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Right at the top Save women |
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Flying blind
Politics of antipathy
The bigger evil
More troops, aid needed to secure Afghanistan US elite blind to West Asia’s realities Chatterati
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Right at the top IT is incidental that chief justice-designate of the Supreme Court K.G. Balakrishnan is a Dalit and he will be the first from his community to reach that highest position. Kerala, the state he comes from, has many such firsts to its credit. The first lady judge of a high court was from the state and so was the first lady judge of the Supreme Court, who was a Muslim. However, it is worth pointing out that it was not because of any reservation that Mr Justice Balakrishnan reached so high in the profession. His brilliance and hard work as an advocate and later as a munsif and judge is what helped him achieve success in life and not any crutch the government provides. Unlike many of his predecessors, he will have a long tenure — three years — as head of the judicial system in the country. This places Mr Justice Balakrishnan in a unique place, in that he will be able to leave an abiding impact on the judicial system. At a time when the people are increasingly losing their confidence in the executive and the legislature on account of corruption and the entry of criminal elements in politics, the judiciary is seen as a beacon of hope. It is on its doors that the people knock when the other two wings are unable to deliver the goods. But this does not mean that the judicial system is in the pink of health. Every court is saddled with such a backlog of cases that it will take several decades to clear them. Computerisation has helped only to a small extent in freeing courts from delays. Ways have still to be found to quicken hearing of cases and delivery of judgements. Setting up fast-track courts, doing away with oral arguments in certain types of cases, minimising chances of appeal against the decisions of lower courts and allowing the accused to pay compensation to the victim in selected cases are ways in which delay can be avoided. Mr Justice Balakrishnan has his heart in the right place as is borne out by his statement that the courts should hear the voice of the poor without being partial and that the state must provide protection to the witnesses. He is in a position to ensure that whatever ideas he has to streamline the functioning of the Supreme Court and the high courts can be tried out during his tenure. Once such ideas are implemented at the Supreme Court level, it will percolate to the lower judiciary, which also suffers from the many ills of society like corruption. |
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Save women Haryana’s women have been getting contradictory signals from the state. On the one hand, the government is ostensibly initiating several measures to ameliorate their lot. But, on the other, they are not being allowed by all-powerful khap panchayats to even marry of their own free will. Those defying the illegal diktats cannot even dare to live in their houses. That negates all the positive steps that the government claims to be taking for them. Seen in isolation, various woman-friendly policies announced by the government are creditable no doubt. The Haryana health department has implemented an incentive-based Janani Suraksha Yojana under the National Rural Health Mission to provide financial support during deliveries to pregnant women living below poverty line. Haryana is working out a scheme to extend maternity leave from six months to five years on half pay. It has also decided to launch a state-level campaign from next month to help over 75,000 women to get employment opportunities. The process of posting women protection officers in all 47 subdivisions is under way to help women facing domestic violence. In the backdrop of all this, it seems strange that the government finds itself so defenceless against caste panchayats which want to dictate to women not only to marry within their own caste but also to steer clear of men belonging to certain “gotras”. The district administrations never catch this communal bull by the horn with the result that it continues to defy even the orders of the highest court of the land. If Haryana’s attempt to improve the lot of women has to become meaningful, it will have to tame the extra-constitutional authorities boldly and firmly once and for all. Thanks to the age-old aberrations, women are treated as second-grade entities in most rural areas. This evil is further compounded because of the male-dominated khap panchayats. The first thing that the government must do for women is to free them from their bondage. |
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Flying blind They should have done it, but they haven’t. It is more than a year since New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi airport was upgraded to the CAT III (b) Instrument Landing System (ILS), but many airlines still deploy aircraft and pilots not equipped for the system. The result is that every time visibility dips below a certain level due to fog, flights are delayed and passengers put to untold inconvenience. The domino effect ensures that with one delayed flight “bumping” another, flights all across India, and right through the day, are delayed or even cancelled. Foggy mornings are a frequent occurrence during the winter, and all the travellers can do is to grin and bear it. Poor facilities at most airports mean that passengers’ nightmares are compounded. The government’s threat last year to airliners to take away their licences if their services were not compliant, has expectedly proved hollow. While such drastic action may be the last resort, the government must draw the line somewhere. The equipment reportedly costs several crores of rupees and pilot training itself costs a few lakhs. Airlines plead enormous cost pressures from competition for low fares on the one hand, and rising fuel costs on the other. But enough is enough. The government must now fix a deadline that cannot be breached. Facilities at airports also need to be augmented. India’s national Capital truly cannot afford anything less than the best airport and accompanying services. The CAT III (b) ILS system permits a pilot to land if the runway visibility is as low as 150 feet. The plane is guided in by electronic signals providing horizontal and vertical guidance to the incoming plane, augmented by marker beacons, and, finally, the runway lights themselves. But the best of technology is useless without training and implementation — and the right attitude. “The winter’s so short anyway” argument is no longer acceptable. It’s time to see the light. |
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Had Cleopatra’s nose been shorter, the whole face of the world would have changed. — Blaise Pascal
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Politics of antipathy
AN assessment of the Muslim League in its centenary year cannot but cause dismay. Not only did it choose to divide India at the cost of millions of lives, it gave a fateful turn to Muslim politics, thereby inflicting long-term damage on the community. As Muhammed Mujeeb says in his book, The Indian Muslims, “they became a much smaller minority in India, with their loyalties obviously open to suspicion”. Had the League not made its appearance on the Indian scene, organisations like the Unionist Party and the Krishak Praja Party of undivided Punjab and Bengal might have succeeded in avoiding partition and taking Muslims along secular channels. Today, no one talks about these two parties, but it may be worthwhile to remember that in their heyday, they had a far broader popular base than the League because of their accommodative politics. The Unionist Party was a “cross-communal alliance of Muslim, Hindu and Sikh agricultural interests”, as described by Pakistani historian Ayesha Jalal, with two towering regional figures in Fazl-i-Hussain and Chaudhury Chhotu Ram as its leaders. Hussain’s importance can be gauged from the fact that Jinnah invited him to preside over the Muslim League in 1936 with the words that “I along with many others feel that at this moment no one can give a better lead to the Mussalmans of India than yourself”. Sure of his local influence, Hussain rejected the invitation and warned Jinnah to “keep his finger out of the Punjab pie”. Hussain’s successor, Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana, was quoted by Lord Wavell as saying that “Pakistan was nonsense” and “Jinnah’s policy was all wrong”. Similarly, Fazlul Huq’s KPP in Bengal with its anti-zamindari stance alienated the landholders and businessmen who constituted the League’s main block of support, with the result that the League tried to undermine the KPP by describing it as “not a purely Muslim organisation”. What is immediately obvious is that in contrast to today’s caste-based and state-based regional parties like the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Dravida Kazhagams, the Unionist Party and the KPP were far more broad-minded. Ironically, it was the League, which was supposed to be a national party, whose attitude was sectarian. It is possible that the liberal nature of Fazl-i-Hussain’s and Fazlul Huq’s parties was the result as much of their personal predilections as of their political need to consolidate their positions through an alliance of all the major communities against British rule. In addition, the fact that the Muslims were in a majority in undivided Punjab and Bengal made it unnecessary for the Unionist Party and the KPP to play the “Islam in danger” card which was the League’s slogan. It might be wrong to blame Jinnah’s transformation from an “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity”, in Gokhale’s words, to his communal self for the League’s divisive outlook. It was the League’s miserable showing in the 1937 election which convinced Jinnah that his sober, constitutional methods wouldn’t yield any political dividends. Hence the recourse to the whipping up of religious sentiments. It has to be remembered, however, that the League was no stranger to such a sectarian line, for it was conceived in the fear that a transfer of power from the British to the Hindus would be disastrous for the Muslims. In his speech on the occasion of the founding of the League on December 30, 1906, in Dhaka, Nawab Viqar-ul-Mulk Mushtaq Hussain, said that “Mussalmans are only a fifth in number as compared with the total population of the country and it is manifest that if at any remote period the British government ceases to exist in India, then the rule of India would pass into the hands of that community which is nearly four times as large as ourselves. Then, our life, our property, our honour, and our faith will be all in great danger.” Herein lies the root of the two-nation theory, which Jinnah found so politically convenient. The timing of the League’s formation, a year after the 1905 partition of Bengal, is not without significance. The British made no secret of their reasons for dividing the province. “The diminution of the power of Bengali political agitation will assist to remove a serious cause for anxiety”, said Lord Minto, who succeeded Curzon as the viceroy. Referring to Bengalis as “a population with great intellectual gifts”, he said that “from a political point of view alone, putting aside the administrative difficulties of the old province, I believe that partition to have been necessary”. The viceroy was obviously speaking mainly of the Bengali Hindus who were appalled by the vivisection of Sonar Bangla while the Muslims, who constituted the majority in the eastern half of the province, were not displeased. When the partition was annulled in 1911, the Nawab of Dhaka described it as a capitulation of the British Indian government to the Congress “agitators”. But although the province became one again, the communal poison injected into its body politik would yield bitter fruit 36 years later with the League succeeding in sweeping aside the less sectarian KPP. While political outfits like the Unionist Party and the KPP fell under the spell of religious fanaticism fomented by the League, which inspired the Pakistan movement, the Muslim religious organisations themselves had little interest in the two-nation theory. As Ayub Khan says in his autobiography, Friends, Not Masters, “It is well known that a number of Muslim ulema openly opposed the Quaid-e-Azam and denounced the concept of Pakistan”. In his book, Jinnah Reinterpreted, Saad Rashidul Khairi wrote that “it is a fact of history that with the sole exception of Maulana Shabbir Ahmed Usmani, no alim of any standing supported the idea of Pakistan; they actually opposed it with all their power”. It may not be fanciful to suggest that like the Unionist and KPP leaders, the Muslim clerics were more in touch with the ordinary Muslims who had lived for centuries with their Hindu neighbours. It has to be remembered that the electorate in the thirties and forties was restricted to the people of property. There was no universal franchise. So, the large masses of ordinary people were excluded from having any say in the future of their country. It was the elitists in the League who decided for them by raising the fear of Hindu domination. How wrong they were was proved only 24 years later when the fear of Punjabi Muslim domination made the Bengali Muslims bury the two-nation theory. Inevitably, the League’s false proclamations subsequently made it irrelevant in the subcontinent. In India, it exists only in Kerala, far away from its original base in northern India. In Pakistan, its “demise” was ascribed by Ian Talbot in his book, Pakistan: A Modern History, to its lack of a mass base. “The League’s failure”, he wrote, “to evolve as an institutional pillar of the Pakistan state contrasts dramatically with the role played by the Congress in Indian politics . A number of writers would have us believe that the absence of mass Muslim League support during the freedom struggle is at the root of the different experiences in the two states”. He also mentions other reasons such as Liaquat Ali Khan’s assassination in 1951 and the League’s defeat in East Pakistan in 1954 from which it never recovered “not only in East Pakistan but at the Centre”. The League represents, therefore, a sad interlude in the subcontinent’s
history.
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The bigger evil
Our country ranks quite high in the matter of corruption. We can, nonetheless, take comfort from fact that we are in good company. Some prominent countries like Russia, China and Pakistan are , more or less , at the same level. In fact, Lord Clive & Warren Hastings who laid such strong foundation of the British Empire in India were the known corrupts and were duly put to shame for this back home. Yet, they kept the interest of the empire above theirs and did nothing that would damage the clout of their country. Our corruption, however, has a different dimension. It is intermixed with inefficiency and arrogance. Government officials here do not think that they are the paid servants of the people. They consider themselves as part of the ruling establishment and the people as their subjects. The other day the members of a group housing society in the country’s capital were waiting for the allocation of their flats through the draw of lots. As per the prevailing practice, the draw had to be managed by some officials from the office of the Registrar of Co-operative Societies and the local development authority. There was no trace of these worthies at the appointed time. The members of the society that included an officer of the rank of a Secretary to the Government of India were getting restive. The embarrassed prime-mover of the society was pacing up and down muttering that they would definitely come as all their demands had been met. After keeping everybody waiting for over two hours a bunch of half a dozen blokes led by an official of hardly Under Secretary’s rank appeared on the scene. In the manner of a minister, the senior officer apologised to the gathering for delay, but wanted them to appreciate how busy (read important) they were. The half amused and half confused members felt like shoe-beating them out of the complex, but remained quiet keeping their helpless situation in view. So, the bribes in our country are not collected as crumbs but are extracted as tributes. Like the hated levy of “Zazia” in some periods of Muslim rule these are required to be paid in all humility. These days some ten thousand members of the housing societies in Delhi are in intense agony. Their flats have been ready for years but they are not being allowed to occupy these, statedly for judicial reasons. Though there is no court stay in the case the very pendency of even a remotely connected matter there provides good enough an excuse for those unwilling to work. In this context, an exasperated old man, waiting long to move to his fully paid for home recently remarked that the previous Registrar (now in jail for allegations of corruption) is preferable to the present one. He may have been carried away by his desperation, but he has perhaps said it. Inefficiency, indeed, is a bigger evil than
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More troops, aid needed to secure Afghanistan The recent, unprecedented complaints by Britain’s top military brass about underfunded and ill-equipped British troops in Afghanistan have raised fresh questions about the ability of NATO forces to stem the resurgence of extremist violence there, over the last year or so. Taliban, al Qaeda and Hizb-e-Islami foot-soldiers have stepped up their operations in south eastern Afghanistan, despite the expansion of the NATO military force. American sources reveal that the number of direct fire attacks on the Afghan army increased almost four times; there were more than 100 suicide bomb attacks from January to November 2006. The number of attacks on NATO troops more than doubled in 2006. Weak governance is a crucial problem. Five years after the defeat and ousting of the Taliban regime it is clear that its overthrow was merely the first uncertain step towards the crafting of stability and economic betterment for Afghans. Security, governance and development remain intertwined; better governance and progress are impossible without security; it might be years before extremists are quashed and the support of ordinary Afghans cannot be won through military means alone. There is not much point in criticizing NATO for focusing either on military security or on ‘pipe-dream democratic development’: both go hand in hand. The inroads made by extremists are facilitated by an ineffective and corrupt government which does not possess the resources to reduce the dependence of Afghan farmers on opium poppies for a livelihood. In September the United Nations announced that opium production in Afghanistan had risen by 50 percent since 2005. Some 92 percent of the world's raw heroin now comes from Afghanistan and NATO troops have so far not been able to sever the links between the Taliban and drug dealers. Development programmes have been piecemeal and have made little headway in the areas bordering Pakistan, where they are most needed to counter Taliban influence. But there is popular support for NATO in Afghanistan, and for its strategy of trying to strengthen governance and to build up the economy, the Afghan army and police. Whatever the hardships faced by Afghans, the Taliban are not popular; Afghans fear intimidation and harassment by militants and would like to be better protected against them. One thing is certain: that Afghanistan does need much more military and economic aid. And that economic largesse has to reach the country’s citizens. They are the real victims of extremist violence. Access to water is an immediate problem in the face of drought and a collapsed irrigation system; money is needed to improve that, to improve medical facilities over a harsh winter, and to build roads and schools. At least $ 1.5 billion will be needed over the next year to improve the economic infrastructure of Afghanistan. And the assurance of longer-term aid from the US and its EU allies is necessary to give impetus to the reconstruction of this war-torn country. America’s avoidable misadventure in Iraq has prevented more military and economic aid - and troops — from being sent to Afghanistan. Washington actually cut aid to Afghanistan by 30 per cent last year, despite the growing threats to military and economic security. Concentration on Afghanistan, rather than on demolishing imagined threats of WMD and ‘terrorism’ in Iraq, might have resulted in a more effective strategy against extremist violence in Afghanistan, which is where the war against global terrorism started in October 2001. Indeed American — and British — commanders have asked for more and better equipped troops to shore up the anti-extremist campaign in Afghanistan. There is also a question mark over the training given to, and the preparedness of, the Afghan army. Soldiers and police do not receive regular salaries; consequently they try to extort a living in order to survive. And estimates suggest that the Afghan army has received a mere 20 per cent of the money it requires to become an efficient fighting force. Some Afghan battalions have only a fifth of the soldiers they need. The strategies of NATO countries have not been well thought out or coordinated. For example, Germany has spent the last few years trying to build up a conventional police force for a ravaged by years of war with only 40 police trainers. On the other side British and American commanders have contended that the greatest need was for well-trained and equipped military and paramilitary troops — and more and better trained policemen. In the long run the US must underwrite NATO’s efforts to provide greater military and economic security to Afghans. Political constraints prevent troops from EU countries, including Germany, Spain, and Italy from fighting. Some French Special Forces have played a role in combat but they will leave in January 2007. However, the failure of NATO to halt the extremists’ infiltration into Afghanistan does not necessarily imply that an ‘Iraq-style’ disaster is on the cards. Unlike the war in Iraq, America’s intervention against the Taliban was legitimised by the UN Security Council and had the support of many Asian countries including India. Pouring money into the wrong war in Iraq has left the US searching desperately for an exit strategy from there, Putting more money into a legitimate war against extremism in Afghanistan would have been more realistic. |
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US elite blind to West Asia’s realities I call it the Alice in Wonderland effect. Each time I tour the United States, I stare through the looking glass at how a distant tragedy turned, here in America, into a farce of hypocrisy and banality and barefaced lies. I picked up Jimmy Carter’s new book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid at San Francisco airport, and zipped through it in a day. It’s a good, strong read by the only American president approaching sainthood. Carter lists the outrageous treatment meted out to the Palestinians, the Israeli occupation, the dispossession of Palestinian land by Israel, the brutality visited upon this denuded, subject population, and what he calls “a system of apartheid, with two peoples occupying the same land but completely separated from each other, with Israelis totally dominant and suppressing violence by depriving Palestinians of their basic human rights”. Carter quotes an Israeli as saying he is “afraid that we are moving towards a government like that of South Africa, with a dual society of Jewish rulers and Arabs subjects with few rights of citizenship...”. A proposed but unacceptable modification of this choice, Carter adds, “is the taking of substantial portions of the occupied territory, with the remaining Palestinians completely surrounded by walls, fences, and Israeli checkpoints, living as prisoners within the small portion of land left to them”. Needless to say, the American press and television largely ignored the appearance of this eminently sensible book - until the usual Israeli lobbyists began to scream abuse at poor old Jimmy Carter, albeit that he was the architect of the longest lasting peace treaty between Israel and an Arab neighbour — Egypt — secured with the famous 1978 Camp David accords. This is no tract by a Harvard professor on the power of the lobby. It’s an honourable, honest account by a friend of Israel as well as the Arabs who just happens to be a fine American ex-statesman. Which is why Carter’s book is now a best-seller — and applause here, by the way, for the great American public that bought the book instead of believing Mr Foxman. But in this context, why, I wonder, didn’t The New York Times and the other gutless mainstream newspapers in the United States mention Israel’s cosy relationship with that very racist apartheid regime in South Africa which Carter is not supposed to mention in his book? Didn’t Israel have a wealthy diamond trade with sanctioned, racist South Africa? Didn’t Israel have a fruitful and deep military relationship with that racist regime? At Detroit airport, I picked up an even slimmer volume, the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group Report — which doesn’t really study Iraq at all but offers a few bleak ways in which George Bush can run away from this disaster without too much blood on his shirt. After chatting to the Iraqis in the green zone of Baghdad — dream zone would be a more accurate title — there are a few worthy suggestions (already predictably rejected by the Israelis): a resumption of serious Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, an Israeli withdrawal from Golan, etc. But for sheer folly, it was impossible to beat the post-Baker debate among the great and the good who dragged the United States into this catastrophe. General Peter Pace, the extremely odd chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, said of the American war in Iraq that “we are not winning, but we are not losing”. Bush’s new defence secretary, Robert Gates, announced that he “agreed with General Pace that we are not winning, but we are not losing”. Baker himself jumped into the same nonsense pool by asserting: “I don’t think you can say we’re losing. By the same token (sic), I’m not sure we’re winning.” At which point, Bush proclaimed this week that — yes — “we’re not winning, we’re not losing”. Pity about the Iraqis. I pondered this madness during a bout of severe turbulence at 37,000 feet over Colorado. And that’s when it hit me, the whole final score in this unique round of the Iraq war between the United States of America and the forces of evil. It’s a draw! By arrangement with
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Chatterati When you have Her Highness, the Maharani of Jaipur, Gayatri Devi, as graceful as ever at a function, rest assured it is for a noble cause. As it is, celebrities never miss a chance to support their favourite cause. A leading fashion house came up with a plethora of activities with models displaying scarves, saris, ties and the like. The clothes were then auctioned for the WWF India Tiger project. Delhi’s glitterati came out in large numbers to support the endeavour. The message was sent out loud and clear that celebrities and the fashion world do have their concerns for endangered species. Head to head Talking about fashion shows, Ritu Beri has just launched her stylish hats. Whether it was the politicians like Najma Heptullah or others, Ritu had them all in her topis. This capital is known for the netas tugging at each other’s topis and now we will spot the fashion frats doing the same too. “Kis ki topi kis ke sar par?” As it is, you never know in this town. For a better life The many bar girls left without jobs after the ban on dance bars, have found help in their fight for survival in the form of Sanman Mahila Manch, a cooperative which provides them small loans. One of the remarkable features of the cooperative is that it does not ask for security against the loan. The loans can be repaid in small installments. This cooperative functions on trust. There are nearly 500 bar girls registered with the cooperative. For the bar girls, it is an opening to a better life. Nitish, the star An MLA from Bihar’s ruling JD(U) is producing a Bhojpuri film to celebrate the end of the 15-year-long Laloo-Rabri regime and the inception of “sushasan” (good-governance) under Nitish Kumar. The first-time legislator from Biharsharif, Dr Sunil Singh, has embarked upon producing the film with an aim of hitting two birds at one time — making money and pleasing his political boss, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. Though with political overtones, it will be laced with songs and dances. It narrates the story of two friends who take to crime, frustrated by the misrule during the Laloo-Rabri regime. They finally give up crime and join the mainstream after Nitish Kumar takes over as the Chief Minister. So far Singh has produced three Bengali films — one of them being a box office hit — but has always cherished the idea of producing a Bhojpuri film. Although the name of the film is yet to be finalised, Singh has already selected Bali, credited with making several hit Bhojpuri films, as the director. Nitish Kumar would be making an appearance in the film.
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The fourth is the super consciousness state called Turiya, neither inward nor outward, Beyond the senses and the intellect, In which there is none other than the Lord. He is the supreme goal of life. He is infinite peace and love. Realise him!
Contemplation of the True Lord, brings illumination.
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