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Killings in Chhattisgarh Some solace Power from Dabhol |
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War in Waziristan
The French perfume
FDI can step up growth Broadening theatre
audience His economics aimed at public good
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Killings in Chhattisgarh THE manner in which the Naxalites gunned down 15 people of Manikonta village in Dantewada district in Chhattisgarh speaks volumes for the state government’s failure to check the increasing violence perpetrated by the Maoists. The fact that 35 villagers have returned home safely without any harm is not much of a consolation. Their recollections of their abduction and the cold-blooded killings have only heightened the fears of the villagers. Reports suggest that fear psychosis continues to grip Manikonta even after four days of the killings. The residents refuse to stay in the village for fear of more raids. They had to bear the brunt of the Maoists for having supported the government’s ‘Salwa Judum’ programme. Though the government hails the programme as the people’s “spontaneous” response to Maoist oppression and as a “turning point” in the fight against Naxalism, people in large numbers have been living in miserable conditions in relief camps. If the situation has come to such a sorry pass, the reasons are not far to seek. Obviously, things have not gone out of control overnight. Years of neglect and apathy by successive governments have led to the present uprising. Instead of dealing with the situation as a socio-economic problem, Chhattisgarh and other Naxalite-ridden states like Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh have been treating it purely as a law and order problem. Of course, these states — and the Centre — seem to have slowly begun to realise that they will have to apply necessary course corrections to check the increasing incidence of Naxalite violence. There is a need to get to the roots of the problem. The spread of the Naxalite problem is linked to the total neglect of the tribals. Almost 40 per cent of the tribal population has been displaced because of industrial and mining activities. With hardly any programme for their rehabilitation, they have become easy recruits to the Naxalite cause. Mere land redistribution won’t address the problem. There has to be massive investment in agricultural infrastructure to make land redistribution effective. Employment generation in tribal and rural areas would be another step to stop the youth from joining the Maoist ranks.
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Some solace IT has been a double tragedy for the families of those who were killed in the Malta boat accident in 1996. They lost their near and dear ones and are even unable to get any compensation in the absence of death certificates. Now that the Punjab and Haryana High Court has issued an order that the certificates should be issued at the earliest, things will start moving again, hopefully. Of the 300 persons who died when their boat capsized near Sicily (Italy) on December 25, 1996, as many as 141 were from Punjab. Their families had been moving from the proverbial pillar to post ever since. As the Malta Boat Tragedy Probe Mission had pointed out, only 15 or 16 persons had been given cash compensation. The government claimed that ex-gratia had been paid to the families of 79 deceased, but did not provide any details. All such families would be greatly helped once they get the death certificates. According to rules, these should have been issued much earlier, but then government machinery is not known for moving on time. It needs to be prodded by judicial intervention. The court has also ordered the immediate payment of ex-gratia of Rs 50,000 announced by the Punjab Government. Most of the victims were illegal migrants. That had made their case all the more complicated. Their fate should be a lesson for all those who still court misery in their eagerness to fulfil their dream of going abroad. It is really shocking that there are still hundreds of people ever eager to be caught in the trap laid by unscrupulous travel agents. While it is one thing to tell the gullible to be on guard, it is also the responsibility of the government to make sure that the killers who go by the name of travel agents are kept on the leash. They have been enjoying a free run ostensibly because they enjoy official patronage. The involvement of even an Indian Foreign Service officer in the racket, which came to the surface recently, lends credence to various allegations of such mafia being in operation.
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Power from Dabhol ONE of the turbines of a state-of the-art plant gave 30 MW power to the Maharashtra State Electricity Distribution Company Ltd on Monday. This event would not have merited more attention had the plant in question not been in Dabhol and the beneficiary had not been the power-starved state of Maharashtra, which has been experiencing a peak shortage of around 4,500 MW. Instead of providing 2,015 MW of electricity, the gas-based power plant had been embroiled in a controversy soon after the now defunct and discredited Enron Power Corporation and the Maharashtra State Electricity Board (MSEB) signed an agreement in June 1992. The Dabhol power plant had been lying unused since June 2001, when the dispute between Enron and the MSEB over the power purchase agreement (PPA) became acrimonious. There were allegation of corruption in India and, later, Enron went belly up in the USA. Among the problems that the Dabhol power plant faced were the high cost of its power supply and environmental issues. Now that the project has been given a fresh lease of life under a new dispensation, it is imperative that this valuable national resource be used to help the country deal with its power crisis. No doubt, naptha is a more expensive fuel than gas, but it is necessary to use it till the liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal to handle gas supplies comes up near Dabhol and the supply is firmed up from GAIL (India) Ltd and foreign companies. The project needs the support of the government, both Central and state, so that it can deliver at its full capacity. Now is the time to focus on its future and what it can contribute to improve the power supply situation in the country.
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Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach. — Arnold Glasow
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War in Waziristan
THE situation in Pakistan’s tribal badlands of Waziristan is fast spiralling out of control. Despite tall claims of the Pakistan army of causing heavy casualties in the ranks of the jihadis, there is little evidence to suggest that the Pakistan army is anywhere near enforcing the “writ of the state” in North and South Waziristan. The operations of the Pakistan army, in which helicopter gunships, fighter aircraft, long-range artillery have been used against militant strongholds, have caused immense “collateral damage” and done little to gain the support of the locals in these areas. Reports suggest that the tribesmen fighting against the Pakistan army are going from strength to strength and expanding their influence and their “writ” in adjoining districts like Dera Ismail Khan, Tank and Bannu. In all these areas, the Pakistani Taliban are issuing diktats on how people should run their lives and have put barbers, musicians, video and music shop owners, cable TV operators, out of business. They are meting out their brand of rough and ready justice and have killed smugglers and kidnappers and hanged their bodies from lampposts and there is little that the state authorities have been able to do. As the level of violence mounts and clashes between the security forces and the Taliban become a regular feature, Pakistan will be forced to re-think its strategy on controlling its wild west. But there are no easy options available for the Pakistani state, especially since its control over the Pashtun-dominated tribal belt bordering Afghanistan has always been very loose. Complicating the matter are the demands being made by the US and Afghanistan on Pakistan to crack down hard on the extremists in the tribal belt who it is believed are providing sanctuary to the resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan. The dilemma for Pakistan is that if it adopts a soft approach, it will be accused of playing a double game in the “war on terror. On the other hand, a hard approach is not working and is, in fact, making things worse. The biggest problem that Pakistan is facing is that it can no longer use the traditional instruments with which it maintained its authority in these areas. The decades of jihad — first in Afghanistan against the Soviets, then against India in Kashmir and in favor of the Taliban in Afghanistan and now against the Americans (and by extension, the Pakistan army which is seen as working on an American agenda) — has completely changed the power equations in the tribal belt. The tribal chieftains and maliks — the traditional instrument through which the Pakistani state enforced its authority among the various tribes — no longer rule the roost in much of the tribal areas. If anything, the tribal chieftains and maliks are today something of an endangered specie. In a statement in Parliament, Pakistan’s interior minister accepted that around 120 pro-government maliks have been killed in targeted attacks in the last few months. Independent estimates say the number is twice the government figure. Anyone suspected of towing the government line or believed to be working for the government is being targeted without any regard to the position he holds in the local society. As a result, nobody wants to be seen to be associated with the government of Pakistan. The breakdown of the authority of the maliks together with the collapse of the system of patronage that the Pakistani state used as part of its carrot-and-stick policy to keep the tribes in check has created a political vacuum that has been filled by the jihadis and hardline clerics. Most of the militant clerics and fighters are Deobandis and have been associated with the Jamiat Ulema Islam either as students in madrasas run by the JUI or as members of the party. But despite their fraternal links with the JUI, they are today beyond the control of the party, something that is causing serious concern to the party leadership. The JUI faces a difficult situation because the rising influence and popularity of the militants is going to ultimately adversely affect its vote bank. At the same time, for reasons of political expediency, the JUI also cannot afford to be seen as opposing the militants or supporting the army action against them. Apart from the mainstream Islamic parties like the JUI, Pashtun nationalists too are in danger of getting further marginalised in the politics of the region. Even though the militants are ethnic Pashtuns, there is little, if any, element of Pashtun nationalism in their ideology. Unlike the ethnic nationalists who like to emphasise their local identity and culture, the Islamists want to subsume local identities under a larger Islamic identity. Therefore, ideologically the Islamists have always been daggers drawn with the ethnic nationalists. It is this factor that lends credence to rumours of the Americans and the Pakistani establishment wanting to build the ANP as a bulwark against the radical Islamists. But even a hint of an association with the army or America will be enough to destroy whatever little chance the nationalists have to retrieve the situation. The Islamic insurgency in Waziristan is really part of a pan-Islamic phenomenon of radical groups fighting against those whom they consider “enemies of Islam”. The driving force is radical Islam rather than money or concessions or jobs or administrative and political offices. The enemy is eternal — the forces of Kufr led by America — and anyone seen to be siding with the enemy is also the enemy — the Pakistan army. The Pakistani Taliban are first and foremost soldiers of Islam. While they are not anti-Pakistan and have no agenda of undoing Pakistan, they want a Pakistan in which Islam and not America calls the shots. If this means having to confront the Pakistan army, then so be it. They are deadly opposed to Pakistan’s assistance to America in the “war of terror and will be satisfied with nothing less than the ouster of American forces from both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Islamists in Waziristan don’t need, or even want, the army to fight on their side. All they want is that the army should not interfere in their activities, not target their “guests”, or restrict their movement to and from Afghanistan, where they are fighting the American-led coalition forces. The moment this demand is met, attacks on the Pakistan army will cease. The only way Pakistan army can do this is by breaking away from the Americans and withdrawing from the “war on terror”. This will not only mean giving a free hand to the jihadis to operate in Afghanistan, but also that the jihadis’ will has prevailed over the army, which will then have to take the role of an equal, if not junior, partner to the jihadis. While the reversal of the patron-client relationship shared between the Pakistan army and the jihadis will be disastrous for Pakistan, it will also severely destabilise the entire region. On the other hand, if the Pakistan army continues with the military operations against the Taliban, it could well get caught in a quagmire in the Pashtun belt. The danger is that as the intensity of military operations increases, and civilian casualties mount, the public opinion could polarise in favor of the militants. This could give rise to a new and more virulent form of Pashtun nationalism which would then mix with radical Islam to make a deadly cocktail that will wreck havoc not just in Pakistan but far beyond its
borders.
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The French perfume THE river Seine originates near Paris and opens out to English channel near the port of Rouen. On the lower half of this serpentine river are located several chemical and perfume factories of international repute. Out of these I remember Nina Ricci and Chanel besides other exotic varieties. These used to produce eau de toilet sprays and perfumes for ready western markets as well as markets of middle east. The sleek looking factory of Nina Ricci was located about 400 metres up the river from the berth where our ship was loading soyabean meal for Italy. Our stay in harbour was for two days only. Armed with tourist literature my wife had planned a morning visit to this factory. In fact she was waiting impatiently for dawn since ship had docked previous evening. Even I was keen to watch thousands of rare looking bottles going round on conveyor belts amidst perfumed mist. It was about 10 in the morning when we headed towards the main gate of the Nina Ricci factory. The gate was open with no human being in sight. We carried no hand bag or camera. A short walk led to the bottling section where a strong whiff of perfume vapours greeted us. We enjoyed standing there and watching. Still, there was no sign of any factory personnel although full machinery unit was in production. We advanced some more meters and reached automatic quality control machine. Just then a voice from control kiosk greeted us: “Good morning folks, welcome and join me for a cup of coffee”. We were much relieved. It was from a chemist-cum-guard seated in front of a monitor screen watching our every movement after we stepped inside the outer gate. He produced a visitors book. He lost no time in handing over to us a complimentary bottle of Nina Ricci EDT spray. My wife insisted she wanted to buy a regular 250 ml flask of perfume. However, the chemist guard declined stating that this could not be done unless the lady’s used blouse was brought to the laboratory to prepare matching perfume to suit a particular skin. Since we were to leave after 48 hours we were instructed that the perfume would be ready for delivery 12 hours after the used blouse is deposited. This was done soon after we returned to ship. We did not expect such a strange response from Nina Ricci which had a very glittering and prestigious outlets in Paris. But ours proved to be a hasty conclusion. Next afternoon, a van with a French customs officer arrived on board and delivered an elegantly packed duty free parcel. It contained a cherished perfume in a French liquid crystal artfully carved bottle plus a dozen free perfume sample phials for distribution to other lovers of
perfume!
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FDI can step up growth PRIME
Minister Manmohan Singh, while inaugurating the Hannover Trade Fair in Germany on April 24 said that “India is in tune with new realities of the global economic order…and it is at the cusp of a historic transformation”. Having emphasised India’s role in opening up more sectors of its economy to foreign direct investment (FDI), particularly, in the core sector, he invited FDI of about $150 billion over the next decade. Its immense merits notwithstanding, the Left parties in India say that FDI invades our sovereignty, rob off our culture and traditions and cripple our economic prospects. Some empirical studies have also challenged and refuted the positive role of FDI in economic growth. It is said that the rapid growth of FDI throughout the world has brought in a pronounced quantitative and qualitative changes in its sectoral composition, from the primary sector and resource-based manufacturing towards services and technology-intensive manufacturing. Thus, it has helped industrialisation and overall economic development of South and South-East Asian countries. The success stories of Japan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Korea Republic, Philippines and Thailand owe much of their economic success to their ability to restructure their manufacturing from labour-intensive industries and activities towards capital–and-technology intensive ones. Nothing illustrates this better than electronics and communication industry. Though there are negative effects such as the displacement of local entrepreneurs, market domination and socio-cultural impacts, the general impetus that FDI gave to industrialisation and economic development has led some observers to conclude that it has resulted in the dynamic growth of Asian region. This is called the “Asian Miracle” with Japan in the lead. The newly industrialised countries of Hong Kong, Korea Republic, Singapore and Taiwan Province of China are in the second rank. ASEAN countries comprising Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand are third. And China, Vietnam and most recently India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are in the fourth. It is feared that FDI will have a negative impact on employment. While there is little evidence of job displacement caused by the introduction of improved technologies, the overall impact is likely to be positive if new techniques are used for new and additional type of work. A study by Kosak Maja finds “the new jobs are created with higher skills and incomes since new products and services of higher quality and efficiency can be developed.” In Asian developing countries, the increased use of computers in banking, insurance, airlines, travel, tourism, hotel operations and other financial services have now become a necessity. Several studies, including some by international trade union organisations, have recognised the need for various levels of automation to ensure competitive production capability. Various world investment reports show that FDI is attracted more towards consumer goods than infrastructure or core sectors. The developing countries need drinking water, not Coca Cola or Pepsi; they need food for people below poverty line, not Cadbury’s chocolates, McDonalds, Uncle Chips, shampoos and soaps. The wage goods sector is a picture of total neglect. FDI does not cater to the needs of the masses. Consumerism has developed sophistication in consumption and consumers increasingly want the best and the cheapest products, no matter where they come from. FDI remains attracted towards a number of industries producing consumer goods such as processed food, cigarettes, toiletries and cosmetics because of high profitability and ownership advantages in the form of well-known international brand names. The consumer goods sector offers maximum scope for increasing job opportunities. And if the FDI flows are allowed in the small sector, it might create more unemployment and pollution in the developing countries. In some Least Developed Countries like Bangladesh, Nepal and Maldives and low income countries in Asia, the positive impact is somewhat weak and insignificant because of their inward-looking policies, labour indiscipline, small market size, terrorism, political hostility and instability, poor infrastructure and poor response by the governments of host countries. In case of India, FDI inflows, in rupee terms, have witnessed a sharp increase of about 325 times during 1991-2006 because of a relatively stable and hospitable investment climate, open door policy framework and the size of market with rapidly growing income and wants have boosted consumerism in the country. A series of economic reforms and non-discriminatory policy towards FDI have encouraged the foreign investors in India. India’s highway plan, currently nearing completion, is one of the world’s largest and Indian railway system, already one of the world’s largest, is being modernised with new technology. Ports and airports are witnessing renewed activity as the private-public sector partnership in investment and operation are being encouraged. On the whole, FDI inflows to developing countries have increased markedly but the country-wise distribution is highly skewed and the FDI boom is concentrated in the most dynamic markets of South and South-East Asia and regions where the most intensive reforms have been initiated. The governments of developing countries should ensure that their environment is not polluted and their culture is not robbed off. In such circumstances, the role of the state has become more important today than earlier. The writer is Director, Graphic Era Institute of Technology, Dehradun
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Broadening theatre
audience HOPING to cash in on the increasing popularity of so-called specialty films, the United States’ second largest theater circuit is about to start showcasing independent films in theaters in markets where art house viewers are believed to reside. AMC Theatres designated 72 of its 5,672 theaters as “AMC Select” venues. There, screens will be set aside not only for the latest studio blockbuster, horror flick and teen gross out comedy, but also for quirky indies and low-budget documentaries. While some of the most popular of these films already screen at AMC theaters — the documentary “`Super Size Me,” say, or the adult drama “Brokeback Mountain” — AMC Select will seek out a broader range of fare and will screen them for longer stretches of time. The introduction of AMC Select comes as every major studio has launched its own specialty film division. The result: this year, several Academy Award nominated films including Sony Pictures Classics’ “Capote”’ and NBC Universal’s Focus Features “Brokeback Mountain.” “Crash,” which won the Oscar for best picture, was distributed by another independent,
Lionsgate. Not only are these specialised films critically acclaimed, but they can also be profitable. Made for budgets under $30 million, these films cost less than half of the average studio production. So when they are hits, the potential profits are huge. A break out success such as “March of the Penguins,” “Passion of the Christ” or “Fahrenheit 9/11,” can reap big box office revenues for both distributors and exhibitors alike. Even unrated, foreign language, risque movies like the 2001 hit, “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” have become sought after by exhibitors in such unlikely places as Omaha, Neb., and Des Moines, Iowa. Peter Brown, chief executive of AMC, said that with AMC Select the Kansas City, Mo.-based chain is attempting to compete with the Internet, iPods and home entertainment for consumers’ attention and pocketbooks. “We are constantly thinking about how we can get more people to come to the theaters,”’ said Brown. “This is realizing the promise of the megaplex — we are broadening out the depth and breadth of the (movies) available.”AMC is joining other theater chains such as Regal Entertainment Group, Pacific Theatres Exhibition Corp., Landmark Theatres and Century Theatres, Inc., in recognizing the money-making potential of character driven adult dramas and documentaries. AMC Select will be offered in areas where specialized films have performed well in the past, including the AMC Barrett Commons 24 in Atlanta, the AMC Grapevine Mills 30 in Dallas and the AMC Rolling Hills 20 in Torrance, Calif. Brown said that audiences who frequent these types of movies are not usually 14 year-old-boys — the studios’ most coveted demographic — but rather people over the age of 40. According to the Motion Picture Association of America, the percentage of moviegoers over the age of 40 has grown from 14 per cent in 1986 to 32 per cent in 2005. As the audience for these films continues to grow, so does demand for state-of-the-art surround sound, wide screens and stadium seating to replace the aging theaters. “This is what we had hoped for when multiplexes were created,” said Dawn Hudson, executive director for Film Independent, that puts on the Independent Spirit Awards and the Los Angeles Film Festival. “This is in response to audience demand for more diverse choices.”
— Los Angeles Times
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His economics aimed at public good
FOR 20 years in the middle of the last century, John Kenneth Galbraith, who died on Sunday at 97, was the “best known living economist”. He is best thought of as a sociological economist, who tried to develop a theory and a policy from an analysis of the institutions of contemporary American capitalism. He had a genius for significant description, and wrote with confidence, wit and a notable talent for phrase-making. His big idea was that the “market system” lauded by economists was a fiction to disguise the existence of economic power. Although he came to praise, not bury capitalism, he was also a left-wing Keynesian who believed that large public expenditures were needed. In his first big book, American Capitalism (1952), he explained that corporate power had provoked the “countervailing power” of trade unions, retail chains and other large producers. As capitalism was itself working to minimise exploitation, public ownership was no longer required. Galbraith’s best book, The Affluent Society, was written in the Swiss ski resort of Gstaad in 1956, a charming place to challenge the contemporary obsession with economic growth at all costs. To satirise this thinking, Galbraith invented his most famous phrase, “the conventional wisdom”. The main idea of the book was not new. The time would soon come, Keynes had argued in 1930, when society would need to accommodate its psychology to plenty, not scarcity. Given affluence, more and more people would (or should) opt for leisure, free time, and intellectual achievement rather than more consumption. Galbraith simply said this situation had arrived — at least in America. His most incisive idea was that growing private consumption required matching spending on public services — what he called a “social balance” — if it was not to foul up cities and countryside and reduce people to idiocy. A pioneering thought was that production should be tested for its environmental effects. Galbraith was in effect arguing that the balance between private and public consumption needed to shift. Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush took the opposite, tax-cutting road. Of course, Hurricane Katrina revealed the folly of starving public services, so public opinion may shift back to Galbraith’s way of thinking. Galbraith has often been compared to Keynes, and they had much in common. But the way they did their economics was very different. Keynes produced theories, Galbraith, theoretically-inspired sociology. Keynes thought that ideas ruled the roost; Galbraith thought it was structures of power. His was a non-Marxist version of class struggle, with the intelligentsia as the engine of social innovation and carrier of the “public purpose”. The Affluent Society will live on because the questions it discusses are timeless. The wit and wisdom of Galbraith will continue to delight. To those who aspire to public service he will remain a model of a “public intellectual”. He will continue to inspire those who think economics should be brought into closer touch with life as it is and as it should be.
— The Independent
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From the pages of Wavell plan disappointing
The publication of the British Government’s proposals for easing the political deadlock in the country, the release of the members of the Congress Working Committee and His Excellency the Viceroy’s appeal for the creation of goodwill introduced new factors in the political situation in India, which must be considered calmly in all their bearings by all those who have the interests of the common man uppermost in their minds. It will be deceiving oneself to imagine that the Wavell Plan will either appease the hunger of the people of India for freedom or it will bring India much nearer the realisation of her objective, for which lakhs of her sons have undergone great sufferings and made untold sacrifices. Not to speak of Swaraj, the Wavell Plan does not provide even a half-way house to Swaraj.
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