this trend of taking revenge in some of the families in villages goes on from generation to generation. The cases are not lacking where the entire families have been eliminated. In one incident multiple murders are committed in a most ghastly manner, shocking the conscience of human beings. Murder after rape has become the order of the day. Day in and day out we learn from the media that for even petty motives gruesome murders are committed. If the provision of the death penalty is taken away from the statute, in my humble opinion, it will have a far-reaching consequence. It will encourage those who have a criminal intent conceived in their minds and hearts. If, for the time being, they are not in a position to translate their designs into reality or have deferred their such designs, it is on account of the fear of the death penalty. This topic requires a deep discussion at the national level and any decision in haste for the abolition of the death penalty would be against society as a whole and may also prove counter-productive. In my considered view, the provision of the death penalty should be retained in the statute. It has already been diluted after the introduction of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973, and in the light of various ratios of judgements passed by different high courts and the Supreme Court.
***** The writer is a retired Judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court
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Shoddy state of Russian communists Today (Nov 7) used to be their day. This country used to be their country. But as the nation’s Communists celebrate the 88th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution that brought Lenin to power and laid the foundation of the Soviet state, their party finds itself without reason to celebrate much else. Once a well-organized and dominant force in the first decade after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the Communist Party now stands on the outskirts of power. The party lost more than half its seats in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, in 2003. Its candidate was trounced in the last presidential race. It has been mired in internal squabbles over ideology and direction; last year, a dissident faction attempted to oust longtime leader Gennady Zyuganov, who has been criticized for lacking charisma and the will to modernize the party. Even Monday’s holiday, which traditionally brings thousands of red-clad party faithful to the streets in a mix of nostalgia for what the country used to be and objection to what it has become, technically no longer exists. The Day of the Great October Socialist Revolution, the most revered of Soviet holidays, lost its identity in 1996 when it was renamed — awkwardly — the Day of Reconciliation and Accord, then was scrapped by the government altogether last year. If it is hard to imagine a reason to champion the rejuvenation of the Communist Party, which during its more than 70 years of rule epitomized the worst kind of repression, corruption and cruelty, there is one: The existence of viable political opposition in the new Russia may well depend on it. In the Russia of President Vladimir V. Putin, dissent is not seen so much as a necessary component of democracy, but a reason to further consolidate power. And the Kremlin has largely succeeded in driving its opponents into the political wilderness. The pro-Putin United Russia party now controls enough seats in the Duma to legislate more or less as it wishes. That has left the Communist Party in something of an unlikely spot: championing values it once abhorred. During a recent party congress, Zyuganov stood before his comrades and spoke of the need for a “democratic revolution” to oust the Putin government. “Communists are more in favor of democracy than the present party in power,” explained Nikolai Petrov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center. “Communists can be seen as promoters of democracy because they are interested in political competition. They are interested in political pluralism.” In some ways, the Communist Party of the Russian Federation is not much different than the Communist Party of yore, save for the gray hair of many of its members and its much-depleted ranks. Party congresses open to the hymn of the Soviet Union. There is talk of collectivism and the detested bourgeoisie. In one recent article, the party’s political journal trumpeted the advantages of socialism over capitalism — which has created a new class of elite rich and left Moscow awash in gaudy wealth. “The Communist Party is a party of the masses,” said Anatoly Lukianov, former head of the Supreme Soviet and reputed mastermind of the 1991 coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, whose once-limitless power in the Soviet Union has eroded to virtually nothing.
— LA Times-Washington Post
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Delhi Durbar LALU Prasad Yadav’s obsession with politics and Bihar in particular is well known. However, for some time now the Railway Minister’s refrain has been “no politics please, I am the Railway Minister.” And so it remained at a press conference in the Rail Bhavan recently. Scribes tried hard to get the irrepressible Lalu to dilate on the Bihar poll, his rivals Paswan and Nitish Kumar and his understanding with Congress President Sonia Gandhi on the seat-sharing arrangement. And Lalu insisted that he is only going to speak about new parcel fees and how he proposed tackling the chronic problem of ticketless travel. Interestingly, at another railway event in Patna about a month ago, Lalu stuck to holding forth on railway development programmes. Vajpayee on leadership What is Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s stand on the leadership issue in the BJP? This question is doing the rounds in the saffron brigade. The RSS insists that Vajpayee thinks like them and the liberal BJP wallahs are quick to fall in line with the RSS reasoning. The RSS did not waste time in approaching Vajpayee and impressed upon him the sanctity of the one-man, one-post principle whereby former Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani can retain the post of being the Leader of the Opposition after he bids adieu to the BJP President’s post. Some would have us believe that Vajpayee listened and nodded. Next in line seeking Vajpayee’s ears were the BJP leaders who underlined the need for building a liberal image and not cow down to RSS blackmail. Vajpayee again nodded. Killing two birds with one stone, Vajpayee has shown his sympathies lie with both camps. Ready for reshuffle Union Ministers are cancelling engagements and keeping invitations in abeyance so that they are not caught on the wrong foot when the impending Cabinet expansion-cum-reshuffle takes place. They do not want to be left high and dry by being away from the Capital when the expansion takes place. They are doing everything in their capacity to catch the eyes and ears of the Prime Minister. Dr Manmohan Singh has emphasised that the exercise to fill the gaps in the Union Council of Ministers and provide proper representation to the states will definitely be gone through before the winter session of Parliament begins on November 23. Fun of Half Marathon All the world seemed to be there in the Delhi Half Marathon held recently. In fact, many more wanted to take part in the great show but could not get the green light from the event organisers who told them that the participants had already been selected — on a first come, first served basis. H Sangini Devi of Manipur won a trophy in the marathon and was one of the hapless lot. She had been refused entry initially. All the same, it turned out to be a fun run. The participants ran for different reasons: some for the (prize) money, some for charity, others just for fun.
**** Contributed by R Suryamurthy, S Satyanarayanan, Prashant Sood and Pramod K Chaudhari
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From the pages of Spying on Indian students
THE arrangements made under the auspices of the Secretary of State for India to look after Indian students residing in various parts of Great Britain…. are too expensive. The bulk of Indian students for whose benefit the arrangements in question have been made resent them and often do so with bitterness and vehemence. They maintain that they have got on very well without the help of these arrangements and that they will continue to do so in future if left alone. The students have been and are subjected to a most objectionable system of espionage. It is really this espionage which the students object to and which they resent. Indian students are not fools to reject an arrangement which is calculated to do them even the slightest good. It is true that some allowance should be made for the desire to escape supervision and control which is natural in young minds.
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I have the highest reverence for Brahminism, under which a class has been set apart from generation to generation for the exclusive pursuit of divine knowledge and consigned to voluntary poverty. —Mahatma Gandhi The saints are good even without ablution. The thief remains a thief, even if he bathes at all the places of pilgrimage. — Guru Nanak Who can stand without legs? Vedanta are the legs on which the Supreme Consciousness stands. —The Upanishads Respect your mind. Keep it clean. Allow only clean thoughts to enter it. — Sanatana Dharma
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