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SEZs get going Quota for minorities |
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Gathering heat
Wonder that is SAARC
Back-chat across space
Rediscovery of Egypt Capitalism reduced to consumerism Inside Pakistan
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SEZs get going THE government has cleared 83 new special economic zones which involve no controversy or land dispute. That the SEZ concept has not been abandoned following protests and violence over land acquisition at certain places is a relief. While requiring every developer to provide at least one job to each displaced family in addition to the land price, the government has decided to stay away from the process of land acquisition, protecting itself from criticism over any unfair deal. However, a stake in the project for each affected family can, perhaps, be a better option since it might become difficult to provide jobs to unskilled or uneducated members of farmers’ families. It is also heartening that there will be no cap on the number of SEZs. However, the cap of 5,000 hectares for an SEZ may not be acceptable, particularly in the case of multi-product SEZs. By the Chinese standards, an Indian SEZ may be too small to be viable. After specifying that 50 per cent of the area (as opposed to the previous 35 per cent) should be earmarked for the core activity, the government should have left it to the investor to decide the SEZ size. The aim, of course, is to discourage SEZs from turning into townships. Given the shortage of houses, corporate townships is not a bad idea, specially after the success of Greater Noida and Jamshedpur. For real estate operations the government can reduce or even withdraw the incentives, limiting these to the core activity. Incidentally, the Finance Ministry’s opposition to massive tax concessions being given to the SEZs has been ignored. Also avoidable is the empowering of a state government to further reduce the size of a SEZ. This leaves the door open for corporate arm-twisting and corruption by politicians and bureaucrats. The new guidelines have derailed Reliance’s SEZ projects in Haryana and Maha Mumbai and the DLF project in Gurgaon, among others. Anyway, this is a good beginning and irritants, if any, can be removed later. The government should be clear about its own role: be a facilitator and leave the nitty-gritty to the parties concerned. |
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Quota for minorities WHEN the reservation cauldron is already boiling over, Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi has added more fuel to the fire by announcing reservation for Muslims and Christians in education and employment in the state. Till now, the debate was raging whether it was at all justified to grant reservation on a caste basis. The DMK leader has upped the ante by offering to grant it on religious lines as well. It has been announced that his government will take steps to provide this reservation to minorities after the Supreme Court judgement in the case relating to implementation of 69 per cent reservation in the State. What has been ominously left unsaid is what will be his line of action in case the apex court strikes down this massive reservation for OBCs, SCs and STs - in contravention of the Supreme Court cap on all reservations at 50 per cent. Of course, he can argue that such reservation existed even before the apex court introduced a 50 per-cent ceiling. Ironically, caste or community based reservation has been only perpetuating the caste labels, which it ostensibly aims to make redundant. Not only that, it has been polarising society hopelessly along caste and community lines. There are any number of leaders who look at everything through a communal or caste prism. It is a pity that instead of being a medium for uplifting those left behind cruelly during the march of progress due to the unbearable millstone of the varna system, reservation has degenerated into a means to garner votes. This bounty is considered the best method to appease certain sections. That is why there is a mad rush to get new names added to the ever-expanding list of OBCs. Now that religion is also being sought to be interpolated into the selfish design, there are chances of even greater fragmentation and friction. Mr Karunanidhi has merrily ignored the fact that the Andhra Pradesh High Court has already struck down reservation for Muslims announced by the Congress government there as “unconstitutional”. |
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Gathering heat AS another working group of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change puts out its report on “how climate change is affecting natural and human systems” environment activists will be hoping that the mounting evidence makes for a forceful and conclusive case that will actually initiate world leaders into remedial action. Some 2500 odd experts and 1250 writers are working for a comprehensive look at climate change, expected to marshal all evidence to cement the consensus that global warming and climate change are no longer mere hypotheses, but documented phenonmena that are so far down the line that they are threatening the planet. In February this year, an IPCC report stressed the human factor in global warming, concluding that human activities had indeed contributed, and were contributing, to climate change. This was aimed at lobbies, particularly in Western countries, who liked to trash the climate change hypothesis. There is no longer any serious doubt that release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere has created a cloak around the earth, with the result that temperatures are rising, glaciers are melting, and sea levels are rising. The drastic changes in weather patterns that are expected will affect human and animal lives across the globe. The World Wildlife Fund has also released a list of 10 of the world’s natural wonders and ecosystems, which face destruction if global warming continues on the same scale. The areas included the glacier systems of the Himalayas, the Sunderbans and the Amazonian rain forests. Low-lying Bangladesh is in many ways on the front-line of climate change — already, the Sunderbans there are facing the effects of intruding sea water. Another IPCC report in May is expected to put out actual policy advice. But reaching a consensus will be the easiest part. Even moderate corrective measures will bite — we don't have to ban cars and air travel. It remains to be seen if governments, and indeed societies, are ready for the changes. |
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A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked.
— Bernard Meltzer. |
Wonder that is SAARC There have been widespread comments on SAARC being all talk and no action in spite of its existence for 22 years. When the objective history of SAARC gets to be written the question that will have to be tackled will be how did SAARC manage to survive for 22 years and at the end add to its number and get a list of impressive observers which includes all great powers except Russia. The day is not far off when SAARC will also have an observer from Moscow. SAARC cannot be compared to the European Union or ASEAN. Those two regional organisations originated in a concept of shared security and then evolved ideas of economic cooperation. SAARC never had a shared perception about the region’s security. We had the bizarre phenomenon of one member of SAARC (Pakistan) launching an aggression on its neighbour, India 14 years after SAARC came into being. SAARC as an organisation had no role to play and no views to offer on that aggression. Therefore, it is ridiculous to compare SAARC with the EU or ASEAN. There are two stories about the origin of SAARC. The first is General Zia-ur-Rehman, having seized power in a military coup wanted to enhance his stature as a statesman. The second story is that it was originally an Indian idea and since it was considered it would be a non-starter if India proposed it, General Zia-ur-Rahman was persuaded to father it. I am inclined to accept the first idea. This move was proposed when the US and Pakistan had initiated and were sustaining a covert war against the Khalq-Parcham government in Afghanistan supported by the Soviet forces. It was also the time when the long Iraq-Iran war was on. Pakistan was also then known to be receiving covert nuclear proliferation assistance from China and US was looking away from it though it was fully aware of it. China was extending military aid to Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Therefore, there was no question of there being a shared perception on security in the subcontinent. The SAARC concept reversed the basic ideas of EU and ASEAN. Let a start be made with economic, technological and cultural cooperation. Perhaps as they develop political and security cooperation may emerge, argued the founders of SAARC. I can recall the debate on whether India should join SAARC, especially when it was clear that making progress under the circumstances was going to be difficult. It was considered necessary to join SAARC or the other six nations may join in an anti-India front largely led by General Zia-ul-Haq and General Ershad. So, India insisted no bilateral issues would be discussed and decisions would be based on unanimity. It was not a period of remarkable Indian economic achievement. India came very close to bankruptcy in 1990. Pakistan had completed its assembly of nuclear weapon in 1987 and initiated its proxy war in Kashmir in 1989. Sri Lankan President Premadasa made his secret deal with Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) and got the Indian Peace Keeping Force out of Sri Lanka. India’s neighbours did not think very highly of Indian economic or military performance. Therefore, the most remarkable achievement of SAARC in the first 15 years was it did not dissolve but continued in spite of the unsatisfactory relations among its constituents. The tide changed in 1998. India became a nuclear weapon power. The economic reforms initiated in 1991 came to fruition and India could withstand international economic pressure. India started acquiring a reputation as an IT (Information Technology) power and the growth rate rose above 6 per cent. The US signalled its support to India on the Kargil conflict and China its neutrality. India was able to hold elections in Kashmir and reestablish democratic government there. Indian security forces gained dominance over the militants. Though the Indo-US relations started improving in the last months of President Clinton’s office it was in 2005 that the US Administration signalled that it looked on India as a strategic partner. China immediately recognised the significance of this development and started acclaiming India as a global player for the first time. Indian economic growth touched 8 per cent. Indian industry started playing a global role and India started investing in other countries. There was a sea-change in the global opinion on Kashmir issue. The UN was clear that the plebiscite resolution was unimplementable. Successive US Presidents declined to mediate on the issue. Now the Foreign Affairs Committee of the European Parliament has come out with a strong denunciation of Pakistan’s record in the portion of J&K occupied by it. European Union expanded and consolidated at a time of high economic growth in Europe. ASEAN was helped by significant foreign investments. That was the time of Asian Tigers. In SAARC India was 75 per cent of the population, area, resources and output. Therefore, without Indian economic growth there could not have been any economic integration of SAARC. Until the last few years India had neither the capability nor the image of being the engine of economic growth of the region. Though Indian economy started growing reasonably well a few years back, India’s neighbours, just as sections of the Indian elite, did not understand the globalisation process and the emerging balance of power. There were wrong expectations of China and India rivalry and continuing US-Indian tensions. Consequently some of the neighbours of India continued to hope that they could benefit out of exploiting the traditional attitudes of India, China and US. The bringing in of China, US, Japan and EU as observers makes it clear that these leading economic powers have an interest in seeing South Asia grow (which means that India, 75 per cent of South Asia, should grow). Therefore the time for SAARC to integrate and grow has just now begun. The Indian policy was to ensure that SAARC did not break under the extremely hostile conditions in which it had to be sustained and then to begin building on it when conditions were appropriate. India’s opening to ASEAN, negotiations on Free Trade with that group, the initiation of BIMSTECH (Bangladesh, India, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Thailand grouping) are all generating pressure on SAARC that time has come to get its act together. Now yet another party interested in integration — Afghanistan — has joined SAARC. Pakistan faces now the stark choice, either to cooperate or get isolated. Till now SAARC hibernated for reasons enumerated. Only now it is starting on its path of functional
integration.
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Back-chat across space
About a year ago, Rohini and I were launched into a geo-synchronous, sun-stationary transfer orbit after an eloping countdown and a perfect lift-off from a sub-registrar’s office. During the honeymoon orbits over Ooty and Kodaikanal, Rohini performed beautifully, responding instantly to my telemetry signals to do my laundry, my socks, sit up late for me or just keeping out of my way. But, of late, Rohini is “acting up” — being tardy in responding to transponder signals or ignoring them altogether, or worse still, talking back cheekily — something which had not been programmed in the on-board matrimonial computer. You can see for yourself what I mean by this excerpt from a de-coded telemetry tape. “Rohini, this is mission control. The boss is hopping mad about the dismal sales figures and he might well sack me and make me join the dole line if I’m not toiling at my desk before sunrise. Can you fix my breakfast, pronto?” “No go, mission control. Forget about my fixing your lousy breakfast. I’ve to rush for an early morning appointment with my hair-dresser and manicurist.” “Rohini, this is mission control. Is it okay with you if I bring an old crony over for lunch?” “I read you, mission control and forget about that lunch as well. My coffee club and ladies’circle is meeting in emergency session to discuss the latest designs in printed Banares’ silk sarees and cholis. Suggest you and your crony try potluck in the corner dhaba and paani puri shop.” “Rohini, this is mission control. Fire your apogee retro rocket for an after burn of T minus 5 seconds and descend to household level. I want you to shop for groceries, pay the water and electricity bills and tell off the maid servant for not sweeping under the sofa-cum- bed. Is that asking too much?” “Listen, mission control, let me remind you that I’m a fully liberated feminist and I’ll dare and defy all male chauvanist pigs and ask them to go jump in the lake. If you don’t like it, you can lump it or you can press the ‘destruct’ button and I’ll go down (or up) in the finest traditions of Kate Millet and Germaine Greer.” So you can see for yourself how things stand. While Rohini put into space by our scientists is performing very well, obsequiously carrying out the brusque and arbitrary orders barked at it, the Rohini I have put into space is a flop, or rather as the media savvy wizard at Sriharikota would have put it, a “partial” failure. This recalcitrant Rohini happens to be my
wife. |
Rediscovery of Egypt The modern world has not been kind to the pyramids of Giza. Just a generation ago they were out in the desert, which is how they still look in the postcards, shot from carefully selected angles. But rampant development has hemmed them in with the trashy accoutrements of the tourist trade - cafes and restaurants, souvenir workshops, stables for horses and camels, tacky little establishments of every sort for fleecing the visitors, and the slummy accommodation into which the tourist hawkers are crammed. It’s unforgettable all right. But apart from the papyrus workshops and the like, the experience is strangely lacking in depth. What are the pyramids all about? Who built them and how and why, and what came next? You can ask your guide as you plod along on horse or camel, but don’t expect much reliable enlightenment. But all that is about to change. On a desert site within view of the pyramids an immense museum, built by the Chinese-American architect Shih-Fu Peng, is about to rise which will transform the Giza experience. The Grand Museum of Egypt (GEM) will be the biggest museum of Egyptology in the world, and (it is claimed) the largest archaeological museum of any sort. It is designed to become the modern complement that the pyramids have always lacked. It will rise at the point where the Nile’s flood plain hits the sand plateau that marks the start of the Sahara desert. The first glimpse of it, through a grove of high palms, will be a vast wall running the entire length of the site composed entirely of triangular segments of onyx. “The face of the plateau is exactly aligned with the Great Pyramid of Chephren,” says Yasser Mansour, the project director. “It is the line between fertile land and the desert, between life and death. So what kind of line should this be, how to represent its aesthetic qualities? The architect answered that it should be a timeless surface, and as light is timeless, it should be translucent.” Initially the architect wanted alabaster, the luminous pink stone that some believe once covered the pyramids. “But the quality and quantity of alabaster seemed very thin,” says Mansour. He settled instead for semi-precious onyx: the contractors are now scouring the world’s markets for a quantity sufficient to cover six football fields. This stupendous facade, which Mansour describes as one of the museum’s two “icons”, along with the grand staircase, suggests that the design is offering competition for awesomeness to the pyramids. Mansour denies that flatly. “The highest point of the museum – the top of the facade – is actually the lowest point of the pyramids, which are built on the plateau. This way you don’t compare the museum with the greatness of the pyramids: it’s a humble statement.” “There’s a 150 foot difference in levels at the site,” says Roisin Heneghan, Shih-Fu Peng’s partner (and wife), “so we embedded the museum between them, creating a new cliff face...From inside the museum you can see all three pyramids...” Light, and geometry: these are GEM’s key elements. As seen from the Cairo direction, the softly luminous surface of the onyx wall is meant to draw the visitor in, inviting him or her to enter and explore. In the evening -the museum is intended to stay open long after dark – the building will continue to glow. Slicing through the onyx wall will be an enormous entrance courtyard which will be the new home of the vast statue of Rameses II, all 83 tons of it. Until last year it stood in front of Cairo’s railway station. It was moved with immense care in the dead of night. “The transfer cost us nearly a million dollars,” says Yasser Mansour.“The slightest shock could have shattered it into pieces. The statue now stands in a corrugated iron enclosure in the museum grounds, awaiting its final move, in 2011, when the museum is scheduled to open, to the new courtyard. The rest of the 100,000 works destined for the museum will begin arriving next March. They will be greeted in the first part of the museum to be built, the underground Conservation and Energy Centre that is already under construction and due to be completed by the end of the year. Every item that arrives here whether from the Egyptian Museum in central Cairo or from the many other sites around the country, will first be inspected and documented in the Centre’s nine laboratories. The museum’s second great icon, beyond the Rameses statue, is an immense staircase, 600 meters long and climbing 45 meters, that hauls visitors (there will be escalators as well as steps) right up the “cliff face” that Roisin Heneghan speaks of. The staircase leads to the different galleries that branch off it, and will itself function as part of the museum’s exhibition space - in ways now being secretly developed by Metaphor, the London-based event space designers. The climax of the staircase is what greets the visitors at the top: a panoramic view of the pyramids. Mr Ghoneim expects that 5 million visitors will come to the museum per year, rising to 8 million by 2020, and the great majority will be clamouring to see the great Egyptian treasures which will at last find a worthy home here, and in particular the 4,000-odd treasures from Tutankhamun’s tomb, and the solar boats by which the god Ra completed his daily journey across the sky. But there will be more to the museum than ancient artefacts. This will be the museum of the history of ancient Egyptian civilisation. “We go up to the Greco-Roman period,” says Ghoneim, “and then we stop.” And the word civilisation is interpreted in its fullest sense, to include the entire ancient culture of the Nile, from irrigation to agriculture and arts and crafts – which will be not merely exhibited but re-created in the museum’s four roof-top parks, overlooking the pyramids, and taught, to schoolchildren and aspiring craftsmen, as practical skills. “There will be workshops for arts and crafts,” says Ghoneim, “teaching people who want to be professional craftsmen: teaching them ancient techniques of woodworking, sculpture, pottery, papyrus plant cultivation and manufacture, spinning and weaving in the ancient Egyptian way, and the cultivation of ancient flowers.” The museum will also be linked electronically with other important Egyptology museums around the world. The cost is estimated at $592 million of which nearly $300 million has been provided in soft loans by Japan. By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Capitalism reduced to consumerism Consumer capitalism today is facing a deep predicament: The “Protestant ethos” of hard work and deferred gratification has been replaced by an infantilist ethos of easy credit and impulsive consumption that puts democracy and the market system at risk. Capitalism’s core virtue is that it marries altruism and self-interest. In producing goods and services that answer real consumer needs, it secures a profit for producers. Doing good for others turns out to entail doing well for yourself. Capitalism’s success, however, has meant that core wants in the developed world are now mostly met and that too many goods are chasing too few needs. Yet capitalism requires us to “need” all that it produces in order to survive. So it busies itself manufacturing needs for the wealthy while ignoring the wants of the truly needy. Global inequality means that while the wealthy have too few needs, the needy have too little wealth. Capitalism is stymied, courting long-term disaster. We still work hard, but only so that we can pay and play. In order to turn reluctant consumers with few unsatisfied core needs into permanent shoppers, producers must dumb down consumers, shape their wants, take over their life worlds, encourage impulse buying, cultivate shopoholism and invent new needs. At the same time, they empower kids as shoppers by legitimising their unformed tastes and mercurial wants and detaching them from their gatekeeper mothers and fathers and teachers and pastors. The kids include toddlers who recognise brand logos before they can talk and commodity-minded baby Einsteins who learn to shop before they can walk. Consumerism needs this infantilist ethos because it favors laxity and leisure over discipline and denial, values childish impetuosity and juvenile narcissism over adult order and enlightened self-interest, and prefers consumption-directed play to spontaneous recreation. The ethos feeds a private-market logic (“What I want is what society needs!”) and combats the public logic fashioned by democracy (“What society needs is what I want to want!”). This is capitalism’s all-too-logical way of solving the problem of too many goods chasing too few needs. It makes consuming ubiquitous and omnipresent, turning shopping into an addiction facilitated by easy credit. Compare any traditional town square with a modern suburban mall. In the square, you’ll find a school, town hall, library, general store, park, movie house, church, art gallery and homes – a true neighborhood exhibiting our human diversity as beings who do more than simply consume. But our new town malls are all shopping, all the time. When we see politics permeate every sector of life, we call it totalitarianism. When religion rules all, we call it theocracy. But when commerce dominates everything, we call it liberty. Can we redirect capitalism to its proper end: the satisfaction of real human needs? Well, why not? The world teems with elemental wants and is peopled by billions who are needy. They do not need iPods, but they do need potable water, not colas but inexpensive medicines, not MTV but their ABCs. They need mortgages they can afford, not funny-money easy credit. To serve such needs, however, capitalism must once again learn to defer profits and empower the needy as customers. Entrepreneurs wanted! With micro-credit, villagers can construct hand pumps and water filters from the clay under their feet. Pharmaceutical companies ought to be thinking about how to sell inexpensive retro-virals to Africans with HIV instead of pushing Botox to the “forever young” customers they are trying to manufacture here. And parents can refuse to relinquish their gatekeeping roles and let marketers know they won’t allow their kids to be targeted anymore. To do this, we will require the assistance of democratic institutions and an adult ethos. Public citizens must be restored to their proper place as masters of their private choices. To sustain itself, capitalism once again will have to respond to real needs instead of trying to fabricate synthetic ones – or risk consuming itself. Barber is a professor at the University of Maryland and is the author of many books, including “Jihad vs. McWorld.” His latest book is “Consumed: How Markets Corrupt Children, Infantilise Adults and Swallow Citizens Whole.” By arrangement with
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Inside Pakistan The media in Pakistan continues to be intimidated despite the government’s claim to the contrary. After The Frontier Post and the Jang group’s Geo TV network, it is now the turn of the Dawn group. Dawn, which has been valiantly resisting the Musharraf regime’s efforts to make this largest circulated English daily toe the government line, is under tremendous pressure to either bow to the diktats of Islamabad or suffer. Obviously, it has opted for the course expected of a newspaper which prides in being a champion of the freedom of the Press. As a result, the Dawn group is being starved of government advertisements. Some time ago it had to close down its popular eveninger, The Star. But its fight goes on irrespective of the consequences. For those interested in knowing the truth and joining in the struggle for Press freedom in a country controlled by the Army, the paper has posted on its website a detailed account of why it is being victimised and what can be done to ensure its survival. “We, therefore, urge you to extend your help in this matter and would appreciate if you address your concerns to the authorities in Pakistan regarding the following areas: “1. That the advertising ban by the Federal Government on the DAWN Group’s advertising is both unwarranted and unethical and a transparent mechanism to exert pressure on the newspaper group’s policies in contravention of the internationally accepted norms of objective news reporting. “2. That the decision to withhold a television broadcast licence to the DAWN Group by the government is in violation of the judgments of the High Court of Sindh and the consent declarations made by PEMRA (the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority) and the Federal Minister of Information in the Sindh High Court. Such right should be granted to other applying media groups as well on the same terms. “3. That the Government of Pakistan continue to submit its policies in Balochistan and its agreements with the pro-Taliban tribesmen of North and South Waziristan to the rigorous assessment of public and media scrutiny. “4. That the Government of Pakistan desist from abducting and arresting journalists in the judicious performance of their duties, and desist from physically attacking newspaper offices as has occurred last week in Islamabad.” The Dawn group’s current affairs magazine, The Herald, has been publishing well-researched articles, exposing the government’s “war” against Al-Qaida and the Taliban in North and South Waziristan and “a possible resurgence of covert government support to Kashmiri militants”. It has also been highlighting the government’s policy failures in insurgency-hit Balochistan, not bothering about Islamabad’s “request” for “a news blackout”. This is what an independent newspaper is supposed to do. It is not the paper’s problem if its revelations go against the interests of the government. The Pakistan government is, however, not harsh with every section of the media. It has been lenient when it comes to dealing with what is known as “Pakistan’s jihadi Press”. The Daily Times in its April 5 issue, quoting a report by David Montero in The Christian Science Monitor, says: “The proliferation of jihadi media puts the President in a difficult position: either crack down on them and risk further alienating a dangerous segment of the population, or let them undermine his leadership with conspiracy theories and calls to arms that bolster terrorism. “Pakistan’s jihadi Press, about two decades old, has largely escaped that heavy-handedness, even though it glorifies the bloody exploits of outlawed militants and expresses violent opposition to the government’s policies.”
There has been an alarming rise in the incidents of crime during the past one year in Pakistan. It is over 20 per cent and may go up considerably in the months to come if no effective steps are taken soon. The Frontier Post carried an interesting report on the subject on Friday: “Despite the efforts and measures taken by the government and tall claims of law enforcement agencies for busting gangs, the crime rate in the country is increasing day by day. The crime rate is said to be touching 20.1 per cent during the last one year. “The graph of vehicle theft and snatching, mobile phone snatching, fatal incidents and general crimes is on the rise while the police and other law-enforcers are raising pleasant slogans and making non-stop claims for busting criminal gangs and rounding up individuals indulging in vehicle snatching and other crimes.” Pakistan’s Punjab province occupies the top position with a record number of 25,991 proclaimed offenders followed by Sindh with 18,373 offenders, the Frontier Post report says. What is more disturbing is that a crime-infested area is an ideal breeding ground for terrorism. |
God is attained by loving the True Guru. I came alone in this world, I have walked alone in
the valley of the shadowof death, and I shall quit alone when the time comes. |
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