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Darkness at dawn Deadwood must go INSAT boosts DTH |
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Disputed Durand
Line
Of passion fruit
and vegetables
Push infrastructure
reforms Control sugar to
cut stroke risk Chatterati
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Deadwood must go PRIME Minister Manmohan Singh’s proposal to reform the administration with provisions for mid-career exit for the inefficient civil servants and fast-track rewards for the competent is welcome. In fact, such a reform was long overdue. Over the years, in the absence of effective performance appraisal of the IAS, IPS and IFS officers, especially at the middle and senior level, the deadwood and non-performing officers have been able to continue in their posts at the cost of good governance. This has not only been inflicting incalculable damage on the system but also demoralising all those down the ladder. For instance, if a joint secretary or an additional secretary at the Centre is a non-performer, how can he show enterprise and lead a team? Clearly, it would be better for the government to dispense with such an officer and stem the rot. Encouragingly, in the past one year, the Centre has put in place many initiatives for reorienting the performance appraisal system and improving the skills of senior bureaucrats. Under Dr Manmohan Singh’s proposal, an officer’s performance will be reviewed at two stages of his service — 15 and 25 years. The idea of giving marching orders to those who do not come up to the expectations should be endorsed in the interest of effective administration and good governance. More important, the new proposal is expected to promote accountability among senior officers. There is a general impression that, nowadays, officers are hardly accountable. Even those who perform well do not get any rewards for their results. A performance appraisal report, based on work output, personal attributes and functional competence would help officers with faster career progression. It will also help the government to choose the right person for the right job. Undoubtedly, politicisation has affected the morale and integrity of the civil services. The role of the eminent persons’ group comprising respected citizens to be selected by a high-level committee, including the Leader of the Opposition, in the performance appraisal of top officers merits a fair trial. It may help as an effective institutional mechanism for assessing officers in a dispassionate and non-partisan manner.
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INSAT boosts DTH THERE is a latent demand for more Direct to Home (DTH) television services and a corresponding shortage in Ku-band satellite transponders, which the newly launched INSAT-4A has only begun to meet. The satellite has 12 Ku-band transponders, apart from 12C band transponders, and all the 12 have been leased by Tata-Sky, who have been waiting quite a while to launch their DTH services. Viewers currently have to choose between the Free To Air (FTA) bouquet of mostly Doordarshan and AIR channels offered by DD Direct Plus, and Zee’s Dish TV. These are beamed from the Dutch NSS-6 satellite, transponders on which were leased by ISRO and offered to DD and Zee While 4B and 4C will add another 24 transponders over the next few months, the total demand has been estimated by ISRO officials to be above 50. DD Direct Plus has been waiting to augment its services, and has been allotted transponders on 4B. Sun is waiting for 4C. Others wanting capacity include Reliance and state-owned BPCL. ISRO says it can lease transponders on more foreign satellites to meet demand. Zee wants ISRO to launch a small satellite for them. ISRO is eventually looking at 72 transponders, and cannot go beyond 80. Spectrum is not an unlimited resource. Other delays, too, need to be accounted for – 4A had to wait months for a launch window at Arianespace. This can be alleviated if the indigenous GSLV series, which is being augmented to launch this class of satellites, has lower turn-around times. A single transponder can air about 12 channels, giving Tata-Sky a potential 144-channel bouquet. Allocation is dynamic, and can change as companies’ plans change. Satellite life is also limited. 4A will last 12 years. There are technological developments waiting in the wings too. If the more advanced MPEG-4 catches on, demand for Ku-band may go down. DTH technology can deliver not just top quality reception, as existing users have already discovered, but choice, flexible pricing, and interactive features. Television is at a turning point, and capacity permitting, viewers have interesting developments to look forward to.
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Could we teach taste or genius by rules, they would be no longer taste and genius. — Joshua Reynolds |
Disputed Durand Line
The
British during their long rule over the subcontinent drew three lines on the map — the McMahon Line between India and China, the Radcliff Line between India and Pakistan and the Durand Line between India and Afghanistan. All three became sources of dispute and bloody wars among the successive governments. The over 100-year-old Durand Line — drawn on the maps and never delineated on the ground, having large ambiguous areas, rendering it a loose “frontier” between Pakistan and Afghanistan — is again a hot issue in Afghanistan. This follows a proposal mooted by President Gen Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, with tacit US support, to fence the Durand Line “frontier”. Pakistan is also trying to use the Tripartite Commission consisting of Afghanistan, Pakistan and the United States, which is meeting every alternate month, to sort out mutual issues along the frontier. A heated debate is on among the various political leaders and ethnic groups threatening to further deepen the divide in the already fractured Afghan nation. The Afghans see this as a very clever Pakistani move to convert the controversial line into a permanent international border under the pretext of stopping cross-border terrorism by enlisting the support of the US. Afghanistan has never accepted the Durand Line as a settled border. It always considered it as “imposed” on them by the powerful British, and never reconciled to the division of the Pushtun population between two countries. The Afghanistan President, Mr Hamid Karzai, has already rejected the idea as “impracticable and unimplementable as families live on both sides of the line and any artificial barriers like fencing would permanently divide them.” The Afghan Interior Ministry, responsible for controlling cross-border terrorism, has said that “the border between the two countries has to be properly decided and delineated first as per international norms before considering any fencing proposal.” The border dispute has its origin in the period of uncertainty in this region following the decline of the Moghul empire after Aurangzeb when the Moghul authority was reduced to Delhi, and the provinces were usurped by the regional satraps. Entire Afghanistan had been one of the most important provinces of the Moghuls. They considered it as the crown of their empire. The empire founder, Babur, was so infatuated with Kabul that he wished his body to be buried in Kabul. The third Anglo-Afghan war of 1919 saw the cancellation of all treaties, including the Durand Line and the Rawalpindi Treaty of August 8, 1919, acknowledging complete independence of Afghanistan. On November 22, 1921, a new treaty between the two “sovereign” governments was signed and later ratified on February 6, 1922, in Kabul. There is no reference to the Durand Line in this treaty and the successive Afghan governments never recognised the Line. Pakistanis claim that though the Durand Line is not mentioned in the 1921 treaty, Article 5 infers that Indo-Afghan frontier is accepted by Afghanistan as it existed between the successive Kabul rulers and the British. Afghanistan maintains that the Durand Line Agreement and its successive ratification was personal to every King and never dynastic and cannot be considered as automatically extended. The Afghan government further made it clear on the eve of the British withdrawal from India that all treaties signed with the British were no longer binding on them as one of the signatories would seize to exist. They demanded that the territories previously part of Afghanistan and populated by people of the Afghan origin should be allowed to rejoin Afghanistan or become independent states of their own. The British did not agree and held a referendum in the NWFP, but limited the choice between India and Pakistan. Annoyed at this, the referendum was boycotted by the Congress and its Pushtun allies led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, popularly known as Sarhadi Gandhi. They advocated an independent Pakhtoonistan. Afghanistan’s legislative Shura nullified all treaties with British India on July 26, 1949. The Loya Jirga (Afghan Grand Assembly) also endorsed it. This was followed by acrimonious ties between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Abdul Ghaffar Khan continued his struggle till his death and did not go to Pakistan. He lived and died in Jalalabad in Afghanistan, where he is buried. The tensions between the two countries heightened after General Mohammad Daud deposed King Zahir Shah and the two neighbours came very close to armed conflict during Gen Zia-ul-Haq’s rule in Pakistan. The events of the last 30 years in Afghanistan after Daud — Russian intervention, Mujahideen résistance with the US and Pakistan assistance and the civil war — gave an opportunity to Pakistan to extend its rule into Afghanistan through the surrogate Taliban, created and nurtured by the ISI. They considered an Afghanistan under their influence as ideal for their strategic depth considering their confrontations with India. The overthrow of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda after 9/11, followed by successful presidential and parliamentary elections in Afghanistan under the new constitution, totally unsettled the Pakistan scheme of things. The Pakistani establishment and its agencies like the ISI have still not reconciled to Afghanistan slipping out of their grip and they feel that a peaceful, stable and strong Afghanistan will again assert rightful ownership over the NWFP by dumping the “unjust and now defunct” Durand Line. Playing up the Taliban activities, Pakistan has now come up with a move to fence the Durand Line to secure it as a permanent border with Afghanistan. The fencing move, however, has serious implications within Afghanistan. The Durand Line divides the Pushtun population in the middle. The tribes inhabiting both sides never recognised the imaginary dividing line. The internal Afghanistan angle to the issue is very significant as the Pushtuns in present Afghanistan constitute the dominant ethnic entity accounting for about 29 per cent of the total population. They had been ruling the country for centuries now. The present Karzai government, having predominantly Pushtun representation, cannot think of accepting a permanent division of the Pushtuns into two. Ironically, the ethnic minorities of the Northern Areas like the Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras, who are the worst enemies of Pakistan, having suffered at its hands, are the best supporters of the Durand Line as the permanent border since the inclusion of the NWFP in Afghanistan would further cement the domination of the Pushtuns by pushing up their majority to near absolute. They oppose vehemently any proposal to disturb the status quo. The fencing proposal and Durand Line acceptance is likely to be a hot issue in the coming
days. The writer was a Prasar Bharati correspondent based in Kabul.
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Of passion fruit and vegetables In
1972, we were posted to Imphal. Offered the choice of three houses, I selected a cottage with a thatched roof, enraptured by its picture postcard garden. At that time, I did not know that bandycoots would run relay races on its roof all night. Also that there would be no running water. Having approved the house, I felt it would seem whimsical to ask for a change. The house had its positive features. Anything planted in the sunny garden, grew into brilliantly flowering plants, or better still a profusion of delicious vegetables, so fertile was the soil. The climate was a combination of hill station and Mediterranean. God could not have willed a more fruitful place. And that went for all Manipur. Come spring, huge oyster mushrooms were sold virtually at the price of fresh air — a basket full for 25 paise. Pineapples 100 pieces for Rs 20, dripping with nature’s bounty. A flood of oranges cascaded for a couple of months, all oozing pure nectar. As Industries Secretary of what was then a Union Territory, I fell devastated, watching all this abundance go waste. All efforts to introduce canning, export to other states, even sun drying, were frustrated. The distances were too great and infestation rates too high. There were no rail links and marketing was restricted to a weekly bazaar run by women. It was not a Manipur problem — it was the Achilles heel of the whole North East —far flung, no rail links, long, circuitous roads, lack of technical knowhow, no exposure to what the rest of India was doing (leave alone the world), with little hope of redemption. That was 33 years ago. Of course, it should have happened much sooner, but a Fairy Godmother in the name of a Technology Mission for integrated Development of Horticulture in the North East (TMNE) is apparently turning the Cinderella into Tina Munim (TMNE), if not a princess. Not to be outdone, Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh and Uttaranchal are also riding piggy back on the horticulture bonanza. Now, at long last, a National Mission on Horticulture has been launched to cover the rest of the country. With a budget of Rs 2300 crore for the next two years, the mission promises greenhouses, drip irrigation, pest management, organic farming, upgradation of laboratories, cold storage, floriculture, grading and processing facilities with a wave of the magic wand. It is one of the best things that could have happened to India. Our productivity is just 7.5 tonnes per hectare as against China’s 14, Brazil’s 14.5 and the world average of 12.7. Only a negligible fraction of our produce is processed and even then only 50 per cent of the capacity is utilised. Meanwhile, Indians will need to crunch a lot more fruit and vegetables to counter the ill effects of gorging on transfatty foods (read butter chicken, samosas, parathas and sweets) which place us at such high risk from coronary heart disease, blood pressure and diabetes. The standard global recommendation for good health is four helpings a day of fruit and raw vegetables. So until the promised passion fruit and kiwis from Tina Munim make it to our tables we have to munch mounds of “cruciferous” (cabbage family) vegetables (another favourite of doctors and dieticians). In the meantime, Cinderella may still turn into a princess and beat the clock, before she becomes a
pumpkin. |
Push infrastructure reforms In
an appraisal of the economic reforms, the Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, and other experts have pointed to infrastructure as the one area where success has been patchy and much needs to be done at once. Their unanimous verdict at a recent interaction that ASSOCHAM organised was that reforms in telecom and airlines have been a grand success. The programme on ports has been successful, on road it is partial success and on power a failure. Dr Ahluwalia disclosed that a massive push to the roads programme was in the making that would show results in three years. Any discussion on infrastructure draws an immediate comparison with China. Even Finance Minister P. Chidambaram at the inauguration of the event was frank enough to admit “China is 10 years ahead of us in infrastructure. And growing at a furious pace. The gap may increase.” His one line advice was: “emulate China.” Explaining why reforms in telecom were such a success, TRAI Chairman Pradip Baijal recalled that the public sector had over the last 50 years invested Rs 100,000 crore in telecom networks and achieved around 45 million connections. But just in 10 years the private sector had brought in Rs 60,000 crore and exceeded the public sector connections. India had the lowest telecom tariffs and competition was pushing the tariffs further down. From an average revenue per unit of eight dollars per month the mobile phone sector was moving to four dollars a month and yet would be profitable. It is the best example of public-private partnership. The next big development will be rural connectivity with broadband and wireless, and shift to next generation networks using Internet Protocol. The government should facilitate rural connectivity not by subsidies, but by support from USO fund, free right of way, modest spectrum charges and sharing of telecom infrastructure between competitors. A one-time spending of Rs 9000 crore will open up the rich potential of the rural sector. “Competition must have a demonstrable success” for greater public acceptance of the challenges of economic reforms, said Rajiv Lall, MD and CEO of the infrastructure Development Finance Corporation. The success of the telecom reforms had a demonstration effect. Civil aviation was another sector where reforms had a demonstrable success. For the first time we have a sharp fall in airfares and in some cases fares lower than that of upper class railway journey. Over 250 planes have been inducted. The low-cost carrier concept has become the rule. In the ports sector the turn-around time for ships has been brought down from six days to three and a half days. Why is the power sector a laggard? The Electricity Act 2003 is two a and half years old “but competition is not yet in sight”, admits Dr Gajendra Haldia, adviser to the Planning Commission. Dr Ahluwalia in a discussion with financial writers earlier had pointed out that the problem lay mostly with the states that should implement the reforms. In telecom the Centre was the sole authority. Hence, the reforms could be pushed ahead. The Electricity Act 2003 laid down the framework for reforms. “But we could only give guidance” to the states, he admits. Generation is linked to distribution. If the distribution is efficient and returns could be expected, generation would also pick up. State government are trying to protect their inefficiency in the power sector,” regretted Hari Shankar Singhania, chairman of the JK group. The only hope in power was that, as Rajiv Lall said, in most states the unbundling of generation from distribution and ownership was being implemented. ASSOCHAM’s outgoing President Mahendra Sanghi added one more aspect of the infrastructure problem — in railways obsolete assets were being flogged further that was one of the reasons for accidents. Urban infrastructure was cracking and in roads both quality and quantity needed to be addressed. Infrastructure investments needed to be $ 150 billion at least. Dr Ahluwalia pointed out that China was investing 45 per cent of its GDP, India only 25 per cent. “The order of magnitude is so high”, he pointed out. The India-China comparison sharply contrasts our poor performance against their progress by many magnitudes. Foreign direct investment in 1984 was almost negligible for both countries. By 2004 China was getting $ 60 billion, India only four billion. Manufacturing remained at 20 per cent of the GDP for India in these ten years, in China, it rose from 38 to 45 per cent of the GDP. Per capita income rose from 400 dollars to 1,200 dollars for China, for India from 400 to 500 dollars in the same period. China has nearly 400 million mobile phone subscribers, India 52 million; China’s below poverty line people are only 13 per cent, India’s 31 per cent. The literacy rate in China is 91 per cent against 61 per cent in India. Revealing all these figures Fortune magazine recently said that average time to start a business in China is 48 days but in India it is 71 days. China achieved this by going all out to adopt market economy and making huge private-public partnership investments in infrastructure. The magnitude of difference between India and China is so great that Knowledge Commission Chairman Sam Pitroda is suggesting that instead of fixing our sight on raising telephone density to 25 per cent (250 million — phones by 2007) we should go for 50 per cent, that is, 500 million in three to four years. The number of IITs should go up to 60 and we must double the engineers’ output from 300,000 a year to 600,000. The commission itself is engaged in this scaling-up study. He disclosed this at a leadership summit that the CII organised in Delhi recently. |
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Control sugar to cut stroke risk Diabetics
who tightly control their blood sugar levels can cut their risk of heart attacks and strokes in half, a long-awaited federally funded study shows. The findings, from nearly 1,400 diabetics who have been followed for more than a decade, provide the first direct evidence that the risk of the most serious complication of the disease, which affects millions of Americans, can be minimized by aggressive treatment, experts said. “This is the most important diabetes news of the year,” said David Nathan of the Harvard Medical School in Boston, who co-chaired the study being published in Thursday’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. “This is the remaining piece of the puzzle with regard to our ability to take the teeth out of diabetes and make it a less dangerous disease.” Diabetics’ bodies are unable to control the amount of sugar in their blood. Over time, elevated sugar levels can cause damage throughout the body, making diabetics prone to a variety of health problems that include blindness, kidney failure, nerve damage that sometimes requires amputations, and, most seriously, heart attacks and strokes. In 1993, Nathan and his colleagues revolutionized the treatment of the disease when they reported the landmark Diabetes Control and Complications Trial, in which 1,441 patients with Type 1 diabetes were put on a strict regimen aimed at tightly controlling their blood sugar and followed beginning in 1983. When the study began, the practice of most diabetics was to test their blood sugar once a day and give themselves one or two insulin injections daily. The strict regimen used in the study involved multiple blood sugar tests every day and a minimum of three insulin injections or the use of an insulin pump. The results, hailed as the most important development in diabetes since insulin, showed that after about six years the strict regimen sharply reduced the risk of the most common complications—eye, kidney and nerve damage. As a result, most doctors began to advocate the aggressive treatment approach and many patients adopted the much more intense, difficult lifestyle. But that study was too short to determine whether strict blood sugar control would also reduce the risk of heart disease, which kills 75 percent of diabetics and is the leading cause of death among them. For the new study, researchers continued to follow 1,394 subjects from the original study until Feb. 1, 2005, to determine the impact on heart disease and stroke. The diabetics on the strict regimen were 42 percent less likely to experience any kind of heart problem and 57 percent less likely to suffer the most serious problems, such as heart attacks or strokes, the researchers found. “That’s a pretty dramatic reduction,” Nathan said. “Short of curing diabetes this is one of the final answers in the puzzle as to whether we can decrease the complications from the disease. This adds something very important to the list of things we know we can improve.” The findings should push more doctors to encourage their patients to embrace the aggressive approach, and more diabetics to work harder at controlling their blood sugar levels, experts said. Despite the 1993 findings, many diabetics fail to tightly control their blood sugar. — LA Times-Washington Post |
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Chatterati Art
is capable of creating its own wealth and as art is a nation builder it must be promoted. Owning a Tyeb Mehta painting is today like owning a house in gold link. The rich have found a new way to invest and that is art. At a talk on “Investment in Art” last week in the Capital it was discussed how contemporary art has four dimensions — aesthetic, historical, financial and educational. It’s amazing how the younger generation has also realised the value of art. Neville Tuli, Chairman and CEO Osians Conniseurs, is very sure that art is capable of creating wealth. He is convinced that within the next 7-10 years art will play a vital role in the economy. Of course, one will need to create an art fund and if art is genuine it has to be accepted by financial institutions as a collateral asset. Well, as some of the world’s largest insurance companies have realised the value of art, art must have a public accountability system where one can access prices of paintings through a data base. Selective demolitions The demolition drive saw a flurry of political activity last week in the Capital. Chief Minister Shiela Dixit is once again in trouble. The dissident group is up in arms, once again. Obviously, the best news in decades is this demolition of illegal constructions. Well, if only 18,000 illegal constructions exist in entire Delhi, it’s clearly a joke. The builders are so powerful in the Capital that some of their illegal constructions like shopping malls and residential blocks are not even on paper. Those illegal blocks cannot be touched. And, of course, all the illegal constructions are backed by politicians and some politicians themselves own a number of benami buildings. Hence, the selective demolition. The nexus of builders, MCD officials, local goons and politicians is so strong that these guys turn a blind eye for fixed monetary consideration. But now this drive is seriously testing the politicians theatrical skills. They have to act very concerned and at the same seek an utterly legal remedy to an utterly illegal act. The leader of every party is agitated over the issue and discussions are on at all levels to create a fuss. The question still remains: where were the MCD when these illegal constructions came up right under their nose? Right now also it’s the same if you don’t want your building demolished. Fill those rather deep pockets. Book on Raj Kapoor Hand in hand walked in Bollywood’s one-time favourite couple — Rishi and Neetu Kapoor. Dressed in formal black, both of them are a hit even today. They flew in from Mumbai with the rest of the khandaan, the Kapoors, for the launch of a book on Raj Kapoor, Shashi Kapoor with sister Ritu Nanda and daughter Sanjana were all on stage to talk about the book. The author, Madhu Jain, is an old India Today hand and today with Roli Books. In between flash bulbs, camera bytes, drinking and chatting the Kapoors were a big hit with the Dilliwalas. Romi Chopra, Manjit Bawa and Om Puri enjoyed the short film on the legendary Raj Kapoor. No doubt, even today the Kapoors exude charm like no one else does. Sadly, from there Manjit Bawa was taken to hospital due to a cerebral stroke. Here’s wishing him good luck’. |
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From the pages of Mahatma Gandhi at Amritsar
Mahatma Gandhi came, he saw, he conquered - not as imperial Caesar did, by the might of his armed legions, but by the peaceful force of the divine soul in man, wherein alone the Mahatma puts his trust. I had thought that the long morning triumphal procession of tumultuous rejoicing, by which the pent up feelings of many months of anguish were transformed in a few short hours into joy, was one be the crowing act of that eventful day. But I was mistaken. There was an act to follow that was supreme. All through the long afternoon the women of Amritsar, with their little children, came in their thousands to offer their hearts’ devotion. This was the last act in the whole; and it was the most significant of all.
— C.F. Andrews
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The dowry is for the woman’s economic independence; a man is obliged to provide this even if his bride is already wealthy. If she is well-off and has no need of the dowry, she may voluntarily give some or all of it to her husband, but this decision is her alone. — Islam The wise man knows that the earnestness is the most beautiful jewel in his crown. His happiness is not marred. It is the only jewel which grains in beauty with every passing day, where diamonds and rubies lose their gloss with every passing day. — The Buddha Sins and good deeds make up the fabric of life. It is we who weave the fabric with our thoughts and actions. But we do not acknowledge it. We blame it on fate. We tell ourselves that God has decreed this for us. What could be greater delution? — Bhagvad Gita To know God, you will have to work very hard. So keep your body strong and healthy. A weak and diseased body will keep your mind revolving around itself. Where then will be time for God? — Sanatana Dharma You have never showed your love for God all these days. What is the use of regretting after the birds have eaten up the grain of your farm? — Kabir |
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