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Nathu La calling Thinking it big |
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Chaining freedom
Middle India under siege
Saasudom sauce
Rapacious Raj Connecting rural India – through
co-operatives Defence notes
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Nathu La calling The India-China agreement, signed in Lhasa on Sunday, to resume trade through the historic Nathu La Pass from July 6 after a gap of 44 years is another major confidence-building measure between the two Asian giants. It is bound to increase considerably the trade volume between the two neighbours, who have so far been doing business mainly through the sea routes. Their bilateral trade is expected to cross the $20-billion mark by the end of 2006. This is not a small gain as trade between India and China was negligible a few years ago. In 2005, it shot up to nearly $19 billion, showing a rise of 37.5 per cent in just one year. There could not have been a better occasion for the resumption of trade through Nathu La than this Year of Friendship between India and China. The decision will benefit both sides of the border areas immensely. Tibet, which had been left behind as the rest of China made rapid strides in trade and industry, will find an excellent opportunity to improve its economic profile. Tibet can gain enormously in terms of trade even if only 1 per cent of the total imports and exports between India and China take place through Nathu La. Similarly, the opening of the old and significant trading route will infuse a new life into business and industry on this side of the border. West Bengal is set to be a major beneficiary as Kolkata, like Lhasa, is only 500 km from Nathu La. The pact for border trade has political significance too. It amounts to China’s tacit recognition of Sikkim as a part of India. It highlights the resolve of the two countries to continue to upgrade their relations, which have been improving substantially for the past few years. This strengthens the belief that border disputes should not come in the way of upgradation of economic relations. After all, better business ties can create an atmosphere conducive to resolving the border disputes. |
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Thinking it big Haryana is set to have the honour of having the country’s biggest special economic zone (SEZ) following the signing of an agreement with Reliance Venture Limited (RVL) on Monday. The Rs 40,000-crore venture can be the vehicle of transformation of its agrarian economy. With the farm production having reached a plateau, the state’s salvation lies in rapid industrialisation. There cannot be a better way to bring that about than such SEZs. That is the route taken by China and Dubai to transform themselves. Given the political will and financial power, there is no reason why a similar success story cannot be scripted here. The project can bring about not only industrialisaton but also generation of a large number of jobs. An investment at this scale also generates peripheral prosperity, in the shape of ancillary units as also infrastructure projects such as airports. It is unfortunate that the project has been opposed less because of rational reasons and more because of political ones. What must not be forgotten is that similar – and even better — incentives are being offered by other states. Some of them like Rajasthan happen to be ruled by the BJP. What is right there cannot be wrong in Haryana. One must focus on the larger picture rather than be caught up with minor details. A project of such a dimension requires considerable risk. In such matters, the track record of the company undertaking it is very important. Reliance has successful SEZs in Gujarat and Maharashtra. That gives rise to confidence that it will replicate the story here as well. Being close to the national Capital, Haryana offers an attractive opportunity. This needs to be fully tapped. At the same time, care must be taken that farmers whose land is acquired for the mega-project are not shortchanged in any way. They should be made willing partners in this megaproject. |
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Chaining
freedom THE Rajasthan Freedom of Religion Bill, 2006, is a supreme example of inexactitude. While it purports to strengthen the freedom of religion, it actually seeks to curtail it. It contains many provisions that run counter to the freedom the citizen enjoys in choosing any religious belief. That is precisely why Governor Pratibha Patil was constrained to send the Bill back to the government without giving her assent. Instead of addressing the lacunae in the Bill, the state government sent it again to the Governor for her assent. Unlike the President, who has to give his assent to a Bill sent to him again, the governor can refer it to the President for his approval. Press reports suggest Ms Patil will have wide-ranging consultations before she takes a decision. It is not the first time that such a Bill has run into rough weather. The Madhya Pradesh government was the first to enact a Freedom of Religion Bill at the suggestion of the Niyogi Commission it had appointed earlier. At the national level, a futile bid was made to have such a Bill passed in Parliament when the Janata Party was in power. Wherever the BJP has come to power, it has made similar attempts, successfully as in Gujarat. Taking a cue from the BJP, the then AIADMK government passed such a Bill on the eve of the Lok Sabha elections. When Ms Jayalalithaa realised that it did not cut much ice with the electorate, which summarily rejected her party, she abandoned the Bill. The pet argument in favour of the Bill is that it will curtail conversion through coercion and inducement. Incidentally, there has not been a single case of conviction in such a case. Yet, the bogey is used to curtail the freedom the Constitution guarantees to the citizens not only to choose any religion but also propagate it. Inequities in society force people to change their religion. Rather than addressing the root cause, enactment of such laws will only worsen the situation. At a time when all efforts are necessary to take the nation to the frontiers of development, divisive Bills like the Rajasthan Freedom of Religion Bill, 2006, need to be consigned to the dustbins. |
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To tax and to please, no more than to love and to be wise, is not given to men.
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Middle India under siege Middle India is under siege along a long-neglected, exploited, underserved, ill-governed, poorly connected poverty belt of forest and hill country covering contiguous areas in nine states “from Pashupati to Tirupati”. This is Dalit-tribal India, Santhal-Oraon-Munda, Gond, and defines the geography of Indian “Maoism”. At its heart lies Chhattisgarh, at the crossroads of Naxal-affected badlands in six states. Until 2000, this was a remote corner of Madhya Pradesh, one of the more backward states in India. Within Chhattisgarh, the former princely state of Bastar was a forgotten backwater, within which again Dantewara remains the most neglected of its three new districts. It partly incorporates Abujmarh (the Unknown Land), a territory the size of Haryana, more or less constitutionally “excluded” in British times and largely unadministered since, barring two forays - to settle East Bengal refugees in Dandakaranya in 1958 and to extract high grade iron ore from Bailadila. This back-of-beyond, inhabited by Primitive Tribes, is being properly surveyed for the first time through remote sensing (2005). So much for Shining India. Regions rapaciously exploited for generations by feudal-caste oppressors, robbed the under-class, especially tribals and Dalits, of their forests, land rights and human dignity with the connivance of successive governments of all hues. They became incubators for the Naxals who, after 1967, aroused political consciousness and preached revolutionary liberation through class annihilation, to surround the cities from the countryside and wrest state power through the barrel of a gun. With pressure on the People’s War Group and Maoist Communist Centre cadres in Andhra and Bihar/Jharkand, before they united, the Naxals sought refuge in the jungle fastnesses of Dantewara-Abujmarh, their first revolutionary liberated zone and launching pad for the establishment of a New Democratic Society. Under Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh was far away and the policy was to “live and let live”. The state did what it could where it could; for the rest of it the Devil could take the hindmost. The new Chhattisgarh state abandoned the earlier policy of abdication in favour of constitutional assertion by extending its administrative writ and promoting development. Confrontation was inevitable. Casualties run to hundreds. The Naxals have mined the roads extensively and now launch large assaults. The Naxals had first come to the tribals as friends and teachers but gradually assumed dominance, seeking enrolment of a male or female member from each family to their cadres, a grain tithe, the cultivation of distributed land to fill the party larder, a levy on all traders and contractors and a bar on development, especially of roads, culverts and bridges, hand pumps, schools and panchayat ghars, so as to prevent connectivity and administrative penetration, which might threaten their supremacy. 2004 and 2005 were drought years in Chhattisgarh. The Naxals insisted on a steep increase in tendu (beedi) leaf prices, which contractors found unviable. In the result, there was no tendu plucking during April-May 2005 nor the government bonus that follows final market sales, thus depriving the tribals of their main source of cash incomes from minor forest products in an otherwise subsistence-barter economy. Resentment sparked tension, spontaneous marches and meetings in Kotru in western Dantewara to resist further Naxal diktats. Politicians smelt opportunity and, under the banner of Mahendra Karma, Congress leader of the Opposition and a tribal from the district, assumed leadership of Salwa Judum, or “purification/peace hunt”. The Jan Jagran Abhiyan on similar lines had failed in the mid-1990s for lack of support. Now the BJP government readily clambered on to the bandwagon. The narrative becomes murky at this point and the sequence of events unclear. Much is anecdotal. However, clashes, reprisal killings and torching of huts created divisions among the people, some 45,000 of whom have fled (been brought?) to miserable roadside camps as victims of a disaster they do not fully comprehend. Fear and compulsion keep them there though some would return to their deserted villages if permitted to do so or given security. Some among the 5000 or so Salwa Judum vigilantes, under-age youth among them, have been recruited as Special Police Officers, given rudimentary training and placed alongside CRPF and other para-military units to provide camp security and man road-blocks to check movements. They make an aggressive rabble and seem under nobody’s control. On the best construction, a hapless government used an incipient popular upsurge to confront the Naxals but soon lost the plot, lacking a clear strategy. It is confused, defensive and defiant in turn. It claims to have merely supported, not sponsored, Salwa Judum and denies any plan to clear the jungles to regroup villages. However, critics allege that this is a diabolical prelude to granting juicy mineral and industrial (read steel) licences to large corporate houses without much protest or squeamishness about land acquisition in tribal-protected Fifth Schedule areas within a quiet forest. This is a far-fetched theory. In fact, significant corporate investments that open up the area in partnership with the tribals could be part of the solution. However, with the monsoon only days away, the government is assisting a fluid camp population to construct semi-permanent mud-brick houses with better roofing and minimal services. Epidemics threaten otherwise. Beyond that, there is no official plan or thinking. Rations are being withdrawn and people are dependent on food for work, which is yet to be widely organised. The camps, now being “consolidated”, are ostensibly to be wound up next year. The unspoken hope is that people will be able to return home by then. With para-military reinforcements coming in, a crackdown is on the cards. The new Counter-Insurgency and Jungle Warfare School in Kanker is also training new commando-type police jungle fighters. Great sensitivity and care will be needed if tribal life and culture is not to be torn apart in battling the Naxals. A law and order approach by itself will not suffice. The Bastar and Sarguja Development Authority and a similar body for a scheduled caste zone have been set up under the Chief Minister and special funds sanctioned. A coherent approach and delivery system seem lacking as the present administrative machinery cannot cope. Eight of Chhattisgarh’s 16 districts are Naxal-affected. The Salwa Judum is limited to part of Dantewara and not all among the political class, the bureaucracy or ordinary people want it to spread. Its alleged misdoings need to be investigated. Policy too needs to be better concerted across states and the Centre has to play a leading role rather than merely exhort from afar after tolerating and partnering rampant mis-governance for
decades.
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Saasudom sauce
Most of you may be having this plant in your home. It is tough succulent with fleshy rootstocks and leathery, upright, lance shaped leaves, which are variously variegated with grey-green crossbands and yellow margins. It is like sophisticated “Rambaan”. Do you know it is called Mother-in-Law’s Tongue and the other name for it is ‘Snake Plant’? These Westerners they see snake in MiL’s tongue. In India also, Saasuji has lately started figuring in the serials and films in which they indulge in “tu-tu; main-main” with Bahuji, otherwise we had always revered Sita Mata for “caring and sharing” three MiLs – Kausalya, Sumitra and Kaikayi. Never heard of Gandhari having verbal exchanges with even a single one out of one hundred Kaurav Bahujis. Draupadi lived in best of terms with Kunti Mata despite her that innocent utterance that forced Draupadi to live polyandrous. None of our legends denigrate Saasuji, instead they make her sit on high pedestal. On the other hand, the British writer Samuel Butler writes in “Further Extracts from the Notebooks”: “One of the strongest proofs of Christ’s personal influence over his followers is to be found in the fact of Peter’s remaining on friendly terms with him notwithstanding his having healed his mother-in-law.” These foreigners are sometimes really harsh on their mothers-in-law. Ferdinand Foch, a French soldier visited the Grand Canyon for the first time, and astonished by the gigantism of the place exclaimed: “ What a marvelous place to drop one’s mother-in-law.” Henry Youngman, a British-born American comedian was really in good cheer one evening. His friend had never seen him so happy. He asked him: “Why? What is the matter?” Youngman replied that he was happy because he was returning from a pleasure trip. The friend got curious and wanted to know the how and what of the pleasure ground. He said, “ I went to the airport.” “What is so cheery about the airport?” was the instant question. “There is nothing cheery about the airport but the baggage with me was my mother-in-law who, after all, bade us goodbye.” John Barrymore, the American actor, once recognised the qualities of his wife and said: “She is the kind of girl who will not go anywhere without her mother.” One of the gatherings said: “ I saw her at place U yesterday.” The other said, “ I saw her at place V day before yesterday.” There were places from W to Z too where his wife was located in the past few days. Barrymore sighed: “ But my mother-in-law goes anywhere.” Not attuned to the whimwhams of mother-in-law’s brouhaha, we take all such uttering as jokes on mother-in-law. Let George Ade, that American playwright, say: “There are only three basic jokes, but since the mother-in-law joke is not joke but a very serious question, there are only two.”
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Rapacious Raj Britain is still a nation locked in denial. If you point out basic facts about the British Empire - that the British deliberately adopted policies that caused as many as 29 million Indians to starve to death in the late nineteenth century, say — you smack into a wall of incomprehension and rage. The historian Niall Ferguson called me “Hari the horrible” for writing about this in my column last week. Another neo-imperialist historian, Lawrence James, accuses me in The Sunday Times of being a “twerp” who writes “twaddle”. The Daily Mail says I should check my facts. I have. Many times. And the truth is still there, no matter how much sound and fury is vomited at it. If you check the claims of the defenders of Empire against the historical record, it becomes clear there is a howling gap between them. For example, Lawrence James says the British imperial rulers of India “were humane men and, although hampered by inadequate administrative machinery and limited resources, they made a determined effort to feed the hungry” during the El Nino famines of the 1870s and 1890s. His evidence for this? “Between 1871-1901 India’s population increased by 30 million,” he says. This is a classic piece of deficient reasoning. The population of Russia grew during the Soviet Union, and the population of China exploded under Mao - does James think there was no mass death there either? Keep going back to the record. There were indeed some decent men among the imperial rulers, whose instinct was to feed the starving Indians. One colonial administrator, Sir Richard Temple, reacted at first by importing massive amounts of rice from Burma. The official record shows that only 23 people died under this enlightened policy. If James and Ferguson were right, Temple would have been held up as a beacon of the way British chaps do things. But in reality, he was severely reprimanded by London for his “extravagance.” The Economist savaged him for allowing the lazy Indians to think “it is the duty of the Government to keep them alive”. Temple learned his lesson. He slammed into reverse, and began to conduct experiments to see how little food Indians could survive on, noting coldly in his book when “strapping fine fellows” were reduced to “little more than animated skeletons ... utterly unfit for any work”. In the average British labour camp that Temple was ordered to set up, inmates were given fewer daily calories than if they had ended up in Buchenwald 80 years later. This new Temple was praised by his imperial masters as a fine example. If you study the records, you can see this pattern practised as deliberate policy all over India. Niall Ferguson is marginally less extreme than his defender James. He admits, “In the case of Lord Lytton, Viceroy during the disaster of 1876-8, there is clear evidence of incompetence, negligence and indifference to the fate of the starving.” But even this grudging concession presents the behaviour of the British as essentially a passive crime — the failure to act. The evidence shows something much darker. Far from doing nothing during the famine, the British did a lot – to make it worse. They insisted that the Indian peasants carry on shipping out grain for global markets, and enforced this policy with guns. (Stalin did exactly the same thing in the 1930s, during the famines caused by collectivisation). This meant, as the historian Professor Mike Davis has noted, “London was eating India’s bread” at the height of a famine. They even stepped up taxes on the starving, and insulted them as “indolent” and “unused to work”. And that’s not all. Lord Lytton ordered that all relief operations would be punishable by imprisonment. One dissident civil servant, Lt-Colonel Ronald Osborne, described staggering through the horror: “Scores of corpses were tumbled into old wells, because the deaths were too numerous for the miserable relatives to perform the usual funeral rites. Mothers sold their children for a single scanty meal. Husbands flung their wives into ponds, to escape the torment of seeing them perish by the lingering agonies of hunger. “Amid these scenes of death, the government of India kept its serenity and cheerfulness unimpaired. The [newspapers] of the North-west were persuaded into silence. Strict orders were given to civilians under no circumstances to countenance the pretence that civilians were dying of hunger.” He met one Brit, a Mr MacMinn, who couldn’t bear it, and used his own money to distribute grain. He was “severely reprimanded, threatened with degradation, and ordered to close the work immediately”. If this policy seems to make no sense, that’s because it doesn’t, just as the actions of Stalin and Mao seem incomprehensible. Lytton seems to have believed that by sticking to “liberal economics”, he was obscurely helping the people of India. The terms used by these imperialist historians are revealing. Lawrence James brags, “Unlike Stalin’s Russia, the British Empire was always an open society.” If you implicitly think of only whites as people, then he is of course correct. People coloured like him or me could condemn anything they liked. But how “open” did the British Empire seem to a Mau Mau rebel being doused in paraffin and burned alive for trying to reclaim land stolen by the British? How “open” was it to an Irishman being tortured by the Black and Tans for advocating a free Ireland? How “open” was it to Indians who were jailed for trying to organise relief efforts in the middle of a famine? No wonder James jeers at “the carping of African and Asian historians focused on [the Empire’s] imperfections”. Odd, isn’t it, how the natives seem so ungrateful? It seems extraordinary to argue that polite British historians with TV series on Channel 4 are apologists for mass murder, as ugly as the Russians who would have us believe Stalin’s crimes were inevitable or justified by the advances in industrialisation he wrought. But the evidence shows that it is true. — By arrangement with
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Connecting rural India – through
co-operatives There has been increasing interest from all quarters, including numerous corporates, in solving the problems of rural India using Information and Communication technologies (ICT). While there have been a slew of initiatives and announcements, substantive results have been far and few. One reason is that many tend to treat the matter as primarily a technology issue. The solutions offered therefore have been around innovations at product level. They range from the earlier Simputers to the recent 100 dollar laptop, to some serious efforts in low cost hardware and connectivity configurations. Very few have attempted to put together a integrated solution to comprehensively overcome the challenge of connecting rural India. Second, sustainability remains a major stumbling block in the game of rolling out rural IT kiosks. No one has still found a satisfactory answer to the issue. Says Dr M S Swaminathan, whose MS Swaminathan Research Foundation village kiosks are a industry forerunner, “Economic sustainability may not happen in immediate terms, but it is more a question of social sustainability. It is essential to sustain such projects from a social viewpoint.” Pankaj Baveja, founder of project Param, and a pioneer in rural computing, endorses these views, but adds “That does not mean that solutions to sustainability are not possible. Issues are not so much to do with choices in technology and connectivity, it is more to do with ownership-operations model, and with the nuances in implementation.” Third, only conferences and seminars have been proliferating, and not substantive work in the field. Indeed, a large number of people tend to assume the role of creating events and forums, and putting out portals and journals on the subject, than being players in the real game of it. We require more players in putting together real solutions and implementing them in the field. For substantive achievements in connecting rural India, a way forward may be the cooperative way. A shining example of marriage of technology with cooperative linkages for real grass roots transformation is Amul. Its manufacturing facilities are a point of envy for the western world, and so are its IT enabled logistics. CEO of Amul, B M Vyas, says, “Amul is not a food company, it is an IT company in the food business”. That is true rural empowerment using ICT. Cooperatives have been deeply entwined with the lives of rural people, fostering economic activity with linkages extending right to the grass roots level. They have been already playing an important role in rural development, in a widespread way. Not many may be aware that in the country there are over 5 lakh cooperative societies, with membership exceeding 22 crores. But more importantly, the principles of equity along with economic growth are embodied in the basic co-operative structures, and hence the co-operative way is the natural way for rural development, and for reducing disparities. On its part, the Government has launched bold initiative of setting up 100,000 Common Service Centres by 2007. Pankaj Baveja, says “whichever way the progress is made on this programme, it will deliver positive results for the rural areas.” However, he adds “there are some fundamental flaws in its design, which will hopefully get rectified as it progresses.” —
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Defence notes The Army Wives Welfare Association (AWWA) has signed an MoU with the Khadi Village Industries Commission (KVIC) to reach out to ex-servicemen, women and widows of the services in assisting them to start ventures under a Rural Employment Generation Programme (REGP). Under the collaboration, AWWA will set up Rural Industrial Consultancy Service Centres to help ex-servicemen and women in setting up ventures in rural areas in the vicinity of respective military stations. In the first phase, about 10-12 pilot projects will be started. After experimental learning, the projects will be expanded to other stations. The products produced under these schemes will be marketed jointly by AWWA and KVIC in Khadi Bhandars and AWWA outlets. It is expected that when fully implemented, the scheme will generate direct employment to around 1.5 lakh women, ex-servicemen and their dependents.
Navy’s initiative The Indian Navy is making its own efforts. It has tied up with the TimesJobs.com, a large online job portal, to secure placements for naval personnel with Indian corporates. The exclusive three-year contract in this regard will facilitate placements for all retiring/retired naval officers, retiring/retired sailors or Personnel Below Officer Rank (PBOR), and even widows of naval personnel in the civilian/corporate environment. This association comprises two modules. The first is the development of the web placement portal, inpa.co.in, where INPA stands for Indian Naval Placement Agency. In the second module, offline/on-ground assistance to prospective job seekers by organising job fairs.
Budhia’s grooming The Army has said that it was ready to assist Orissa child marathon prodigy Budhia Singh at a later stage in life when his natural talent can be actually groomed. Chief of Army Staff Gen J.J. Singh recently said that just as other children who have potential are assisted by the Army, the force would be ready to provide all possible assistance to Budhia if his parents or guardians approached the Army. Gen Singh, however, pointed out that Budhia presently was very young and what he needed most at this stage was education and nutrition.
Best hospital The Indian Naval Hospital Ship (INSH) Ashvini, Mumbai, has bagged Defence Minister’s Running Trophy for the best Armed Forces Hospital for the year 2005. The Commandant of the hospital Surgeon Rear Admiral V K Saxena received the trophy and Rs two lakh in cash from Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee earlier here. The INHS Ashvini located at Mumbai, facing the Arabian Sea, is an 825-bed hospital which attends to all serving and retired armed forces personnel and their families including coast guard personnel and defence civilian personnel. This hospital has its own plans for disaster management and fallout from nuclear, chemical and biological warfare. Drills are conducted regularly with trained personnel and equipment. |
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January 1, 1958 Abdullah poses a problem
Sheikh Abdullah, from published accounts of his speeches, seems mentally to be still living in the barbed-wire invested house at Kud where he was held in detention for four years. On January 12, he told a welcoming crowd at Annantnag on the way to Srinagar: “Mr Nehru has been kind to me, so much so that he used to treat me as a member of his family which I fully reciprocated. But I cannot even think of sacrificing the interests of 40 lakhs of people for the sake of personal relationship or friendship.” Mr Nehru is not given to hurling reproaches, so Sheikh Abdullah need have no fear of his being denounced as the Sheikh has denounced others who enjoyed his unstinted hospitality. The adage runs “think before you speak.” In Sheikh Abdullah’s case it would be good for him and for all whose wellbeing he cherishes, even if he thought after having spoken. |
It is for this reason that the Quran places the limits of propriety even upon
forgiveness and does not recognise every display of this quality as moral quality unless it is shown upon the right occasion. The mere giving up of a claim to requital from an offender, whatever the circumstances and however serious the nature of the offence, is far from being a great moral quality to which men should aspire. A living faith cannot be manufactured by the rule of (the) majority. Led astray by doubt, mortals repent in the long run. Wearing that kind of dress which causes torment to the body and breeds evil in mind, is distressful, O friend! He is a fool who never allows another to speak. For he then remains ignorant of their knowledge. ... God has set the Earth as the Seat of Duty.
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