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Simply scandalous Only a first step |
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Triumph at Sabina Park
End of an innings
Journey of an ASM
The dismal picture A young girl’s struggle in Stalin’s Russia Delhi Durbar
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Simply scandalous THINGS could not have gone more horribly wrong. Baba Farid University of Health Sciences, smarting under last year’s embarrassment of the leakage of the paper for the Pre-Medical Entrance Test, outsourced the job of setting, printing and distributing the paper to Panjab University this year. That in itself is a sad reflection on the state of affairs in Baba Farid University. Panjab University, whose recent record has been none too exemplary, makes a similar mess of things, with the paper finding its way out again this year and put on sale for upwards of Rs 15 lakh. After all, clearing the examination means a dream ticket to a medical college. Fortunately, the scam was detected in time and an alternative paper was given to the students, avoiding previous year’s ignominy of seeing the paper being cancelled. Despite this intervention of providence and some effective policing, the whole scandal is a matter of shame for Baba Farid University and the kind of doctors it is capable of turning out. It will be nothing more than an excuse to say that the paper was printed at a private printing press – probably in Lucknow – and the leakage took place from there. That the university itself is not printing it is a sad reflection on its working. Allowing it to go to a press where security is not foolproof makes it worse. In any case, it is hard to believe that a racket of this dimension could be run without the support of some insiders, even in Panjab University which undertook the responsibility of the outsourced job. Last year, when the paper was leaked, the police arrested several persons within days, just as it has arrested five this time. But during that 2005 scandal, the entire blame was put on a peon, a driver, a chowkidar and an office assistant of Baba Farid University. No action was taken against any senior official despite the fact that names of several VIPs surfaced. It is because of such laxity that the leakage of papers has become an annual occurrence. The administration has to put everyone responsible for the shameful incident behind bars at the earliest to stem the rot and salvage the reputation of the PMET. At stake is the career of bright and honest aspirants for a medical career, who stand to lose in the race against those who can buy an examination paper from touts.
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Only a first step Although belated, the five working groups announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Srinagar on May 25 have been given a kickstart with the naming of the heads of four panels. They are all well-known names in their areas of specialisation —- Justice A. M. Ahmadi, Mr M. K. Rasgotra, Dr C. Rangarajan and Mr M. Hamid Ansari. Their recommendations, covering major aspects of the J and K situation, to be discussed at a future roundtable conference, must help find a solution to the problem. These groups, it is believed, will try to evolve a consensus with a result-oriented approach to the unattended internal dimensions of the Kashmir issue. Now there is a mechanism to carry forward the dialogue process with a view to bringing peace and stability to the trouble-torn state. It has taken several weeks to announce the names of the heads of these groups. There should be no delay in announcing their composition to enable them to do their job. During the second roundtable conference in Srinagar Dr Manmohan Singh had said that he had an open mind and the group on relations between the state and the rest of the country would have the mandate to go into the question of greater autonomy and self-rule, as demanded by many sections in the state. This is the most important aspect of the whole problem, which has been evoking the maximum attention during the last several years. Unfortunately, the organisation that claims to represent the aspirations of a vast section of the Kashmiris, the Hurriyat Conference, refused to participate in the previous roundtable discussions. This irresponsible behaviour showed that the Hurriyat leaders were not serious about resolving the Kashmir question. The Hurriyat and other separatist organisations can even now make amends and associate themselves with the roundtable process. Their representation in the working groups will definitely help in working out new relationships —- between the Centre and the state, and between different regions —- in Jammu and Kashmir. But if they remain adamant on their negative stand, the working groups must go ahead with their work.
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Triumph at Sabina Park AFTER agonising years comes a series win to delight Indian cricket fans. The Indians came tantalisingly close in two of the three tests that had gone before. In Antigua, they were just one wicket away, with the Windies’ last wicket pair staving off 19 thrilling balls. In St. Lucia, they were just three wickets away, after a whole day’s play was lost to rain. Things got tougher in St. Kitts, but the Indians were still playing better cricket. And finally, at Kingston, on a minefield of a wicket with turn and variable bounce, with the ball alternately keeping low and exploding off a good length, our boys got the victory they deserved. It was without doubt a team effort, with a young seam attack coming good, but at the centre of it all were two gritty, quiet, match winners. Both Rahul Dravid and Anil Kumble are more aggressive than they look, but their style is steady accumulation, of runs and wickets, innings after innings, match after match. Rahul became the fastest to 9000 runs in this match, with Kumble taking his tally to 526. Rahul’s innings of 81 and 68 were sterling examples of test batting under difficult conditions. Unsurprisingly, he described them as among the most satisfying of his career. And Anil’s six wickets sealed the Windies’ fate. That painting of Rahul and Anil made by Rahul’s mother back home in Bangalore is now going to shine a little bit brighter. One of the memorable moments of this match would be Brian Lara offering mock applause to Charlie, the curator at Sabina Park sitting grinning in the pavilion, after a Harbhajan delivery turned square in front of him. Later, Lara, while strolling off to lunch, could be seen congratulating Dravid – evidently telling him something like “hats off for managing to bat on that!” For Dravid, this test will be special for his captaincy too. All those contentious selection and post-toss decisions finally paid off. This has been a tour of learning as much as triumph, and the only way from here is towards some more hard work for the next year’s World Cup.
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Liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or human happiness or a quiet conscience. — Isaiah Berlin
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End of an innings
THE American political vocabulary as well as of daily discourse is loaded with superlatives. Nothing is good; everything is great and fantastic or a disaster. Like the “have a nice day” greeting that is so ready on salesgirls’ lips and streams on bus crystal displays, there is “no problem” in solving anything. These expressions have become so ritualistic that they have ceased to mean what they purport to. So when President George W. Bush took his great buddy to the Elvis Presley ranch Graceland to fulfil Junichiro Koizumi’s desire to meet his pop idol in spirit, he could not take a false step. Indeed, the gesture was presented as a “thank you” for standing by the US on Iraq, even to the point of sending a non-combatant unit to Iraq in the face of a public outcry. It was also an attempt to firm up an important relationship. Koizumi has played a vital part in cementing his country’s relationship with the US, with the treaty between them expanded in scope and the Tokyo-Washington alignment reverting to take the central place it did in more certain Cold War days. It is not entirely an altruistic exercise for Koizumi because he has been in a hurry to shed off his country’s ostensibly self-effacing post-war ways and needs the US to calm anxious neighbours as it seeks to assert his country’s weight. Koizumi steps down in the autumn after five years at the helm and his successor will face two kinds of problems. In view of the Prime Minister’s own ideological bent, he has taken his country too close to the US. President Bush and his neoconservative cronies are as unpopular in Japan as elsewhere in the world. Second, Koizumi has decided not to respect his South Korean and Chinese neighbours’ sensitivities by ostentatiously visiting the Yakusuni shrine containing the remains of men declared war criminals by America and its allies. The Chinese in particular use their disapproval as an instrument of policy. It is therefore quite likely that Koizumi’s successor will seek greater room for manoeuvre by keeping some distance from America and seeking to repair relations with the country’s second most important interlocutor, China. It would not represent a basic change of policy but rather a change in style and nuance. However influenced young Japanese are by US culture, some American practices and approaches still grate on the Japanese consciousness. The coming transition in Japan highlights a dilemma. It is proper that Japan not be asked to wear sackcloth and ashes for its conduct in World War II. For far too long, Japan has punched below its weight in the international arena hobbled by the past and its single-minded devotion to bringing about the Japanese economic miracle. And the political leadership is now chafing at the bit to take its proper place. The problem is that Japan has still to find the balance by convincing its neighbours of its sincerity in turning over a new page in assuming a more prominent place. Its efforts to secure a permanent seat in the UN Security Council, initially through G-4, including India, and more recently by campaigning singly with US support are a clear indication of its resolve. Japan’s future strategic role is dependent upon regional equations as well as its own military relationship with the US, in which a difficult North Korea plays an important part. It is no secret that American moves to provide counterweights to China’s rising power have resulted in broadening the scope for future Japanese military action in the region. Besides, while the country’s armed forces are known by its dovish appellation, their capabilities and sophistication are truly impressive, despite their lack of recent field experience. Down the line, Japan’s American-sponsored pacifist constitution will be revised, giving Tokyo greater room for manoeuvre. But Japan remains mired in disputes with both South Korea and China over an island in the first instance and over an outcrop and the hydrocarbons below it in the latter case. Both these disputes are overlaid with emotion and, in Beijing’s case, the fine-tuning of nationalist sentiments for partisan profit. Japan has travelled a long way since its defeat in World War II. Single-mindedly, it concentrated on economic development even as it was absolved from high military spending by its erstwhile victor America offering its nuclear umbrella. The result was the economic miracle, which stunned the world and evoked its admiration. After decades of unprecedented prosperity, economic progress began to flag, and the Japanese method of conquering the world economically was not proving equally efficacious in the new information age. While America the laggard raced ahead, Japan was beset with a range of problems underlined by a vicious era of stagflation, the urgent need to restructure industrial and business hierarchies and a doomsday scenario for the future: a rapidly aging population unable to replenish itself in a homogeneous country hostile to immigrants. Resolving these problems in a conservative traditional society, despite the economic marvels it has achieved, is no easy task. Japan is changing, the most important change symbolised by Koizumi himself, who rose to power by appealing over the heads of his party’s faction leaders who traditionally made deals to name a party head and prime minister. But the change is incomplete and patchy, and the old political warlords have tremendous resilience. Equally, changes made in the banking sector in particular have been half-hearted, concern as they do some of the hoariest families. But Japan has finally moved out of at least a decade of stagflation and there is a new sprightliness in its step. What Koizumi will do after he steps down is an intriguing question. He initially emerged as the pin-up boy of Japanese politics provoking the unique phenomenon of being many women’s idol. Posters carrying his image sold like hot cakes, and, much like his own pop idol, he became a cult figure. The shine has worn off since then, but he sprung an election on the issue of privatising the mammoth post office complex, punished party dissenters and won it to return to power. His hope must be that his appeal will be as enduring as
Presley’s.
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Journey of an ASM WHILE glancing through the pages of The Tribune on June 19, I got stuck at the first page of “Chandigarh Tribune” carrying the photograph of the Assistant Station Master candidates waiting for the train for their return journey and found myself tempted to narrate the journey of an ASM. It dates back to June, 1975, when I received a call letter for appearing in the ASM’s written test. Everybody in the family was happy. My father, himself a railways employee, had special reason to be
happy. More thrilled was my uncle. The journey of a group of eight candidates began in a passenger train leaving Jullundhar railway station for Ludhiana on a sultry evening. The thrill of journey was doubled due to the two reasons — (a) the train was going to take four time the normal time, thus making us spend more time in the train. (b) It was a free trip, passes having been sent by the Railway
authorities. On having qualified the written examination, I was called for an interview in Allahabad in January, 1976. However, at the end of the exercise, I was not found fit to man a railway station. Having acquired my NCC Air Wing “C” Certificate, I was allowed to appear for the selection test of pilots in the Indian Air Force. Seven of us reached the Dehra Dun Air Force Selection Board. From day one, we were being noticed as to whether we possessed officer like qualities (OLQ) or not. There was a pre-requisite test called the pilot aptitude battery test (PABT). During the PAB test, I was like few others not found capable of flying aircraft. However, one colleague of ours, namely Gurwant Singh Gill, got selected. A dejected lot of three of us found itself sailing in the same boat, straight from the aircraft to the boat and decided to head towards Mussoorie, ‘the Queen of Hills’. On reaching Mussoorie, we got a room near the Library point. In an attempt to explore Mussoorie, we started off our journey towards the Children’s Park. On the way, there was a huge gate showing the entrance to the Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration. By this time, we had come to know that this is the academy producing the Deputy Commissioners. Later on, I happened to be there at two occasions. First, for the foundational course in the Indian Economic Service; and then for the IAS. First time, I came to know about the Deputy Commissioner’s aura from the close quarters was the visit of the then Deputy Commissioner of Jullundhar, Mr Ram Gopal, to my college function in the early seventies. My first encounter with an SDM was in the middle column titled “SDM’s Chhora” written by Mr M.G. Devasahayam that appeared in The Tribune sometime in 1978. During my IAS foundational course, I noticed that my next door neighbour in the Valley View Hostel was Mr Hrushikesh Panda whom I had met through the Competition Success Review which carried his photograph as the IAS topper of 1979. I saw him thereafter during the Election Observers briefing at the Ashoka Hotel, New Delhi. We revived our memories during the “one-week training programme” at National Law School of India University, Bangalore, recently. DAV college, Jullundhar, where I studied had the tradition of sending officers to the defence forces and civil services. That was the time, when Mr B.S. Bahl, a strict disciplinarian, was the principal of the college, I occasionally meet him at the Sukhna Lake, these days. Thus, the journey of ASM continues, so does the journey of life — unmindful of next platform, governed by a mysterious but beautiful thing called
destiny!
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The dismal picture THE saddest part of FIFA 2006 is that we are not there. Languishing at the 117th position in the world rankings, India has little hope of making it to the final round of the World Cup in the near future either. In all major sports our position is pathetic, but nowhere is it as low as that in football. Even poverty stricken Zambia, Sudan and Ethiopia are ranked higher than us. And presiding over this ignominy for the last 16 years is the Indian Football Association president Priyaranjan Dasmunshi. He stays put because there is no accountability in Indian sport. Nobody pays the penalty for non-performance. Rightfully, IFA should be doing unto him what a Ronaldo does unto a football. But that will never happen. In the Indian sports set-up, each satrap controls his turf effectively with a clever mix of patronage, proxies and state power. It is the same in almost every field, except cricket, the only one where the president is changed regularly and which is not dependent on government largesse. K P Singh Deo has had the rowing federation in his grip for over 20 years. Vijay Kumar Malhotra has presided over the archery association for over 30. K P S Gill has been making a mess in hockey for over a decade. Suresh Kalmadi has just let go of athletics, but still sits firmly astride the Indian Olympic Association. In no Olympic sport has India attained the top position, in individual or team events, at the world level, since the fractured Moscow games of 1980. In our 72 years’ participation in the Olympics we have not won a single individual gold medal. In no other field of activity is failure forgiven as easily as in Indian sports. Unless we institute accountability, this sorry state will continue. Sports administrators must show results, or be thrown out. If threatened with banishment, they will mobilize vote-banks to wage a battle from within, and cite ‘autonomy’ to protect their fiefdoms from without. But the purse strings are in government hands. It can lay down a condition that if we get no medal in any sports discipline for two consecutive Olympic Games, or world-level competitions, then its head has to roll. Or else all grants will be stopped. That alone will not get us medals, but the bosses will then stop treating sports organisations as their personal jagirs and put in some quality time and effort to produce world champions. Or, may be, better men will come in. In any case, the situation cannot get worse. The other policy change required is to ban all international mega events and use the money saved to nurture sports from the grass roots level upwards. It may be too late to get out of our commitment to host the 2010 Commonwealth Games, but the reasons trotted out for holding such wasteful spectacles need to be questioned. The principal excuse is that it will give a fillip to our medal quest. We hosted the Asiad in 1982 and all that it got us so far are one silver and a couple of bronzes. In contrast China was thrown out of the Olympic Games in 1952, for political reasons. For over three decades it did not take part in any meet of this scale, let alone host one. Yet, in 1984, when it re-entered the Olympics, its medal tally was 15 gold, eight silver and nine bronze. Clearly, staging of gargantuan sports meets has no relation with winning medals. Even as China was ostracised from the Games, it went about quietly nurturing its sporting talent. Its athletes then went on to win medals by the dozens in every Olympiad thereafter. And only when they had established a good track record did they claim the right to stage the Olympic Games. A pipedream close to the hearts of our sports administrators is that in 2016 India will host the Olympic Games. IOA Chairman, Suresh Kalmadi has even said that the Commonwealth Games will give us the credentials and experience to bid for the big one. It is a tradition at the Olympics that the final lap at the inaugural is run, and the games’ flame, lit by persons who have won at least one gold medal at a previous meet. If India gets to hold such a mega-event where will we get our gold-medallist from? Or, as a substitute, will pot-bellied potentates of Indian sport huff and puff around the stadium with the Olympic flame in their hands, like they did during its halt in Delhi two years ago, en route Athens? The other reason given for organizing such events is that it leads to the development of the city where they are held. The fly-overs built during the Asiad 24 years ago in Delhi are cited as an example. Are not fly-overs are built otherwise? Do we need an excuse for development? The only thing that happens when their construction is tied to the deadline of an international event is that as the final date approaches and the work is perceived to be off target, all norms are throw to the winds and contractors go laughing to the bank. And not all money is spent on ‘development’. At the Afro-Asian games held in Hyderabad two years ago Rs 20 crore was spent on the opening and closing ceremonies alone. This would be chicken feed compared to the requirements of Olympic Games. According to reports, the Commonwealth Games will cost us Rs 6,600 crore. Much of this money could have been spent on spotting, nurturing and training sportsmen who might fetch us some medals at some future Olympics, with plenty left over for other urgent needs of the country. Incidentally, this figure includes a training subsidy of Rs 80 lakh that India as the host will have to give to each participating nation. Among them are such needy ones as England, Australia, Canada and New Zealand! The difference that adequate resources and good organization can make is best illustrated by the experience of the Gulf nations in football. The Arabs are not a particularly athletic race. In several parts of India one can find people with far better physical attributes. But they get the best talent scouts, coaches and training facilities. The lowest among them, Oman, is 35 rungs above us in FIFA rankings. Bahrain with a population of barely 10 lakh is 63 places higher than India. Of course, all this needs money. That, too, we could have, if only we do not blow it up on senseless extravaganzas.
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A young girl’s struggle in Stalin’s Russia
A 13-year-old schoolgirl who kept a poignant and ultimately tragic diary during Stalinist Russia is being hailed as the Russian Anne Frank. The diaries of teenager Nina Lugovskaya, called I Want to Live: The Diaries of a Young Girl in Stalin’s Russia, are to be published in English this week after lying in a KGB file for over half a century. They offer an unusually perceptive view of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, combined with intimate soul-searching about the kind of everyday difficulties faced by teenage girls everywhere: boys, parties and parents. Like Anne Frank, Nina was 13 when she began keeping her diary; like the Amsterdam schoolgirl, she was writing in the shadow of one of the 20th century’s most repressive regimes. In 1937, at the height of Stalin’s purges, her family’s Moscow flat was raided and her diaries, which covered the years 1932-37, were confiscated by the secret police. Nina’s father, a left-wing socialist revolutionary from whom she drew much of her contempt for the regime, had already incurred the Kremlin’s wrath and spent time in prison and in exile. But her negative feelings about Stalin and the repressive nature of his government, feelings that she expressed in the diaries, were to be the undoing of the rest of the family. Along with her mother and two sisters, Nina was found guilty of treason and branded a counter-revolutionary. Their sentence was harsh; five years of hard labour in the Siberian gulag, followed by seven years of internal exile. It was an ordeal that the young diarist’s mother did not survive. But Nina did: after Stalin’s death she was politically rehabilitated. She married and became an artist, and lived long enough to see the fall of Communism. She died in 1993 at the age of 74. The diaries were unearthed in 2001 by Irina Osipova, a researcher for Memorial, an organisation that tries to keep alive the memory of Stalin’s victims. They had lain forgotten, scrawled in childish handwriting on the pages of three school exercise books, in a KGB archive in Moscow. Ms Osipova, whose own father was branded “an enemy of the people” and died during interrogation, believes Nina’s diaries offer the most sharp-eyed insight into the Soviet Union of the 1930s yet. “She was very talented and bright,” she said. “She read newspapers and was interested in what was going on in the country around her. It offers a more vividly observed and faithful account of the 1930s than anything else, better even that anything written by former gulag inmates.” Marianne Velmans, a senior executive at Doubleday, which is printing the diaries, hopes that they will capture the imagination of teenagers and help them understand the 1930s in the same way as Anne Frank’s diaries have helped students to understand the Holocaust. “If you read a book like this you’re touching the past,” she said. “It brings the period to life in a way that nothing else does.” In Russia, where the diaries have already been published, they made little impact. Ms Osipova, the woman who found them, thinks she knows why. “It’s shameful but people are sick of this period of our history,” she said. “It was always said that we didn’t know what was going on at the time, but these diaries show that even children knew.” — By arrangement with
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Delhi Durbar UNION
minister and LJP leader Ram Vilas Paswan is not waiting for things to happen in the run up to the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh. He first hosted a birthday bash for former Prime Minister V.P. Singh and is trying to win over various forces in UP in an effort to put up a joint front. Both the Congress and the BJP are hardly a force in UP. Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav and BSP supremo Mayawati are the main rivals in the country’s most populous state. Uma Bharti, who has floated her own Bharatiya Janshakti party, is trying to cosy up to Paswan. Bharti is hoping that Paswan will be favourably disposed as she has broken ranks with the saffron brigade. She is trying to do one better than the BJP in pushing the Hindutva agenda. Paswan, who is firmly opposed to the BJP, might be compelled to steer clear of Bharti.
Competitive skies The Jet Airways buyout of Sahara was always in doubt. Civil aviation insiders insist that this was a huge deal and would have inevitably hurt the prospects of Indian and Air India in a highly competitive environment. Sahara’s merger with Jet would have meant a high market share for the latter, having an adverse impact on the erstwhile monopoly holders Indian and Air India. In the last few months, Jet, in any case, has cashed in on Sahara’s market share besides realising that the airline’s infrastructure vis-a-vis engineering was abysmal. There is utter discontent in Sahara whose staff and aviators want to move on but find that DGCA regulations a big dampener. Meanwhile, union Civil Aviation minister Praful Patel is keen on merging Indian and Air India by the end of this year.
Playing spoilsport After flying high as union minister for Petroleum and Natural gas, Mani Shankar Aiyar finds that overseeing Panchayati Raj and sports is not all that exciting. Despite making it clear that he knew nothing about sports, the top leadership has chosen to look the other way. Congressmen believe that the sports ministry is a huge challenge considering that the Commonwealth Games are scheduled to he held in the national capital in 2010. They are quick to ask how clued in was Aiyar about petroleum and natural gas before he handled the ministry in addition to Panchayati Raj. From all accounts it seems certain that there will be no relief for Aiyar, as far as the sports ministry is concerned.
Race for UGC secretary’s post Prof Moolchand Sharma, who till recently held the post of Secretary, University Grants Commission, has now been promoted as Vice Chairman. And with him moving on to the new assignment, the race for the Secretary’s post has begun. Among the contenders are two additional secretaries in the Commission who have been hoping to make it to the post for long. Sources, however, claim that owing to the affirmative action that is being carried out in the Commission, albeit unofficially, the odds are in favour of the candidate who comes from a reserved category. Contributed by Prashant Sood, S S Negi, R Suryamurthy and Smriti Kak Ramachandran
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From the pages of Gallant fight against China
Universal and permanent peace can be built up only if all national offer collective resistance to aggression through the U.N. or help a country resisting aggression with arms and other means of defence. The West has fully grasped the significance of India’s fight against Chinese expansionism. Some persons are inclined to think that the Sino-Indian conflict has arisen from the ill-defined nature of the boundaries between the two countries and that the conflict can be ended through mediation or negotiation. No assessment of the merits and the conflict could be more inaccurate. The conflict between India and China has not sprung from differences over the boundaries because they were long settled and had not until recently been a subject of discussion. India is fighting Chinese imperialism and naked and brutal Chinese aggression. |
Truth rests at the pinnacle of great effort. From the base, the pinnacle appears to be shrouded in mists of maya (delusion). This often leads men astray. They became uncertain of its existence and remain at the base, asking meaningless questions and wasting time. —The Bhagvad Gita What may appear as truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person. But that need not worry the seeker. —Mahatma Gandhi All deeds and ceremonies performed in ego, are nothing but entanglements. —Guru Nanak
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