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No dilution of N-deal Telangana again Respect others’ feelings |
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The war in Lebanon
Poet of poets
News analysis The man who refused “Nobel” for math Delhi Durbar
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No dilution of N-deal The sceptics have now the reason to feel comfortable after the extensive debate over the Indo-US nuclear deal in both Houses of Parliament and the Prime Minister’s categorical reply to their questions. If everything goes according to the July 2005 Joint Statement, India will have got what it had been seeking for some time. There is no threat to the country’s strategic and other interests. India’s declaration of a voluntary moratorium on further nuclear tests can be withdrawn the moment the country’s national interests demand. The deal will not come in the way. Dr Manmohan Singh has made it plain that it will be India’s sovereign right to build as many nuclear reactors as it wanted, whether civilian or military in nature. The civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the US does not bind India to the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty, as it does not fit into India’s scheme of things. The safeguards agreement to be signed with the International Atomic Energy Agency will be only India-specific — exactly on the lines given in the Joint Statement. Thus, it is clear: the deal’s final shape will be acceptable to India only if it will be in the country’s overall interests. President George W. Bush too has given the commitment that the goalposts decided in July 2005 will not be shifted. Or, India will be free to draw the “appropriate conclusions”, as Dr Manmohan Singh told the Lok Sabha. The Prime Minister’s remarks not only tend to reassure the country, but also carry a message for the US law-makers who have been trying to dilute the commitments made in the basic document. The US Congress, now in the process of amending the American law to allow nuclear trade with India, cannot afford to ignore India’s legitimate concerns if Washington wishes the deal to remain intact. Those in India who think that the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement is only about finding an alternative source of energy should revise their opinion. There are other laudable objectives too. India had to find a way to end the restrictive technology regime that had been imposed on it. The country’s strategic interests could not be allowed to suffer forever because of the sanctions that came in the wake of India’s assertion of its nuclear power status in 1998. The deal with the US in a way amounts to India’s recognition as a nuclear power like the five old members of the nuclear club. This is the net gain for the country.
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Telangana again The exit of the Telangana Rashtra Samiti (TRS) from the United Progressive Alliance and its government has again brought to the fore the politics revolving around the demand for a separate state. The political, economic and administrative merits of the case for carving out Telangana from Andhra Pradesh are unlikely to be either focused upon or served by the tussle the TRS has now triggered. The TRS is the first party to quit the UPA since it formed the government. Although the departure of the five MPs is unlikely to affect the numbers game, the Congress may begin to feel concerned about its inability to sustain the cohesion of the coalition at the Centre. This is relevant because the immediate objective of the TRS is to extract a separate Telegana by striking at the Centre and adding to its discomfort in Andhra Pradesh. Whether the TRS has let its campaign peak too soon — when the next elections are a good three years away in the normal course — is a moot point. The TRS is unlikely to be embraced by opponents of the Congress, though every major party is suspected of having its own dark horses within the TRS. The BJP may be anxious to capitalise on the TRS breaking away but given the troubles within the party and the compulsions of the state unit, it is unlikely to make common cause with the TRS right now. That the BJP has more to gain — than the Telugu Desam Party — by bolstering the agitation for a separate Telangana does not necessarily mean that it can add force to the TRS campaign. The TDP, like the Left parties, is dead set against a separate Telangana; and in a state where the main contenders are the Congress and the TDP, the BJP’s prime concern is to avoid falling between two stools. The demand for Telangana’s statehood is many decades old and it fulfils every criterion for a separate state. In fact, there is no great opposition to a separate state as Telangana is the largest region of Andhra Pradesh and contributes bulk of the revenue despite being deprived and backward by any index of development. Unfortunately, the case for Telangana has been hostage to expedient and electoral politics. What view the Manmohan Singh government takes of the demand after the exit of the TRS from the UPA remains to be seen.
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Respect others’ feelings THE arrest of one of the seven people involved in cutting the hair of a Sikh boy in Jaipur should, hopefully, lead to the arrest of all the others and blowing over of the whole incident. On its part, the Rajasthan government has also taken disciplinary action against the policemen who were lax in dealing with the situation. It has promised deterrent action against the guilty persons. These steps should help quieten the atmosphere and reassure the community that no leniency would be shown in this case. Had the Jaipur police taken summary action when the incident happened, it would not have caused indignation to the Sikhs who felt that their religious belief was under attack. After all, keeping hair is an article of faith for the community whose feelings ought to have been respected. This knowledge itself should have been sufficient for the police to gauge the seriousness of the incident. It was certainly not vendetta alone that motivated the seven who kidnapped the Sikh boy, a student of Class XII, beat him up, cut his hair and dumped him in front of his school. Communal provocation seemed to have been one of their aims. The police handling of the situation was not only crass inefficient, it even smacked of partisanship. Otherwise, the seven accused would not have been able to escape from Jaipur. Incidentally, one of them was arrested while arriving in Delhi by a Mumbai-Delhi flight. This itself is a sad commentary on the state of affairs in Jaipur. Much will now depend on the charges brought against the seven and how they are pursued to their logical conclusion. The BJP government has every reason to shore up its image in terms of dealing with questions of minorities. There were quite a few incidents in which the administration was accused of adopting a partisan attitude. The recent verdict of the Rajasthan High Court on the manner in which a minority institution at Kota was dealt with by the government agencies did not show it in a good light. This is all the more reason that it should not spare any effort to book all the culprits involved in the hair-cutting incident and award them the severest punishment.
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He who wields the knife never wears the crown. — Michael Heseltine
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The war in Lebanon
DOUBTLESS the cease-fire in Lebanon is extremely fragile. The UN’s unambiguous condemnation of Israel’s commando raid on a Hezollah stronghold inside southern Lebanon as a “violation” of the Security Council’s unanimous resolution 1701 has not deterred Tel Aviv from threatening to repeat such raids until the Lebanese Army, assisted by the expanded UN peacekeeping force, can ensure that the Hezbollah would not be rearmed by Syria and Iran. Lebanon’s infuriated Prime Minister would have nothing of this. He has warned that he would stop the deployments of the Lebanese army in the south should Israel persist in truce infringements. Add to this the delays and difficulties being caused by nations that have to contribute troops to raise the presence of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) from 2,000 at present to 15,000 — to be joined by as many soldiers of the Lebanese army — and the problems ahead become obvious. However, irrespective of the rival rhetoric and bombast, it is crystal clear that Israel and the United States that backs it to the hilt have both been the losers in the month-long ugly war in Lebanon even though the barbaric Israeli bombings have killed 845 innocent civilians, injured more than 4,000 and rendered a fourth of the Lebanese population homeless. Significantly, of the 158 Israelis killed, only 39 were civilians. Anyone inclined to contest the above conclusion would do well to ponder the stark and incontrovertible facts that follow. First, in 1967, the Israelis had vanquished the three most powerful Arab armies in six days flat. During the Yom Kippur War six years later the Israeli armed forces had taken only 20 days to convert a “stunning defeat into a spectacular victory”. This time around a “small terrorist group”, an Iran-backed Shia militia in southern Lebanon that calls itself Hezbollah, has fought the formidable Israeli army to a standstill. Never before has the myth of Israeli invincibility been shattered so conspicuously. No less painful than the military standoff has been the Israeli (and American) loss in the battle of the world opinion. Second, the Israelis had to accept a cease-fire and the presence of an international force along the Israel-Lebanon border without even securing the release of their two soldiers whose kidnapping had started it all. Israel’s boast of destroying the “menace” of Hezbollah once and for all invites only derisive laughter. The Hezbollah remains the most powerful military entity in Lebanon. Its arsenal of rockets and missiles has been diminished, not destroyed. Anyone who thinks that the Lebanese - with or without the help of the enlarged UNIFIL, whose mandate is far from clear - can “disarm” the Hezbollah is living in a paradise of his or her own making. This does not mean that the Hezbollah is itching for another bout of warfare. But what is clear is that the Hezb’s charismatic leader, Mr. Hassan Nasarallah, would abide by the cease-fire but without allowing anyone to disarm his organisation. Several of the countries expected to contribute troops for Lebanon have already declared that their job is to keep the peace, not to kill people. Third, Israel had calculated that its merciless pounding of Lebanon would turn the majority of the population against the Shia militia, thus making its own task easier. Precisely, the opposite has happened. So great is the anger against Israel that almost the entire Lebanese population — Sunni, Christian, Druze and, of course, Shia — has rallied round the Hezbollah leader. His popularity across the Arab world has soared to the point that 50 years after Gamal Abdul Nasser, Hassan Nasarallah is the most respected pan-Arab leader. Not for nothing has The Economist captioned its cover story, “Nasarallah Wins the War”. To say this is not to deny or condone the wrongs that the Hezollah and its backers do. But all that has happened in recent weeks has to be viewed in the complex and painful context of West Asia. And that is what brings me to the fifth and the final point. The disaster in Lebanon has led to the most bitter and divisive blame game in Israel ever. Mutual recrimination — between the military and the politicians, within the armed forces and across the civil society — has practically ended the enviable Israeli unity on the issue of its security. The two individuals most censured are Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Defence Minister Amir Peretz. But then top generals are also being targeted. General Udi Adam was the man in charge of the campaign. He is blaming the politicians for “holding back the army for several days and then ordering the final push”. His boss, Chief of Staff General Halutz, who had appointed another general to “oversee” Adam, is under fire for arousing the “wild expectation” that the Air Force alone could destroy the Hezbollah. What respected analysts are writing is mortifying for both the government and the armed forces. America had supported Israel to the hilt all through the month-long war not only because of the age-old US policy but also because of obvious American stakes in the war for the “destruction” of the Hezbollah. According to several US strategists — quoted by Mr Seymour Hersh in the latest issue of New Yorker — Washington believed that the Israeli success in achieving this would help them in attacking Iranian nuclear installations, if it became necessary. For, by getting rid of the Hezbollah, Israel would eliminate “Iran’s western front”. That hope has now been dashed. Whether this would persuade the neo-conservatives dominating the Bush administration to abandon the idea of striking at the Iranian nuclear facilities is difficult to say. Much would depend on what happens at the UN Security Council at the end of the month when the deadline for the suspension of Iran’s uranium enrichment activity expires. For this country a difficult question will soon arise. India is represented among the peacekeepers in Lebanon at present. But the force is small and functions under strict constraints. During the recent war some Indian soldiers, in fact, came under heavy danger. In all probability, New Delhi would be requested to send more troops and become part of the larger UNIFIL. All things considered, we would be well advised to stay out of the mess that has been created and is bound to last a long time. Mr Hersh has a word of advice for Israeli leaders that needs to be endorsed: “The definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expect different results”.
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Poet of poets
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WANTED to do my masters in English literature from the Institute of English in Thiruvananthapuram. The only reason was that I wanted to be a student of Prof K. Ayyappa Panikker, who headed the institute those days. I had no acquaintance with him except through his poems one of which I learnt by heart and was fond of reciting and explaining in my own way. The poem, when it appeared in print, was diamond-shaped. It read: Kam Thakam Pa-thakam Kola-pa-thakam Nenthra vazha kola pa-thakam Kola-pa-thakam Pa-thakam Thakam Kam It was, perhaps, my first encounter with modern Malayalam poetry. The poem deals with a night in the life of the poet. He waits for Muse’s blessing when suddenly the poet hears a sound. He strains his ears. Yes, it is the sound of footsteps! He sees a shadowy figure entering the compound of his house. He must have come to do some black deed, thinks the poet. The poet can see a knife in the intruder’s hand. Now he knows he has come to commit a murder. Whose? The man walks towards a plantain tree. He cuts a bunch of plantain fruits and carries it away. The same lines are now in the descending order. He can hear the footsteps of the thief as he walks out. Totally helpless, the poet wakes up to the possibility that the thief can come again to pluck another bunch another day. At the end, the thief gets to eat the plantain fruits and the poet gets a poem. Each according to his need, as Marx says. It might have been odd that one of Malayalam’s greatest poets taught English for a living. But then, he was equally at home in Sanskrit and Tamil. Few other poets have experimented with poetic form, theme and structure as Prof Panikker did. In his formative period as a poet, he wrote about the village life in Kerala using folk rhythm and colloquial language. During the Emergency when many poets extolled the virtues of discipline a la Vinoba Bhave, Panikker’s poems ridiculed the waywardness of authoritarianism and social atrocities. His mental unrest sought refuge in a serene poem Gopikadandakam presenting Krishna in various roles. Prof Panikker tried diverse narrative styles to retell stories from the Ramayana, the Mahabharata and Silapadikaram. He also explored the legend of the Buddha as a magnificent quest for ultimate reality. His works collected in four volumes under the common title Ayyappa Panikkerude Kritikal (The works of Ayyappa Panikker) earned critical acclaim, including the Saraswati Samman in 2005. He also founded and edited Kerala Kavitha, a journal devoted to poetry and criticism. He was also a founder member of the Unesco World Academy of Poetry and Chief Editor, Medieval Indian Literature, Kendriya Sahitya Akademi. He did a lot of work in aesthetics, particularly in ancient Tamil poetics. Few other Malayalam poets had a following outside Kerala as Prof Panikker had. I still remember a Chandigarh-based poet and contributor of The Tribune praising him for his qualities of head and heart when he learnt that I too came from the poet’s own country. All his admirers and lovers of poetry and scholarship have been shocked by his death after a prolonged illness at Thiruvananthapuram on Wednesday. He was
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News analysis The indefinite fast undertaken by Telangana Rashtra Samithi (TRS) chief K. Chandrasekhar Rao is oddly reminiscent of the one in the early 1950s that led to the creation of Andhra state, though no two persons can be as dissimilar as Potti Sriramulu and Chandrasekhar Rao. A separate Andhra state was carved out of the Composite Madras state after a historic fast unto death by Sriramulu, a frail and self-effacing Gandhian. Telugu-speaking people of Coastal Andhra and Rayalaseema regions, who were part of the Composite Madras state, had been agitating for a separate Telugu state for years when the country gained Independence. The then Congress government headed by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru was not inclined to carve out states on a linguistic basis. The issue became more complicated when Telugus, who had historically a large presence in Chenna Pattanam (as Chennai was called in Telugu), claimed Chennai, then Madras, as part of their proposed Andhra state. In the First General Election of 1952, Andhras expressed their resentment towards the Congress leaders by defeating them at the poll. Out of the 140 seats from Andhra in the Madras Legislative Assembly, the Congress could secure only 43, while the Communist Party of India, which threw its weight behind a separate state, bagged as many as 40 seats out of the 60 it contested. With Nehru refusing to budge on the issue, Sriramulu sat on fast unto death on the 19th of October, 1952 at Madras. The Congress refused to give in even as Sriramulu’s historic fast entered 50th day. Eight days later, he died. Time magazine reported the development in its issue dated December 29, 1952. “One of the doctors at his bedside suggested that it was time to end the fast. Sriramulu had lost the power of speech, but he lifted his hand, slowly and unsteadily placed a finger on his lips in refusal. A few hours later he was dead.” All hell broke loose in the Andhra region and there was uncontrollable violence, chiefly led by the Communists. Sriramulu’s supreme sacrifice did not go in vain, as Congress had to give in finally, and on the 1st of October, 1953, an Andhra state came into existence but without the city of Madras. Meanwhile, the Hyderabad state consisting of Telangana, parts of present Karnakata and Maharashtra was liberated by the Union, and a majority of members of the Hyderabad Legislative Assembly favoured formation of Vishalandhra (Greater Andhra), which eventually became a reality on November 1, 1956 in the form of Andhra Pradesh. The merger of Andhra and Telangana had hiccups from day one. A ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’ was reached between the leaders of the two regions, one of the main provisions of the Agreement being the creation of a ‘Regional Council’ for Telangana for its all round development. Subsequently, two separatist movements erupted, chiefly led by unemployed Congress politicians, as it was the only party ruling the state continuously till 1983. A sequel to this was the “Jai Andhra” movement that rocked the state in 1972, with Telugus from this region alleging they became second-class citizens in their own capital. The domination of Andhra culture, language and economy in the new state was always a sore point for Telangana, which, having been under the Nizam rule, had been influenced by the composite Hyderabadi culture. Even the Telugu spoken here had a heavy Urdu influence. The Telugu film industry, which shifted base from Madras to Hyderabad, was always dominated by the language and culture of Krishna delta region. The ascent of the Telugu Desam Party in the early 80s led by N.T. Rama Rao, who hailed from Krishna district, led to a large influx of the people of coastal region to Hyderabad in search of better educational and employment opportunities. In no time, the enterprising coastal Andhra people transformed Hyderabad. Having been left behind in the development stakes, Telangana continued to nurse its grievances against ‘Andhra migrants.’ It fell upon K. Chandrasekhar Rao, till then an insignificant TDP leader, to fire the passions once again, when he was refused a berth in the Cabinet by Chandrababu Naidu. Rao, a glib-tongued politician with strong political instincts, turned his newly formed TRS into a formidable entity in Telangana, and the alliance with the Congress proved a windfall with the party garnering 5 MP seats and 26 MLA seats in the last polls in 2004. But the Congress party is not easy to deal with, as Andhra history has shown time and again. With the entire state in its kitty, the party is not willing to let go a part of it. If Telangana is granted, it might go the way of TRS. And a peeved Andhra and Rayalaseema, which are emotionally attached to the united state, might throw out the Congress in future. These fears have ensured the status quo till now. Interestingly, the opposition to the bifurcation of the state has waned considerably in the last few years in the Andhra region. The issue actually whittles down to just one point: Hyderabad. The capital of Andhra Pradesh is located geographically in Telangana. The people of Andhra and Rayalaseema believe that their contribution was significant in catapulting the city to where it is today. In fact, the city’s image is so interlinked to the issue that whenever there is talk of imminent Telangana, the real estate prices in Hyderabad witness a slump. Another interesting aside to this debate is the plight of Rayalaseema, where both the present Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy and former Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu hail from. While the coastal region with fertile Krishna and Godavari districts and an industrial and port city of Vizag is viable as a separate entity, Rayalaseema with just four districts which are eternally drought-prone will be left in the lurch. No wonder, the most vocal voices of opposition to bifurcation of the state are those from
Rayalaseema.
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The man who refused “Nobel” for math
The achievement of solving the intractable mathematical problem, Poincare Conjecture, dealing with the nature of space, is under Russian Grigory Perelman’s belt. While he may have found a solution to this puzzle discovered by Henri Poincare, Grisha, as he is known, ended up being a mystery himself by turning down the coveted Fields Medal, considered the “Nobel Prize for Mathematics.” While the International Conference of Mathematicians at Madrid was abuzz with talk of “Grisha and his decision” among delegates, the mathematician is learnt to have told the President of the Mathematical Union that he did not wish to appear to be one of the leaders of the mathematical community by accepting this award. The Fields Medal, awarded every four years to a mathematician not above 40 years, was to be confered on him at the Mathematics Congress at Madrid. A product of the world-famous Leningrad Secondary School, a specialised school with advanced Mathematics, Perelman is also credited with achievening a perfect score in the International Mathematical Olympiad as a member of the USSR team in 1982 besides offering solutions for a number of other mathematical challenges. Born into a Jewish family in 1966, Perelman first disclosed that he had solved the Poincare Conjecture in 2003 by posting some papers on the internet and giving lectures on the subject during his tour of the United States. First identified by French Mathematician, Henri Poincare, in 1904, the Conjecture states that “every simply connected, closed 3-manifold is hameomorphic to a 3-sphere.” This may be all Greek to a layman but to mathematicians, it captures the essence of a problem that has long blocked their path towards understanding the concept of shape. While we all think we know when something is flat or curved, square or round, mathematicians always demand something far more rigorous – in this case, a set of rules that will infallibly reveal the true nature of any given surface. Poincare’s idea remained a conjecture - a polite term for a guess—for decades. Mathematicians only started to think it was even plausible in the late 1970s, and only now has Dr Perelman proved it for sure, which made him a front-runner for the Fields Medal, ahead of many others. After rejecting the Fields Medal, he is also learnt to have rejected the $1 million award sponsored by US maths enthusiast, Landon Clay, on finding a solution to one of the “Seven Millenium Prize Problems” identified by the Clay Mathematics Institute. And, of course, this is not the first time that Perelman, said to be a very private individual, has turned down recognition and laurels that have come his way. In 1996, he added to his legend by turning down a prize for young mathematicians from the European Mathematics Society.
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Delhi Durbar Rajya Sabha Chairperson Bhairon Singh Shekhawat did the Somnath Chatterjee act this week. While the BJP members were raising slogans on the Vande Mataram issue, Shekhawat did not heed them and continued with the business of the House and got one of the most important bills, the Wildlife Protection (Amendment) Bill through amidst the din. He adjourned the House only after all the amendments were voted on and the Bill was passed. While the BJP MPs were prompt in criticising Chatterjee last week, they were shying away from the media on what Shekhawat did, for obvious reasons. Double standards One of the BJP MPs had an interesting suggestion to make to tease the Left on their opposition to the proposed hike in MPs’ salaries and allowances. He observed that the Left always spoke against a hike but ultimately drew the hiked salary without demur. The MP suggested to his party bosses to introduce an amendment to the bill whenever it is introduced in Parliament to insert a clause in the Bill, enabling MPs who are opposed to the hike in salaries the liberty to draw the old package. The Leftists were squirming in their seats. Their main contention was that as the country’s lawmakers, they would be sending a wrong signal to the people if they themselves decided on increases in their pay and perquisites. They felt that an expert committee could have studied this aspect and made recommendations to the government.
Paswan’s plans Lok Janshakti Party chief and union minister Ramvilas Paswan has been successful in his strategy of achieving one goal at a time be it the ouster of the BJP-led NDA during the last Lok Sabha elections or the defeat of the maverick leader Lalu Prasad Yadav’s RJD during the Bihar assembly polls. Now the articulate leader is looking ahead at next year’s assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh where his party is part of the V.P. Singh-inspired Jan Morcha. Paswan has urged Congress to join hands with the new front as their aims in UP are similar. However, apart from ousting the Samajwadi Party government, the LJP leader would be hoping to corner the Bahujan Samaj Party and occupy its space. No dinner Telangana Rashtra Samiti chief K. Chandrashekhar Rao, who quit the Manmohan Singh government along with his colleague Narendra on Tuesday, ducked the dinner hosted by the Prime Minister for the NDA MPs on the Telangana issue. Earlier in the day he had told union Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee, who is also heading the committee to look into carving out Telangana state from Andhra Pradesh, that he is on fast. While the dinner was on, Rao made the dramatic announcement about the fast after keeping mediapersons on tenterhooks for more than five hours, that the TRS was bidding adieu to the UPA. In his seven-page resignation letter to the Prime Minister, an agitated Rao stated categorically that the Congress was solely to blame and that the people of Telangana will teach the party a befitting lesson. ——
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From the pages of Exit Congress, enter Janata The wheel of change, said Mr Nehru many years ago, moves on and those who were up come down and those who were down go up. In fact, everything changes and nothing remains static. If Mrs Gandhi thought that she would remain Prime Minister in perpetuity and could therefore make mincemeat of the Constitution and trample upon the people’s basic liberties without ever getting a telltale rebuff, she was sadly mistaken. The harsh realities of public fury must have dawned upon her when she went to Rashtrapati Bhawan to tender her and her Cabinet’s resignation. Mrs Gandhi’s exit from the citadel of power comes as a nemesis. This and the imminent induction of a truly popular Janata ministry are bound to go down in the nation’s history as distinct land-marks. The lifting of the Emergency and the restoration of basic freedoms are especially welcome. They will help people breathe fresh air after a long period of stagnation. |
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