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Dangerous liaison Bribes and kickbacks |
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Kiran does Anita, India proud
Tackling HIV/AIDS
O P brand
Dateline Washington United in their disapproval Legal notes
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Dangerous liaison If
the world is upset over the North Korean nuclear blast, it should also view with concern Pakistan’s role in it. There is no dearth of evidence to prove that the North Korean bomb has Pakistani hallmark despite Islamabad’s clarification that “North Korea’s nuclear programme is plutonium-based and Pakistan’s programme is mainly uranium-based”. Pakistan’s responsibility for nuclear proliferation is as serious as North Korea’s unfortunate decision, threatening peace and stability in the North-East Asian region. Keeping quiet at this juncture will only encourage the proliferator, endangering regional and global security. The US administration, which has been rewarding Pakistan despite having discovered the A. Q. Khan’s skill in marketing nuclear know how will have to change its attitude vis-à-vis Pakistan in the interest of nuclear non-proliferation. This is necessary to prevent more North Koreas from emerging on the world’s nuclear map. Washington knows what Pakistan’s nuclear establishment has been doing all these years. A senior Pakistani official admitted during an interaction with journalists in February 2004 that Dr Khan did secretly transfer nuclear technology and equipment to North Korea in exchange for advanced missile technology from Pyongyang. He had been clandestinely travelling to North Korea till June 2002. But Pakistan has been so far successful in getting off the hook by swearing that the top nuclear scientist was doing all that he did to help North Korea, Libya and Iran on his own. The plea that even the all-powerful army, too, had no idea about his dangerous dealings with other nations is unbelievable. Dr Khan’s proliferation programme had apparently official sanction. After the treatment he was meted out in the wake of 9/11 by the army-controlled Islamabad regime, he reportedly revealed that at least three army chiefs — Gen Pervez Musharraf, Gen Jehangir Karamat and Gen Abdul Waheed —were well aware of his nuclear transactions with North Korea. What else does the US and the rest of the world concerned over nuclear proliferation want to establish Pakistan’s links with North Korea’s development of the bomb. Washington has to ensure that Pakistan’s involvement in helping North Korea to play dangerous games is not ignored by the world. |
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Bribes and kickbacks THE CBI has taken the plunge in registering an FIR against former Defence Minister George Fernandes, his senior party colleague Jaya Jaitley and former Navy Chief Admiral Sushil Kumar for alleged corruption in the Rs 1150-cr Barak missile deal. It also conducted raids on the premises of many arms dealers, including Congress MLA from Sangrur Arvind Khanna. While the final shape of the FIR is not known, the CBI has alleged that Ms Jaitley who was the then president of the Samata Party received a bribe of Rs 2 crore. Mr Fernandes has charged Congress president Sonia Gandhi of pursuing political vendetta by forcing the CBI to register the case against him and his associates. Unfortunately, he has also tried to drag the name of President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam into the case. Even if as a defence official then Dr Kalam had recommended Barak, it does not mean that he was party to any misdeed. Obviously, the CBI has based its investigations on the Tehelka tapes in which a Samata Party official had blabbered about the party receiving money in defence deals. The nation will know whether the CBI has evidence of Ms Jaitley receiving Nonetheless, the CBI’s credibility vis-à-vis high-profile cases like the fodder scam in Bihar, the Telgi case in Maharashtra and the Taj corridor scandal in UP, to name a few in which leaders like Mr Lalu Yadav and Ms Mayawati are involved, is at the rock bottom. It is curious that it took such a long time and a regime change to register the case against Mr Fernandes. While time alone will reveal whether the CBI has bitten off more than it can chew, the Fernandes-Jaitley case underscores the need for greater transparency in defence deals, which, unfortunately, people believe could be guided by extraneous considerations as in Bofors and now in Barak. Why can the country not buy defence equipment free from the taint of bribes, kickbacks or commissions? |
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Kiran does Anita, India proud There is no limit to literary ironies. The Reigning Czarina of Indo-Anglian literature is Anita Desai, three of whose 14 novels have been nominated for the Booker Prize, the last one in 1999. Yet, she never won the prestigious award, which has now been claimed by daughter Kiran for her second novel, “The Inheritance of Loss”. Kiran’s joyous prose is proof enough that literary talent flows in genes. In the process, Kiran has become the youngest woman ever to capture one of the world’s most prestigious literary awards. The Columbia
University student was born on September 3, 1971, making her all of 35 years and one month. The other Indian to claim the 50,000 pound prize, Arundhati Roy, in 1997 was a month short of her 36th birthday. To that extent, the prize given to the best book by a writer from Britain, Ireland or a Commonwealth country is a recognition of the depth of Indian writing in English, by woman authors in particular. Described by the judges as “a magnificent novel of humane breadth and wisdom, comic tenderness and powerful political acuteness”, “The Inheritance of Loss” is a touching narrative of the all-encompassing melancholy of globalisation and tiny joys of existence in a small Indian village. How fitting that when Kiran got the biggest award of her young life, mother Anita didn’t get to know about it, as she was in a small Indian village without a telephone. The book is a searing comment on the tribulations that migrants face. In a way, it is a collage of her own family’s history and the stories that she heard while growing up in India till the age of 15. Kiran won in the face of forbidding challenge. The hot favourite was Peter Carey, the Australian best-selling novelist, who was in line for picking up the award a record third time. Then there were also veteran South African Nadine Gordimer, who had won it 32 years ago, and established British writers such as David Mitchell. But the judges omitted these literary giants and shortlisted such fresh talent as Sarah Waters, Edward St Aubyn, Kate Grenville, M J Hyland and Hisham Matar. Kiran’s “radiant, funny and moving family saga” triumphed over them all. Quiet a day for Kiran! Quiet a day for India! |
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I wish my deadly foe, no worse/Than want of friends, and empty purse. — Nicholas Breton |
Tackling HIV/AIDS
HIV/AIDS is a high-visibility media issue. So is trafficking. Yet surprisingly, major developments in both are quietly underway with no media focus, much less debate. The media flurry will perhaps follow after events are fait accompli. This month (October) the World Bank board will meet and undoubtedly approve (alongside its development partners, notably the UK’s DFID) the Third National AIDS Control Programme (NACP III ) for India for which the National AIDS Control Organisation (NACO) has developed a strategy/implementation plan with an outlay of Rs11,585 crore ($ 2 1/2 billion) for five years. This figure does not reflect Rs1500 crore to be catalysed from other programmes, nor thousands of crores worth of states’ resources that will inevitably divert as state AIDS societies expand the HIV/AIDS empire to the district/subdistrict level with “horizontal linkages” to district health societies in concession to the National Rural Health Mission direction for integrated health programmes. The direct outlay represents a five-fold resource jump for under one- third time-frame as against the NACP I & II corpus for over 14 years. The basis for this extravagant scaling-up mystifies, particularly as NACO’s past record is badly wanting. The Public Accounts Committee (2005-6) totted up Rs 2344.65 crore as the financial corpus with NACP Phase I & II and categorically blasted NACO for its “limited success” and “under-utilisation of funds”. Besides, it raised several accountability issues, such as “non-reconciliation of accounts”, “absence of adequate infrastructural facilities”, failures on almost every front — from inadequate provision of condoms, drugs, trained manpower, numbers of STD clinics, modernised blood banks and voluntary counselling and testing centres to “ineffective Targeted Interventions Programme” and non-assessment of the impact of various components of the programme. It particularly indicted the “failure of the National AIDS Committee to meet after 2001” to steward. Earlier, the Comptroller- General of Audits’ programme review (2003) had picked innumerable holes in implementation and financial matters. This has been reported earlier. The World Bank had in March suspended funding to the health sector in a show of severity on corruption allegations, since proven. But it is now business-as-usual. In the past NACP phases it had happily upped the carrot each time without bothering about performance implementation/evaluation obligations. This round is no different. Besides huge amounts cavalierly earmarked for a programme lacking procedurally stipulated mid-and-end-evaluations (and self-evidently in disarray), disturbing is what is proposed through much of this colossal outlay. The expenditures impact the very contours of Indian society. NACP III’s lofty goal is “halting and reversing the HIV/AIDS epidemic in India in the next five years through an integrated programme for prevention, care, support and treatment”. Ironically, the “integrated” approach allocates under-17 per cent to care/ support/treatment of 5.2 -5.7 million HIV/AIDS-affected per official estimates. Of these, at least 10 per cent (520,000-570,000) are already seriously immuno-compromised. The humanitarian aspect is curiously limited. Support/ treatment/care targets are cautiously sketched: free ART medicines for only 100,000 persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) by 2007; a target of 300,000 for 2011-end. (What happens to near-half?) Targets for HIV-positive mothers (babies get infected during birth/breastfeeding) are as economical. Fifty per cent of deliveries in India are picked as the reachable universe, then 80 per cent coverage of this truncated 50 per cent target to be reached by project-end. Interestingly, total funds for care/ support/treatment are less than three-fourths of the Rs 2000 crore available for just one “prevention” commodity — condoms! Mistake not. NACP III opens the flood-valves for a deluge of the condoms-and-STD-drugs-treatment-formula euphemistically termed Targeted Interventions (TIs) for high-risk-sexual-behaviour-groups, i.e. “prostituted-women, homosexuals, injecting-drug-addicts, truck drivers and migrant labour”. For NACP II, the World Bank insistence on “decentralised” outside-government-administration-systems and TI component-introduction as a key “paradigm shift” tied its $ 191 million plus $100 million partners’ grant package. Pivotal position to TI-grounding was further ensured by making the assessment of India’s capacity to respond to HIV/AIDS contingent on the number of State AID Societies (i) functioning, and (ii) efficiently managing TIs implemented through NGOs. NACO claims successful implementation of 1000 TIs, covering 660,000 core high-risk person over Phase II. However, the two evaluations done of the TI component — one, by the NACO/ Sexual Health Resource Centre and the other by DFID, principal funder and technical adviser of this component — tell another story. Both are equally devastating. Both evaluation teams — while openly-biased for TI approach — severely faulted its implementation. SHRC rated the average efficiency level of TIs at a poor 37 per cent across the country; DFID raised a whole host of issues pinpointing poor quality but also poor financial accountability. It assessed TI effectiveness in HIV transmission prevention, as also cost effectiveness, to be low in India, but among other things prescribed more as needed. This latter advice has been lapped up over Phase II’s extended two years. Additionally, since 2004 Gates Foundation’s (GF) $200 million commitment reducing the World Bank to smaller-player-status in AIDS-prevention games has exclusively concentrated on TIs (in six southern states). Information on GF implementation /impact is not in public domain. But a huge vested interests bank in TI strategy now exists. NACP-III has Rs 7, 786 crore for prevention that is virtually synonymous with condom-centric TIs. Nearly Rs 6000 crore is earmarked for “saturation” of the country with narrowly-focused TIs. These will fund into existence several thousand organisations of high-risk individuals, mobilised and organised into distinct-collectives only by virtue (?) of their high-risk-sexual-behaviour-identity. As many as 2.3 million — 1 million prostituted-women, 1.2 million homosexuals and 190,000 IDUs — are the focus of this mega-funding, not for any ambitious rehabilitation/alternative life-skills/style plan for such vulnerable groups but to conduit condoms/STD treatments to prevent further HIV infection. Rs 50 crore is earmarked to create “enabling environment”, including addressing laws that “hamper” such limited interventions. Past “enabling environment” efforts are already paying off. Parliament has before it amendments to the Immoral Traffic (Prevention) Act (ITPA), presently referred to the HRD Standing Committee. The Bill piloted by Ms Renuka Chowdhary is poorly drafted legislation with sufficient grey areas to allow prostitution a free run even as it ostensibly pitches to strengthen its prevention. Currently, the Standing Committee examining ITPA is flooded with 500-plus memorandums, mostly from pro-prostitution lobbies developed in recent years, including within leading women’s organisations/lawyers’ bodies. These seek to dilute its only teeth: penalisation of “clients” and brothel-keepers; and to create the perception that prostitution — as differentiated from trafficking — has always been legal in the country! These developments come under the noses of an unexceptional personally ethical ruling-political-triumvirate: a high-thinking Muslim at India’s helm; a Roman-Catholic-cum-well-acknowledged-paragon-of-Hindu-pativrata/bahu steering the ruling coalition; and the head of the government a Sikh gentleman whose ethics and Brahminy-Duck-spousal-relationship is without reproach. Bizarre! They need to heed; ahead is chaos such as will put Delhi’s lawless urban development breakdown and consequent lawbreakers’ vice-grip seem like a picnic. Also it is time the householder-citizen with conscience and values spoke up before the highly flawed disease-prevention strategies swamp to premium macho-sexual-predatory-behaviours that disempower the right-thinking, disrupt family-households and amplify the very conditions that spread HIV/AIDS.
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O P brand
With spews of smoke curling into his eyes, he was pounding away on the typewriter, churning out one of the many “Sports Sallies” that donned the sports page of The Tribune in the ‘70s and early ‘80s. His string of thoughts would be momentarily halted with the burning cigarette butt sticking to his lips. It was the late Samuel Banerjee at work, a chain smoker. This was the era when smokers ruled the roost in The Tribune’s newsroom. There were all types of them: chain smoker, heavy smoker, moderate smoker and one-cigarette-a-day type. Coming from Lucknow, I loved having two paans (betel leaves) a day. Cigarette, somehow, was not my cup of tea. But then a cigarette or a pipe appeared to lend some style to my way of thinking (then a 23-year-old). Inhaling the smoke resulted in coughs. So I just blew in and blew out the smoke. Why not be more artistic, I told myself. And then began my lessons in blowing smoke rings in the air. And within a month I mastered the art. Blowing smoke rings, Pran style. Five years later, another breed of smokers came up. They smoked a brand of their own. Sweet talkers, they made a beeline for desks of heavy smokers. Virtually planting themselves on the seat, they remained glued till they had puffed the last of the cigarettes. They sported a 555 imported packet in their shirt pockets. But I never saw them open it. The next day it would be another desk that these branded smokers would move towards. Was triple five their brand? I became a little inquisitive. “What is your brand of cigarettes?” I asked Mr X one day. “O P brand”, he said as he walked out, like a model on a ramp. O P was a colleague, now retired. His brand was Wills Navycut. The next day I found Mr X plonked on a chair smoking a chocolate flavour cigarette. “Now what brand is that”, I asked. “O P brand”, came the reply. “Other people’s brand”, shouted three smokers in
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Dateline Washington As the international community debates the success of North Korea’s nuclear test, one thing is certain: the hermit regime’s actions have succeeded in grabbing the world’s attention. North Korea — infamously labelled part of the “axis of evil” by U.S. President George W. Bush — has for long been pushing Washington to engage in a bilateral discussion over its nuclear programme. Last year, Pyongyang dropped out of the so-called six-party talks with South Korea, Russia, Japan, China and the United States, and has resisted calls to return. The reported nuclear test on Monday has renewed the debate about the wisdom of Washington’s North Korea policy. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in an interview with CNN she had heard people say “we should take this on bilaterally.” But, she contended, bilateral talks with North Korea in the 1990s didn’t work — Pyongyang “cheated on that agreement.” Mr Daryl Kimball, Executive Director of the Washington-based Arms Control Association, says there is no reason why the U.S. should not agree to such talks. “Bilateral talks were always a good idea... they are still a good idea,” he said in an interview with The Tribune. Mr Walter Andersen, Associate Director of the South Asia studies programme at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, admits there are some who argue that North Korea’s stance was a result of a sense of being isolated. “This may be true to a point,” he told The Tribune. “The North Korean leadership is an isolated and highly suspicious group, starting from the top and thus prone to believe in conspiracy theories and imminent threats, whether any where there or not.” There is also a sense that the Bush Administration’s preoccupation with the quagmire in Iraq and the nuclear standoff with Iran led it not to take North Korea seriously. However, Mr Andersen, maintains the Bush Administration took the threat very seriously. “The possibility of a Korean test has long been there and nothing I have seen indicates that the ‘distraction’ was such as to cause key decision makers to overlook the Korea issue,” he said. Mr Robert Einhorn at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington also believes the Bush Administration took the threat seriously. He says it “seems to have decided a while ago that the North Korean situation was essentially hopeless and that its policy should be to keep it off the front pages of newspapers (so as not to draw attention to a failed policy).” Mr Einhorn, who served as deputy assistant secretary for non-proliferation in the State Department’s Political-Military Bureau from 1992 to 1999, explains the Bush Administration didn’t want to reward bad behaviour by making concessions to dissuade the North Koreans from testing. “Indeed, some in the Bush Administration are probably thankful to the North Koreans for clarifying what we already knew (that they have the bomb) and increasing prospects for a strong international response,” he told The Tribune. Not everyone is convinced the North Koreans successfully tested a nuclear device. Some intelligence officials have noted that the seismic event of about 4 on the Richter scale could have been triggered by high explosives. Others say the regime might have planned a big explosion which fizzled out. It will take a while to determine the test’s success. Analysts familiar with studying data after India and Pakistan tested their nuclear bombs in 1998, say experts will be looking at data on radioactive emissions, and analysing seismic data. “The prevailing view is that it was a nuclear detonation,” said Mr Kimball of the North Korean test. One thing is for certain, he added, “The importance of the North Korean test is political rather than technical.” Miss Rice said, “We have to take the claim seriously because it’s a political claim if nothing else that tries to get the bargaining position of being a nuclear power.” The changed scenario will force the major global players to rethink their strategy toward North Korea. Already there are signs at the United Nations that at least one close ally of the Communist regime in North Korea — China — is contemplating punishment in the form of sanctions for the regime’s defiance of the international community. South Korea too has begun to doubt the efficacy of its policy of engagement with its northern neighbour. Now, Mr. Kimball said, “it makes it all the more important for the U.S. and China to reconsider their approach.” |
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United in their disapproval North Korea’s announcement that it had tested a nuclear device is pushing Japan, China and the two Koreas into a new era that challenges existing assumptions about security and diplomacy in a region riven by deep historical grudges and modern rivalries. But there is no consensus on how northeast Asia’s delicate relationships will finally realign. Despite a harmonized condemnation of the North Korean test, deep fault lines over how to deal with Kim Jung Il’s regime still run through the region’s governments. Although Japanese leaders took the test as vindication of their long-standing hard line against Pyongyang and contemplated how much harder they could push, the South Korean government spent Tuesday examining the tatters of a policy that had been trying to woo Kim toward reconciliation with economic aid and increased cross-border contacts. “We are in for a time of heightened tension on the Korean peninsula and we need some ideas on how to stabilize the situation,” says Moon Chung-in, Dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at Seoul’s Yonsei University. ``People say this is the end of our engagement policy with the North, but if you stop engaging with them, what do you have? “If you stop engagement, you have war.” Clearly, some diplomatic policies will be casualties, while new political boundaries are being crossed. The once-taboo subject of a Japanese nuclear deterrent was discussed — though quickly smothered — in Japan’s parliament Tuesday. And Japanese leaders called for tough sanctions against Pyongyang, refusing to rule out any options, including military action. Meanwhile, politicians in Seoul launched a clamorous debate about whether their historic “sunshine policy” has irrevocably failed and should be scrapped. Conservative critics accused President Roh Moo-hyun of blithely providing aid to North Korea while the recipient diverted resources into building a bomb, and demanded an end to cross-border economic ties such as the joint North-South Kaesong industrial complex. “There are still some segments of our society who want to maintain dialogue and don’t want to see the North cornered,” said Gong Ro-myung, a former foreign minister under conservative South Korean governments in the 1990s. “But the engagement policy has completely failed. And the consensus on the streets is: Enough is enough.” China found itself agreeing with the United States on the need to punish Pyongyang. But there was no certainty over how hard Beijing was prepared to squeeze Pyongyang’s economic windpipe in an attempt to curb its brinksmanship. Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao ruled out military action, calling it an “unimaginable way” forward. But the application of economic sanctions will require careful calibration in order to hurt, without shattering, Kim’s regime, observers said, noting that China is anxious to avoid a political implosion in North Korea that could spark an exodus of refugees and the freelance spread of nuclear technology. Indeed, parts of the Chinese political establishment are as disturbed by the secondary shocks the North Korean test has released, notably the risk that Japan could use Pyongyang’s entrance into the nuclear club as a pretext to become a nuclear power itself. A nuclear Japan would mark a radical reordering of Asian power politics, and new Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe moved quickly to ensure that it was North Korea’s bomb, not a potential Japanese weapon, that remained the focus of global concern. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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Legal notes In the era of women empowerment, the Supreme Court has broadened the scope of the applicability of the law on outraging the modesty of a woman, laying down that it was not necessary that she should react to any culpable intention of a man to make a case against him. The reaction of the victim woman though is relevant but its absence is not always decisive, it held. The essence of a woman’s modesty is her sex… modesty is an attribute associated with female human beings as a class. It is a virtue attached to her and culpable intention of a man, accused of outraging it, is all important to make him liable for punishment under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code, a Bench of Justices S B Sinha and Dalveer Bhandari ruled, while deciding a case of unsuccessful sexual assault on a 12-year-old girl by a man in Jharkhand in 1998. The apex court upheld his sentence for five years for attempting to abduct her and two years for outraging her modesty in the process. Laying down guidelines for trial courts how they should treat the cases of any form of assault on women. “Modesty is given as womanly propriety of behaviour, scrupulous chastity of thought, speech and conduct (in man or woman); reserve or sense of shame proceeding from instinctive aversion to impure or coarse suggestions.” In the eyes of the top court of the country, culpability of a man should be suggestive of any action that shocks the sense of decency of a woman. Sealing law and 9th Schedule Though the Supreme Court has given substantial relief to small traders in the national Capital against sealing of their shops in residential areas, leaving big fish for action by the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the Urban Affairs Ministry is understood to be not satisfied with the apex court order and is contemplating a proposal to the government to put the Delhi Laws (Special Provision) Act, 2006 in the 9th Scheduled of the Constitution to take it out of the purview of judicial scrutiny by the Supreme Court. The Act provided a year’s moratorium on sealing operation. But sources say that there were differences in the Group of Ministers, set up by the Prime Minister to deal with the sealing issue on the Urban Affair Ministry’s proposal, as it might send a wrong signal that the government was for outright confrontation with the judiciary in a matter which was sub-judice and the apex court had been monitoring it for past several years. Still the Ministry is in the process of seeking legal opinion in the issue from top lawyers as the Supreme Court has clearly laid down that the commercial ventures which were not covered by government’s July 21 and September 7 notifications, should be sealed without delay. The Centre has also been restrained from issuing any further notification to give respite to traders. Abnormal delay in trial courts Speedy trial is a fundamental right of the accused. The Supreme Court has expressed serious concern over abnormal delay in deciding cases in trial courts, specially due to the lethargy of prosecuting agencies, and reiterated, once again, that speedy trial was a fundamental right available to an accused under Article 21 of the Constitution. The court has said that though enforcement of the law is important, it is the bounden duty of the courts and prosecution to prevent unreasonable delay in deciding the cases. It has been clarified by the court that the purpose of right to speedy trial is intended to avoid oppression at the hands of the state and it is an obligation cast upon both the courts and the prosecuting agencies to proceed with the trial with a reasonable dispatch. Though no general guidelines can be issued for the fast disposal of criminal cases in a time-bound manner as each case differs from the other, but it is not a happy situation that the cases are delayed merely because the witnesses could not be produced. Fast disposal of cases is essential to make the administration of criminal justice effective, vibrant and meaningful, the apex court has said while asking the Union and state governments to take necessary steps so that the speedy trial does not remain only a mere formality on paper. This has been laid down by the apex court in the wake of a lower court taking 26 years in deciding a corruption case against a bank manager. |
As you do to others, so will others do to you. Thus if you think well for others, they too will think well for you. Everything in life has a reciprocal relationship. If one returns bad for the good that we do to him, rest assured that he will suffer the results of his action. The mediator must be transparent and perceived as being above all duplicity in speech and intent. If one warring party feels that he bears a secret love for the enemy and holds a secret grudge against him, the mediations are doomed to failure. I hold flesh-blood to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world—if we are superior to it. |
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