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Another kind of justice Polls are here Growth for whom? |
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Benefits of Indo-US deal
The forgotten grandmother
There are others who are also guilty... 2007: landmark year for robotics? Chatterati
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Another kind of justice SADDAM Hussein has ultimately met his end. That he had to pay for what he had done in his life was certain after his capture by US forces from his underground hideout. But very few people expected his execution so soon, on the fifth day after Iraq’s highest appeals court upheld on December 26 the death sentence awarded to him in November for his “crimes against humanity”. Sending him to the gallows on a day when Sunni Iraqis were preparing to celebrate Eid-ul-Azha — the Shias did it the next day — raises certain questions. Why did the US-sponsored Noori Al-Maliki government choose this special occasion for the execution? The court had given 30 days for the implementation of its order. Was it meant to humiliate Saddam and his followers during the final hours of his life? Or was there some other purpose? Perhaps, it did not want the protests against Saddam’s hanging to gain momentum. Obviously, the Iraqi government could not have acted so quickly without signals from Washington. Whatever the reason, Saddam’s hanging does not meet the ends of justice. After all, his trial was a farce. The death sentence pronounced by “a counterfeit court cannot carry conviction”, as former Supreme Court judge V. R. Krishna Iyer says. Saddam, of course, was not innocent. He was a ruthless dictator and a tyrant, and must have committed crimes against his own people, besides fighting wars against Iran and Kuwait. But Iraq under him was a sovereign country, and only the Iraqis had the right to bring him to justice. What he has got is nothing but victor’s justice, meted out to him during the American occupation of Iraq. Saddam seems to have become a powerful symbol of resistance against those who believe that might still pays in the international order. What is, however, unfortunate is that his avoidable hanging has fractured the Iraqi society beyond repair. This is proved by the way the Iraqis have reacted to Saddam’s execution. The Shia-Sunni divide is now so deep that it may not allow any reconciliation effort to succeed in the foreseeable future. A dead Saddam may continue to add more fuel to the flames of Sunni insurgency than when he was alive. The hanging reflects shortsightedness, which will harm the interests of the Iraqis as well as of the United States. |
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Polls are here THE ordering of elections in Punjab, Uttaranchal and Manipur has brought to an end the practice of the state governments announcing a spree of election-eve sops to the voters. This is particularly true about Punjab where the government has announced several such sops even after the last session of the Assembly was held. There would have been more such announcements if the Election Commission had waited to announce the election schedule. It is a measure of the success of democracy that in all these states, the ruling party was able to complete its full term. The elections are crucial for the ruling Congress as it is holding the reins of power in Punjab and Uttaranchal. In Punjab the way the Congress and the Shiromani Akali Dal-BJP combine have been conducting themselves in the run-up to the polls did not inspire confidence. Both sides have shown a tendency to hit each other below the belt. Now that the model code of conduct evolved by the Election Commission has come into force, it is fervently hoped that both the ruling party and the Opposition would strictly adhere to it. If the Amarinder Singh government truly believes in its “success”, it can certainly seek votes on its achievements. Similarly, if the SAD-BJP alliance is convinced that the Congress has failed on redeeming its promises, it can list them one by one and seek the votes on that count. In other words, there is no need to resort to indecent campaigns to paint the rivals in the blackest hue. The voters expect the two main parties in the fray to campaign on issues, rather than personalities. They also expect all political parties not to pander to caste and religious feelings in their bid to be one up on each other. Such an approach will make the campaign healthier, cleaner and purposeful. It is a measure of the confidence in the peaceful nature of the people of Punjab that the Election Commission has gone in for a one-day poll. The two-week interregnum between the day of polling and the day of counting was unavoidable as elections are to be held in insurgency-hit Manipur during the same period. While the Election Commission is duty bound to hold a free and fair poll, it is incumbent upon the parties concerned to facilitate its work by strictly adhering to the model code of conduct. The violators need to be dealt with sternly, both by the commission and the voters. |
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Growth for whom? THE
massive “childcare failure” is a matter of national shame and sits uneasily with India’s 9 per cent growth story. Economist Amartya Sen, releasing a report on “Focus on Children Under Six” has stressed that the population of underweight children is not going down. Immunisation efforts have not reached everyone, and several health problems remain. Such a failure in taking care of the well-being of the children and the nation’s future is not only morally untenable but also a major handicap in our progress. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stressed recently that benefits of growth should reach all. Suffering children are the most distressing aspect of a failure to ensure a broad spread of growth, and all concerned departments should make a concerted effort at changing ground realities. The first step towards amelioration is always an acknowledgement of the severity of the problem, and Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia’s admission that the much-touted Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) was not doing well across the country, is in the right spirit. He has promised more money for the ICDS in the 11th plan. Increased budgetary allocation by itself will not tackle the problem. Even a country like Bangladesh has done better in child welfare. Implementation is key, and while state governments have clearly been lax in this regard, merely passing the buck back and forth between states and the Centre serves no purpose. If there are any lacunae in terms of facilities, training and manpower at the state level, the centre should go beyond funding and increase its involvement. All agencies should show more commitment. No progress can be truly meaningful unless it is reflected in the smiles of the poorest of our children. |
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Take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.
— William Lowndes |
Benefits of Indo-US deal WITH the ratification of the enabling Bill on Indo-US nuclear cooperation by President Bush, the last hurdles for the nuclear deal to become a reality have to be tackled by the Indian leadership with support from the US administration. The two barriers still to be crossed are concurrence of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and negotiating an India-specific safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). No less challenging is the drawing up of the 123 Agreement — essentially a bilateral Indo-US agreement — spelling out the terms of the accord binding on the two governments. It can reasonably be assumed that the first two hurdles will be successfully dealt with. The friendly — almost partisan — stand of France, Britain and Russia on the nuclear deal will smoothen the way to NSG concurrence. Most members of the group have indicated their willingness to terminate the nuclear sanctions imposed on India. Misgivings of the Scandinavian countries apart, the focus is on China and Japan. All said and done, the Chinese leadership takes an enlightened view on global civilian nuclear issues and has given ample indication that despite its earlier reservations, it will enable the NSG to lift nuclear sanctions on India. Although Japan’s support should not be taken for granted, the Prime Minister’s visit to that country has paved the way for a positive stand. New Delhi has, however, to remove Japan’s lingering doubts that the nuclear deal might be used to boost India’s weapon capability. As for the IAEA safeguards, negotiations are already on between IAEA Director-General Mohammed Al-Baradei and the Chairman of India’s Atomic Energy Commission, Dr Anil Kakodkar. Dr AlBaradei is a friend of India and has supported the Indo-US nuclear accord. But working out India-specific IAEA safeguards to fit the new dispensation for India has many complexities and needs careful working out. IAEA safeguards in this instance are of a new variety — neither the safeguards that the IAEA applies to the five NPT weapon states nor the full scope intrusive safeguards for non-weapon member-states. India’s weapon status is being given tacit acceptance despite its being an NPT non-member. Its civilian and military facilities are being separated; the safeguards will be applicable only on the civilian facilities. Apprehensions in India about the way the IAEA safeguards will be worked, especially in relation to the R&D centres and Indian scientists’ innovation, have to be removed. As of now, IAEA safeguards on India have been limited only to imported nuclear material and plants —Tarapur and Russian supported VVER light water reactors being built at Kudankulam and the LEU fuel imported for light water reactors. It is now proposed that in addition to this limited safeguards agreement, an additional India-specific protocol will be drawn up between the IAEA and New Delhi. The civilian facilities listed out in the Indo-US accord will be placed under the IAEA safeguards. These include not only the present and future imported nuclear reactors, material and technology, but also 14 of the 22 Indian built (some under construction) civilian reactors, future civilian fast-breeder reactors (other than the fast-breeder test reactor and the upcoming 500 MWe prototype fast-breeder reactor), designated heavy water plants, part of the nuclear fuel complex and civilian R&D complexes like the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, the Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics and the Institute of Plasma Research, and the Prefree Tarapur Reprocessing Plant. The nuclear military facilities will not be under the IAEA purview and will be entirely for India to operate. It is for India to name its military and civilian facilities. The facilities that India names as military — BARC, Kalpakkam’s IGCAR, FBTR and the upcoming 500 MW prototype Fast Breeder Reactor, the supporting infrastructure and reprocessing plants — will determine India’s strategic programme out of the IAEA safeguards purview. India is also free to build any fresh military facility to keep its nuclear deterrent in vibrant condition. The shape of the Indian nuclear deterrent is for the Indian government to comprehend and decide — based on its threat perception and global overview. Some senior nuclear scientists — Dr P.K. Iyengar, former AEC Chairman, for instance — have criticised the inclusion of R&D centres under the safeguards regime. And also future fast breeder reactors. This, they contend, will stifle scientific creativity and serve as a conduit leaking Indian innovation abroad. Dr Iyengar also maintains that moratorium on nuclear tests should go: further tests are needed for India’s credible nuclear deterrent. Others are critical that not allowing the import of enrichment and reprocessing technology by India envisaged in the Hyde Act cripples US nuclear cooperation for India. Besides the civilian nuclear cooperation, critics apprehend that Indian foreign policy will become a tail of US global interests, as in Iran. These are major concerns. But there are good reasons to believe that the Indian authorities — political and nuclear establishments — have taken care to deal with the issues raised. The Prime Minister has given clear assurance that innovation and research in R&D centres placed under safeguards will have no constraints. That is what an India-specific safeguards agreement with the IAEA means. As for bringing 14 Indian-built reactors and future fast breeder reactors under safeguards, this is all to India’s benefit since curbs on uranium imports will go. There is assurance in the accord announced by President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that uranium supplies for the safeguarded reactors will be available for lifetime, which is a major boost to the Indian nuclear power programme. Bringing the TIFR, the VECC, the Institute of Plasma Research and the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics under safeguards has advantages too; the sanctions regime covered all these institutes and constrained their activity and creative work. Now, these constraints will be lifted. If the apprehensions are that research that has a bearing on India’s strategic programme will be affected, the answer is that the hub of Indian nuclear strategic build-up and research is the BARC and the IGARC. These are not in the purview of the IAEA safeguards. The only concern of the IAEA is to assure that imported nuclear material, reactors and technology are not availed of for expanding Indian strategic programme. The 123 Agreement between the United States and India is the key requisite to give the Indo-US deal a legal shape; the terms of this agreement will be binding on both governments. Drawing up the 123 Agreement is thus the most important task, and it should meet all valid concerns such as the specifics on the provision for uranium imports for the safeguarded nuclear facilities.. There can be no limitations on the use of India-built reprocessing plants. This has to be specified in the final Indo-US bilateral agreement, embodied in the 123 Agreement. It is necessary to speedily work out the agreement on the lines of the two statements of President Bush and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. The event will usher in what might be called a new era in India’s nuclear programme. A nuclear renaissance, advancing the target of 20,000 MW nuclear power from 2020 in just five years, is on the anvil. A nuclear renaissance for the Indian economy, giving not only a vital input for growth at a crucial juncture, but also clean energy that does not add to global
warming. The writer is a senior journalist specialising in nuclear affairs
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The forgotten grandmother IT was a strange wound, a deep incision in the joint of her big left toe. After every conceivable form of treatment had failed my aunt agreed to an amputation. The operation was over in an hour and the surgeon told us to come back at four to collect her. We reached at four thirty. There was no sign of her. We searched high and low but could not find her. The surgeon could not help us, the sister on duty had come in at 2.30 p.m. and found another old lady outside the operation theatre. She had trundled her into the recovery room where she was still fast asleep. The sister on morning duty, when summoned, admitted that her leave started at one, so she had left both the patients outside the operation theatre, where she was sure the relatives would find them. Who had taken my aunt away? We rang up everyone we knew and finally informed the police, but got no answer till nine o’ clock in the evening. My aunt had begun to regain consciousness. She could see and hear but she herself could neither speak nor act. Two youngsters came into the corridor and peered down at her, first one and then the other. “Is this one ours?” one of them asked. “I think so. Amit said his grandmother was good looking and this one is the better looking of the two.” They carried her to their car. She tried to protest but no words would come. All she could do was give way to tears. “Why is she crying?” The first youngster asked. “Do you think she is in pain?” “Patients coming out of anaesthesia behave in an irrational way,” the other said reassuringly. They took her home and put her to bed and all through the process all she could do was cry. “Perhaps she needs something.” “All she needs is sleep. Granny,” he said patting her hand. “Amit will be here at six. You’ll be all right. Come, lets watch the match.” From time to time the youngster would look in on her and every time she tried to protest he patted her hand and said. “Don’t worry, just relax.” She worried that they would not discover their mistake, that she would have to spend the night here and we would be worried to death. When she found her voice she shouted for help but her cries were drowned in the sound of the television. At last, a third youngster came into the room. He took one look at her and said. “God! That’s not my grandmother.” The first one turned to my aunt and asked accusingly. “Why didn’t you tell us you didn’t belong to us?” “I did try but you wouldn’t listen,” and my aunt broke into tears again. And all through the drama, the forgotten grandmother slept peacefully in the recovery room, oblivious to the fact that she had been forgotten and
abandoned. |
There are others who are also guilty... SADDAM to the Gallows. It was an easy equation. Who could be more deserving of that last walk to the scaffold — that crack of the neck at the end of a rope — but someone who murdered untold hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis while spraying chemical weapons over his enemies? Our masters will tell us that it is a “great day’’ for Iraqis and will hope that the Muslim world will forget that his death sentence was signed — by the Iraqi ‘government’, but on behalf of the Americans — on the very eve of the Eid al-Adha, the Feast of the Sacrifice, the moment of greatest forgiveness in the Arab world. But history will record that the Arabs and other Muslims and, indeed, many millions in the west, will ask another question, a question that will not be posed in other western newspapers because it is not the narrative laid down for us by our presidents and by our prime ministers — what about the other guilty men? No, Tony Blair is not Saddam. We don’t gas our enemies. George W Bush is not Saddam. He didn’t invade Iran or Kuwait. He only invaded Iraq. But hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians are dead — and thousands of western troops are dead — because Messrs Bush and Blair and the Spanish prime minister and the Italian prime minister and the Australian prime minister went to war in 2003 on a potage of lies and mendacity and, given the weapons we used, with great brutality. In the aftermath of the international crimes against humanity of 2001, we have tortured, we have murdered, we have brutalised and killed the innocent — we have even added our shame at Abu Ghraib to Saddam’s shame at Abu Ghraib — and yet we are supposed to forget these terrible crimes as we applaud the swinging corpse of the dictator we created. Who encouraged Saddam to invade Iran in 1980 — the greatest war crime he has committed for it led to the deaths of a million and a half souls — and who sold him the components for the chemical weapons with which he drenched Iran and the Kurds? We in the west did. No wonder the Americans, who controlled Saddam’s weird trial, forbade any mention of this, his most obscene atrocity, in the charges against him. Could he not have been handed over to the Iranians for sentencing for this massive war crime? Of course not. Because that would also expose our culpability. And the mass killings we perpetrated in 2003 with our depleted uranium shells and our ‘bunker buster’ bombs and our phosphorous, the murderous post-invasion sieges of Fallujah and Najaf, the hell-disaster of anarchy we unleashed on the Iraqi population in the aftermath of our ‘victory’ — our ‘mission accomplished’ — who will be found guilty of this? Such expiation as we might expect will come, no doubt, in the self-serving memoirs of Blair and Bush, written in comfortable and wealthy retirement. I have catalogued Saddam’s monstrous crimes over the years. I have talked to the Kurdish survivors of Halabja and the Shiites who rose up against the dictator at our request in 1991 and who were betrayed by us — and whose comrades, in their tens of thousands, along with their wives, were hanged like thrushes by Saddam’s executioners. I have walked round the execution chamber of Abu Ghraib — only months, it later transpired, after we had been using the same prison for a few tortures and killings of our own — and I have watched Iraqis pull thousands of their dead relatives from the mass graves of Hilla. One of them has a newly-inserted artificial hip and a medical identification number on his arm. He had been taken directly from hospital to his place of execution. Like Donald Rumsfeld, I have even shaken the dictator’s soft, damp hand. Yet the old war criminal finished his days in power writing romantic novels. It was my colleague, Tom Friedman — now a messianic columnist for the New York Times — who perfectly caught Saddam’s character just before the 2003 invasion: Saddam was, he wrote, “part Don Corleone, part Donald Duck’’. And, in this unique definition, Friedman caught the horror of all dictators; their sadistic attraction and the grotesque, unbelievable nature of their barbarity. But that is not how the Arab world will see him. At first, those who suffered from Saddam’s cruelty will welcome his execution. Hundreds wanted to pull the hangman’s lever. So will many other Kurds and Shiites outside Iraq welcome his end. But they — and millions of other Muslims — will remember how he was informed of his death sentence at the dawn of the Eid al-Adha feast, which recalls the would-be sacrifice by Abraham, of his son, a commemoration which even the ghastly Saddam cynically used to celebrate by releasing prisoners from his jails. “Handed over to the Iraqi authorities,’’ he may have been before his death. But his execution will go down — correctly — as an American affair and time will add its false but lasting gloss to all this — that the west destroyed an Arab leader who no longer obeyed his orders from Washington, that, for all his wrongdoing (and this will be the terrible get-out for Arab historians, this shaving away of his crimes) Saddam died a ‘martyr’ to the will of the new ‘Crusaders’. When he was captured in November of 2003, the insurgency against American troops increased in ferocity. After his death, it will redouble in intensity again. Freed from the remotest possibility of Saddam’s return by his execution, the west’s enemies in Iraq have no reason to fear the return of his Baathist regime. Osama bin Laden will certainly rejoice, along with Bush and Blair. And there’s a thought. So many crimes avenged. But we will have got away with it. By arrangement with
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2007: landmark year for robotics? Comes now the minor miracle of The Week After Christmas, 2006. These are the days when liberal-arts majors finally crossed the line, falling into an emotional relationship with a real robot. Not one on a movie screen, but one that scoots around their ankles, scaring their cats — isn’t that fun to watch — while actually being quite useful. This week, women all over America — and not a few men — are cooing and doting over their surprise hit Christmas present. They swoon when it hides under the couch and plays peekaboo. When it gets tired and finds its way back to its nest, sings a little song and then settles into a nap, its little power button pulsing like a beating heart, on, off, on, off, they swear they can hear it breathe. It’s as cute as E.T., as devoted as R2D2, more practical than a robotic dog and cheaper than some iPods. It’s a Roomba, an artificially intelligent floor-vacuuming robot, and this is the year mountains of them rumbled off the shelves. They landed on the floors not just of innovators and early adopters, as in the previous four years, but the hip majority targeted by “Saturday Night Live.” More than 2 million of the machines, which range in price from about $150 to $330, have been sold. “The Roomba is wonderful!” says Kazuko Price, a family practice physician in Alexandria, Va., who says her patients include a lot of “kids who come in and mess up.” Her robot cleans four rooms. “Well, sometimes he’s dumb. He keeps going back to the same place. I kick him.” She’s named hers Robert. Why does she thinks it’s a boy? “Because I’m a she, that’s why. I like guys.” These people are onto something. The wonder is only marginally about dust bunnies. It’s about robot love. The cultural moment when the walls between human and artificially intelligent machine began to tumble arguably came a couple of years ago when an “SNL” skit imagined a product called the Woomba, “the first fully automated completely robotic feminine hygiene product.” That moment can now be revisited on YouTube. This week, however, the cinematic moments occur in homes. Visit new Roomba owners and the scene is like those old war movies where you can hear the sounds of conflict, but all you can see are the faces of onlookers, cringing and turning away. The thumps and bumps under the bed finally end and suddenly these faces break into rapture as the Roomba emerges - covered with dust, but victorious. “We could have made the Roomba cuter,” says Colin Angle, the chief executive officer of iRobot, the Massachusetts firm that makes the Roomba and Scooba as well as a host of military robots. “But we wanted to make sure this product was taken seriously. Rather than put a little bunny on top, we hit the efficacy message over and over again, because it appeals to the busy homemaker who has the job that needs to get done. “And then she decides it’s cute. The epiphany is when adults start talking about it as a helpful member of the family. You get them saying `I do this and Rosie does that’ or `We can’t imagine Rosie not helping us.” Indeed, the vast majority of Roombas get named, according to Angle. Kids name 40 percent of them when they’re barely out of the box. The naming decision leads to questions of whether a Roomba is male or female. Rosie is the most common name, says Angle, after the robotic maid of “The Jetsons.” But the Roomba does seem kind of male, in an eager-to-please fifth-grader way. Adding to its Y-chromosome cred is that you wish it had a little more memory, and that its meanderings weren’t so random. There’s even a group on Amazon discussing why so many people view Roombas as male. By arrangement with |
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Chatterati CHRISTMAS and New Year is really a busy time for the VVIP security squads. This year is no exception. The Congress’s first family, with near and dear relatives, are off for a holiday to Kerala. Sitaram Yechuri of the CPM is away to Malaysia. Prakash Karat is also in Kerala. Opposition Leader L K Advani is going off to Rishikesh to spend a quiet evening with his family, participating in the Ganga-aarti. Mayawati and Mulayam, keeping in mind the coming UP elections, will be the only ones working over time in UP to woo the minority vote bank. The first of January is Bakra Eid so both these regional leaders will be doing their Maulana Act with vengeance, visiting one mosque after another. Raj revisited Students in India have got pretty much used to controversies regarding textbooks. Our students have to worry about attempts to rewrite history every few years, when the Government changes and new theories get to dominate old ones. Of course, it is not just history, but some times even Physics and Maths that are subject to rough treatment. Now it’s the turn of the British. And in focus is our very own Jallianwala Bagh. The vicious massacre is a sad milestone in our history. But including it in a British History School textbook has raised hackles there. Apologists of the empire believe that it need not be included at all. British confusion over the worst instances of the cruelty of the Raj is well illustrated by this controversy. Those who wrote the textbook are perhaps taking a cue from former Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who on his visit to Amritsar had expressed his grief over the killings. Of course, some years ago, the Queen also visited the Jallianwala Bagh but chose not to say sorry. But the plight of the poor school children who are trying to study history in Britain will be sorry indeed. Much of recent world history will be out of their textbooks if they try to whitewash all the sins of the empire.
Ugly city Delhi may want to become a world class city by 2010, but things don’t seem to be working too well for the capital. A Human Development report released by the Planning Commission’s Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia has rated Delhi as one of the worst cities in the world. According to the report, a survey says that about half of Delhiites believe that the city is unsafe for women. Ninety percent feel that the public transport is not fit for women. The report also slams the pathetic power and water supply. The common man suffers while the VIP areas do not know about the anguish they are going through. Over a lakh and half children of school-going age do not go to school. But Delhi is not alone in this. Many other towns and cities in India are in the same state. |
Though one may be the son of a noble king but if he is wrathful and strikes terror in the hearts of his subjects, he is not worthy of being the king. The king must be righteous as well as noble. —The Mahabharata Only when God casts a glance of mercy man can contemplate Him. — Guru Nanak Smiles generate smiles, just as love generates love. — Mother Teresa |
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NO less an authority than Bill Gates announces in the current issue of Scientific American that 2007 is the year the robotics industry will take off the way the personal computer industry did 30 years ago. “Some of the world’s best minds are trying to solve the toughest problems of robotics,” he writes. “And they are succeeding.”