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Cut oil prices Seeing through marks |
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Integrated command A long-felt need should be met FORMER Navy Chief Admiral Arun Prakash has done well to flag one of the most important issues confronting the armed forces today — “unity of command at the top.” Post-Kargil, and after the well-publicised recommendations of the Group of Ministers, the Chief of Defence Staff concept has been much debated.
Demand for new states
Lethal cargo
Tawang is India’s Indians largest foreign group in London Poverty and disease are the main challenges: Tutu
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Cut oil prices WITH the global oil prices falling from $78 a barrel in September to $ 57-58 now, it is but natural for consumers to expect a reduction in the domestic prices. The government has reportedly decided to wait until the prices plummet to $52. Its perception, based on the futures market, is the decline in the oil prices is momentary and the upswing may resume soon. Economic think tank NCAER also feels the oil prices may rise in view of the “tight spare capacity”, rising geo-political tension in West Asia, likely slowdown of oil production in Nigeria and OPEC’s desire to push up prices by restricting output. There are, however, equally valid arguments in favour of price reduction. It is believed oil production will improve in winter as the turmoil in Iraq may ease with the Democrats wresting control of the US Congress. Secondly, if the prices are to rise in line with the global trend, these should also fall accordingly. The government could be delaying a cut to recoup the losses the public sector oil companies had suffered earlier. Third, an oil price cut will help bring down the prices of commodities like wheat, sugar and pulses as also the general cost of living. Now that the revenues of the Centre and states are at a high due to buoyant growth and better tax collections post-VAT, it is time to cut taxes, especially in the petroleum sector. Instead of proposing to pass on relief to the industry or give concessions to big car manufacturers, as media reports suggest, the Centre should take the initiative to cut the taxes on oil and the states should follow suit. The Centre and the states together earn a fifth of their revenues from the levies on oil. If petrol sells at Rs 47 in the domestic market, Rs 25 goes into the coffers of the Central and state governments. The Centre may decide on the timing, but there are sound reasons to cut the oil prices and taxes.
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Seeing through marks THE Central Information Commission’s directive to the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC) on Monday to release the marks of all candidates who took the Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination, 2006, within two weeks is welcome. Undoubtedly, it will ensure transparency in the recruitment of IAS, IFS, IPS and allied services officers. In response to over 2,000 petitions filed by the aspirants under the Right to Information Act, the CIC’s full Bench headed by Central Information Commissioner Wajahat Habibullah has ruled that the UPSC has to disclose the cut-off marks or subject-wise marks obtained by candidates in general studies and optional subjects. It should also disclose the scaling method as well as the model answers in one month. There is logic in the CIC’s order that the scaling method — devised to ensure proportional assessment of candidates taking examinations in diverse subjects that have varied scoring potential — serves a larger public interest by providing a level-playing field for all candidates. The UPSC should not find it difficult to implement the ruling since the evaluation of the Preliminary examination is fully computerised. This examination has two papers of objective type (multiple choice) questions. Paper I (General Studies) carries 150 marks and Paper II (one subject to be selected from the prescribed list of optional subjects) carries 300 marks. Of over 1.5 lakh candidates trying their luck in this examination every year to qualify for the Main Examination (which is descriptive), followed by the interview, about 500 are finally selected to various posts in the civil services. Significantly, the UPSC enjoys high credibility for its foolproof method of selection. The petitioners themselves have not questioned its image while seeking information under the RTI Act. All they wanted to know were the marks they have scored and the model answers of the question papers so that they would be able to assess their shortcomings and perform better next time. However, the UPSC maintained that the information sought by the aspirants formed part of its “crucial secrets and intellectual property”. The CIC was not impressed by this stand. Clearly, its ruling has reinforced the RTI’s crucial role in bringing about transparency in the recruitment of the civil servants at the cutting edge of the administration.
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Integrated command FORMER Navy Chief Admiral Arun Prakash has done well to flag one of the most important issues confronting the armed forces today — “unity of command at the top.” Post-Kargil, and after the well-publicised recommendations of the Group of Ministers, the Chief of Defence Staff concept has been much debated. The three services certainly need to show greater coordination and integrated decision-making, in everything from defence planning and procurement to doctrines and operations. The lack of such integration came to the fore during a crisis like Kargil — witness how the then Army and Air Force chiefs are still wrangling about the role and timing of airpower and intelligence-sharing. Hopefully, the lessons have been learnt. As the Navy chief admits, service rivalry is a reality, and there are “very serious issues” on the path to greater integration. As he puts it, each service does believe that it can win a war on its own. Air Force fears of being subsumed by the Army and made into a supplementary or subordinate force, and its consequent opposition to the CDS concept, are well known. And a one-man operational control of all three fighting services is anathema to the political establishment as well. But the current post of a chairman of the chiefs of staff committee, which Admiral Prakash has held, does not quite fit the bill either. A need to develop a new model, along the lines of a permanent chairman of a joint chiefs of staff with no operational control over troops, has been suggested by many experts. Whatever we call it, and whatever the final model that is instituted, there is no doubt about the need for greater unity at the top. The tri-services command at the Andaman and Nicobar islands is indeed a working model on a smaller scale, but it will take a determined will to put in place a viable and effective joint command and planning structure.
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We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.
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Demand for new states AT a time when it is fashionable to trash all that is Nehruvian, if there is one legacy of free India’s first Prime Minister that endures as a symbol of Shining India, it is the linguistic states that were created under his leadership. True, the reorganisation of states along linguistic lines was not Jawaharlal Nehru’s idea; nor was he enthusiastic about it. The fact that it was advocated by Mahatma Gandhi and adopted as an article of faith by the Indian National Congress did little to make Nehru change his mind. Nehru’s party had formed Pradesh Congress Committees on the linguistic principle some 25 years before the report of the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) was implemented on November 1, 1956. Although Nehru had strong and valid reservations about the Congress party delivering on this pre-Independence promise made by Gandhi, he bowed to the demand; in fact, after Potti Sriramulu fasted unto death for the creation of Andhra, the political upheaval that followed left Nehru — for all his reluctance — with little choice in the matter. In opposing the creation of states on the basis of language, Nehru - as also other Congress leaders — based their reasoning on the effects of the Partition. They felt that it would be ruinous for the unity of new India to compound the religious division with a linguistic demarcation. Against his better judgment, Nehru acted on the SRC report; had he resisted, he could have counted on the support of a number of other stalwarts, and it would never have been implemented. Therefore, the credit for the reorganisation of states is owed to Nehru, and Govind Ballabh Pant. Fifty years on, the constitutional and federal structure founded on linguistic states, as the great equaliser that unified British India and Royal India as one political entity remains unquestionably vindicated by history. Fears that the linguistic states would spawn fissiparous tendencies and lead to balkanisation of the country have been proved to be wrong. Far from fomenting divisiveness, the states have deepened democracy and strengthened the Union as well as its federal content. On the contrary, in retrospect, these states may well have eliminated the ground for fomenting parochial political mischief. In fact, the statutory importance accorded by this reorganisation to the linguistic cultures as well as the languages of the respective states have reinforced the diversity of democracy and participatory freedom. No democratic experiment is without its problems and the creation of linguistic states is no exception. However, the contests and conflicts between different, especially neighbouring states, though coloured by the language of the parties involved are not linguistic in their origin. The Cauvery water dispute between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka is not a fight between Tamils and Kannadigas, though politics, at times, makes it appear so. Essentially, it is a tug-of-war between the water users — the farmers over (seasonal) availability and management of a scarce resource. An inventive approach that unites the water users across the two states and empowers them to decide on the sharing of Cauvery waters may rid the issue of the parochial connotations it has acquired because of competitive party politics. Similarly, both Punjab and Haryana, formed in 1966, are claimants for Chandigarh — a city that may be said to represent both the best and worst of these two states. It is an aspiration for a prized territory and no linguistic issue is involved. No doubt, there are linguistic rationalisations for the dispute over Belgaum or Kasargod. But the fact that the states concerned have lived with this and are not unrelentingly agitated about their “rightful due” underscores the larger unity of purpose by which these linguistic cultures are actuated. No reflection on the theme of language and democracy in the Indian Union can exclude a reference to the anti-Hindi agitation that rocked Tamil Nadu in the 1960s and the sons-of-the-soil policy that some states resort to in education and employment. The anti-Hindi agitation was neither for Tamil (the language of Tamil Nadu) nor against Hindi (one of the Union’s two languages for administration). The problem was (wanting) English: Tamil Nadu wanted English to be continued as the language of administration; the opposition was to “Hindi imperialism” and not to the Hindi language. For years, if not decades, the Dakshin Bharat Hindi Prachar Sabha prided itself on enrolling the largest proportion of Hindi learners who passed the language courses. The people of Tamil Nadu, like those in other southern states, are open to learning any language — not just English and Hindi but of computers, too — if that improves their educational and employment prospects. They have been among the most mobile linguistic groups who wanted the advantage of Hindi as a matter of choice and not a handicap imposed by political coercion. The sons-of-the-soil policy may be seen as the domestic variant of the protectionism that every economy seeks for those in a particular cultural habitat. This is more the result of uneven development and skewed distribution of the benefits of industrialisation and growth. This is not “ethnification” in any parochial sense but a struggle for the rights — and fruits - of development. An implicit acknowledgement of this being so is manifest in the creation of Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Uttaranchal in 2003. There was no linguistic criteria applied for creating these states, which were the result of the most significant change made to state boundaries after 1971, when the North-East was reorganised. The reorganisation of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh was primarily intended to address economic issues. No doubt, cultural distinctiveness was also an argument to justify the demand for new states as being essential to overcome the neglect they had suffered as part of the larger states from which they were carved out. These states being the result of popular movements has revived other demands for separate states in a more aggressive manner. The demand for Telengana has gained as a serious political and electoral issue affecting national and state parties. Similar articulations may catch on for Vidharbha (Maharashtra), Bodoland (Assam), Harit Pradesh (UP) and Gorkhaland (West Bengal) if it is perceived to hold the promise of political dividend. In the absence of a defined criterion for creating new states, the Centre and national parties may find themselves in a bind. Before events overtake the Centre and popular pressure makes it give in to these demands, it should set up a second states reorganisation commission to draft a policy that would lay down the basis for new states. The demands for new, and smaller, states are bound to gather momentum, sooner rather than later. Whether as a response to popular demand or a containment strategy, the Centre can no longer ignore these aspirations until they explode, with disruptive consequences, on the national
agenda.
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Lethal cargo MY friend joined an Iranian mercantile ship almost the same time I joined mine at Kuwait in 1976. Those were the days of Shah of Iran. Disquietening news continued to come across the border as followers of Ayatollah started gaining ground. Within a week of joining his company my friend Captain Satish gave news regarding his sailing for the US. He further added that his charter envisaged two trips between Bandar Abbas and the US. I forgot all about this as I got busy with my own task of ferrying sulphur from Umm Kasr to France. After about five months, his ship happened to be alongside mine in Bandar Abbas when I arrived there with Brazilian sugar in bulk. More so, my vessel was tied up with his while he was discharging his cargo in wooden crates from the US. I was neither curious nor inquisitive. He was immensely pleased to inform me that everyone of his ship crew member was rewarded with a gold wristwatch for their excellent work by the administration. My ship was awaiting unloading till the inner vessel completed discharge. Curiously it took about a week to allow commencement of unloading of wooden crates on special security trucks which arrived from Teheran. Each wooden crate was marked “jeep spare parts” weighing about 5 tons each. I was having dinner with Satish when dockside cranes started lifting crates one by one and commenced stacking them on special trucks. It was a slow process. There were about 400 crates in all. By 10 O’clock Captain Satish accounted for delivery of 20 crates. Derricks were also being used to assist cranes to expedite. At about 10.15 pm we came out of the mess. Suddenly we hard a loud thud and hammering sound. A crane had stopped working. The steel sling lifting a crate had fouled with a side derrick resulting in breaking of the sling. Right in front of our eyes the crate came crashing down on the wharf. Luckily there were no workers on wharf. The place was well guarded and well lit. Wooden planks of crate broke open and lay scattered in open view. Some items could be identified as rapidfire sub-machineguns. Everything was in full view of officers and workers on jetty. Captain Satish was aghast to see weapons in crates marked jeep spare parts. Harbour authorities were quick to apologise to the Captain and hurriedly managed to replace the weapons back in the broken crate somehow, secured the broken planks and behaved as if nothing had happened. After an hour everything was made to seem normal and unloading of remaining crates resumed. No one talked about this hush-hush incident. Captain Satish never wore the elegant watch in utter disgust. He was, however, satisfied that from his side, ship’s manifest and bill of landing documents were in
order!
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Tawang is India’s THE visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to India warrants a dispassionate look at the whole question of the boundary issue. The issue is bound to come up, overtly or covertly, when the leaders of both the countries sit together in informal, one-to-one talks. To ignore or down grade this vital subject at the alter of the so-called gains from the expanding trade and economic ties between the two countries, would be like missing the proverbial wood for the trees. As long as the boundary question is not resolved, at heart India and China will remain adversaries pitted against one another. The reported Chinese view that India restore Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh to Tibet, before any concessions can be made by it in other sectors of the Himalayan border, should ring alarm bells in South Block and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA). They should not overlook military and strategic considerations by agreeing to such a demand in haste. That the Chinese always mean business should be clear to anyone who claims to know China well. On a recent visit to China this writer has seen the steely and disciplined resolve in the eyes of the Chinese soldier who stands guard at Tiananmen Square and elsewhere in the countryside. As a former GOC of the Tawang Military Garrison, with intimate knowledge of the two country's joint border meetings at Bumla, one is only too aware of the meticulous and persistently focused Chinese mind and way of working. They never really give anything away, and this would apply to reports that in return for Tawang they might consider certain concessions in Ladakh and the Aksai Chin region. Actually, if anything, the Chinese are strengthening their stranglehold in that region, with projected rail and oil pipelines across the Karakoram mountains, links from the western Xinjiang province to parts of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) and the northern belts of Pakistan. The existing Xinjiang rail network could one day provide access to major water ports in Pakistan, just as any give away in the strategic Tawang mountain belt could give China a major ingress to the Brahmaputra plains and sever from India virtually the whole of its North East. To the south of Tawang, barring the Sela and Bomdila massifs, there is little of note till the Chinese Claim Line of the Brahmaputra riverline. The recent expansion of the Chinese rail line in the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) opposite the Indian defences, its major expansion of road networks in Tibet and Ladakh, and the corresponding minimal and incomplete road infrastructure in Arunachal, with no rail networking in the Valley, what to mention Ladakh, clearly point to the Indian deficiencies in vital infrastructure. Without such infrastructure available at the crucial time, wars can well be lost. As it is, the higher Tibet plateau provides China with forward air bases that India cannot possess because of the topography, and losing the Tawang district would unbalance further both the air and land defences. One hopes that the IFS and IAS officialdom in the MEA and the Ministry of Defence (MOD) listen carefully to what the Chief of Army Staff and the Army Commanders on the ground should be telling them from time to time. The loss of Tawang will not only amount to the loss of the second oldest monastery in the world, but also undermine the Watershed Principle of international border management that is universally recognised. Its loss also would mean saying goodbye to Bhutan and with it the Himalayas in our northeast. The unhinging of Tawang will lead to a ripple effect in the strategic arena all the way to the tri-junction along the Indo-Myanmar-Tibet border. There is also little merit in suggestions made in certain quarters that a kind of a Tibetan religious hold be extended over the Tawang monastery to assuage Chinese interests, as it must be remembered how much the Buddhist life, outlook and culture revolves around the monastery and its Rimpoche. Even if, for argument’s sake, such a proposal were to be accepted, its overall effect on the Dalai Lama and his following in India and abroad would need to be measured in real terms.
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Indians largest foreign group in London A THIRD of Londoners were not born in Britain, according to latest research. The British capital now has its highest proportion of residents who started life overseas, with the foreign-born population standing at more than 2.2 million. Indian-born residents make up the largest proportion of the overseas contingent, with a population of 206,000 - an increase of 62,000 on the 1997 figure. Bangladeshis were the second biggest group, at 133,000, followed by the Irish at 114,000. There are 658,000 more non-British-born London residents than in 1997, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS). The number of British-born Londoners has fallen by 150,000 since Labour came to power, although they still account for more than 5 million of the 7.3 million who live in the capital. Migration analysis has shown that thousands of people move out of London each year, with the south-west of England one of the most popular destinations for those in search of a better life. The ONS analysed data from its annual Labour Force Survey, based on interviews with more than 50,000 households. Statisticians estimated the number of foreign-born London residents rose from 1.63 million in 1997 to 2.28 million by June of this year. The biggest rises were of people born in eastern Europe, particularly in countries which have recently joined the EU, giving their citizens work and residency rights here. The number of Russian-born people living in London has doubled to 14,000 in the past nine years; the Polish-born population has risen from 25,000 to 70,000 and there are 19,000 Bulgarian-born residents, compared with 1,000 in 1997. There have also been big rises in the numbers of Brazilians (up from 4,000 to 25,000) and Zimbabweans, whose numbers have risen from 9,000 in 1997 to 29,000, reflecting the increasing exodus from President Robert Mugabe's regime. The number of South Africans has doubled to 60,000. There are 49,000 Australians, 58,000 Americans, 12,000 Japanese and 43,000 Germans. Politicians and business leaders said the rising population of foreign-born residents had strengthened the capital's economy, but warned that their integration into wider British society remained crucial. Nigel Bourne, London director of the Confederation of British Industry, said: "As London's economy has expanded, the staff needs of businesses have drawn people from around the world. But staff from overseas cannot fill all of our growing requirements - we need to see a step change in education and training." Jim Fitzpatrick, the minister for London, said: "We have to make sure that although we are tolerant and welcoming, our Britishness is not diluted to the extent that it disappears. While London has the highest proportion of foreign-born residents and ethnic minorities of any region in the UK, the population of Britain is becoming more mixed. The proportion of people in the UK who were born overseas has doubled since 1951 to 8.3 per cent of the population - nearly 5 million residents. By arrangement with The Independent
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Poverty and disease are the main challenges: Tutu ARCHBISHOP Desmond Tutu of the Republic of South Africa has been chosen for the Gandhi International Peace Prize 2005. Excerpts from a conversation with Devaki Jain. Q: For all of us, in India, the struggle in South Africa against apartheid was really as if it was our own. To us you and Nelson Mandela were a pair, in our imagery of South Africa’s struggle and heroic victory. When did you first meet him? A: It was in the 1950s when I first met him. I was in a teachers’ training college. We were in a debating team in South Africa. He was the adjudicator, tall and in a smart suit, very debonair. The next time I met him, it was in the 1990s, when he was released from prison, 40 years later. He spent his first night with us, his first night of freedom, in the Archbishop’s official residence in Cape Town. Q: You were once saying that the Mandela who went into prison was an angry man and those 26 years later, the person who came out was different. A: Lots of people say, “Oh, 27 years, what a waste”. When Nelson Mandela went to jail, with his comrades, and they were sentenced to life imprisonment, he was an angry young man, who was also head of what was called the armed Wing of the African National Congress. Someone who really believed in the use of violence. Then, what I call the crucible of suffering in prison took place. It was hell for most of them. But he began to become magnanimous. He got to the understanding of the views of Afrikaaners, their fears. That is one of the attributes of suffering, you can become noble; yet, it can make you bitter. He could have come out of prison, even angrier, bristling, with bitterness and wanting revenge. Mercifully, for us, it was not so. Q: You have often called yourself a rabble rouser. A: I think, perhaps one of the gifts that I got was being able to be funny and making people laugh. That was important when things were rough… you could make people laugh even at themselves, our people have got that capacity. I think that helps. Q: How do you view the rise of religious fundamentalism? A: I get worried when we easily characterise religious fundamentalism as Islamic or whatever. I wish we could remember that there is also Christian fundamentalism. In the United States, you have people who are opposed to abortions and instead of saying, well, let us persuade people by speaking to them, they resort to violence. They often kill doctors who procure abortions. You have the same kind of thing, when you have a group with the cross as their symbol, and yet are able to kill, lynch the Black people. They drag Black people behind trucks to their death and claim the sanction of their faith. It is important for us to say that religion in itself is neither good nor bad. It has produced people like Dalai Lama; it has produced holy, good people. It has also produced the other kind. The adherence of any particular faith has to be developed by that faith, and how they understand that faith; because, you could produce as Christianity did, some extraordinary people like Julius Nyerere. Nelson Mandela was also a product of the Christian church; he was educated in a church school. Yet the same Christianity is what influenced people to engineer the holocaust. The people who produced apartheid in South Africa, they did not hide the fact that they were Christians. Q: What is uppermost in your mind today? A: Poverty and disease; the inequalities that we have in the world today are absolutely dangerous. We have seen what happened in France. Inequalities generate instability. God is saying to all of us: “Wake up, wake up to the fact that I created you to be members of the human family, my family, and you are not going to win a war against so-called terror when there are conditions that make some of my children feel desperate.” Last words: In Bangalore, all the Christian denominations had come for a prayer meeting preceding Christmas, called an Advent. Tutu shifted the meaning of Advent from a Christian event to a human celebration of motherhood, of parenthood, of the birth of a child, and of an era. He said : “I wish they had called people from some of the other faiths like a Hindu or a Muslim or a Buddhist. That would have made it really an Advent.”
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When the potter moulds clay, he gives it a shape and identity. Our desires and subsequent actions give our lives their unique shapes and identities. It is very significant that some of the most thoughtful and cultured men are partisans of a pure vegetable diet. If one makes a garland of the leaves of one’s body and flowers of one’s virtue, it is acceptable to the Lord. When then should one search for other branches for flowers of another kind.? Adham (inferior) are they who in spite of receiving and understanding instructions, refuse to act.
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