 |
|
PM’s assurance is welcome Punjab messes up education Not woman enough |
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Russia still a great power
Always on call
UNICEF chief in India The age of ‘Homo Urbanus” Defence notes
|
PM’s assurance is welcome WHEN President George W. Bush was busy signing the US waiver Bill in the White House on Monday, the Lok Sabha was going through an intense debate on India’s decision to go in for the nuclear deal with the United States. If the US leader exuded confidence that now nothing could prevent him from signing what would be called the 123 Agreement, the Congress-led UPA government successfully defended the arrangement with the US, meant to end nuclear apartheid India had been placed under after the Pokhran blasts. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh assured the nation once again that “nothing will be done that will compromise, dilute or cast a shadow on India’s full autonomy in the management of its security and national interests”. It’s a different matter that this was not considered enough by the scaremongers, particularly the members belonging to the BJP and the CPM. The Prime Minister has, however, admitted that “there are areas which continue to be a cause for concern, and we will need to discuss them with the US administration before the bilateral cooperation (123) agreement can be finalised”. Questions have been raised about the disposal of spent nuclear fuel, India’s right to procure enriched uranium from different sources in an event of a dispute between New Delhi and Washington, uninterrupted access to duel-use technology, future nuclear tests, India’s Iran policy, etc. The Bush administration will have to address these concerns to enable Dr Manmohan Singh to take the entire Indian nation along with him when he finally signs the agreement whose clauses will be binding on the two parties. “Clearly difficult negotiations lie ahead”, as the Prime Minister told the Lok Sabha. Yet there is no room for pessimism, as the 123 Agreement has to take care of the interests of both countries. So far as India is concerned, it could not allow the opportunity to go unutilised. It needs to end its status of a nuclear untouchable, but without compromising its national interests. Also, the civilian nuclear cooperation agreement with the US should not be seen merely in the context of India getting access to latest technology. It is like what China got when Richard Nixon was the US President. If everything goes as expected, India is bound to acquire a new status in the comity of nations, besides, of course, enhancing its relationship with the US which “has never been more vital”. In a way, it changes power equations on the global scene.
|
|
Punjab messes up education NOT many will be surprised by the findings of a study carried out by certain teachers of Punjabi University that point to the increasing exclusion of rural students from higher education in general and professional education in particular. Punjabi University of late has been making commendable efforts to reach out to rural students, but how much can a university do when education at the school and college levels is so substandard? The quality of education can be gauged from the fact that even engineers turned out by Punjab Technical University have been found to be unemployable. The medical colleges are short of staff as well as equipment. It is after a good many years that the government has now appointed school teachers. No wonder, the dropout rate is so high and the so-called progressive state occupies the 16th position in literacy in the country. The blame for the deterioration in education in Punjab can be justifiably attributed to the successive state governments. Whether it is the rule of the Akalis or the Congressmen, education has seldom got the priority it deserves. The state spending has been far less than what experts suggest. As a result, government schools lack even the essential infrastructure. It takes the government years to fill vacancies. The universities are raising money by selling seats to NRI-funded students, private colleges have effected a hefty increase in their charges and the school board is selling textbooks of doubtful utility at twice their cost of production. While the existing educational institutions suffer from fund constraints, new ones are coming up fast. Punjab is quick in setting up universities — after the two technical and medical universities, there is one on veterinary sciences, another on defence and still another coming up focussing on rural students. The medical university is still without its own building. The Faridkot medical college is run from godowns. Obviously, fund utilisation has got misdirected in the expansion spree. Now at the end of the term, the Amarinder Singh government has appointed an education commission. One can only wish it good luck. The commission cannot provide any government the political will required for pushing education to the top of its agenda.
|
|
Not woman enough WITH the Tamil Nadu government going ahead with an award of Rs 15 lakh to athlete Santhi Soundarajan, even as the Indian Olympic Association (IOA) ordered a probe into her failing a “gender test”, the case is now taking a bizarre turn. More is at stake than the silver she won in the 800-metre race at the Doha Games. Some reports suggest that there was no attempt to become a woman or at any kind of deception on the part of Santhi, and that as a victim of a biological aberration, she may actually be deserving sympathy. It has also been reported, however, that she was denied a job in the Railways on the grounds of “making a false claim” of being a woman after a similar gender test. Any actual attempt at cheating must be dealt with severely, and if Santhi, her coaches, and concerned officials have in any way been involved in an intention to deceive, severe action is warranted against them. Such incidents bring shame upon the nation, worse than a low medal tally. It has been seen time and again, particularly with the use of performance-enhancing drugs, that players and coaches are more than willing to put the nation’s honour at stake by adopting dubious means to win laurels. There needs to be zero tolerance for these malpractices. Hopefully, the inquiry to be conducted by the IOA Medical Commission, which has been given 10 days, will clear up what is still a murky affair. Experts aver that showing more Y chromosomes than is normal for a woman, as Santhi did in the test, can be caused by training, genetics and even poor nutrition. In which case athletes like Santhi, who are chemically in a half-way house between a man and a woman, indeed find themselves in an unfortunate situation. The Indian Olympic Association should ensure that there is no unfairness, one way or the other, but officials and coaches who allowed Santhi to go to Doha should not go unpunished for their lapse.
|
|
Courage is fear that has said its prayers. — American proverb
|
Russia still a great power IT has been six years since
Russian President Vladimir Putin visited India and signed the “Strategic Partnership of Friendship and Peace” in October 2000. Then Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Putin expressed their support for the formation of a multipolar order, one based on equality and mutual benefit. This was an important declaration and its rationale was clear — US power at the time was at its peak, and its hierarchy unchallenged in the international system. The subsequent sequence of geopolitical events has, however, re-altered the distribution of power globally and, therefore, provided Indian security managers another opportunity to re-evaluate their worldview. And an important element of this introspection is due to the immediate relevance of Indo-Russian relations to the US-India nuclear deal and, more generally, to India’s overall military and energy security and its quest for great-power status. The US invasion of Iraq and the unrelenting insurgency that ensued imposed enormous military costs and budgetary costs on the United Sates. Recent estimates have projected over $1 trillion to American coffers by the time operations are terminated or scaled back to an “over the horizon” force some time over the next two or four years. While the incremental costs since the 2003 invasion have risen tremendously, the United States’ major geopolitical adversary, Russia, has focused on rebuilding its own state power. The Putin administration, on the back of supernormal hydrocarbon prices, has greatly accelerated the economic resurgence of Russia. To be sure, Russian power is still nowhere close to its former might. Russia’s current military spending of around $ 30 billion per year is still a fraction of the US budget, which is about 24 times as high. Yet, the fundamental underlying strengths of Russia — its exceptional endowment of natural resources, scientific knowledge base, and military potential and capability, particularly in the strategic weapons domain — have ensured that it continues to possess the attributes of a great power. To the above can be added the unique geographical position that Russia occupies on the Eurasian continent, which allows it to influence multiple theatres on the geopolitical chessboard. That the international system no longer resembles anything like that the late 1990s is obvious. The US unipolar pretensions have been dispelled by its own folly in Iraq. The concurrent resurgence of Russian power has once again brought to the fore the issue of stability and management of the international system. The Iran nuclear issue was the first visible geopolitical event that displayed the pivotal role of Russia and relative American weakness. Russia’s geostrategic leverage has ensured that the US strategy of first isolating Iran and attempting to follow that up with punitive sanctions and/or a unilateral military solution does not materialise. While Chinese support is important to Russian efforts that seek to counterbalance an offensive US, it is more important at a political level in the UN Security Council than at a geostrategic level. Nonetheless, the adoption since the mid-1990s by the US of a policy of defacto dual containment of both Russia and China prompted an even greater degree of strategic coordination in their foreign policies. More recent evidence of Russian-Chinese coordination is the North Korea nuclear issue where both ensured a watered-down UNSC resolution to block any US-Japanese efforts to punish North Korea further. India-Russia relations have been traditionally based on a broad convergence of interests. Formal cooperation between India and Russia began in 1960, when the two countries agreed to a programme of military-technical cooperation, which culminated in a formal alliance in 1971. Since the “Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation” of that year, Soviet power ensured substantial economic, political and military cover for India during the ensuing period of the Cold War. India’s military inventories still comprise of largely Russian-made weapon systems. Recent statistics indicate that India was the leading buyer of Russian-made arms in 2005. At present, acquiring advanced foreign technologies and licensing the manufacture of military equipment are receiving priority in Indian military imports. Again, Russia is the leading partner of India in this sphere. A successful model of this type of collaboration is BrahMos Aerospace, a $ 300 million Indo-Russian joint venture to manufacture 1,000 supersonic cruise missiles over the next decade for domestic and export markets. As India’s Defence Research and Development Organisation looks to market several of its products internationally, military-technical cooperation with Russia’s state-owned Rosoboronexport, which performs the international activity for the Russian defence industry, could greatly improve India’s chances of making a dent in the highly competitive global arms bazaar. Another dimension that has gained salience is Russia’s emerging position as an energy super-power, as the world’s largest gas producer and second-largest oil producer and hence its importance to India’s energy security. Russia’s increasing influence in Central Asia and its dominant control of the pipeline routes implies that only a well-crafted energy partnership will enable India to access those oil and gas reserves. A recent trip by Indian Petroleum Minister Murli Deora to Moscow seeking Indian participation in upcoming upstream projects in Russia and cooperation in downstream projects in both countries is part of an ongoing objective of diversifying India’s import dependence on West Asia. Indian policy makers should discern that Russia’s long-term energy strategy, evidenced by its public pronouncements and dealings with the European Union, China, East Asia, South-East Asia and North Africa, is based on the idea of Comprehensive energy cooperation with all its partners rather than the traditional paradigm of import-export relationships. In commercial terms, this would amount to the buyer-nation opening its downstream energy markets (such as refining, petrochemical, electricity) for Russian investment in return for assured supplies and reciprocal access to upstream Russian assets. Despite all the rhetoric to the contrary stemming from skeptics in the EU, such an institutional lock-in will only increase stability and reliability of energy flows between Russia and its partners. It was confirmed recently that President Putin would be the chief guest at the Republic Day Parade in January, underscoring India’s importance to the Kremlin. At a time when dynamic geopolitical events threaten to unleash a new diplomatic revolution, it is to be hoped that India’s strategic establishment is willing to re-evaluate its strategic predispositions and account for Russia’s place in
them. The writer, a product of the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, is a strategic affairs analyst.
|
Always on call SCHOOL days were testing times in more than one ways. Getting up early on chilly winter mornings was always a nightmare. And my mom had a wakeup line that really worked, “Get up or Roshan would be here.” Roshan Lal, my rickshaw-puller, also happened to be our neighbour and would, therefore, start his day by picking me up ahead of all other students. A man in his mid-50s, he would invariably be dressed in his trademark kurta-pyjama. He loved to tell us stories about how he climbed the telephone pole the previous night to bring down a banner to stitch a new outfit out of it. Twice divorced, Roshan Lal always insisted that we should address him as uncle, not “bhaiya”. He was a mystery man for his fellow rickshawpullers, who would address him as “chhada” (bachelor). Many others would respect him for the fact that he took care of his paralytic, old mother and managed the daily chores himself, even as his elder brother did little for him and his bed-ridden mother. Since he took great pride in his rickshawpulling skills, we often motivated him to overtake other rickshaws so that we could reach school a bit early. He would take the challenge sportingly. But one day we were in absolutely no mood to go to school. Waiting for one of my friends to get ready, we suddenly realised that we were parked in front of a small temple. Inspired by the way he paid obeisance at the temple, we threw another challenge. This time asking him to pray to God for a holiday in our school. He nodded his head, took out his wallet, closed his eyes before a picture of Lord Shiva and whispered a few words. “I think your work would be done,” he declared. We didn’t believe him. But the moment we reached the Baradari Gardens, we could see jubilant classmates coming back with the announcement that some urgent maintenance work had forced the school management to close down for two days. Still in school, we were too young to call it a miracle or coincidence but we were definitely convinced that our rickshawpuller was a mystery man, someone who played cards with other rickshawpullers because he knew he would win. Last week, I got a call from my mom that Roshan had come to meet me and was inquiring about the other students who used to go in the same rickshaw. A couple of days later he
died.
|
UNICEF chief in India
UNICEF India head Cecelio Adorna came to India with no pre-conceived notions. He believes he has grown into India and his travels in the country have helped him unravel the manifold realities of the land. Today, two years into his "beautiful" Indian experience, Mr Adorna is convinced that if India makes to the Millennium Development Goals then the world makes it. “Nearly 25 percent of the world’s children are in India. So, we virtually carry one-fourth of the world’s responsibility. That’s why I emphasise the India holds to key to reforms in the social sector. A galloping economy, robust coffers, progressive policies and adequate resources together are providing a conducive environment to redress social issues,” he emphasises. Visiting Chandigarh at the invitation of the Haryana Government, Mr Adorna, in an interview to The Tribune, said that given the availability of resources, it was up to the authorities to meet the challenge of outlays equaling outcomes. "The hardest nut to crack is malnutrition. Targeted projects in West Bengal and Bihar have lowered malnutrition levels. People have woken to the realisation of using iodised salt, Vitamin A and adding iron supplements in their everyday food but malnutrition continues to be our number one problem," he said. While their are states plagued with malnutrition, there are several pockets in progressive states which are crying for attention as well. Maintaining that it was imperative to work harder in this direction, Mr Adorna said that the marginal aspect of service delivery needs to be addressed. “Though we have Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS) available freely, we must make sure it gets to the anganwaris. We have to rein in absenteeism, fill up vacancies, have a concurrent system of monitoring while building systems to disperse information and the capacity of frontline workers,” Mr Adorna emphasised. Critical of the fact that most Auxilliary Nurse Midwives (ANMs) are losing their midwifery skills, the Representative remarks,”We have to help them regain their skills. Further, they need to be taught the essentials of nutrition so that the information is passed on to pregnant and lactating mothers in anganwaris.” Fired with the mission to bring about a difference, he said that the UNICEF’s new strategy to combat diseases was to tap students in schools and colleges. “Catch them young--that’s our motto. If children grow up being educated about diseases, then we can cut the occurrence by half which is particularly true of viruses like HIV/AIDS,” he said. On the health front, Mr Adorna says there’s reason to cheer the falling infant mortality rates and the maternal mortality rates. “In some districts the Infant Mortality Rate (IMR) equals that of the best developed countries. There’s also a great possibility in sanitation and East Midnapaur in West Bengal has set an example for others to follow,” he holds. Advocating the cause of sanitary marts, he explains,”Local masons produce low cost toilets. These are marketed by women. Total sanitation in schools, provision of separate toilets for girls are things that are keeping the sanitation momentum alive. It’s important to build this up as a panchayat movement for better sanitary conditions.” While he expresses satisfaction over the way education has reached villages and enrolment increases every session, Mr Adorna says that the challenge in education comes from being able to retain the students in school and reduce the drop-out rate. “We do not want to compromise on quality education. We want the children to learn and write. So far, experience has shown that while children get enrolled and attend school, they leave studies midway. We have to check this tendency,” he asserts. Among many other issues, UNICEF is also committed to wiping out exclusion in societies. “When I first came to India, the slums of Mumbai left a lasting impression on my mind. Racing away from me as I drove out of my hotel to mingle with the crowd at the World Social Forum going on in those days, the slums moved me beyond words. I took it to my heart. Our effort is also to address this exclusion and make them all a part of the mainstream. It will happen subsequently,” he concludes. And, through it all, his optimism shines through. It is propelled by the fact that a committed India is surging ahead in the social sector, taking all challenges in its stride and devising ways to redress these.
|
|
The age of ‘Homo Urbanus” THE coming year marks a great milestone in the human saga, a development similar in magnitude to the agricultural era and the Industrial Revolution. For the first time in history, a majority of human beings will be living in vast urban areas, many in megacities and suburban extensions with populations of 10 million or more, according to the United Nations. We have become “Homo Urbanus.” Two hundred years ago, the average person on Earth might meet 200 to 300 people in a lifetime. Today a resident of New York City can live and work among 220,000 people within a 10-minute radius of his home or office in midtown Manhattan. Only one city in all of history - ancient Rome - boasted a population of more than a million before the 19th century. London became the first modern city with a population over 1 million in 1820. Today 414 cities boast populations of a million or more, and there’s no end in sight. As long as the human race had to rely on solar flow, the winds and currents, and animal and human power to sustain life, the human population remained relatively low to accommodate nature’s carrying capacity: the biosphere’s ability to recycle waste and replenish resources. The tipping point was the exhuming of large amounts of stored sun, first in the form of coal deposits, then oil and natural gas. Harnessed by the steam engine and later the internal combustion engine, and converted to electricity and distributed across power lines, fossil fuels allowed humanity to create new technologies that dramatically increased food production and manufactured goods and services. The unprecedented increase in productivity led to runaway population growth and the urbanization of the world. No one is really sure whether this turning point in human living arrangements ought to be celebrated, lamented or merely acknowledged. That’s because our burgeoning population and urban way of life have been purchased at the expense of vast ecosystems and habitats. Cultural historian Elias Canetti once remarked that each of us is a king in a field of corpses. If we were to stop for a moment and reflect on the number of creatures and the amount of Earth’s resources and materials we have expropriated and consumed in our lifetime, we would be appalled at the carnage and depletion used to secure our existence. Large populations living in megacities consume massive amounts of the Earth’s energy to maintain their infrastructures and daily flow of human activity. The Sears Tower alone uses more electricity in a single day than the city of Rockford, Ill., with 152,000 people. Even more amazing, our species now consumes nearly 40 percent of the net primary production on Earth - the amount of solar energy converted to plant organic matter through photosynthesis - even though we make up only one half of 1 percent of the animal biomass of the planet. This means less for other species to use. The flip side of urbanization is what we are leaving behind on our way to a world of hundred-story office buildings and high-rise residences, and landscapes of glass, cement, artificial light and electronic interconnectivity. It’s no accident that as we celebrate the urbanization of the world, we are quickly approaching another historic watershed: the disappearance of the wild. Rising population; growing consumption of food, water and building materials; expanding road and rail transport; and urban sprawl continue to encroach on the remaining wild, pushing it to extinction. Scientists tell us that within the lifetime of today’s children, the wild will disappear from the face of the Earth. The Trans-Amazon Highway, which cuts across the entire expanse of the Amazon rain forest, is hastening the obliteration of the last great wild habitat. Other remaining wild regions, from Borneo to the Congo Basin, are fast diminishing with each passing day, making way for growing human populations in search of living space and resources. It’s no wonder that (according to Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson) we are experiencing the greatest wave of mass extinction of animal species in 65 million years. We are losing 50 to 150 species to extinction per day, or between 18,000 and 55,000 species a year. By 2100 two-thirds of the Earth’s remaining species are likely to be extinct. Where does this leave us? Try to imagine 1,000 cities of a million or more just 35 years from now. It boggles the mind and is unsustainable for Earth. I don’t want to spoil the party, but perhaps the commemoration of the urbanization of the human race in 2007 might be an opportunity to rethink the way we live. Certainly there is much to applaud about urban life: its rich cultural diversity and social intercourse and its dense commercial activity. But the question is one of magnitude and scale. We need to ponder how best to lower our population and develop sustainable urban environments that use energy and resources more efficiently, are less polluting and better designed to foster human-scale living arrangements. In the great era of urbanization we have increasingly shut off the human race from the rest of the natural world in the belief that we could conquer, colonize and utilize the riches of the planet to ensure our autonomy without dire consequences to us and future generations. In the next phase of human history, we will need to find a way to reintegrate ourselves into the rest of the living Earth if we are to preserve our own species and conserve the planet for our fellow creatures. By arrangement with
|
|
Defence notes THE Public accounts Committee (PAC) of Parliament has pulled up the Ministry of Defence (MoD) over the import of robotic de-mining equipment. It has adviced the three services to use fast track procedures for acquisition of weapons systems and platforms only in "emergent, unavoidable conditions". Stating that 40 sets of the equipment were imported 16 months after Operation Parakaram, when 97 per cent of the 10 lakh mines had already been manually removed on the Indo-Pak border, the committee asserted that evoking fast track procedures in peace time led to payment of higher price and purchase without adequate testing in Indian conditions. The committee pointed out that of the 2,78,300 mines proposed to be recovered through the equipment, only 1182 mines, just about 0.42 per cent of the total, were recovered using the de-mining equipment. The remaining mines were recovered manually. While the Operation Parakram ended in 2001, the proposal to purchase the de-mining equipment through the fast track procedure was made in August 2002. Significantly, while the contract for the import of robotic de-mining equipment at a cost of 19.05 million Euro (Rs 103.91 crores) from a Denmark firm was concluded in March 2003, the delivery of the equipment was stipulated over a period of nine months. The equipment was actually received between June 2003 and March 2004, eight to 16 months beyond the date indicated by Army Headquarters. Alleviating jawans’ stress Defence Minister A K Antony has expressed concern over the deaths of soldiers due to mental stress and said he would write to the Chief Ministers to take the responsibility of looking after the families of the jawans on the borders. At a briefing last week he said tension among soldiers on the borders was increasing as they were not getting enough emotional support, due to the changes in society. “I will write to the Chief Ministers and urge them to look into the problems of the families of jawans, and the issues relating to their property and education of their children, so that the jawans on the borders are tension-free.” He also dismissed the possibility of reservation in the armed forces and said recruitment in the armed forces was done on the basis of talent and ability, and there could be no compromise on it. Indian Army Band in Japan The Indian Army Band participated in the Japan Ground Self Defence Force Band Festival 2006 held at Budokan, Tokyo, Japan recently. This festival is being held annually since 1953 to celebrate the anniversary of the Japan Self Defence Force (JSDF). Visiting Tokyo on the invitation of the Japan Defence Agency (JDA), this was the first time an Indian Army Band was invited to take part in the festival. JDA has been inviting foreign military bands to the festival as guest bands. In addition to Indian Army band, the US Army Band in Japan, US 7th Navy Band and US Marine Corps Band also participated in the festival. The two-day show was witnessed by almost 50,000 spectators. The Japanese Director General of Defence Agency Mr Fumio Kyuma and His Excellency Mr HK Singh Ambassador of India in Japan were present. Communal harmony in Ladakh The Indian Army recently held a two day seminar on “Towards a Progressive Ladakh” at Kargil, aimed at indentifying common ground and strengthening traditional and cultural bonds between the Buddhists and Muslims in the Ladakh region. A number of senior Army officers, eminent scholars, and political and religious leaders spoke about their vision for a developed, prosperous and peaceful Ladakh. Mr Pinto Norboo, the sitting MLA from Nubra constituency expressed his views on ‘Political developments in Ladakh’ and ‘Challenges ahead in the field of Economic Development’. The major issue of ‘Ramifications of the religious divide between the Buddhists and Muslims of Ladakh’ was discussed in detail. Speaking on the occasion, Lt Gen JK Mohanty, GOC 14 Corps, complimented both communities for having consistently presented a unified front against terrorism, which has prevented any inroads by militancy in Ladakh. He, however, expressed concern over the recent incidents of violence, which could break this long standing harmonious relationship between the two communities. He stressed the need to reinforce the identity of the population as ‘Ladakhis’, irrespective of religions affiliations. |
This is what should be done by one who is skilled in goodness, and who knows the path of peace: Let them be able and upright, straightforward and gentle in speech. Humble and not conceited. —The Buddha Deaf, dumb, and blind they will not get back. —The Koran Only God Himself can deliver us Only He can forgive us. —Guru Nanak
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
