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Left out
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Power play in Lanka President Rajapaksa upstages rivals Through a series of adroit moves Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has set in motion the process of an unprecedented power shift in the island republic. His welcoming of 25 MPs – 19 from the opposition United National Party and six from the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress – into the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party and giving them ministerial berths has thrown his opponents within the party, Parliament and among the Tamil leadership on the defensive.
Putin’s offer
Lured by lottery
Narmada, at last Train tunnel to link Africa and Europe Defence Notes
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Left out in the
cold THE
reshuffle Bharatiya Janata Party chief Rajnath Singh effected in the
decision-making bodies of the party would not have attracted much
attention but for his decision to drop Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra
Modi from the Parliamentary Board. Mr Modi also lost his membership of
the Central Election Committee, which selects candidates for all the
Lok Sabha and Assembly elections. It is difficult to believe that Mr Rajnath Singh would have dropped him without consulting the big bosses in Nagpur, particularly when the reshuffle has the imprint of the RSS. Mr Sanjay Joshi, “on loan” from the RSS, who has a colourful past and was holding the key post of general secretary (organisation), has been replaced by one of the senior most RSS pracharaks. In dropping Mr Modi from the key organisational posts, Mr Rajnath Singh has clearly tried to clip his wings. This has happened at a time when a small section of the party believes that the Gujarat leader has the charisma and organisational skill to lead the party in the next general elections. The BJP would have weighed the pros and cons of allowing such an impression to continue, let alone grow, before taking the decision. For all his bluster and claims of converting Gujarat into a land of honey and milk, Mr Modi remains a liability for the BJP. It knows only too well the heavy price it had to pay in the last Lok Sabha elections for his failure to take decisive steps when Gujarat burnt. It does not want to court disaster by giving him prominence the Chief Minister does not deserve. Given the closeness of Mr Modi to Mr L.K. Advani, Mr Rajnath Singh’s decision amounts to a setback for the Leader of Opposition. It is one more sign that the party chief is busy asserting his independence and taking the party in the direction he wants it to take. To be effective, the president has to be truly independent in the sense that he does not have to take orders from extraneous forces like the RSS. Besides, merely dropping Mr Modi from two large bodies of the party will not serve any purpose so long as the ideology, rooted in his version of Hindutva, remains dear even to Mr Rajnath Singh. What is required is a rupture with everything that is associated with the Gujarat Chief Minister. Alas, that is asking for too much from Mr Rajnath Singh. |
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Polls and passions Ideally, democracy demands election of people’s representatives by reasoned debate and free choice. As the election date draws near, Punjab seems to be turning into a battleground where rules of civilised behaviour are, however, given the go-by. As if the advertisements inserted by the Congress and the Akali Dal in the media were not distasteful enough, there came the shocking Sidhu-Singla duel, verbal as well as physical, in Amritsar. It was too shocking for words no doubt, but worse was yet to come. That manifested itself in the shape of a violent clash between the workers of the two dominant parties near Beas on Monday which left one person dead and several injured. Such conflicts have been taking place elsewhere too and there are reasons to apprehend that more blood may be shed at many places soon enough, if leaders of the two parties do not issue clear-cut instructions to all their supporters to desist from such maniacal rivalry. Violence and intimidation deny a free poll. Hence the top priority is to ensure that there is no violence. At the same time, it is necessary that violent language is also not used, in public speeches, party gatherings and propaganda material. Any hitting below the belt starts a chain reaction, since it acts as a signal to the supporters of the politicians to come to blows at the slightest pretext. Bazaru language is bound to arouse the baser instincts among the irrational ones. Since two can play this dirty game, it is in everyone’s interest to steer clear of such mud-wrestling bouts. Besides whatever steps the Election Commission has to take, the positive signal to clean up the act has to come from the leaders of political parties. Unfortunately, when even responsible leaders use the kind of purple prose which we teach school children to avoid, the atmosphere is bound to be vitiated. All this is bringing a bad name to Punjab. As it is, public respect enjoyed by politicians as a class stands greatly eroded. Any further depletion will only make them an object of ridicule and worse. |
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Power play in Lanka Through a series of adroit moves Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa has set in motion the process of an unprecedented power shift in the island republic. His welcoming of 25 MPs – 19 from the opposition United National Party and six from the Sri Lanka Muslim Congress – into the ruling Sri Lanka Freedom Party and giving them ministerial berths has thrown his opponents within the party, Parliament and among the Tamil leadership on the defensive. The most significant outcome of 25 MPs crossing party lines is that Mr Rajapaksa now enjoys a clear – though not the two-thirds required for constitutional changes – majority of 113 in a House of 225; and is no longer dependent on the 37 MPs of the ultra-left, anti-Tamil Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna even as he continues to enjoy the support of the nine-member Jathika Hela Urumaya (JHU). President Rajapaksa has not only strengthened himself in Parliament but also within his own party. The SLFP, like the UNP, has long been a family affair, and Mr Rajapaksa has outmaneouvred his detractors to assert himself over those who were giving him a hard time. The UNP members who have crossed over and been rewarded were anyway disenchanted with Mr Ranil Wickremesinghe, who himself had won over prominent figures from the ranks of the SLFP when he was Prime Minister. Yet, if Mr Rajapakse has attracted criticism in Sri Lanka, this may be attributed to the fact that he does not enjoy the open support of the privileged sections that were comfortable with family-run political parties; and the re-alignment necessitates a re-working of equations, and that involves effort and resources. Mr Rajapaksa’s assertion of his primacy comes at a time when the Sri Lanka armed forces have inflicted one of the worst defeats on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam by capturing the Vaharai region in the Eastern province. This was a formidable military operation that drove out the LTTE and, in the process, demolished the claims of the Tamil Tigers to being the sole representative of Tamils. Doubtless, Mr Rajapaksa’s political moves have been encouraged by his government’s recent military success, but to suggest that this will wreck the peace process, because the LTTE has been weakened, would be an exaggeration. |
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Suffering is permanent, obscure and dark,/ And shares the nature of infinity.
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Putin’s offer
AT the end of his visit President Putin left a very clear message to India. Russia will help India on the supply of nuclear reactors and nuclear technology subject to India getting clearance from the Nuclear Suppliers Group. Russia will also help in canvassing support for getting that clearance. It is quite obvious that India has to do its share of the task to get that clearance — to conclude an India-specific safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. What is clear from President Putin’s message is India’s clearance of the nuclear deal with the US is not just a bilateral issue but a necessary step in freeing itself from the international technology denial regime of which Russia and France, keen to engage in nuclear technology trade with India, are members. Once that hurdle is crossed and the Nuclear Suppliers Group clearance is obtained, Russia and France will undertake the supply of reactors and technology unencumbered by the conditionalities sought to be attached by the US legislators to a US-India nuclear cooperative deal. After India gets its NSG clearance and Russia and France become established suppliers of nuclear reactors and technology to India, the US businessmen and US government may have to have a second look at the wisdom of their conditionalities, if any. Therefore, at this stage the Indian concentration should be primarily on the safeguards agreement with the IAEA and thereafter on the 123 agreement, and care should be taken to ensure that it has no conditions which will hamper the Indian strategic programme, nuclear R&D, reprocessing rights and guarantees for fuel supply. The negotiators in the government are reasonably confident that this can be achieved. While it is necessary and desirable for various observers to caution the government on this, it is counterproductive not to pursue the path of negotiations. There should be no fear to negotiate. Russia is a member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenmaar arrangement and the Proliferation Security initiative. It is building the International Space Station as a partner of the US. It is also a participant in International Thermonuclear Energy Research (ITER), the newly proposed US Global Nuclear Energy Programme (GNEP)). While Russia has its own GLONASS satellite positioning programme, it proposes to interact and interlink with the US global positioning satellite programme. Russia is trying to emerge as a reliable energy supplier to Europe, China and Japan. Though Russia claimed to have developed a manoeuvrable missile uninterceptible by any missile technology so far available, it is not engaged in any arms race with the US. Russia is a member of the Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe along with the US and has a liaison general at the NATO headquarters. It is a member of G-8 and is expected to become shortly a member of the World Trade Organisation. Mr Putin believes that the balance of power system today requires both cooperation and competition with the major balancers. Cooperation with the US is needed in respect of technology control regimes, but competition is called for in selling reactors and nuclear technology. Russia also competes with the US in arms sales, with China and India as its two biggest customers. Russia today needs a major arms market or a joint venture partner in the development and production of major weapon systems. It is no longer in a position to develop economically very highly sophisticated weapon systems on its own meant only for the armed forces of Russia. It appears to have chosen at this stage India, in preference to China, as a partner for the multi-role transport aircraft and fifth generation combat aircraft. Already it has developed BrahMos missile jointly with India. New Delhi appears to have gained Moscow’s preference because, unlike China, India has had an uninterrupted six-decade-long friendship with Russia, and not being an immediate neighbour of Russia there is less likelihood of any potential tension between the two countries. In the true balance of power spirit, Russia is a member of the OSCE and at the same time a founder-member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation with China and both are members of the Asean Regional Forum and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) along with the US. Russia has condemned the North Korean nuclear test and has joined the US in imposing sanctions on Iran through a Security Council resolution though it has differences with the US on how to deal with the Iranian nuclear issue. Russia has similar differences with the US on Iraq invasion and the Arab-Israeli issue, though it is one of the members of the quartet trying to promote a solution to the Palestinian problem. Russia, as the former Soviet Union, tried out socialism in one-country experiment and has finally came to realise that there could not be optimum economic and technological growth for the resource-rich and talent-rich country unless it is integrated with the international system. China, too, came to that conclusion under Deng Xiao Peng. In today’s globalised world, there are limits to autarchic development. Russia, considered an autarchic super power only 17 years ago, has now learnt to adjust itself to the global balance of power system and is now reemerging as the likely supplier of energy to great powers, its former adversaries — Europe, China and Japan. President Putin inherited a demoralised Russia from his predecessor, President Boris Yeltsin, and in the last seven years he has built up the Russian economy and its strategic stature. He has sustained the Russian autonomy in international relations even while attempting to integrate Russia into the global system. He is interested in ensuring that there is balance of power in Asia, and understands that the economic and technological growth of India is vital for the Asian balance of power. In this respect, geo-strategically, he shares a perspective with the US, Japan and the European Union. Though Russia wants to compete with the US in offering India nuclear reactors and technology and in combat, transport aircraft and missile development, it wants India to take the necessary steps to get the NSG clearance and not continue to isolate itself
technologically.
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Lured by lottery
NOW I know why I have never won the lottery bumper prize. My white-collar job is to blame for it. Lady Luck has a soft spot for people who barely eke out a living, be it a daily-wager, cobbler or rickshaw-puller. Like Robin Hood, she loves to bestow riches on the choicest poor. Ever heard of a journalist, doctor or engineer hitting the jackpot? At first glance, the lottery seems to be the easiest, cleanest and most egalitarian way of pocketing mega moolah. You don’t have to be a GK wizard who sits in the “hot seat” and answers questions posed by a superstar. You just have to buy a ticket, which has mathematically as good a chance as any other of winning the coveted prize. The outcome is uncannily similar to the genesis of life, as only one lucky sperm out of millions succeeds in fertilising an egg. However, things are not all that simple and fair in actuality. With apologies to George Orwell, it has to be said: “All ticket holders are equal but some are more equal than others.” The odds are heavily in favour of the social underdog, who often has to skip a few meals just to buy a ticket. Once the windfall comes, he can afford to relish sumptuous feasts at will. Of course, not every (under) dog has his day. A vast majority of them go empty-handed, their dreams of getting rich overnight shattered time and again. Willy-nilly, they go through the daily drudgery, propped up by the hope that the next draw would turn the tide in their favour. Optimism is the opium of the Indian masses, intoxicating enough to make their hard lives tolerable. As far as I’m concerned, fate enjoys playing the game of Twenty20 with me. A Rs 20 ticket has at best won me an amount equal to its own cost. In the Rs 100 category, I have always been clean-bowled for a duck. I won’t waste money on lotteries — this was my sole New Year resolution for 2007, but it has already been broken. The Lohri bumper is gone, but there are still two to come later this year on the occasions of Raksha Bandhan and Divali. Switching over to a petty blue-collar job can boost my chances of bagging the big one, but I would rather not take such a great gamble. After all, a bird in the hand is worth two, if not more, in the bush. Meanwhile, I try not to be rude or patronising to the man who mends my shoes or the one who collects my garbage. Who knows, if the wheel of fortune spins their way tomorrow, I might see them riding in cars bigger and swankier than my
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Narmada, at last ON the eve of the advent of 2007 the country’s biggest hydroelectric project became operational when the Sardar Sarovar Dam in the Narmada Valley reached its designated height of 121 metres. Calculating from 1961 when Nehru laid its foundation stone, it has taken forty-five years, perhaps the longest ever gestation period, for the Narmada project to fructify. It must have meant losses of crores of rupees in cost overruns and denial of benefits to the people of the area. Like other giant multipurpose projects, it owes itself to Nehru’s vision that the harnessing of our sizable natural resources of arable land and fresh water was necessary for overcoming the socio-economic backwardness of the people. The first decade-and-a-half of Nehru’s prime ministership saw the undertaking and completion of a chain of projects like Bhakra-Nangal in Punjab, Hirakud in Orissa, Nagarjuna Sagar in Andhra Pradesh and Tungabhadra in Karnataka. Hailing them as India’s modern temples, the great man had identified himself with them. The mood induced by Nehru’s personality dissipated motivated opposition. There was, of course, no Medha Patkar shedding tears for tens of thousands of oustees from the areas flooded by the construction of the dams or diversion of the course of the rivers in some cases. That made a big change. For instance, the Akali opposition was laughed away in jokes about a Sikh peasant grumbling that the Bhakra-Nangal dam had drained the water from the Punjab Rivers - Ravi, Beas and Sutlej - of its power. Similarly, when Hare Krushna Mahatab, who was a Central minister, said in Parliament that that Punjabi engineers manning the Hirakud project had taken their buffaloes also to Orissa, he was good naturedly reassured that if there was adequate milk supply for the engineers and their families the buffaloes would go back. In the case of Nagarjuna Sagar the apprehension of loss of precious Buddhist relics was allayed by adequate arrangements for transshipping most of the relics to safer places on the other side of the bonded river for being housed in a museum. In short, in most cases, politically motivated opposition was also met squarely. When the projects were completed and the benefits began to flow the woes of the adversely affected families were forgotten. The projects are means of transferring life-giving water from surplus to deficit areas by dams and its transmission through a system of canals. Before Independence British engineers had built a network of canals to conserve the water from the Indus and its tributaries enriching today’s Pakistan Punjab. Even in normal monsoon years, perennially drought-prone areas like Kutch, Saurashtra and north Gujarat were vulnerable to degradation of environment on account of ingress of salinity, advance of desert, loss of green cover and erosion of biotic life. For instance, during the drought years of 1985-86-87 water trains had to be run to relieve the thirst of humans and cattle in Saurashtra, Kutch, Mehsana and Banaskantha districts of Gujarat. Supply of drinking water once in three or four days was common in many Saurashtra towns. The mean annual flow of the Narmada is more than the combined flow of the Ravi, Beas and Sutlej. Considering that the three Punjab rivers have transformed Punjab, Haryana and north Rajasthan into veritable granaries with healthy and hard-working people, one could conjure up what the Narmada project could have done to the unfortunate people of Gujarat, especially of its Kutch and Saurashtra regions. Another green revolution like that which put Punjab and Haryana at the apex of economic development would have facilitated multi-faceted growth of Gujarat. Unlike most other rivers of our country the Narmada flows upwards into the Arabian Sea from its origin in the mountains of central India. There could have been a no more touching scene than Yogendra Kumar Alagh ecstatically dipping his hands in the water released from the Narmada reservoir when it was nearing completion last year and sending out a prayer to heaven. Professor Alagh is a former Vice-Chancellor of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) and was minister for planning, programme implementation science and technology and power in the United Front Government of Inder Kumar Gujral in 1996-98. He was reacting as much as a Gujarati as an expert on river valley projects. But that was after some difficult hurdles had been crossed. First, the World Bank withdrew its funding for the project primarily because of the loud protests on the issue of rehabilitation of the oustees. In its judgment the prospects of the project being completed were bleak in the face of such determined resistance by champions of the oustees. The Union and the State governments took the rebuff in their stride by deciding to find funds for it within the country. Then celebrities like Booker Prize winner Arundhati Roy and film star Aaamir Khan pitched in. It was a veritable witches Sabbath, with everybody and anybody, what ever his or her avocation, became worthy of media attention for opposing the Narmada project. The Union minister of state for water resources thought it was his political duty to stop the completion of the dam as a riposte to Gujarat 2002 and Narendra Modi’s sponsorship of it. Initially, he set out to ‘review’ the decision of the Narmada Control Authority’s decision raising the dam height to its optimum height. Patkar’s petition was also coming up before the Supreme Court. Then Patkar overreached herself by launching a fast in front of Sonia Gandhi’s bungalow. The fat was in the fire and Patkar fell from grace. The dam at 121.92 metres will irrigate an additional 3.6 lakh hectares, provide drinking water over a longer reach and generate up to 1,450 MW of power at the riverbed and canal-head hydel stations. These are no small gains and will benefit millions, including small and marginal farmers and trigger further employment and income generation. Finally, it will boost production. Hopefully, the consummation being devoutly wished is now within reach. |
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Train tunnel to link Africa and Europe TANGIER, Morocco - From the bustling waterfront of this African port city, Europe appears tantalisingly close: The coast of Spain shows on the horizon just nine miles away. Despite decades of dreaming, no one has been able to bridge the physical divide that opened between the two continents more than 5 million years ago, forming the geological bottleneck to the Mediterranean Sea. In recent months, however, the governments of Morocco and Spain have taken significant steps to move forward with plans to bore a railroad under the muddy bottom of the Strait of Gibraltar. If built, the project would rank among the world’s most ambitious and complex civil engineering feats, alongside the Panama Canal and the Channel Tunnel between Britain and France. A Gibraltar transportation link has adorned official drawing boards for a quarter-century. After years of slow-moving studies and geological tests, Spain and Morocco gave the project fresh momentum last fall by hiring a Swiss engineering firm to draft blueprints for an underwater rail route. Numerous obstacles remain, and a final decision on whether to build is still a few years away, but optimistic engineers say the project could be completed by 2025. Government officials on both sides of the Mediterranean say the tunnel would give the economies of southern Europe and North Africa an enormous boost. But the project is being driven at least as much by intangible benefits: the prospect of uniting two continents that culturally and socially remain a world apart despite their geographic proximity. “We’ve already done a tremendous amount of work to make this dream come true, to go from an idea-a concept that is just philosophical-into something we can transform into reality,” said Karim Ghellab, Morocco’s minister of transportation. “It’s not easy to predict a date yet, but it is a project that will happen.” Ghellab envisions a day when commuters will board a high-speed train in Seville, in southern Spain, at 8 a.m. and arrive at their workplaces in Tangier by 9:30. Next stop, 90 minutes later: Casablanca, followed by the bazaars of Marrakech slightly more than an hour after that. Today, such a trip by ferry and rail would take at least three times as long. Like the Channel Tunnel, the Gibraltar project would consist of twin tracks in parallel tunnels, with a service tunnel in between. But engineers said the technical challenges would far surpass those encountered in constructing the “Chunnel,” which opened in 1994. For starters, the water is exponentially deeper: nearly 3,000 feet at the shortest route across the strait, compared with just 200 feet in the channel. As a result, engineers have mapped out a different path, from Cape Malabata, Morocco, to Punta Paloma, Spain, that would run twice as far across the strait but through shallower water-a still daunting 985 feet below sea level. Compounding the problem is that the seabed around Gibraltar is much more permeable than the hard-chalk rock under the channel, which would require engineers to push the tunnel down by another 300 feet or so. The water pressure at that depth means the tunnel would leak heavily, no matter how well it was constructed, said Andrea Panciera, chief project engineer with Lombardi Engineering Ltd., the Swiss firm that is designing the Gibraltar link. Officials in Spain and Morocco said their governments are committed to the tunnels but acknowledged that engineering and cost hurdles won’t be easy to overcome. “The engineers will always tell you everything is possible, it’s just a question of more money,” said Ricardo Diaz, secretary general of the Spanish government agency that oversees the project with its Moroccan partners. “But there is one very important piece of information: the geology, which on this land is a tormented, very difficult geography, not like the Channel Tunnel or other tunnels.” Also looming large is the red ink incurred by the Chunnel. Private investors, who paid the bulk of the $20 billion price tag, have suffered heavy losses; the operator, Eurotunnel, has verged on bankruptcy for years. While neither Moroccan nor Spanish officials have given a bottom-line estimate for their project, private analysts said it could cost $6.5 billion to $13 billion. The two nations said that they are a long way from resolving financing details but that they hope to rely heavily on the European Union and the private sector. Crowds pack the passenger ferries that shuttle between Tangier and Algeciras, Spain. Mohammed Chatt, who runs a travel agency outside the port’s gates in Tangier, said he doesn’t expect the tunnel to be built quickly but has no doubt that millions of people would use it.
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Defence Notes THE Indian Air Force would be hosting an international seminar on aerospace power here on February 4 and 5, which would see the presence of Chiefs of 37 Air Forces of the world, including the USA, the UK, France, Russia, China, Israel and Sri Lanka. The theme of the seminar is “Aerospace Power in Tomorrow’s World”. During the two-day seminar, discussions would take place on topics covering the emerging geopolitical context of aerospace power, transformation of airpower, translating technology into doctrine, strategy and applications, joint operations, integrating aerospace operations and surface forces, cooperative aerospace operations in future, and the like. Other countries that have confirmed their participation include Afghanistan, Australia, Botswana, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kazakhistan, Malaysia, Maldives, Mangolia, Myanmar, Netherland, Nigeria, Oman, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Srilanka, Sweden, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, UAE, Uzbekistan and Vietnam. After the seminar the visiting Air Force chiefs would be proceeding to attend Aero-India 2007, the biennial aerospace and defence exposition held at Bangalore. Malaysian lead For the first time in the history of the Republic Day celebrations, a foreigner led a unit of the Army contingent. Captain Tunku Ismail Ibrahim, grandson of the Sultan of Johar, a State in Malaysia, led the Mouted Column of the Jaipur-based 61st Cavalry which was part of the Army contingent at the 105-minute long parade. The young Malaysian Prince was commissioned into the army two years ago after passing out from the Indian Military Academy (IMA) Dehradun. For him it was a family tradition to get trained in the forces. While his grandfather was trained in the Malaysian Army, his father, the Crown Price received his military training in the US. He is the first member of his family to join the Indian Army. Studying with Thales Thales, the French defence major which is helping the Indian Navy in construction of submarines here in India, is offering 15 educational grants to Indian students. The initiative, launched last year, is designed to attract the world’s best talent to continue and complete their education within France’s higher education establishments. The establishments who have signed up to the initiative include some of Europe’s most prestigious graduate schools. As part of the initiative, if needed, the students would also receive free intensive French-language training from their local Alliance Francaise before they leave for France. They would then be invited to follow an advanced specialised course in engineering science or business management. Thales Academia’s programme in the first year was very successful with a total of 21 students. |
Happiness goes to the person who does not work for selfish motives. He works for the greater good of the greater number. Neither praise nor criticism can shake his self-conviction. He remains steady on the path of God. God cannot be understood or realised through cleverness.
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