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Banish the thought A Call to Honour? |
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Cricket in bondage
The Indo-US deal
Prince’s ordeal, and mine
Carnage
in Qana A reporter remembers the Babri demolition Defence notes
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Banish the thought The United Progressive Alliance government’s proposal for restoring executive powers in the matter of appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and the high courts will cut into the independence of the judiciary. It is unlikely to be acceptable to the judiciary and the people who would like it to remain independent of the executive’s long arm. Union Law and Justice Minister H.R. Bhardwaj told the Rajya Sabha on Monday that he would like to strive for a “consensus” in Parliament since a constitutional amendment is necessary to implement the proposal. The executive’s keenness for greater role in judicial appointments is suspect, whatever the Law Minister’s assertions. The executive, irrespective of which party in power, is always keen to pack the courts with obliging judges. The 1993 Supreme Court ruling making the Chief Justice of India (CJI) the sole arbiter in the appointment of judges is the most effective way to insulate the judiciary from the executive influence. The collegium headed by the CJI and senior Supreme Court judges is fairly foolproof. The executive role in the appointments ought to be administrative in nature and this should continue to be as such. Any change giving the executive a greater role is bound to undermine the independence of the judiciary and the spirit of the Constitution. If the UPA government, or Parliament at its instance, reverts to the pre-1993 position, it will be a serious setback to the constitutional scheme. The collegium headed by the CJI has given no cause to complain that it has not exercised its power to select judges as it ought to. In response to the Presidential reference on July 23, 1998, the Supreme Court said that it is open to the executive to inform the collegium of its objections to a particular appointment. However, if the collegium still held the view, that appointment should be made as a matter of healthy convention. The Supreme Court’s view is clear and it is time the government and Parliament banish sinister thoughts that are bound to lead to renewed tensions between the judiciary and the other two wings. |
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A Call to Honour? RATHER than exposing the mole in the Prime Minister’s Office during the late P.V. Narasimha Rao’s regime, former Union minister and BJP leader Jaswant Singh has been increasingly exposing himself as a fickle leader or someone trying to be clever with words. Ever since his A Call to Honour in which he referred to the mole who passed on India’s nuclear plans to the US appeared, he has been making a fool of himself. By now he has issued umpteen statements, misstatements, resorted to innuendos and repartees, written to the Prime Minister and published the letter in which an American supposedly named the Indian mole in a news magazine but nobody has become any wiser. With his whole plan of getting cheap publicity for his book going haywire, he is now speaking of victimhood, of how the Press has been trying to skin him alive. He tried to mislead the media (and the country) and now has the cheek to blame it for not singing his praises Mr Jaswant Singh has only himself to blame if everyone, from his own partymen to his rivals, has been making fun of him. The author who begins the book comparing himself to Charles de Gaulle has ended up as a caricature of his former self, all because of his own attempt to be too clever by half. Now questions have been raised about Jaswant Singh falling all too easily for a cock and bull story. This is not the kind of image he had dreamed of when in A Call to Honour, he describes in detail the extra mile he travelled to convince the Americans that Indians were not suckers and the helpless situation in which he had to make that inglorious visit to Kandahar in the company of terrorists. But that is precisely the price those who try to be oversmart often end up paying. As Mr Jaswant Singh tries to shake off the millstone of mole around his neck, the nation wants to know why he kept silent for 10 long years when as a minister and member of the Cabinet Committee on Security Affairs for six years he could have done much to bring the mole to book. Equally pertinent, why did he not inform his own Prime Minister, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee, about the mole when he appeared to be anxious to inform his successor after a lapse of several years? Obviously, he wanted to spice up his book in the smug belief that the Prime Minister would not call his bluff by asking him to name the mole. Small wonder that as he falls in the pit he has himself made, there is nobody around to shed a tear for him—not even the BJP, some of whose members thought that he was India’s Bismarck. Even the publisher would have found he could have done better without the mole story. |
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Cricket in bondage The unsavoury drama of the elections to the head of the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) has once again proved, if proof was needed, that external bosses are vitiating the atmosphere and ruining cricket administration in the country. With the game being run by politicians, industrialists, and sundry satraps, fixers and power-mongers, cricketers and the game itself are frequently held hostage to extraneous considerations. The game suffers, the players suffer, but the bosses go on merrily. It is time to get rid of them. Consider, for example, what happened in Calcutta. Mr Jagmohan Dalmiya faced a tough election for the CAB’s presidentship. Ranged against him in the opposite camp were Chief Minister Buddadeb Bhattacharjee, no less, and former captain Sourav Ganguly, both supporting the candidature of police commissioner Prasun Mukherjee. The affair had a nail-biting midnight finish to rival any one-dayer played under lights at the Eden Gardens, with Dalmiya winning 61-56. Earlier, observers were giving Dalmiya all the chances of a batsman facing Anil Kumble with a pencil. Apparently, however, the anti-Dalmiya e-mail from Ganguly, leaked a few days earlier, failed to do much to swing the undecided voters against the Dalmiya camp. There is evidently, a fissure in the CPM camp as well with even big boss Jyoti Basu and state sports minister Subhas Chakrabarty jumping the ideological barrier in support of Dalmiya. When Buddadeb rued the victory of “evil over good” Basu was quick to protest. None of this can help cricket. Dalmiya himself is facing a BCCI enquiry over financial irregularities, and declared that he “needed this platform to fight the BCCI.” Just in case anyone thought that the victory would be used to further the cause of Bengali and Indian cricket. Few people dabbling in what has become a power game care to think that cricket should be run by cricketers. It is time to find ways by which distinguished former players like Sunil Gavaskar, Bishan Singh Bedi, Kapil Dev etc can look after Indian cricket. Cricket must be made safe from bosses. |
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One is never as unhappy as one thinks, nor as happy as one hopes. — Duc de la Rochefoucauld
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The Indo-US deal
Two
legislatures, separated by miles of land and sea, but inspired by the
same ideals of freedom and democracy, presented two different
spectacles on July 27 when they discussed their vision of the future
of the relationship between their two countries. In the House of Representatives of the US Congress, the sense was of a change of paradigm, the need to remove the last vestiges of the cold war and to foster a new relationship with India. Even the opponents of the nuclear deal were seeking ways of safeguarding their favourite non-proliferation doctrines without hurting the emerging relationship between the two democracies. Those who moved “killer amendments” to the nuclear deal did so more for fear of rogue states acquiring nuclear weapons than for depriving India of its nuclear assets. Republicans and Democrats alike stressed the importance of India; the non-proliferationists only wished, like The New York Times did, that India and the United States had built their new partnership on something other than “a bad nuclear deal”. The overwhelming majority, of course, approved the deal. In the Indian Parliament, however, it appeared that the cold war was still alive. Even after the Prime Minister assured the House that India would accept no departures from the July 18 accord and that concerns about the elements added to the deal by the committees of the House and the Senate had been conveyed to the United States at the highest level, the opposition found common cause with the left parties to raise the possibility of a sellout by India of its nuclear autonomy. The government opposed the move for a “sense of the house” resolution for fear that it would only polarise positions inside and outside Parliament. The good news, however, was that, at the end of the debate, it appeared that the opposition was not to what India had accepted so far, but to the unilateral conditions that the US Congress was trying to attach to the deal. Political issues, which are not directly related to the nuclear deal surfaced in both the legislatures. In the US, it was the tug of war between the President and Congress on the limits of authority that can be exercised by either on matters relating to foreign policy. If there were adequate consultations with Congress before the agreement of July 18, 2005, the Congress would have gone along with a deal with India, even though the non-proliferationists would have opposed nuclear cooperation with India. The violent opposition to the deal in certain sections of the press and the think tanks sent ripples through Congress and it took intensive efforts by the industry and the Indian community lobbies to counter them. In India, the peculiar chemistry of the left within the ruling coalition was fuelled by a few scientists and the BJP, which set off the nuclear issue in the first instance and then successfully contained the fallout, found an alibi to discredit the government, for accomplishing something that they would themselves have liked to secure. The legislative process in the US is far from complete and the conditions set by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee are more stringent than those of the House committee. Even after the Senate has approved it, the final reconciliation between the House and the Senate versions will have its own surprises. The US Administration has already pointed out the sticking points in the House bill and has stated categorically that it would oppose any amendment that would require renegotiation of what was agreed in the July 18 statement. It recognises that India cannot agree to a fissile material cap and that cooperation with India cannot be made contingent upon hostility towards Iran. The Administration is equally opposed to the infringement of Presidential authority reflected in certain provisions of the House bill. It is appalled that the bill would tie it down to certain positions in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). In other words, the US Administration is as uneasy with the House bill as India is and the wisdom of sticking to the Joint Statement is obvious to everyone. In India, it is interesting that those who criticise the additions introduced by the Committees of the House and the Senate are the very same people who opposed the Joint Statement itself. They were critical of the Joint Statement and later the separation plan and the US Congress has simply given them more ammunition to fight their battles. The statement of a respected nuclear scientist that he would rather have India sign the NPT rather than enter the deal was surprising to say the least. He found the NPT superior as it had an escape clause. The escape clause is more obvious in the case of bilateral agreements since the international community is not involved. Either side in breach of the agreement will automatically leave it and suffer the consequences. In the case of the NPT, the Security Council would come into play if a signatory were to express interest to withdraw, as it happened in the case of North Korea. In the din and buzzle of the Indian argument that the deal is a sellout, we seem oblivious of the lament from the west that that the deal is still bad. The New York Times and the Economist made their own lists of shortcomings in the deal. India has done nothing in return for getting nuclear technology and equipment, claims the former: no Indian promise to stop producing bomb-making material, no promise not to expand its arsenal and no binding promise to test. The latter points out that India has not taken on any new obligations to lighten the blow to the NPT. But ironically, in certain circles in India, the NPT is seen as a lesser evil than the deal. Some of the assertions made by the committees of the US Congress are nothing more than stating the obvious. If our unilateral moratorium on testing is stated in the Joint Statement, it follows that if we do test, we should be aware that the deal will be dead. Same is true in the event of our not joining the FMCT when it is negotiated. The rest are unilateral expectations of good behaviour, which are anathema to us as they have a bearing on India’s independence. As in the case of Iran, it may happen that our interests may coincide with those of the US and we might back them. We do not need to be concerned about someone else riding their own wish horses. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s latest statement in Parliament, together with the latest statement by the Bush Administration, makes it quite clear that neither side has any intention to move away from the Joint Statement of July 18. India has already accepted certain changes in the timetable and also accommodated the US on the separation plan. But India is not a party to anything that has happened since March and we do not need to match every action in the US Congress. The dynamics in the US Congress are different from those in the Indian Parliament, where the ruling coalition is bound to support the government. Individual Congressmen and Senators, unlike our parliamentarians, have their personal agendas, which do not necessarily complement the administration policy. It is a coincidence that the Republicans have overwhelmingly supported the deal, while the democrats have opposed it. But in the end, the Administration manages to carry Congress by a mix of persuasion and pressure. There was a time when critical references to India were common in the US Congress and our diplomats in Washington, with their meagre resources, were battling moves by individual Congressmen to censure India. Congressman Dan Burton’s annual amendments to censure India were considered a litmus test of India’s popularity on the Hill. Today, India is much more equipped to counter such moves with the support of the powerful business lobby, the Indian Americans and an army of lobbyists at our disposal. The best that the Pakistan caucus could do was to introduce an amendment that India and Pakistan should pursue their dialogue. Burton himself is a new convert to the cause of India-US friendship. The balance of rights and obligations of the Joint Statement is still intact even after minor adjustments in the timetable and sequencing. India has not accepted any of the conditions put forward by Congress. The arguments made in India and the US since July 2005 have only highlighted the delicate balance in the agreement. As long as the balance is maintained, India will only gain from the
deal.
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Prince’s ordeal, and mine
Prince’s ordeal in a 60-foot hole reminded me of a “similar” experience that I went through. The difference was that I was in a hospital and there were nearly a dozen doctors available who had specialised in most of the medical fields, in case I needed their help. There was none else to pray for me except my wife and two sons. Wife holding my hands; one son rubbing my feet and, the other nursing my head and occasionally running around, to complete hospital formalities. Unlike the slimy, underfed, uncouth, naked and nowhere-near-a-prince-look “Prince”, I in comparison to him was a six-footer and well fed. The radiologist on the advice of my ortho had properly briefed me on the test I was to undergo. A simple MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) was to confirm my lumbers “position” and the low back “shambles.” I was to be slid into a nearly six feet deep capsule with my head going in first, and rest of the straightjacketed body to follow. They put a rubber balloon — a bell — in one of my fisted palms, resting on my chest, to be pressed in case I felt “some problem”. Slowly the thing started moving in and I was soon buried inside the capsule. What if an earthquake struck then! The radiologist conducting the test would be the first to run away! In a split second this eerie thought flashed in my mind when at the same time the magnetic resonance thundered into my ears. And I pressed the balloon-bell! I was taken out. Offered water. Reassured. Counselled on safety aspects of the MRI test. The family members beseeching and affectionate glances and the doctor’s “nothing to worry” smile made me agree to be pushed in once again. And several times, again and again. Wife said: “You can do it darling!” And I did it. Well I could do it. A six-footer. In 60 minutes. In a six feet deep tunnel. Prince, nearly six years old, also did it. For 60 hours. Sixty feet deep. Well, I think only Prince could do it. And he did it. A real doing at that. Can I say to myself, “I also ran”? Confessing honestly, I
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Carnage in Qana They
wrote the names of the dead children on their plastic shrouds. “Mehdi
Hashem, aged seven - Qana,” was written in felt pen on the bag in
which the little boy’s body lay. “Hussein al-Mohamed, aged 12 -
Qana”, “Abbas al-Shalhoub, aged one - Qana.’’ And when the Lebanese soldier went to pick up Abbas’s little body, it bounced on his shoulder as the boy might have done on his father’s shoulder on Saturday. In all, there were 56 corpses brought to the Tyre government hospital and other surgeries, and 34 of them were children. When they ran out of plastic bags, they wrapped the small corpses in carpets. Their hair was matted with dust, most had blood running from their noses. You must have a heart of stone not to feel the outrage that those of us watching this experienced yesterday. This slaughter was an obscenity, an atrocity - yes, if the Israeli air force truly bombs with the “pinpoint accuracy’’ it claims, this was also a war crime. Israel claimed that missiles had been fired by Hizbollah gunmen from the south Lebanese town of Qana – as if that justified this massacre. Israel’s Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, talked about “Muslim terror” threatening “western civilisation”- as if the Hizbollah had killed all these poor people. And in Qana, of all places. For only 10 years ago, this was the scene of another Israeli massacre, the slaughter of 106 Lebanese refugees by an Israeli artillery battery as they sheltered in a UN base in the town. More than half of those 106 were children. Israel later said it had no live-time pilotless photo-reconnaissance aircraft over the scene of that killing - a statement that turned out to be untrue when The Independent discovered videotape showing just such an aircraft over the burning camp. It is as if Qana - whose inhabitants claim that this was the village in which Jesus turned water into wine - has been damned by the world, doomed forever to receive tragedy. I found Nejwah Shalhoub lying in the government hospital in Tyre, her jaw and face bandaged like Robespierre’s before his execution. She did not weep, nor did she scream, although the pain was written on her face. Her brother Taisir, who was 46, had been killed. So had her sister Najla. So had her little niece Zeinab, who was just six. “We were in the basement hiding when the bomb exploded at one o’clock in the morning,’’ she said. “What in the name of God have we done to deserve this? So many of the dead are children, the old, women. Some of the children were still awake and playing. Why does the world do this to us?” No one in this country can forget how President George Bush, Ms Rice, and Tony Blair have repeatedly refused to call for an immediate ceasefire - a truce that would have saved all those lives yesterday. Ms Rice would say only: “We want a ceasefire as soon as possible,’’ a remark followed by an Israeli announcement that it intended to maintain its bombardment of Lebanon for at least another two weeks. Throughout the day, Qana villagers and civil defence workers dug through the ruins of the building with spades and with their hands, tearing at the muck until they found one body after another still dressed in colourful clothes. In one section of the rubble, they found what was left of a single room with 18 bodies inside. Twelve of the dead were women. All across southern Lebanon now, you find scenes like this, not so grotesque in scale, perhaps, but just as terrible, for the people of these villages are terrified to leave and terrified to stay. The Israelis had dropped leaflets over Qana, ordering its people to leave their homes. Yet twice now since Israel’s onslaught began, the Israelis have ordered villagers to leave their houses and then attacked them with aircraft as they obeyed the Israeli instructions and fled. There are at least 3,000 Shia Muslims trapped in villages between Qlaya and Aiteroun – close to the scene of Israel’s last military incursion at Bint Jbeil – and yet none of them can leave without fear of dying on the roads. And Mr Olmert’s reaction? After expressing his “great sorrow”, he announced that: “We will not stop this battle, despite the difficult incidents [sic] this morning. We will continue the activity, and if necessary it will be broadened without hesitation.” But how much further can it be broadened? Lebanon’s infrastructure is being steadily torn to pieces, its villages razed, its people more and more terrorised – and terror is the word they used – by Israel’s American-made fighter bombers. Hizbollah’s missiles are Iranian-made, and it was Hizbollah that started this war with its illegal and provocative raid across the border. Incredibly, Israel yesterday denied safe passage to a UN World Food Programme aid convoy en route to the south, a six-truck mission that should have taken relief supplies to the south-eastern town of Marjayoun. More than three quarters of a million Lebanese have now fled their homes, but there is still no accurate figure for the total number still trapped in the south. The seven-mile highway between Qana and Tyre is littered with civilian homes in ruins and burnt-out family cars. On Thursday, the Israeli Army’s Al-Mashriq radio, which broadcasts into southern Lebanon, told residents that their villages would be “totally destroyed” if missiles were fired from them. But anyone who has watched Israel’s bombing these past two weeks knows that, in many cases, the Israelis do not know the location in which the Hizbollah are firing missiles, and – when they do – they frequently miss their targets. How can a villager prevent the Hizbollah from firing rockets from his street? The Hizbollah do take cover beside civilian houses - just as Israeli troops entering Bint Jbeil last week also used civilian homes for cover. But can this be the excuse for slaughter on such a scale? —
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A reporter remembers the Babri demolition Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha Lal Krishan Advani has again come under the scanner on account of a book by the former Police Chief of Faizabad district, D B Rai, who has stated in his book ‘Ayodhya Ka Sach’ that Mr Advani had addressed the meeting on December 6, 1992, when the Babri Masjid was demolished by Sangh Parivar loyalists and BJP workers. Not only Mr Rai but even former Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Uma Bharti, who was herself present on that day at the Ramjanmabhoomi site, has confirmed that Mr Advani addressed the meeting from a dais which was occupied by her, among others. Mr Advani, when he held the office of the Home Minister of India, had told the Liberhan Commission that he did not address the meeting. Since I am an eyewitness of the beginning of the process that resulted in the total demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992, I can vouch for the fact that Mr Rai and Ms Bharati are correct in their statements.. I had reached Faizabad from Delhi on the night of December 5, 1992, I was not able to collect an entry pass to cover the ‘Karseva’, for an afternoon newspaper Delhi Mid Day, as the passes had been issued by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) during the day. So on the day of the demolition, I asked the driver of my taxi to tag on to a VIP convoy which was going towards the Babri Masjid site. Thus I reached the spot at about 10.10 in the morning without any hurdles. As I was climbing a small hillock to reach the venue, I saw RSS volunteers in their long khaki shorts along side UP Police constables, presumably posted to guard the structure. To me, it was a strange sight. When I reached the sport where the VHP had announced symbolic Karseva for laying the foundation of a Ram temple, the Parishad volunteers did not allow me to enter the venue. I had to seek the help of Ms Bharti whom I knew, as I had been covering the BJP for many years. After entering the spot, I went around meeting the reporters and newspersons who like me had come to report the event. At about 500 meters, a large dais had been erected. Many BJP and VHP leaders including Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Ashok Singhal were present. While I was listening to the speeches of the leaders, I heard the organisers had announced the name of the next speaker. It was none other than L.K. Advani, who was addressing the gathering. Suddenly, there was a commotion. I saw many youth were climbing the Babri Domes. These youth had shovels, hammers and sharp edged iron rods in their hands and were hitting the structure while they were going up the domes. My professional instincts took over and I rushed to my taxi and asked the driver to find a telephone. I had to file my story at the earliest, as the special Sunday edition of my paper would be awaiting my dispatch. I left Ayodhya and reached the Faizabad telegraph office from where I called up my Editor John Dayal, to report the eyewitness account of the Babri Masjid demolition. |
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Defence notes With the 11th Defence Plan of the country in the final phase of being prepared, indications are that the annual defence spending is likely to go up to 2.57 per cent of the GDP from the present 2.33 per cent. Though the hike in the defence spending would still not be three per cent of the GDP, which has been a long standing demand of the armed forces, reports suggest that the expenditure on the country’s strategic sector would grow by nine per cent during the 11th plan period starting next year. The rise in defence spending would go along with the strategy worked out by Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee to bring in a fifty-fifty parity between capital and revenue expenditure, a trend which is followed around the world. Currently, India’s defence budget of Rs 89,000 crore is loaded in favour of revenue expenditure, with the capital outlay accounting for 40 per cent of the expenditure.
Space based navigation Raytheon Company, the US based leading defence company, has successfully completed the Preliminary System Acceptance Test for the GPS Aided GEO Augmented Navigation-Technology Demonstration System (GAGAN-TDS). GAGAN-TDS is the first phase of a project sponsored by the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) and Airports Authority of India (AAI), to implement a space-based navigation system in Indian airspace. “This test was significant because the GAGAN-TDS ground elements supplied by Raytheon were installed and integrated ahead of schedule,” said Andy Zogg, vice president of Raytheon’s Airspace Management and Homeland Security business. “More importantly, the system functioned properly and exceeded the accuracy requirements.” The system could eventually be useful for Indian defence as well.
NCC for environment The National Cadet Corps (NCC) and the Govind Ballabh Pant Institute of Himalayan Environment and Development (GBPIHED) have signed a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA) for environment protection and development of the Himalayan region. The memorandum was signed on behalf of NCC by its DG Lt. Gen M C Bhandari and on behalf of GBPIHAD, its Director Dr. V Upendra Dhar. This joint venture has been named as OP-PARADE – Participatory Action for Rural Areas Environment and Development – and to implement it, the Institute has developed a Village Environment Action Plan which envisages devising simple and cost effective solutions to the problem. The main objectives of this plan include ensuring sufficient and sustainable availability of water sources, making water available to water shortage stricken areas, conserve and manage natural resources, increased productivity by land reform programmes, controlling pollution, enhancing employment opportunities and ameliorating the standards of cleanliness and health in rural areas. |
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From the pages of No rhyme or reason
A division bench of the Andhra Pradesh High Court has allowed the writ petitions of three revolutionary poets who were detained under the Preventive Detention Act. The strictures passed by the Andhra High Court cannot but confirm the public feeling that Governments may not always be trusted to use their powers sparingly or discriminatingly. Stating that they had gone through the poems of the petitioners, the Judges said that all of them were quite harmless. Some were critical, some where scornful and some were couched in bitter language. But none of them contained any positive call of violence. As for the likelihood of public disorder on the basis of these poems, the chances were nil. To claim that these poems were likely to lead to public disorder, the Judges said, would be even more extravagant than the language of the poets. Poets claim poetic license for their flights of fancy, but the serious business of government must have both rhyme and reason. |
Take good care of your slave. You do not know what great passions fiercely scorch his chest. Were you a slave yourself, vain would be your wrath and righteous passion, and the inability would create a ranging fire in the mind. There are six allegators—Lust, anger, avarice and so on—within you, in the “souls fathomless depths”. But protect yourself with the turmeric of discrimination and renunciation and they won’t touch you. Satyagraha teaches us the art of living as well as dying.
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