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Rare unity on terrorism No pipedream |
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Stem cell’s potential
State of coalitions
Once too often
Human Rights Diary Oil, car firms conspire against the electric car Delhi Durbar
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Rare unity on terrorism The 14th summit of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), which concluded in New Delhi on Wednesday, reflected a rare unanimity of views on fighting terrorism. It is for the first time that Pakistan, too, joined India and the other members to declare terrorism as the most serious threat to peace and progress in the region and in the strongest language possible. Hence the SAARC’s reaffirmation to do all it can to destroy the scourge root and branch. It called for early adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, a project in which India is playing a major role. The assembled leaders agreed to finalise quickly the modalities for implementing all the SAARC conventions adopted to eliminate the menace, which can undo all that has been achieved by the grouping so far. Significantly, the SAARC declaration laid much stress on plugging the sources of funding of terrorism in various clandestine ways, including the use of front organisations. How far SAARC will succeed in implementing its commitment depends on the sincerity with which the member-countries cooperate in accomplishing the challenging task. All eyes will be focused on Pakistan where terrorists’ sympathisers are well entrenched in the system. Terrorists’ infrastructure is yet to be dismantled completely despite Islamabad’s claims to the contrary. Their front organisations continue to collect funds on various pretexts. The Taliban’s increasing presence in particularly the North-West Frontier Province is an alarming development, more so because the extremists enjoy the support of Islamabad. This is dangerous even if the Pakistan government is doing so to use them for eliminating foreign militants. By now Pakistan must have come to know that terrorism is like a two-edged weapon. Under no circumstances should it be promoted. The interim administration in Bangladesh, which got a number of terrorists hanged recently, has shown the way these enemies of humanity deserve to be treated. Once all SAARC nations decide to get tough with terrorists and their sympathisers, the monster will die its natural death. The time has come for the SAARC countries to launch a joint and decisive drive against terrorism. This is unavoidable to make the grouping concentrate on poverty-alleviation programmes in a focused manner. |
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No pipedream THE Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline project moved one more step on its way to fruition when Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Shaukat Aziz declared their intention to go ahead with it. On its part, Iran would have been mighty pleased with the SAARC decision to accord it observer status in the regional grouping. And that too in the teeth of opposition from the US, which wants only a pariah status for the Islamic state. It is unfortunate that the US does not want the pipeline project to succeed as it sees it as a defiance of its will in the region. It is gratifying that both India and Pakistan do not see the project through borrowed and coloured glasses and see it for what it is, a project of immense economic value. Once the project is completed, it will be a boon for both India and Pakistan. It is one of the most ambitious pipeline projects in the world. The pipeline will start at Asalouyeh in Iran, travel nearly 1100 kms in the country before it passes through Balochistan and Sindh in Pakistan to reach India. Pakistan will be an immediate beneficiary of the construction, which will cost $7 billion. As for India, which will require 400 million cubic metres of natural gas by the year 2025, up from 90 million cubic metres as in 2005, it will be a boon. It could not make much headway as Iran has not agreed to the price quoted by India. Differences on price are not difficult to be narrowed once both sides decide that the project is in pursuance of their national interest. It is a welcome sign that Pakistan has overcome its initial hesitation to support the project, which is seen in some sections there as more beneficial to India. They now realise that it can also meet the growing demand for energy in Pakistan. Similarly, the skeptics in India, who questioned the project on the ground that it would be a sitting duck for militants, are increasingly convinced that it is in the overall interest of the country and the region. It is against this backdrop that both India and Pakistan want to go ahead with it, though the US is unlikely to see it in that light. In pursuing the project with Pakistan, India has taken a calculated risk. The US will do well not to create roadblocks for the project in the overall interest of the region. |
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Stem cell’s potential The potential of stem cells in treating and even curing debilitating diseases, that have proved intractable to other forms of medical intervention, has been known for some time. The field is unfortunately embroiled in a controversy because of opposition from religious conservatives in the United States. This has, however, not prevented scientists in other parts of the world from going ahead, and the news that stem cell researchers at Manipal Hospital in Bangalore have claimed to have “cured” a patient of Parkinson’s disease is intriguing. Apparently, the treatment was provided by using stem cells from the patient’s own body. In the West, even donated stem cells from another person have been transplanted to successfully treat patients suffering from blood cancer. But Parkinson’s has been particularly difficult to treat. To date, there is no cure or prevention. The disease attacks a specific part of the brain, and by the time it is identified, 80 per cent of the cells there have been damaged. The patients’ movement and coordination, from walking and speaking to autonomous functions like swallowing and sweating, are affected. And the harrowing struggle begins. Treatment with pills has its own side-effects, ranging from jerky, uncontrolled movements to compulsive behaviours. Patients complain that since only a small number (relatively speaking) are affected, pharmaceutical companies do not spend enough money on research to cure Parkinson’s. This is where stem cells come in. If the doctors have indeed come up with a remedy, it is a dramatic breakthrough and will help millions world-wide. Manipal Hospital’s neurological disease institute head Dr N.K. Venkataramana made the additional point that the present treatment did not stop the progression of the disease, but the potential was clear. He also added that since adult stem cells were used, the chances of the success causing a controversy were less. Much of the opposition is to embryonic stem cells. Scientists, however, aver that the greatest disease-curing potential lies in embryonic stem cells, and even in the US, a Democratic-dominated Congress appears ready to pass fresh legislation freeing up research. Manipal’s results, if validated, are indeed a step in the right direction. |
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The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants and for peace like retarded pygmies. —
Lester Pearson |
State of coalitions
LAST week when newspaper headlines proclaimed, “Crisis in Kashmir coalition blows over”, there was an audible sigh of relief in the nation’s capital that transcended even the crazy cacophony over cricket. But already there are doubts about the longevity of this comforting sentiment. The reasons for this should be obvious but need explaining. Jammu and Kashmir is an extremely sensitive state that makes the coalition there, between the Congress, the core of the ruling United Progressive Alliance in New Delhi, and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) of Mufti Mohammed Saeed, a former state Chief Minister and his daughter Mehbooba, distinctive from those in other states. But, far from nurturing this delicate plant, the two sides have let it languish. Conflict ensued soon after the Mufti handed over —in accordance with a previous agreement — the office of Chief Minister to Congress’s Ghulam Nabi Azad. Mufti Saeed then embarked on his controversial demand for a quick reduction in the troops in Kashmir and their redeployment away from schools, hospitals, orchards, etc. PDP ministers started boycotting Cabinet meetings. The terms on which a compromise was eventually reached — appointment of an expert committee, headed by the Defence Secretary, and a political committee, presided over by Defence Minister A. K. Antony, to examine the Mufti’s demand — could have been clinched on day one. But such is the UPA’s style of political management that the emotive controversy was allowed to drag on. Bitterness inevitably escalated, as Mr Azad matched the vehemence of father and daughter with strident rejoinders, sometimes of a personal nature. Dr Farooq Abdullah, another former Chief Minister and currently leader of the principal Opposition in the state, intervened to assert that reduction of troops was a matter so crucial that it required all-party consultations, “not discussions with only one party”. The situation worsened further because of the apparent linkage between General Pervez Musharraf’s idea of “demilitarisation” of Kashmir and the Mufti’s proposals; strong hints from the armed forces that “professional advice”, not “political expediency” should prevail; and selective killing of five Hindus by terrorists in an area under the control of the Border Security Force, not the Army, around the time the compromise was reached. It is in this context that Mufti Sahib has started demanding “early submission” of their reports by the two committees. Having been in the game long enough — he was Union Home Minister in Mr V. P. Singh’s short-lived government —he knows that committees are usually appointed to buy time. This could cause a fresh controversy, unless all concerned watch out. The merits of the issue of reduction/redeployment of the Army in J & K, where complaints of custodial deaths and fake encounters also abound, can best be discussed only after the Antony Committee has vetted the recommendations of the expert panel and given its verdict. What is needed at present is an agonising appraisal of the clumsy manner in which the UPA leadership has handled a matter of the highest sensitivity. According to the prevailing myth, each state is under the charge of one of the party general secretaries who is supposed to keep a close watch and forewarn the top leadership about impending developments. But the reality is vastly different. In some cases the functionary does not even know what he or she is expected to do. No wonder, even in a state like Maharashtra, the Congress and the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) of Mr Sharad Pawar, jointly ruling the state, constantly pull in opposite directions and seem to be losing confidence in each other’s good faith. Above all, the dismal episode in Kashmir has yet again underscored the lack of synergy between 10 Janpath — the citadel of the Congress party establishment — and 7 Race Course Road, the Prime Minister’s work-cum-living place. The overriding and deeply disappointing outcome of all this is the utter collapse of the hopes — energetically fostered by many — that with the “end” of the single-party rule, coalitions would provide the country with “more democratic” governance, if only because power would be shared by a large number of parties that would “truly” represent India’s bewildering diversities. Bitter experience — since the fall of Mr V. P. Singh’s much-lauded government in eleven months flat, to say nothing of that of Chandra Shekhar in just 120 days — has shown that coalitions of various hues have been opportunistic, ineffectual, fractious and transitory. Even small splinter groups with only a marginal representation in the Lok Sabha habitually hold to ransom the governments of which they are a part. To be sure, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee did demonstrate some skill in keeping a motley crowd of 24 parties together for close to six years. But neither the precise sequence of events nor the methods through which the National Democratic Alliance was preserved would bear too close a scrutiny. Atalji’s first government in 1996 was a 13-day wonder, and the second collapsed just after “celebrating” a year in power. The third did last close to five years during which it had to “roll back” a dozen of its decisions under partners’ pressure. Mr Chandrababu Naidu, whose party did not accept ministerial office at the Centre, could dictate to the Union government simply by punching a few buttons on his satellite telephone. The Nandigram outrage in West Bengal has been devastating in exposing the reality of coalitions. The “exemplary” Left Front has been shown to be a house divided, with comrades angrily blaming each other. The Congress party’s performance, as leader of the ruling coalition, has been worse than the Vajpayee-led BJP’s because of its too prolonged a belief in its “divine right” to rule the country on its own. Even after it was turfed out of power in 1996, it continued to ride the Pachmarhi high horse of “going it alone”. The reversal of this policy in 2002 yielded rich dividends in Kashmir. These are now being squandered. Many Congress leaders complain that the Left Front, supporting the UPA government “from outside”, has become a “constant pain” in their collective neck. The other side of the coin, however, is that, but for the Left’s strong restraining influence, the Congress would almost certainly have committed the folly of placing Uttar Pradesh under President’s rule. One has to conclude sorrowfully that the more the coalitions are becoming inevitable, the less workable they are turning out to be. How long will the system withstand the tightening coils of this fundamental
contradiction?
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Once too often
Tall, bald-headed, slightly stooping, he looked very much like a pall-bearer suffering from dyspepsia. The fellow I’m writing about had taken to walking on a narrow but shady path which, for several years, I had regarded as being my exclusive preserve in the park where I take my evening constitutional. I did not mind casual intruders such as children with their mothers, dog-lovers with their pets or young couples strolling arm-in-arm, whispering sweet nothings to each other. But a “regular” was a different matter. Come to think of it, his daily appearance should not have irked me. He had as much right to walk where he chose as I had. All I wished was that he would do it at some other time so that I could feel that this particular path, lined on both sides by bougainvillaea bushes, was my very own. An unreasonable assumption, but there it was. Normally, I am a friendly sort of cove, ready to greet a stranger with a nod and a smile, but somehow I never felt inclined to flash my ivory-white dentures at this fellow whom I looked upon as an interloper. Nor did he ever seem to notice me as we passed one another every evening, one going south, the other north or vice-versa. I often wondered, though, what he did for a living, or had done in his younger days. I judged him to be the same age as I which meant that, like me, he was a “super-annuated” person and had been for some time. A retired government servant? A teacher? banker? A disgruntled politician recharging his batteries? Then, one evening, he was not there, nor the next, and the next. Oddly enough, I began to miss him. I wondered if his dyspepsia had laid him low. But when a whole month passed without my seeing him, I felt certain that he was no longer in the land of the living. At my age — our age — it was a depressing thought. I began to lose my appetite. I visited my doctor and asked him to describe the symptoms of dyspepsia. I was relieved to learn that they were foreign to me. All the same, I gave up walking on my favourite path. One month or so later, I stopped going to this particular park. There is another one, not quite so nice as my old haunt, but within walking distance of my house. On my very first evening out whom should I see walking on the lawn but my dyspeptic pallbearer. Barely suppressing a shout of joy, I caught up with him. Recognising me instantly he gave me a sickly smile. I asked him why he had given up walking in the other park. “One gets tired” he said, ‘of seeing the same faces every day.’ I took the hint. So I am back on “my” path in “my” old
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Human Rights Diary WE have to be near the airport to fly immediately to ward off attack by the enemy.” This is what a military officer in uniform said at a public hearing held by a high-powered committee which the Supreme Court had appointed. The hearing was on the illegal and blatant construction at the Aravalli ridge at Vasant Kunj in New Delhi. The ridge is older than the Himalayas and its violation is not only sacrilegious but also a fatal blow to the flora and fauna in the area. I was reminded of military officers in Pakistan, where they occupied at whim the land to which they took fancy. It is understandable in that country because the military is the all-in-all ruler. But India is not a cantonment democracy. I have great respect for our armed forces, committed to the supremacy of the Constitution as they are. Yet their scant respect for the environment worries me. While private builders are raising plazas and the malls at the ridge which Delhi Development Authority (DDA) has sold illegally, the Defence Ministry is putting up tenements without any permission and despite the protests human rights activists have made. Such is the spell of the word, ‘defence’ that generally no questions are asked. Even the Supreme Court did not say anything on the ridge construction when it was pointed out that every norm or rule had been violated. So ridiculous was the argument of the military’s representative on being near the airport that it did not deserve to be repeated. I drew the attention of General J.J. Singh, chief of army staff, to the illegal construction. When I did not get even an acknowledgement from him, I wrote to Defence Minister A.K. Anthony. His prompt reply said he would come back to me after making necessary inquiries. That was more than two months ago. In the meanwhile, the military has cut more trees, built a solid wall at the ridge and usurped more land. We have about 7 sq. kms of quartzite land in the Aravalli ridge which recharges as much as 85 per cent of the rainwater. Delhi’s average annual rainfall is 60 cms. If we consider 50 cms of recharge in this area, we find that the 7 sq. kms will recharge 3 billion litres in a year. This is unpolluted and high quality drinking water. If we were to sell it as bottled water at the prevailing rate of Rs 10 per litre, we would earn Rs 3,000 crore a year. Human rights activists have written against the devastation to many. But none in the government has paid any heed. Letters to the Prime Minister, Delhi Chief Minister and Lt. Governor remain unacknowledged. There seems to be a conspiracy of silence. On the top of it has come the new master plan for Delhi. Even a cursory look indicates it will be one of the greatest disasters of the 21st century. The money which the builders will make is mind-boggling. The area that DDA has sold at the ridge is 640 hectares – 6.40 lakh square metres. The commercial value of the land is $100 to $150 billion, one fifth of our GDP. How can the government be a party to such a scam? Some bureaucrats and petty politicians must be getting a share of the booty. The Ministry of Environment has only fined the builders of plazas and malls for not seeking prior permission for construction and that too after the Supreme Court proposed the imposition of fine. The court did not suggest razing of the illegal constructions to the ground. The plea was that too much had been built to invite destruction. Incidentally, the Supreme Court was approached for a stay order before the first brick was laid. Then it refused to do so and, subsequently, argued that it could not order destruction since much had been built. This argument has not deterred the different movements from raising their voice. They are agitated against the government’s flagrant policies against the people. Throughout March there was the Sangarsh Action at the Jantar Mantar to articulate popular demands. Medha Patkar was sent to jail to muzzle the popular protest. Still the Sangarsh has not relented. It has passed a resolution: All natural resources including land, water, air, minerals, aquatic wealth and forest belong to the farmers, tillers, landless peasants, agricultural workers, dalits, tribals, fishermen and the like.
Changing values Do you remember JP’s political secretary Sachchidanand? His wife, Hemlata Devi, has not died of malnutrition but of starvation. She had given up taking food because she was extremely frustrated and dejected at the Bihar government’s “apathetic attitude” towards her family’s sufferings. Her last letter to me says: “My family’s sufferings today under the regime of JP’s disciple – chief minister Nitish Kumar – are far worse than what we had during the emergency. Can there be a bigger irony? My entire family took part in the ‘74 movement. I was first to go to jail (among women) though being a heart patient. ‘If you don’t go (to jail) how can I ask others (other women),’ my husband told me. He himself played the most important role in the movement. Efforts were being made to misguide JP and defeat the movement. Had it failed, most of today’s leaders would have still been on the road and the rest like Vajpayee, Advani and George still in the opposition, as they had been for 30 years. Yet none of them came forward to help my family.” The letter does not surprise me although I was pained to read it. Values have changed. Even Gandhiji has been pushed to the background. JP was only his disciple. How could JP’s disciple or his family’s plight make any difference? |
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Oil, car firms conspire against the electric car Somewhere out there, in the dusty basements of the American Chevron-Texaco corporate headquarters, there is a technology that can – in one swoop – slash global warming emissions, save millions of people from respiratory illnesses, and stop us trashing the Middle East to seize its oil. Yet it is being deliberately left to rot, in the hope we will all forget about it. Its story begins in California in the early 1990s. The people of the Sunshine State were waking up with a cough to a crisis: one-quarter of 18-25 year olds in LA County had lung lesions or chronic respiratory diseases caused by air pollution. In 1990 alone, there were 41 chronic smog alerts in LA. The state government realised they had to act – so they seized on news of a dramatic new technology. General Motors (GM) had developed a prototype of an electric car with swelling consumer potential. It was a sleek, silver car that could drive at the same speed as a fossil-fuelled hunk of metal – only with no exhaust fumes. You simply plugged it in at night, like a mobile phone, and drove off in the morning. The electricity costs the equivalent of 30 pence a gallon as opposed to the four pounds Brits pay at the petrol pump. But GM seemed reluctant to push this extraordinary product on to the consumer market. So the California State Senate gave them a nudge. They passed a law that said if you want to sell cars for California’s roads, a proportion had to be electric cars: 2 per cent in 1998, 5 per cent in 2001, and 10 per cent in 2003. The car companies were enraged. They began a two-pronged strategy: the most grudging possible compliance with the law, while lobbying fiercely alongside Big Oil to have the law scrapped. The first electric cars appeared on California’s roads nonetheless, and a slew of celebrities including Tom Hanks, Ted Danson and Mel Gibson snapped them up and plugged them at every opportunity. But the people working on selling the electric cars noted something odd: GM was deliberately underselling them. Chelsea Sexton, one of the company’s electric car specialists, explains that the team had to fill in vast questionnaires for every customer, only for most to be rejected inexplicably: “I had to fill in a resume for Mel Gibson listing his accomplishments and achievements, because they said he didn’t warrant a car.” Instead of marketing the cars with sexy women draped over them, GM’s ads had odd opaque graphics and the voice of an elderly woman. Big Oil speedily joined this anti-advertising campaign. Exxon-Mobil followed its standard operating practice of setting up fake consumer groups to spread disinformation about the products, saying they were bad for the environment. This corporate coalition finally succeeded in repealing the law – and GM immediately called in all their electric cars and sent them to the scrap heap. Their campaign almost complete, Chevron-Texaco came in with a final blow. The biggest drawback to the electric car had been its limited range: one charge lasted about 60 miles, then the car stopped. So the engineer Stan Ovshinsky created a battery that could run up to 300 miles at 70mph on a single charge – enough to get from London to Scotland. The oil companies bought the technology. Nobody has seen it since. Why on earth would a string of corporations scrap a potentially profitable technology? The oil firms had an obvious interest in stopping an alternative to fossil fuels. There is $100 trillion of oil left in the earth, and they plan to mine it – even if doing so will make the planet uninhabitable. But why did the car companies collaborate? Electric cars have no combustion engine, and it is in maintaining and replacing those engines that makes up a hefty chunk of profits. A transition to batteries would be a disaster for the car companies’ balance sheets. Thatcho-Reaganites are always lecturing about how unregulated markets are the best way to stimulate innovation. The story of the electric car is a parable about how, to the contrary, unregulated markets often quickly descend into a corporate oligopoly that smothers new technologies in their cot. Only tough, democratic regulations – which they mock as “red tape” – keeps markets from devouring themselves. By arrangement with
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Delhi Durbar The Nandigram firing continues to haunt the CPM leaders and was the dominant theme during the three-day politbureau and Central Committee meet recently. Several theories were making the rounds including one about a conspiracy hatched by Washington against the longest running Communist government in the country. Politbureau member Brinda Karat took the US phobia to a new level by alleging that a US official held an “unprecedented” meeting with a leader involved in mobilising the minority community in Nandigram. While West Bengal Chief Minister Buddadeb Bhattacharya admitted the mistake, the party did not own up to its own cadre’s involvement in the firing, in which 14 persons lost their life. CPM General Secretary Prakash Karat tried to dodge the issue by claiming that several people suffered stab wounds and other injuries, contrary to the CBI report. What the CPM leaders did not explain was what action the party would take against its cadre who have taken Chinese communist leader Mao Zedong’s philosophy that “power flows from the barrel of a gun”, literally.
Unpredictable Fernandes Janata Dal (United) President and Rajya Sabha MP Sharad Yadav does not seem to be sure of the mercurial temperament of his predecessor George Fernandes. On his return last week from a four-day tour of Uttar Pradesh to campaign for the JD(U), besides alliance partners – the BJP and Apna Dal – Yadav was asked by a journalist if he would ask Fernandes to campaign for the party for the forthcoming assembly polls. The JD(U) President did not want to miss the opportunity afforded by the question of speaking his mind on the NDA Convenor. Hinting at Fernandes’ unpredictable utterances, Yadav replied he had not approached him so far as he was not sure what he may say. He added that if Fernandes says anything, he will do more harm to the Bharatiya Janata Party than to the JD(U). The JD(U) is likely to contest 17 out of the 403 Assembly seats in Uttar Pradesh while Apna Dal is likely to contest 37 seats. BJP is contesting the remaining seats.
Hospital for women The national Capital can now boast of North India’s first all women’s hospital in South Delhi. Inaugurated by Union Minister for Women and Child Development (Independent Charge) Renuka Choudhury, within three weeks of the International Women’s Day (March 8), the Fortis la femme multi-speciality hospital will provide a range of services to ensure that women’s health is not neglected. Besides the out-patient department services, diagnostic and preventive health checkups, the hospital will offer cosmetic surgery and obstetrics, gynaecology and neonatology. Contributed by R Suryamurthy and Tripti Nath |
No one has attained to God without the grace and guidance of the True Master; Though many have grown weary, trying to do so through other means. He replied: “The illumined sages say Knowledge is twofold, higher and lower. Love starts at home and lasts at home.... the home is each person's first field of loving, devotion, and service. |
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