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Slugfest at Amritsar Shielding the corrupt |
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Sound of money Is this music to the voter’s ears? THE process towards elections for the Punjab Assembly is revealing — for what is declared as well as what the declarations conceal. When the Election Commission stipulated that candidates have to declare their assets (financial, not political) and ‘liabilities’ (criminal record) at the time of filing nominations, few would have expected the aspirants to let it all hang out.
Politics of proliferation
Borders of mind
US Indians set to expand sphere of influence ULFA’s path to terror Bihar needs development strategy
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Slugfest at Amritsar THE Amritsar Lok Sabha seat has suddenly become the most avidly watched contest following the unprecedented Supreme Court verdict staying the conviction of Navjot Singh Sidhu in a road rage case. As was quite expected, the BJP has readopted the cricketer, who has given a comic touch to the idiot box, as a candidate for the seat he had vacated last month. Taking him on will be Punjab Finance Minister Surinder Singla, who had been lobbying hard for this seat for several weeks. That this will be a close race goes without saying. Former cricket star Sidhu has promptly thanked God for this turn of events. Actually, thanks should have gone to the apex court, because the decision has a large element of surprise to it. Legal experts are of the view that this is perhaps the first time that conviction has been stayed in such a manner. What seems to have weighed a lot with the judges perhaps was the fact that he had promptly resigned last month on moral grounds on being convicted by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The court also raised doubts on the high court’s order not “adverting” to the aspect that initially Sidhu’s name was not in the FIR and he was made an accused later by the sessions court. The Bench also raised doubts on the high court’s analysis of the medical findings and said the fact that the victim was suffering from heart ailment had not been taken into consideration. Questions remain. Will he resign again if his conviction is upheld? But for the time being what matters is that there is no bar on his contesting the elections. That has electrified the BJP-SAD camp, for which he is a star campaigner. Even though he has not been acquitted, Mr Sidhu and his supporters are likely to project it as a “moral victory”. On the other hand, his challenger Surinder Singla has already begun stressing his conviction for “culpable homicide not amounting to murder”, and as expected not his reprieve. However, what the consequences of the Supreme Court order are going to be on similar legal cases in future remains to be seen. Writing the judgement, Mr Justice G.P. Mathur has made it abundantly clear: “The legal position is clear that an appellate court can suspend or grant stay of order of conviction”. It is for Amritsar’s voters to decide who to send to Parliament — Mr Navjot Singh Sidhu or Mr Surinder
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Shielding the corrupt THE Supreme Court has rightly come down heavily on the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in Uttar Pradesh for its persistent attempt to protect former Chief Secretary Neera Yadav. This tainted bureaucrat, presently Chairperson, Board of Revenue, has been indicted by several commissions in the Noida land allotment scam. However, the government has done little to bring her to book. In October last, she was shifted from the post of Chief Secretary following the Supreme Court’s orders. The latest charge against the state government is certainly its questionable decision to drop departmental inquiry proceedings against her. A three-member Bench consisting of Justice Arijit Pasayat, Justice C.K. Thakker and Justice L.S. Panta said that it was wrong on the part of the government in dropping the inquiry against her particularly when it had been initiated on the basis of the Justice Murtaza Hussain Committee report. The apex court ruling is particularly significant because it has made it clear that the departmental probe and trial of a criminal case against Neera Yadav can go simultaneously. When the charge in the criminal trial did not involve “complicated questions of fact and law”, there was no justification for the government to drop the departmental probe against the 1971 batch IAS officer, the Bench said. The standard of proof required in departmental proceedings against a bureaucrat is not the same as required before a court to expedite criminal charges against someone, it said. Interestingly, Justice Arijit Pasayat, who wrote the judgement, explained the “conceptual difference” between a departmental inquiry and criminal proceedings. Criminal prosecution is launched against an officer for not doing his/her public duty or for acting in breach of law. However, departmental inquiry is aimed at maintaining discipline and efficiency of the civil service. Clearly, bureaucrats like Neera Yadav have brought little honour to the system. It is mainly because of the Chief Minister’s blessings that Ms Neera Yadav is able to get away despite her involvement in so many scams. The state government now has no choice but to expedite the inquiry against her and punish her for her acts of omission and commission. |
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Sound of money THE
process towards elections for the Punjab Assembly is revealing — for what is declared as well as what the declarations conceal. When the Election Commission stipulated that candidates have to declare their assets (financial, not political) and ‘liabilities’ (criminal record) at the time of filing nominations, few would have expected the aspirants to let it all hang out. Yet, that’s what they are doing, in declaring their wealth as well as details of criminal cases pending against them. Obviously, in politics, crime is not the liability the law-abiding citizen presumes it to be, nor does such mind-boggling wealth preclude the politicians from proclaiming themselves to be the representatives of aam aadmi. Take the election scene in Punjab, which makes nonsense of economic categories. Poor Parkash Singh Badal and his wife together are worth a mere Rs 9 crore. Chief Minister Amarinder Singh is plain middle class if his declared net worth of Rs 39 crore is taken at face value. Only Bibi Jagir Kaur, the former SGPC, fits the definition of rich: She is worth more than Rs 80 crore, according to the disclosure filed with her nomination papers. If the declared wealth of all the candidates is added up party-wise, in all likelihood the amount would be sufficient to buy a chunk if not the whole of Punjab as real estate, always considered an asset in the state. When that is the case in a rich country with rich politicians where only the people are stupid enough to be poor, why have elections at all? Why not carve up the land, with the size of each ‘plot’ corresponding to a constituency and auction it to the highest bidder? This may not make political sense in a democracy, but it would be the most effective economic arrangement. For one, the cost of elections would be saved and can be used for development. Secondly, given the politician’s penchant to save his own wealth and make others spend during election, these resources too could be conserved. There are any number of such reasons that can be trotted out to argue that what is good for politics is not in the economic interest of the people. But, the big question is: Will the voter swallow this line of reasoning? Or will they just laugh it out at the daily gossip session. |
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For secrets are edged tools,/ and must be kept from children and from fools.
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Politics of proliferation
Alarm
bells rang in Moscow and Washington when China conducted its first nuclear weapons test on October 16, 1964. India also woke up to the capabilities of a nuclear-armed China that had less than two years earlier invaded it, crossing the once impregnable Himalayas. President Lyndon Johnson appointed a high-powered commission to suggest new directions to American policy in 1965. The commission that included then CIA Director Allen Dulles rejected the suggestion that China should be countered by assisting India and Japan to go nuclear. It proposed that dialogue with China and the Soviet Union should be intensified to prevent new entrants to the nuclear club. It concluded that the possession of nuclear weapons by others would erode American global influence and would "eventually constitute direct military threats to the USA". Working hand in glove with its principal adversary, the Soviet Union, the United States won approval for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that sought to effectively block new entrants to the nuclear club. China denounced the NPT as a symbol of "hegemony", but had no hesitation in joining the treaty in 1992, when it decided the time was ripe to gain international respectability as a "responsible power" by doing so. After initially pressurising India to accede to the NPT, Moscow soon changed its tune on Indian nuclear imperatives, after its border conflict with China in 1969. No objection was voiced to India's nuclear test in 1974. When American pressures on India mounted on fuel supplies for the Tarapur Nuclear Power Plant built with US assistance, Moscow offered to help India. In the meantime, US President Jimmy Carter had moved with Evangelical zeal to force India to sign the NPT by threatening to cut off supplies for the Tarapur Power Plant (which the US was treaty-bound to provide) unless India placed all its nuclear facilities under international safeguards and became a de facto member of the NPT. The Janata Party government dithered on this issue, but the Americans found in 1980 that Indira Gandhi would not yield and proposed an "amicable disengagement" on the Tarapur issue, with India getting nuclear fuel supplies from France. Requiring Pakistani assistance for defeating the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, the Americans looked the other way for a decade as Pakistan developed nuclear weapons through a network of clandestine imports and Chinese assistance. The Americans "discovered" that Pakistan had a nuclear weapons programme only after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan. China, however, continued nuclear assistance to Pakistan even after it acceded to the NPT in 1992. The Clinton Administration turned a blind eye to Chinese proliferation, and the US and China actively colluded and collaborated to "cap, roll-back and eliminate" India's nuclear programme, for the first six years of the Clinton Presidency. Meanwhile, 188 countries had acceded to the NPT, which was indefinitely extended by consensus in 1995. India, however, continued to face sanctions in nuclear and dual-use high-tech cooperation not only from the US but also from the US-led 45-member Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG). While France and Russia showed some understanding in the immediate aftermath of the 1998 nuclear tests, others led by the US and China spared no effort, albeit with little success, to isolate and strengthen sanctions against India. It is in this background that one has to evaluate the significance of the July 18, 2005, "nuclear deal" with the United States. Despite strong domestic opposition by entrenched lobbies that considered India's nuclear weapons programme either directly or indirectly a threat to US security, President Bush became the first US President to challenge this "conventional wisdom," thereby changing a US policy that had been in vogue for four decades. More importantly, the agreement, whose basic requirement was that India would place its peaceful nuclear facilities under safeguards in return for an end to global sanctions, was one initially proposed by one of India's most distinguished nuclear scientists, Dr. Raja Ramanna. Not surprisingly, opponents of the deal sought to introduce provisions that would be "deal breakers" such as a mandatory cut-off of fuel supplies in the event of India being compelled to conduct further nuclear tests, an early end to the production of fissile material for weapons by India and demands that India should adopt a foreign policy congruent to that of the US. On December 18, 2006, President Bush officially clarified that as Sections 103 and 104 (d) (2) of the legislation passed by the US Congress impinged on his constitutional powers as President to execute foreign policy, he was not bound by these provisions, as they ran counter to the US guarantees of continued fuel supplies during the working life of nuclear reactors imported by India. While India presently finds no need for further nuclear tests, its position could change if China decided to resume nuclear tests following a US decision to test a new generation of nuclear weapons. The President's action also annuls objectionable provisions in the legislation seeking to compel India to adopt US-led policies on Iran and other proliferation-related issues. While these are positive developments, there is still a long way to go before international sanctions against us, because of our not acceding to the NPT, end. We still have to conclude a bilateral agreement with the US that has to conform to Section 123 of the US Atomic Energy Act. India's nuclear envoy Shyam Saran, who has shown immense skill in negotiations, will have to craft an agreement that not only ensures the reliability of fuel supplies, but also deals with the issue of reprocessing of spent fuel. While negotiating a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency should be relatively straightforward, securing the consent of the NSG, which includes countries like Ireland, New Zealand and Sweden that are members of the "New Agenda Coalition", is not going to be easy. These countries have demanded after the 1998 nuclear tests that India should accede to the NPT and place all its nuclear facilities under international safeguards. Will a Democratic Party President, who may assume office in 2009, interpret the US legislation ending the nuclear sanctions on India in the same manner as President Bush has done? What would India do if he/she chooses to abide by all the provisions of the legislation? It would be prudent to proceed carefully before signing contracts for importing nuclear power plants. We should also consider amending our Atomic Energy Act to permit foreign and private sector investment in imported nuclear power plants in India to limit the adverse impact of any cut-off of nuclear fuel supplies as we have experienced in the
past.
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Borders of mind
THE gentle spray releases the knots in the mind and pleats in the soul. It doesn’t come in bucketfuls in Melbourne as it does in the native country, nor do the clouds gurgle and bellow. As one would amplify, “They come, they sweep and they drizzle” but when the rain brushes one, the feeling of exhilaration is the same. However, my children grumble as I walk them to their school. “If you have any problem anytime, I can pick or drop your children to school”. I turned around to come across a short, black-haired brown skin and she smiled and said: “I am from Pakistan, Lahore, to be precise.” And so this affinity blossomed into a beautiful bond. “Our elders knew Punjabi,” she declared. “Our elders know Urdu.” I echoed and was suddenly aware of the loss that both the cultures had suffered with the partition of the country. Both the languages overlap and study of one is incomplete without the study of the other. It is here on the foreign soil that one realises the importance of roots. The soul, hungry for familiar colour, foliage, people, twines around its counterpart, and both draw mutual strength and try to encapture fragrances left behind…the smell of freshly-ground turmeric, the feel of hard pebbles on bare feet, even the simple rituals of ringing of the temple bells or the cry of the Azaan, …and thus nourish the autumned selves. Few truth are honed in. One, nothing else will cure, perhaps, so effectively, the natives of both the countries of their parochial, “narrow confined” borders as a strong dose of “stay” in foreign soil. If all natives are not possible to transport, at least, all the politicians should mature in exile. The realisation will dawn that the banyan tree, which grows to fullness in hundreds of years, has roots and leaves on both sides of the border. Its shade is not the “property” of any one country. But there is another truth — the truth that was spelled by Amir Khan in the movie, Mangal Pandey, the truth of the colour of the skin. Indians, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans and other brown skins are Asians, while the “chinky-eyed” is the “yellow race”. The rest are all “Goras” and Africa is “Black”. The borders are there, here too, brother… but the horizons widen. I guess that will be cured only by the discovery of another “Earth”. |
US Indians set to expand sphere of influence THE 2.2 million Indian-Americans in the U.S. constitute a model minority, highly educated and well paid. And now, following in the footsteps of immigrant groups such as the Irish, the Jews and the Cubans, Indian-Americans are emerging as an influential force in Washington. And look what just whizzed through the Capitol: the Henry J. Hyde U.S.-India Peaceful Atomic Energy Cooperation Act. The legislation, which allows U.S. government and private companies to sell nuclear technology to India for peaceful, civilian purposes, was thought to be dead on arrival as recently as March. But it won surprising support, even from nonproliferation die-hard Democrats such as Nancy Pelosi. At work behind the bill’s passage was the usual crew of lobbyists and U.S. companies, including General Electric, Boeing and Lockheed, which will reap the bulk of the $100 billion the deal is expected to generate. But the bill’s biggest backer was the Indian-American community, which united as a political power for the first time since immigrating to the U.S. in force 35 years ago. This group loves its adopted land; it also cares deeply about the country of its heritage. Led by businessman Swadesh Chatterjee of the U.S.-India Friendship Council, Indian-Americans lobbied individually and collectively. They were so effective – and on an issue as controversial as nuclear technology, no less - that Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns called the law the Indian-Americans’ “coming-out party in the U.S.” The nuclear deal cements a strategic U.S. shift toward India, said Chatterjee, and will “change old mind-sets both in India and the U.S.” It also confirms that the Indian diaspora is now an economic and political asset in both countries. Indian-American political action has been percolating for years. As professionals – mostly doctors and engineers – they spent their first decades working hard and ensuring Ivy League educations for their children. (More than 60 percent of Indian-Americans have college degrees.) Now they are established, law-abiding and wealthy – median family income is nearly $70,000 – providing a prime source of human and financial capital for Washington. They are present everywhere in the U.S., both geographically and professionally. Indian doctors were given U.S. visas in the 1960s and ‘70s, provided they practiced in underserved states such as Tennessee, Missouri and Nevada, and they have been quietly building relationships with leaders in those states. Motel owners in Texas, Illinois and New York have long cultivated ties to Democrats such as Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Tech gurus such as Vinod Khosla, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, are politically active in California. So are the U.S.-based alumni of the prestigious Indian Institutes of Technology, many of whom are Silicon Valley millionaires. Professionals such as Rajat Gupta of McKinsey & Co. have penetrated the upper echelons of global management consulting and finance. The number of Indians on Wall Street doing everything from investment banking to trading is staggering. An estimated one-third of the professionals in the money-making derivatives industry – yes, those geeky PhDs working on complex algorithms and econometric models – are of Indian origin. The bridges to Bangalore from Silicon Valley were built by Indian-American engineers and entrepreneurs. All these native-born Indians – 90 percent of the Indians in the U.S. are first-generation emigres and the cream of India’s crop – came together to help the passage of the nuclear deal. They took lessons from other successful ethnic group lobbies, especially the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. Throughout 2006, they took out ads in Roll Call and the Washington Post, held receptions on Capitol Hill, sent out hundreds of faxes and e-mail petitions, talked to congressional staffers and harangued their senators and representatives. Finally, they piled into buses and sped to Washington to lobby door to door on Capitol Hill. When President Bush signed the bill Dec. 18, 75 noted Indian-Americans were invited to witness the event. Bush took singular care to thank the Indian-American community’s effort, which he said “was vital to explaining this bill to our citizens and also to India.” What’s next for Indian-Americans? Exerting influence in the 2008 presidential elections, surely. In 2004, Indian-Americans raised $5 million for the Democratic Party ($2 million for John Kerry alone) and $1.5 million for the Republican Party. Though historically Indians are overwhelmingly Democrats, they are starting to lean Republican too, especially after this bill. Watch their moves – they’ve only just started. The writer, an Edward R. Murrow Press fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, is writing a book on the effect of India on globalization and globalization on India.
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ULFA’s path to terror THE recent killings of Hindi-speaking people in Assam by the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA) has yet again demonstrated what has been a long-established fact: that ULFA’s halo of being a revolutionary group is long gone and it has been reduced to just a terror outfit. The leaders of ULFA are all Hindus. It often tends to be forgotten that in the 1980s they started their movement mainly to drive out millions of illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh. As they became dependent on the intelligence agencies of Bangladesh and Pakistan for money, training, arms and sanctuaries, these agencies intelligently manipulated them to give up their campaign against illegal Muslim migrants from Bangladesh. Eventually, ULFA’s campaign has turned against Hindus from other parts of India, who had settled down in Assam in order to earn their living. Today, ULFA is totally isolated from the people of Assam, whom it claims to represent. Its activities indicate the outfit is not willing to negotiate and efforts by Indira Goswami could not yield any results. Its top leadership is pursuing a personal agenda from foreign soil and is desperate to prove its presence through such soft-target killings. The question that the people of Assam as well as the cadres of ULFA need to confront the ULFA leadership with is: does ULFA any longer espouse the cause for which it was created 27 years back. The linkages with the elements whom they once vowed to throw away from Assam, have today emerged as their mentors. The Government of India has authentic reports indicating that the recent carnage in Assam was carried out by the ULFA carried under direct orders from its so-called chief of staff, who is often guided in its activities and mission by the ISI. ULFA has left no stone unturned either in removing any misgivings from the public’s mind that their claim to be fighting for a sovereign homeland of Assam is an unadulterated lie, a camouflage for their personal agenda of greed and a Bohemian lifestyle. ULFA’s so -called Commander-in-Chief Paresh Baruah leads a lavish lifestyle with his personal assets’ worth exceeding Rs 500 crore. Baruah’s finances are being managed by a senior businessman and a Jatiya Party (Ershad) functionary in Bangladesh. Baruah is reported to personally own or has controlling interests in several businesses in Bangladesh, including a tannery, a chain of departmental stores, garment factories, travel agencies, shrimp trawlers and transport and investment companies. ULFA Chairman Arabinda Rajkhowa is all set to purchase property in London under the cover of a charitable organisation. Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) is reported to be helping him in this endeavour. Baruah’s trips to Pakistan on false passports are not unknown facts these days. Apart from running training camps, ULFA has launched several income generating projects in Bangladesh. It has set up a number of firms in Dhaka, including media consultancies and soft drink manufacturing units. Besides it is reported to own three hotels, a private clinic, and two motor driving schools in Dhaka. The top ULFA leadership has been in close touch with certain officers of the Pakistani High Commission in Bangladesh, who have arranged for their passport in various names and travel to Karachi, from where they have been taken to the terrorist training centres run by the ISI and its affiliates. Some children of top ULFA leaders are reportedly studying in the USA and Canada under ISI protection. This should serve as an eye-opener to those analysts in India who are still debating whether or not ULFA cadres are getting shelter in Bangladesh. And for those who still doubt if ULFA is based in Bangladesh will have to consider the fact that ULFA leadership has managed to stay in Bangladesh for close to 15 years, regardless of the party in power, be it pro-India Awami League or Begum Khalida- led BNP. There is not a single report of Bangladesh taking any action against UFA within its territory, barring some isolated incidents that are few and far between. ULFA apprehends that with Indian influence growing in Southeast Asia and Washington cooperating with New Delhi on many issues including terrorism, the possibility of rebel leadership being deported to India seems very real. ULFA is known to have been paying protection money to DGFI and other government agencies of Bangladesh for long. Of late, some of the field operatives of ISI have also been demanding money from ULFA. Paresh Baruah is known |
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Bihar needs development strategy IN 1952 Dr. Paul H. Appleby, a US scholar, presented a document on Indian States to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru which suggested that Bihar was the best administrated state in the country at that time. He used various criteria and interviews with hundreds of specialists across the country for his study. The state is now counted as one amongst the most economically backward states in India. Lakhs of people from the state have migrated both within the country as well as abroad in search of better avenues. Undoubtedly many of them have achieved eminence in various fields. The bifurcation of the state has also changed the parameters of development, particularly in terms of resources. The ‘Global Meet for Resurgent Bihar’ was conducted in Patna last week to boost the economic development of the state is part of that strategy. The Institute for Human Development (IHD), New Delhi and Bihar Times have organized this meet with the active support of the Bihar government. The seminar was attended by over 500 eminent persons, including NRIs, economists, technocrats and investors from around the world. Inaugurating the Global meet, President APJ Abdul Kalam suggested a ten-point formula for overall development and prosperity of the state. He stressed missions like agro-processing, global human resource development, infrastructure development, tourism, and the creation and operation of exclusive economic zones, which will provide an opportunity to work together and bring prosperity to Bihar and thereby to country. Since the number of people living below poverty line in Bihar is about 42 per cent against the national average of 26 per cent, the first mission should be to elevate all of them and bring income into their hands and smiles on their faces. The Human Development Index ranking of Bihar within Indian states is fifteen, which should be improved considerably to be in tune with the heritage, past glory and the present aspirations. There is need for the state to achieve higher results in the area of housing, literacy, formal education, life expectancy, infant mortality rate, per capita expenditure and poverty alleviation. The major infrastructure development required in Bihar is the development of physical connectivity. To improve the connectivity to the 45,000 villages in Bihar there is a need to urgently upgrade the 35,500 kms of seasonal road to all weather roads to provide all weather, business and commercial movements to all district and villages of Bihar. In addition there is an urgent need to upgrade all highways to international standards so that the tourists can be attracted to Bihar. Modernization of existing power plants and creation of mega power plants are also urgently needed. Although there have been concerted efforts to improve the overall climate of development in the state, yet it is still facing enormous challenges that need to be overcome to pursue an effective development strategy. The immense potential of the state needs to be looked at from a fresh perspective in order to control the resources most effectively towards development. |
The world never needed love more than today: people are starving Often people are confused about their duties and the right way to perform them. They look for a guide. The wise, performing their duties with perfect detachment, fulfill this role. They are the perfect examples, the perfect preceptor. It is when the mass mind is unnaturally influenced by wicked men that the mass of mankind commit violence. But they forget it as they commit it because they return to their peaceful nature immediately the evil influence of the directing mind has been removed. Only they who love God can conquer the love of self.
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