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Dubai crackdown Are the 10 Dawood’s men or Shakeel’s? INDIA would have wanted the help of the Dubai authorities to get back Dawood Ibrahim, who flits in and out of the UAE quite regularly. But what it has actually got are 10 foot soldiers of his gang who were involved in many serious crimes in India as well.
Afzal’s hanging
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DOCUMENT Civil war in Lebanon LEGAL NOTES
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India, China move forward DESPITE
their border disputes remaining unresolved, India and China as mature nations have found a way to cooperate with each other for mutual good in different areas, including trade and industry. The signing of 13 agreements between the two sides during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s New Delhi visit in a friendly environment provides proof of their keenness to build as many bridges of understanding as possible. Their target of doubling the bilateral trade to $40 billion by 2010 is not difficult to realise, going by the progress they have achieved during the past few years. There is now an easier visa regime with an agreement to open a Chinese consulate in Kolkata and an Indian consulate in Guangzhou. This is bound to encourage visits by more businessmen to the two countries in search of trade and investment opportunities. As the joint statement issued on Tuesday said, “Both sides hold the view that there exist bright prospects for their common development, that they are not rivals or competitors, but are partners for mutual benefit.” A reference to civilian nuclear cooperation in the joint statement, released soon after the wide-ranging talks between Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and President Hu, has its own significance. It is for the first time that India and China have agreed “to promote cooperation in the field of nuclear energy, consistent with their international commitments.” Whatever such expressions may mean, they have raised the hope that the Chinese may revise their opinion of the Indo-US nuclear deal, though yet to come. If India and China continue to move forward in this manner one can hope for the emergence of an atmosphere congenial to the resolution of their territorial disputes, which indeed remain as tricky as before. They have already set up a mechanism with their Special Representatives to hold periodic meetings for “finalising an appropriate framework” for the purpose. Of course, it is not so easy to achieve success on this front despite the realisation that an early settlement of the border disputes can enable them to take their relations to a new plane. But it is heartening to note that the situation as it exists today is not being allowed to come in their way of reaping the benefits of building a cooperative relationship. This pragmatic approach should be continued in the endeavour for developing friendlier relations, while the border question, it seems, remains on the backburner. The two High Representatives will be asked to expedite their efforts to tackle what is being described in a new language as “a strategic goal”, whatever it means. |
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Peace comes to Nepal THE
peace accord signed between Nepalese Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala and the Maoist chief Prachanda is a historic development that marks the Himalayan country’s break with the 10-year-old insurgency. No less important is that the Comprehensive Ceasefire and Peace Agreement between the Seven-Party Alliance Government and the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) signals a resolute march towards an inclusive democracy with the Maoist rebels as a full-fledged partner. Although the actual inking of the agreement was delayed, the critical part — of managing the Maoists’ weapons under UN supervision — had already gone through without a hitch. In the event, the differences that delayed the signing ceremony do not appear to have been of great import. With the accord signed, sealed and delivered to the people of Nepal, the Maoists would now be a part of mainstream politics. The CPN (Maoist) is slated to join the 330-member interim parliament on November 26 and the interim government of Mr Koirala on December 1. According to the agreed timetable, elections would be held before June 2007 for a 425-member constituent assembly, which would draft a new constitution. This constitution can be expected to be a radical advance towards a republic. The failure of past attempts — in 2001 and 2003 — by the Maoist rebels and the government to arrive at a peace agreement was exploited by the monarchy, especially King Gyanendra, to snuff out multiparty democracy and usurp executive authority. Given this experience, the monarchy is certain to be caged if not jettisoned altogether. Differences over this detail are unlikely to deter Nepal’s progress towards a new democratic society. The Maoists have all but given up their anti-India rhetoric, and the fact that they have acknowledged New Delhi’s guiding presence at the crucial stage of transition bodes well for Nepal and India-Nepal relations. |
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Dubai crackdown INDIA
would have wanted the help of the Dubai authorities to get back Dawood Ibrahim, who flits in and out of the UAE quite regularly. But what it has actually got are 10 foot soldiers of his gang who were involved in many serious crimes in India as well. They are being presented as a prize catch. But if one looks a little deeper into the whole episode, many other sordid details stand out. Most of those deported to India happen to be men of Dawood’s lieutenant Chhota Shakeel, whose growing clout the former is now trying to curtail. Shakeel controls most of the shooters and the gang’s extortion and counterfeit-currency operations and can emerge as a challenge to Dawood. In fact, three of the 10 sent back to India are close relatives of Chhota Shakeel. The Dubai authorities had picked up 40 criminals, because their activities there had started scaring away investors. But many of them were allowed to flee to Pakistan. That gives the real game away. The Shakeel faction now stands virtually crippled. As far as Dawood is concerned, he is still being treated with kid-gloves. The huge investments that he is in a position to make act as a protective shield for him in many countries in the Gulf and South-East Asia. Pakistan, of course, continues to be the safest haven. The effectiveness of any crackdown on crime will be measured in terms of its desire and ability to net the real big fish. Nevertheless, those who have been brought back to India are hardcore criminals mostly involved in the extortion racket run by Chhota Shakeel and Faheem Machmach. Some have murder and assault cases against them. Sustained investigation can help extract details of a large number of underworld operations from them. |
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Being tactful in audacity is knowing how far one can go too far. — Jean Cocteau
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Afzal’s hanging
THE death sentence meted out to Mohammed Afzal under the Indian Constitution is not just in any way.” This is not a line from any appeal for commutation of the punishment decreed by the Supreme Court for Afzal Guru. It is a quote from a section of the Hindutva camp that does not find the punishment harsh enough. An outfit in Tamil Nadu called the Federation of Hindu Organisations has called upon President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, with whom a mercy petition for Afzal is pending, to set aside the death sentence. Sounding as pious as the Fallen Angel citing the scripture, the federation asks Mr Kalam to recommend punishment as prescribed (according to it) by the Shariat and the Quran. A Tamil statement issued by the federation spells out the alternative punishment with sadistic glee. A free translation: “The sentence should be so amended that his (Afzal’s) right hand and left leg are cut off and one of his eyes is gouged out and he is allowed, in this state of mutilation, to freely tour the whole of India and make an exhibit of himself in order that no extremist or terrorist ever emerges in this country again.” The widely circulated statement adds that the federation is “waiting with hope” for the President to make this recommendation, achieve “indelible fame in history” and prove himself “a great patriot”. The statement seeks to kill three birds with one stone. The federation’s demand, of course, is designed to deter a sympathetic official consideration of the plea for commuting the sentence to life imprisonment. It is also a continuation, by other means, of the maliciously communal campaign against Indian Muslims and the Muslim personal law. And none but the most naive can miss the mischievous tenor of the plea addressed to the President with an unstated reference to his religious identity. What the statement illustrates, more than anything else, is the hate — or the ideology as well as politics of hate — behind the campaign at the mass level for Afzal’s hanging. The avowedly constitutional and anti-terrorist arguments we hear in decorous television debates in favour of the maximum punishment for the convict hardly conceal the character of this campaign, which matters far more in our free-for-all democracy. The noose-for-the-anti-national demand is particularly dangerous in a country and a system where a political party can profit by a pogrom in a state and actually threaten to repeat it as an electoral tactic elsewhere. The demand is all the more dangerous because it is not being raised only in the state under Mr Narendra Modi. Lethal assaults have been made on satyaghrahis asking for clemency to Afzal even in Left-ruled Kerala. The clamour against clemency has only become shriller and cruder after the expiry of the original date for the hanging (October 20). Mahatma Gandhi may have measured the distance to Swaraj by the length of the khadi yarn spun in the country. The present-day “patriots” do not measure the distance to a victory in the “war of terror” by the length of the hangman’s rope (already announced along with its weight). They do so by counting the days that remain for the death sentence to be carried out. The strongest argument for commutation of the sentence, as some have pointed out, is the utter anachronism of capital punishment. Most countries have abolished this form of punishment, and it does not do India proud that the latest to join the list are five, far less developed Asian nations — Cambodia, Nepal, Timor-Leste, Bhutan and the Philippines. Intimately linked is the argument about the unwisdom of empowering the state as an executioner. An almost equally valid objection to death sentences, however, is the vicious social atmosphere they almost always promote. Hanging of persons convicted even of petty thefts was a public spectacle in Britain of the early Industrial Revolution, when the punishment was intended to teach the young working class respect for private property. Lynch mobs laughed and cheered as the noose tightened around a Negro’s neck in the United States not too long ago. No one may say it on the camera, but Afzal’s hanging is also being billed as mass communal entertainment. Custodians of public morality in these past cases of both the US and Britain (which have now declared a crusade against “Islamic terror”) held up the hangings as attempts at civilising the economically or racially handicapped. A vitally essential part of the exercise is the portrayal of the victims — and, by implication, their class and community — as criminal. Strikingly similar is the way the holy warriors of the hang-Afzal camp are now waxing self-righteous. This finds crude evidence in the kind of responses the campaigners against Afzal’s hanging have to cope with. One of the many examples is the electronic epistle received by Sukla Sen of the Ekta (Committee for Communal Amity), Mumbai, after launching an online petition for the Presidential pardon for Afzal. The petition said: “One is only asking for the commutation of the death sentence — not quashing of the punishment altogether, whereas a demand for retrial would have perhaps been more justified given the fact that all the relevant facts were not allowed to be presented before the trial court and that the facts presented were doctored.” The plea could not have been less provocative. The angry response asked Sen: “…how would have reacted if Afzal had brutally raped your wife or sister and killed your child? Why don’t you ask your wife what she would have wanted?” The questions are not connected in any way to the attack on Parliament, which involved no such crimes. They only seek to reinforce a demonic image of Kashmir rebels in defence of the death sentence. Pundits like Mr Soli Sorabjee may really mean it, and do sound plausible, when they say the sentence cannot be set aside on the ground that its implementation will create an explosive situation in Kashmir. The learned man of law, personally opposed to capital punishment, argues that, so long as the statute book provides for it, an exception in its enforcement cannot be made just because a political or pressure group opposes it. What he fails to note is the force of support from a much larger and more fiercely determined family of political and pressure groups for expeditious implementation of the death sentence in this case. The orchestrated opposition to the pursuit of the constitutional process of the mercy petition and a Presidential pardon is not seen as a pressure campaign. The character of the campaign is not readily recognised because the campaign is more invisible than visible. Mr Sorabjee’s stance represents the campaign at its best, followed by fervent pleas from retired luminaries of the Foreign Service and the like for “responsible” self-restraint by rights activists in such sensitive natters of state. It is statements like the one we started with that illustrate the invisible but the more important part of the campaign. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has threatened to launch a “public awareness campaign” across the country on the importance of hanging Afzal. To be sure, the party has officially put its stress on issues of “internal security” and drafted its select Muslim showpieces in the struggle for an early execution of the convict. But then L.K. Advani, too, only kept repeating his mantra of “cultural nationalism” during his Ayodhya “rath yatra”, which left a trail of communal riots and culminated in the Babri Masjid’s
demolition.
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Soap bubbles
PRODUCING a TV serial is much easier than making a movie provided you have a firm conviction that all your viewers will be big dunces having no sense of logic. All is smooth sailing after that. You do not need huge finances as in this trade you earn in the form of ads as you spend for production. Then you do not need a costly star cast as family soaps are not star-based but story (rather suspense-based. Any handsome young man with some muscles to show or a fair-complexioned girl with a well-contoured figure who have some experience of acting up to their school level will serve the purpose. An unlike in movies, you have not to wait with bated breath for the court verdicts on the likes of Sanjay Dutt or Salman Khan. When any actor leaves or is shunted out the director has only to display on the screen that from that day the role of such and such character will be played by such and such person. When Satyajit Ray got his Oscar for his life-long services to cinema the protagonists of the so-called mainline cinema complained that he had only displayed poverty and filth in India. Present-day family soap makers have completely washed away all that poverty and filth. The families live in grandeur of palatial houses with breathtaking furnishings and separate rooms for a large number of couples. The star cast in a family soap has to be big as you have to show characters of all shades from pitch-black to grey to snowhite. The story line fuses the melodrama of Undivided Hindu Family business and household intrigues, opulent parties and club life alongside elaborate religious rituals — in fact everything under the sun. The snowhite character is the eldest lady of the household who is devotedly religious and gets respect from everybody or the eldest bahu whom she hands over the bunch of keys representing the burden and privileges of managing the household. This Bahu is a strong and confident woman with her opinions, principles, perceptions and convictions to defend them. The characters of grey tinge change from white to black according to the requirements of the suspense. Interestingly, a black character is mostly a bua or nanad though married (mark of red triangle of family planning on her forehead), she all the time lives in her parents’ house keeping everybody at logger heads. Some money is saved by not including a phupha in the story. After all, phuphas do not come free of
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DOCUMENT ACROSS
the world, the poor are forced to pay much more for clean water than their affluent neighbours, says the 2006 Human Development Report. The report, entitle “Beyond scarcity: Power, politics and the global water crisis”, notes that in the slums of Nairobi the poor pay five to 10 times more per litre of water than wealthy people living in the same city. The poorest households of El Salvador, Nicaragua and Jamaica spend on average over 10 per cent of their income on water; in the United Kingdom, by contrast, spending more than 3 per cent of family income on water is considered an economic hardship. And the longstanding public-versus-private debate on water will not bring prices down, stresses the 2006 HDR. In recent years, public debate on water-delivery policy in developing countries has been dominated by a polarising discussion on privatisation versus public ownership. But the authors argue that this is a false choice, diverting attention from the ultimate goal of finding viable ways of getting potable water to those who can least afford to pay. As a starting point, the report advocates for all governments to go beyond vague constitutional principles in enabling legislation to ensure the human right to a secure, accessible and affordable supply of water. At a minimum, this implies a target of at least 20 litres of clean water a day for every citizen and at no cost for those too poor to pay, the authors emphasise. The 2006 HDR lays out a number of recommendations on how to make this a reality: *Put water at the centre of poverty-reduction strategies and budget planning: A bold, coherent national water plan grounded in strategies for reducing poverty and extreme inequality is a first step, stress the authors, but this needs to be backed with predictable finance. *Extend ‘lifeline tariffs’: The 2006 HDR notes that lifeline tariffs would allow poor households to access a minimum amount of water for a very low price or no charge, with usage fees rising thereafter. However, tariffs alone will not help where informal settlements are not connected to the utility or where households do not have meters installed. *Expand ‘pro-poor’ investment: Water is underfinanced, says the report. The biggest financing gaps are in rural areas and in informal urban settlements. Closing these gaps requires increased financing and a reorientation of public spending to rural communities, through the provision of wells and boreholes, and to urban slum areas, through the provision of standpipes. *Set clear goals — and hold providers to account: The authors stress that contract arrangements under public-private management agreements should set clear goals for expanding access for poor households living in slums. Non-performance should result in financial penalties. The same rules should apply to public providers, with nonperformance penalised through incentive systems. *Develop and expand the regulatory framework: The public-versus-private debate has diverted attention from the pressing issue of public utility reform. *Rethink and redesign water tariffs and subsidies: Subsidies can play a critical role in delivering affordable water to the poor, but too often, they instead deliver windfalls to the non-poor, while impoverished households using public taps face the highest prices. Targeted subsidies depend on the capacity of the government to identify poor households. Where done properly, as in Chile, this can be a route to efficient water delivery by private utilities and high levels of equity in water access. Using cross-subsidies — a combination of pricing and access policies, including targeted subsidies — to support standpipe users where coverage rates are low would be a step towards improved equality. *Prioritise the rural sector: Rural water supply poses special challenges. Building on successful demand-responsive approaches, governments need to make service providers more responsive and accountable to the communities that they serve. Decentralisation of water governance can play an important role, provided that decentralised bodies have the technical and financial capacity to deliver services, says the report. The report notes: “ ‘Not having access to clean water’ is a euphemism for profound deprivation. It means that people walk more than one kilometre to the nearest source of clean water for drinking, that they collect water from drains, ditches or streams that might be infected with pathogens and bacteria that can cause severe illness and death.” And the poorer you are, the more you pay for clean water. For those who must get water from tankers, access to water costs far more per litre than it does for their richer compatriots, or for people in the cities of the developed world. While the rich usually get water from a single supplier, the poor have to reckon with a bewildering array of service providers, such as public standpipes, vendors, truckers, and water carriers. Some of the water vendors access water from the municipal source and then re-sell it at a premium to poor slum dwellers who do not have access to piped water. As a result, water delivered through a vendor is often 10 to 20 times more costly than water provided by the public utility. *Inequality is one driver of the crisis: ‘Water lords’ now dominate the water market in the Indian state of Gujarat, for example, where falling water tables are compromising the lives of hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people. Large landowners have constructed deep wells, depriving neighbouring villages of water, only to sell it back at a high price to those whose wells they have emptied.
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Civil war in Lebanon CIVIL
WAR - the words on all our lips now. Pierre Gemayel's murder - in broad daylight, in a Christian suburb of Beirut, his car blocked mafia-style by another vehicle while his killer fired through the driver's window into the head of Lebanon's minister of industry - was a message for all of us who live in this tragic land. For days, we had been debating whether it was time for another political murder to ratchet up the sectarian tensions now that the democratically elected government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was about to fall. For days now, the political language of Lebanon had been incendiary, the threats and bullying of the political leaders ever more fearsome. Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Shia Hizbollah leader, had been calling Siniora's cabinet illegitimate. "The government of Feltman," he was calling it - Jeffrey Feltman is the US ambassador to Lebanon - while the Druze leader Walid Jumblatt was claiming Iran was trying to take over. The assassination of Pierre Gemayel was a warning. It might have been Jumblatt, who has told me many times that he constantly awaits his own death, or it might have been Siniora himself, the little economist and friend of the also murdered former prime minister Rafik Hariri. But no. Gemayel, son of ex-president Amin Gemayel and nephew of the murdered president-elect, Bashir Gemayel - murder tends to run in the family in Lebanon - was no charismatic figure, just a hard-working unmarried Christian Maronite minister whose unrewarding task had been to call émigré Lebanese home to rebuild their country after Israel's bloody bombardment. The fires burnt in the streets of Christian east Beirut last night and there were hundreds of young and occasionally armed young men in the neighbourhood of Jdeideh, where Gemayel was killed. "I want no revenge," his father Amin pleaded in front of the hospital where his body lay. But violence crackles through the air in a city where four anti-Syrian politicians and journalists have been assassinated in 21 months. Gemayel, too, was a harsh critic of Syria, which was one reason why Hariri's son Saad - leader of the March 14th movement which controls parliament - blamed Damascus for his death. Yet nothing happens by accident in Lebanon and political detectives - as opposed to the police kind who most assuredly will not find Gemayel's killers - have to look beyond this country's frontiers to understand why ghosts may soon climb out of the mass graves of the civil war. Why did Gemayel die just hours after Syria announced the restoration of diplomatic relations with Iraq after a quarter of a century? Why has Nasrallah threatened street demonstrations in Beirut to bring down the government when Siniora's cabinet had just accepted the UN's tribunal to try Hariri's assassins? And why did America's UN ambassador, John Bolton, weep crocodile tears for Lebanon's democracy - which he cared so little about when Israel smashed into Lebanon this summer - without mentioning Syria? All this, of course, takes place as thousands of Western troops pour into Lebanon to shore up the UN force in the south of the country: UN troops who are supposed to protect Israel (which they cannot do) and disarm Hizbollah (which they will not do) and who are already being threatened by al-Qa'ida. No wonder the Europeans, whose armoured Nato forces now lie trapped in the south of the country, are so fearful. No wonder the Foreign Office has been telling Britons to stay away. No wonder Tony Blair - as discredited in the Middle East as he is in Britain - has been demanding an inquiry into Gemayel's assassination, something he will not get. Twelve days ago, all six Shia ministers left the cabinet, leaving the largest religious sect in Lebanon unrepresented in government. Last Monday, Siniora's government - Gemayel included - approved the UN's plans for a tribunal to try Hariri's killers, whom most Lebanese suspect were working for the Syrians. But without the presence of the Shia, their decision may have no legal status. Nasrallah began to call for street demonstrations. The Lebanese may be too mature for another civil war. But ministers might be well advised to avoid driving their ministerial cars along the highways of Beirut for the next few days lest someone blocks their way and fires through the driver's window.
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LEGAL NOTES THE Union Government has taken a stand in the Supreme Court that border disputes cannot entirely be resolved by applying the linguistic formula strictly even though it might have formed the basis for drawing the boundaries of certain states after Independence. The apex court is seized of the suits of Maharashtra and Assam and the stand of the Union Government has been stated in an affidavit of the Home Ministry in the Belgam dispute raised by Maharashtra, claiming the territory of the entire district for reasons that the majority of its population speaks Marathi. But the Centre says language is only one factor among several others for the inclusion of any area in a state. It is neither feasible nor desirable to demarcate borders of villages, talukas and districts in a manner that the people of a particular area speak a particular language. Next NHRC chief The Union Government has yet to appoint the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) after Justice A S Anand relinquished the post after completing his five-year tenure on October 31. The NHRC Act provides that its chairperson should be a former CJI. His tenure is for five years or till the age of 70 years, whichever is earlier. The choice of the government is limited to two former CJIs: Justice V N Khare and Justice R C Lahoti. But both are understood to have expressed their reservations to take up the responsibility. The UPA Government had even contemplated an amendment to the NHRC Act so that any retired Supreme Court judge should be qualified to take up the responsibility. Similarly, in state commissions, instead of High Court Chief Justices, any High Court judge was sought to be made the chairperson. But this was opposed by the BJP and the Left parties and the idea was finally dropped. Justice Shivraj V Patil, a former Supreme Court judge and a member of the NHRC, acts as the officiating chairperson. Now it is to be seen whether the present CJI Y K Sabharwal, who retires on January 14 next, will be willing to take up the responsibility. No to number 13 A strange case that came before the Supreme Court recently related to the Kerala High Court not having the “Court No-13”. The apex court directed the High Court to take measures to ward off the impression that the judiciary was encouraging superstition, while admitting a petition by a lawyer who had raised the issue before the High Court. Instead of giving a positive hearing to him, the High Court had fined him Rs 10,000, which he has challenged. But it is not an isolated case as it has come to light that the practice is also prevalent in at least four other High Courts and in some complexes of the lower judiciary, which were apprehensive of having court rooms with the “evil number-13”. Lawyers do not like to have a chambers with the No 420, an Indian Penal Code Section dealing with the offence of cheating. In the Delhi High Court there is no chamber No 420; instead it is marked as 419-A and then 421. |
Those who work without any desire for self gain are the purest in heart. They reach salvation faster than others. I refuse to buy from anybody anything, however nice or beautiful, if it interferes with my growth or injuries those whom Nature has made my first care. The glories of the great God cannot be described He is the Creator, the Almighty and the Beneficent One who provides sustenance for all living beings. |
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