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Katara and the ilk The arms bazar |
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ISRO goes commercial
Election mantra
The exalted circle
Chandigarh’s skewed development Pakistan a society at war with itself Delhi Durbar
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Katara and the ilk THE case of BJP MP Babubhai Katara is becoming curiouser and curiouser. When he was arrested last week while trying to smuggle out a woman and a boy from Kapurthala on the passports of his wife and son, it was assumed that it was a freak case. But if details of interrogation of the MP are anything to go by, he is part of an organised racket. The MP's own passport reportedly has entries suggesting that he had made two visits to the US and Canada in the recent past. It is assumed that he would have made a lot of money by trafficking in people on the strength of his diplomatic passport. Paramjeet Kaur, who tried to relocate herself to Canada, is claimed to have paid him Rs 30 lakh. The detection of a dozen passports from his house shows that he was virtually running his own passport and immigration offices. One of his acquaintances has spilled the names of at least three MPs who are alleged to be involved in a similar racket. It is obvious that the case needs a thorough investigation so that all the MPs involved in the racket are dealt with under the law. However, witch-hunting against the MPs just because a questionable character has named them will be unacceptable. As Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee has pointed out, the black sheep should not be allowed to tarnish the name of Parliament, which has members who maintain exacting standards of probity. It is against this backdrop that the Speaker has convened an all-party meeting on Wednesday. Hopefully, the meeting will recommend expulsion of Katara from the House and evolve a policy on dealing with MPs who misuse their privileges for personal ends and pecuniary gains. Since prevention is better than tackling a malaise later, the case of Katara should prompt all political parties to take a decision not to encourage such people to enter politics. At present, only those who have been convicted in serious cases lose their membership of the House. We have in these columns argued that all those who are charge-sheeted in criminal cases should also be forced to put in their papers. A better solution would be for the political parties to study the antecedents of a person before he or she is fielded as a candidate. In that case Katara and the ilk would not become honourable MPs and cause shame to democracy. |
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The arms bazar IN less than a week after the bloodiest campus massacre at Virginia Tech University in modern US history, the high security Johnson Space Center of NASA in Houston was rocked by a shooting incident on Saturday. An engineer working there gunned down a colleague before killing himself with his licensed weapon. These incidents have sparked off a serious debate in the US on whether people should be allowed to possess a gun so easily as is the situation today. People in the US have the right to carry a firearm anywhere throughout the country except in the states of Utah and Pennsylvania. There is a bar on taking a gun inside the campus of an educational institution, but one can always smuggle it in as South Korean killer Cho-Siung-Hui did at Virginia Tech. Now the anti-gun lobbies are up in arms against the liberal firearm laws as a result of which the US has as many as 200 million privately owned guns today. Their argument is that most of the 30,000 deaths that occur in the US every year could be prevented by denying people easy access to lethal weapons. No one should be able to buy a weapon as the Virginia Tech killer did — he went to a gun store and was back with a pistol within a few minutes. In this short time he completed all the required formalities, including the police verification of his background. This indirectly amounts to promoting a gun culture by those who never miss an opportunity to lecture others on the growing environment of violence in the world. But the pro-gun lobbies, which have their business interests at stake, look at the situation differently. They say that people in the US, including school and college students, are highly vulnerable to an attack from various quarters. They must possess a firearm to ensure their security. In their opinion, people cannot be deprived of their right to self-defence because of what happened at Virginia Tech. They, in fact, favour carrying of guns even in schools, colleges and universities so that students do not feel helpless as it happened at Virginia Tech. The gun-right lobbies have enormous influence in US political circles because they contribute handsomely to election campaigns. It is, therefore, not easy to get a law changed if it does not suit the arms lobbies. |
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ISRO goes commercial WITH ISRO’s workhorse launcher PSLV C-8 injecting the Italian Space Agency’s AGILE satellite 550 kilometres above the earth in a perfect mission, the country and the space community can allow themselves a feel-good moment over ISRO’s first commercial launch. While the agency has launched foreign satellites before, it was always done along with Indian satellites. AGILE, a 350 kg satellite for the study of gamma rays emanating from distant celestial objects, was the main payload on PSLV C-8. The Italian Space Agency (ISA) chief praised the “calm and professional” manner in which the mission was carried out. That once again reflects the confidence that the scientists now have over the PSLV, though this flight, in fact, featured new technologies and configurations. Along with AGILE, there was an Indian payload, an Advanced Avionics Module (AAM) which was sent up to test new avionics, inertial navigation and telemetry packages, which should stand ISRO’s launch vehicles in good stead in the future, including the advanced GSLVs. ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair expressed satisfaction over the fact that a commercial launch had been made on a totally indigenous vehicle. Given the light payload (PSLV is designed to carry a 1000 kg satellite), PSLV C-8 was flown, for the first time, in a “core-only” configuration without the familiar six strap on boosters in the first stage. The precision of the launch, where the desired low inclination of the satellite with respect to the equator was “even better than aimed for”, as the ISA chief put it, will add to ISRO’s standing. While ISRO is indeed a late entrant into the commercial launch business, given the established nature of other services and the capabilities to launch heavy satellites, the agency is moving in the right direction. Later versions of the GSLV are also to be commercialised and they should be capable of carrying 4000 kg satellites. ISRO will mainly press its cost advantage for customers. SHAR’s location, closer to the equator and ideal for eastward launches, is also a plus. The government should now consider supporting ISRO in any leap into the space it may wish to undertake, towards rapid augmentation of its commercial launch offerings.
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I think that I shall never see/A poem lovely as a tree.— Joyce Kilmer |
Election mantra THERE comes a time in the life of a political party when it must stand up to be counted. For the Bharatiya Janata Party, such a time arrived with the assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh and the face it has shown to the electors and the country is distressing in its implications and a warning of the shape of things to come. Everyone knows that the BJP climbed to power in Delhi on the strength of Mr L.K. Advani's blood-curdling rhetoric as he carved a red path along a swath of the country in his Toyota vehicle dressed as a chariot. Then came the destruction of the Babri mosque in Ayodhya and the almost miraculous accretion of strength to the BJP in the Lok Sabha. From then on, it was a predictable jump to being the largest single party after the general election and, after some hiccups, the BJP came to rule the country for six years. Once in power, it talked a different language, and, apart from savouring power, it set about putting in place a physical and ideological apparatus in the Central Government and agencies to perpetuate the Hindutva philosophy in the long run. There was the hope, now turning to disillusion, that having employed dubious and reprehensible means to achieve power, the BJP would settle down to pursuing policies that would take the country forward and attempt to alleviate the plight of the disadvantaged and less well-off. There was, of course, the warning from Gujarat under Mr Narendra Modi's stewardship, but Mr A.B. Vajpayee's supposed desire to make amends was subsumed in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh cracking the hip against any assault on the Chief Minister, however symbolic it might be. Many in the country had still hoped that despite the BJP's surprised defeat in the last general election, the party would build up its programme on something more than a hate-Muslim agenda. In other words, it should have gained sufficient confidence as the alternative national party to frame a broader national agenda of development and promoting equity. The BJP has now given its answer in the UP assembly elections. Whatever the outcome of the infamous compact disk issue, it became clear that the mantra the BJP sought to use was to spread communal poison of the most blatant kind to divide the people to seek votes. The CD, combined with the election rhetoric of some of the party's candidates, captured on tape, is as clear an evidence as any that the leadership has come round to the conclusion that it can improve its position in the all-important state only on the strength of repeating Mr Advani's rath yatra declamations. Earlier, Mr Rajnath Singh's elevation to the party presidency was directly related to the UP elections. The implications of the BJP's decisions are horrendous. The 60-year history of independent India has taught us to be sceptical of the prospect of a Third Front as a major factor in national politics. Thus, we are faced with the alternate national party wedded to promoting a programme inimical to the interests of at least 12 per cent of the country's population. Where it will take an India officially wedded to secularism merits study. The BJP has been undergoing a churning process. With Mr Vajpayee hardly in a position to impose his will on the party and Mr Advani living on borrowed time after the ignominious treatment meted out to him following his Jinnah remarks, the baton has already been passed on to second-rung leaders who are beholden to the RSS for political survival. The party has become more ideology-driven than it has been since it tasted power at the national level. From the RSS perspective, it stands to reason that the promotion of Hindutva should be the highest aim of the BJP. During the six years of BJP rule, the RSS had succeeded in capturing key posts to promote its ideology and in sprinkling the official machinery with its followers at various rungs of the bureaucratic ladder. But the BJP's unexpected defeat in the general election meant that its tasks remained incomplete. Before going into the long, phased UP assembly elections, the BJP had let it be known that it would not highlight the Ayodhya temple-building issue because it was presumably felt that it was like flogging a dead horse. The reversal of its strategy is revealing for the hold the RSS exercises over the party and its decision to use the occasion to re-indoctrinate the party cadres. It is no secret that, contrary to some occasions in the past when it sought to voice its dissent; RSS cadres have been working overtime for party candidates. The RSS shows contempt for the criticism it has received from the English-language Press and television channels because the electorate it is seeking to influence is nor exposed to these media. The BJP leadership's reaction to the CD issue was revealing in its attempt to fasten on to the mechanics of its handling, rather than its inflammable content. And Mr Vajpayee thought it fit to give his blessing to the official party version. The larger question of where the BJP's tactic and strategy will lead the country to remains unanswered. The results of the UP election will decide whether the BJP will emerge as a deciding factor in who comes to power, but the Indian polity's dilemma is acute because the national alternative party has given notice that its true agenda is different from that of the concept of secularism that is such an essential part of the national constitution and consensus. If the run of Congress defeats in assembly elections continues, it would find it difficult to give an appropriate answer to the BJP. In any case, the constituents of the United Progressive Alliance will get more restless with time and will perhaps experiment with different political alignments. The Left is already becoming more vocal in its critique of the UPA's economic policies although its main objective of keeping the BJP out of power remains as valid today as it was yesterday. The BJP is now testing its diverse opponents' will to counter its own new, old
strategy.
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The exalted circle AT last, demigods Shahrukh Khan, Hritik Roshan, Rani Mukherjee and lesser mortals like you and I have something in common. None of us got invited to the big fat Abhiash wedding. Or was it Ashabhi or Buchrai or Raibuch shaadi. What I mean is who cares, a reasonably good-looking man got married to a reasonably good-looking woman. That’s about all. So what was the media frenzy all about? For three days, may be more, TV crews set their business on the pavement across Bachchan bungalows in Mumbai. Denied access to the wedding, they could be seen chasing the maid, the bandwallah, the dhobi, the securitywallah, the phoolwallah, just about everyone with the remotest possible connection with the shaadi, or the Bachchan or the Rai surname. One guy, poor chap, could be seen reeling with ecstasy when he tasted food made of “desi ghee”, distributed amongst the media waiting at his doorstep by a “very thoughtful” Amitabh Bachchan. When his colleague in the studio enquired, “so how was the food”, pat came the response” very tasty. It was made of desi ghee you know”. Thank you very much Bachchanji for treating media so well, just like class IV employees are normally treated here in India. Remember, how when sahiblog attend parties, drivers are handed over packed dabbas by the hosts as they wait for sahiblog to emerge. Incidentally, the same Bachchanji used the media to his advantage whenever it suited him in the past. Remember, how when he decided to launch his beta dearest in the big bad movie world, he actually steeped out of his high-security bungalow, Abhishek in tow, to seek blessings from people and the media. But then a shaadi is a family affair and Bachchanji has every right to keep the media at bay. So upset was the family over the unwanted love showered on them by the adoring media and the public that the family spokesperson Amar Singh had to come on air and say “leave us alone”. How very nice and polite! Actually, the good salesman that Mr Bachchan is (he does sell everything from clothes to chocolates), he knows he is the most saleable commodity in the present-day consumer-driven India. He also knows the ever-forgiving and competitive Indian media will continue to carry out all duties of a good paparazzi in the future even if he decides to ignore them for now. Even though their initiation has been quite recent, just about the time Brangelina came to India and Indian reporters took their initial training chasing the couple and their adopted son Maddox all over the town, the growth of Indian paparazzi has been quite encouraging. They also did the country proud during the Liznayyar, or was it Lizarun, wedding. Despite being bashed and insulted by security persons, reporters and camerapersons tried everything possible to gatecrash into the wedding. More recently a media house sent an Abhishek lookalike right till Aishwarya’s doorstep. And the day the poor couple was to get married, a lady decided to, appear on the TV, claiming to be Abhishek’s wife (somehow, can’t do away with a niggling thought that maybe it was a media plant to create some more excitement). Way to go man. And this time it was not just the channel guys, whom the so-called serious journalists normally use as punching bags for all ills that have befallen journalism, some senior and serious print media guys were seen writing page one stories on who all had been invited for the Abhiash shaadi. So, who all were invited? The list included Tian, Hedha, Kiranu, Neeri. Oh that’s Tina-Anil Ambani, Hema-Dharmendra, Kiron-Anupam Kher, Neetu and Rishi Kapoor for the unenlightened. To tell you the truth we don’t mind being invited to the wedding. We are in the exalted
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Chandigarh’s skewed development MONOPOLY public control over land acquisition and development was justified for achieving two objectives: ensuring planned development within the Master Plan area, and protecting the periphery from unplanned suburban sprawl. Only a public authority, it was argued, would cater to the needs of the poor and ensure availability of the desired social infrastructure of schools, health centres and the like for all sections of the population. The needs and aspirations of surrounding villages had no place in this scheme of things – their land, resources and opportunities were to be the sacrificial lambs for the urban project. In the early years, land was acquired, developed with public utilities and social infrastructure, and sold on the basis of cost recovery. The price charged for private plots included the cost of land, public utilities and other community facilities. Despite land being dirt cheap in those days, the Chandigarh Capital Project made no effort to profit from buying cheap and selling at high prices. Pandit Nehru responded to the oustee villagers’ demand for proper rehabilitation (instead of just monetary ‘compensation’) by ensuring that they received equivalent land in new locations in lieu of land lost for the city. That somewhat reduced the inevitable pain and trauma of displacement. Land acquisition for phase 2 sectors was more conflict prone. Acquired land was not replaced with alternative land; many of those promised plots within the city at reserve price are still doing the rounds of government offices. Others could buy much less land with the compensation money than what they lost. Non-land owners received nothing. From day one, however, planned land allocation within the Master Plan had a major lacuna. The minimum price for the smallest 5 marla plot was way beyond the paying capacity of the labour building the city. Consequently, unauthorised labour colonies, and informal low cost markets to serve their needs, preceded construction of even Le Corbusier’s famous buildings. On the contrary, in 1960, the policy of disposing private residential plots on a cost recovery basis was changed to auctioning them to the highest bidders. While the city’s population increased by 170,000 between 1961 and 1975, only 1112 plots were put up for sale to the general public with another 5056 being allotted to non-resident defence personnel on concessional terms. Land prices sky rocketed, going beyond the reach of an even higher section of the population. The responsibility accompanying monopoly control over land, of releasing adequate quantities based on anticipating demand of different socio-economic groups, was hardly being honoured. The mid-1970s saw creation of the Chandigarh Housing Board (CHB) for building affordable housing. Although the CHB built 1310 ‘Economically Weaker Section’ units during its initial years, between 1982 and 1992, it did not build a single such unit for the growing low income population. Instead, it built units for NRIs and various categories of Higher, Middle and Lower Income Groups. As proportionate growth in the city’s population living in unplanned colonies continued apace, CHB was assigned the responsibility of developing resettlement colonies for them under the much maligned and abused resettlement scheme. Instead of even belatedly integrating the poor within the Master Plan area, the majority were (and continue to be) dumped outside the Master Plan on additional land acquired from villages in the periphery. An estimated 40 per cent of the city’s present population has settled in the city via the unauthorised route because affordable land and housing was never provided for them within the Master Plan – one of the primary mandates for monopoly government control over land. The poor villagers have paid the price through losing their land and being used as dumping grounds for the city’s poor as well as it’s garbage. That brings us to the latest (and last) round of ongoing land acquisitions. These have become contentious for several reasons. Firstly, they violate the spirit of Chandigarh’s Master Plan by developing the periphery. Besides protecting land for phase II, the primary objective of the Periphery Control Act (PCA) was to maintain a clear rural-urban dichotomy and preventing urban sprawl around the Master Plan area. All the new activities for which land is now being acquired, violate these objectives. No transparent planning process, taking the public into confidence, for such a major departure from Chandigarh’s well known and accepted Master Plan has been followed. Secondly, the Administration has decided to acquire all remaining rural land in the UT and develop it at a frantic pace, leaving none for future generations to exercise other development options. Lastly, unlike in the past, land is being acquired cheap, and being directly handed over to private developers for gated activities – the IT Park, ‘world class habitat’ for IT professionals, ‘film city’, ‘theme park’, ‘education city’ and what have you, at times at a 2000 percent profit! There is no evident planning for the large number of lower income migrants these elite activities will invariably attract. With Chandigarh Administration itself becoming the biggest violator of the PCA and the Master Plan, owners whose land is being forcibly acquired at a relative pittance are questioning the ‘public purpose’ in it’s profiting from or subsidising elite companies like Infosys at their cost. The bureaucracy’s monopoly right of interpreting ‘public interest’ should no longer be left unchallenged. Madhu Sarin is an architect and development planner who has written a book on Chandigarh’s planning. |
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Pakistan a society at war with itself THE Pakistani people are living through turbulent times and, General Musharraf, the self-styled President, is under tremendous pressure. The United States-led anti-terrorism campaign in Afghanistan has shaken Pakistan’s polity like no other event in its troubled history as US and NATO forces have been launching cross-border forays into Pakistan in hot pursuit of fleeing al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Hundreds of Uzbek and other foreign militants have established strongholds in the NWFP and are now being forcefully opposed by the Pashtuns with the army’s help. Mired in a virulent madrasa-Kalashnikov-narcotics smuggling-terrorism culture, Pakistan is embroiled in internal instability that might gradually spin out of control. And, as if to rub fresh salt into General Musharraf’s wounds after the government’s disastrous showdown with the lawyers over the dismissal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry in March, Burqa-clad, lathi-wielding female students of the Jamia Hafsa madrasa, attached with the Lal Masjid in Islamabad, have launched an aggressive back-to-the-dark ages agitation in Islamabad, Pakistan’s showpiece capital. Abundantly endowed with misplaced enthusiasm to defend Islam and perform a “community correction role”, these intrepid young women raided a house and kidnapped an old woman, her young daughter and daughter-in-law for indulging in “immoral” activities in the area and then stood their ground against the police for several days. When the police took two female teachers and two male students into custody, the girls reacted by kidnapping two policemen. Earlier, in a showdown with the administration of the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) over the demolition of a part of the Lal Masjid for illegal construction, they had occupied a nearby students’ library, started a round-the-clock vigil armed with Kalashnikovs and lathis and had threatened to fight to the death if the police tried to evict them. The administration backed down, re-constructed the demolished portion of the mosque and offered to talk. Almost for a month now, the teachers and students of the Jamia Hafsa seminary have been going around the markets exhorting shopkeepers to stop selling audio and video CDs, DVDs and cassettes that promote a “vulgar and un-Islamic” culture or else they would stop the shopkeepers physically from dong so. The latest development is that Maulana Abdul Aziz of the Lal Masjid has announced the establishment of a parallel Islamic court to be headed by Qazis (judges) who will be appointed by the Ulema to enforce Islamic law or Sharia. In its first “verdict” the court has condemned a woman minister for hugging her male instructor after a short joy ride in a paraglider. The management of the Lal Masjid has also launched an illegal FM radio channel to broadcast fiery speeches and religious music. The mosque, that is said to have links with the Taliban in Waziristan, has posed a direct and stunning challenge to the government headed by General Musharraf. The Maulana has threatened to launch hundreds of suicide terrorist strikes if the government tries to evict the students from the library or take over the mosque by force. Though the leaders of the ruling Muttahida Majlis-e Amal (MMA) alliance have condemned the antics of the radical cleric and the misguided youth to enforce Islamic law and carry out moral policing, they have done so on the specious grounds that Islam does not “permit women to lead such campaigns”. They have failed to speak up against the forced imposition of the Sharia. Such political ineptitude cannot but encourage other Islamist hardliners across Pakistan to promote similar courts. Having burnt his fingers in the Chief Justice dismissal case, General Musharraf has reacted with caution and expressed a desire to resolve the issue amicably even while emphasising that the Constitution already guarantees that no laws will be enacted that are violative of Islamic injunctions. The picture that emerges is clearly that of a society at war with itself and a government that is slowly but inexorably losing control. The government of Pakistan is desperate to ward off the creeping Talibanisation of the state but is unsure of the course of action that it must adopt and of what the consequences might be. It is time for the Indian government to also take note of the developments and formulate a pro-active response to ensure that India’s secular fabric is not singed by fundamentalist yearnings. The author is Senior Fellow, Centre for Air Power Studies, New Delhi. |
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Delhi Durbar AFTER a standoff between Ghulam Nabi Azad and Mufti Mohammaed Sayeed lasting several months on the demand of the PDP for a phased withdrawal of troops from Jammu and Kashmir before the summer, to give a fresh impetus to the healing touch policy in the state, the two leaders will be coming face to face in the capital during the third Round table conference in the capital on Monday Azad had stoutly opposed the PDP's demilitarisation proposal. The problem has since been defused with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh constituting a committee to go into the issue of phased withdrawal of troops. Even though Azad and the Mufti live close to each other, both in Sringar and the summer capital of Jammu, there has been no contact between them either on the telephone or otherwise. Precious water During an interface with mediapersons to announce the successful commissioning of a barge mounted desalination plant off the Chennai shore in the capital recently, the Ministry of Earth Sciences, under which the project is being undertaken by the National Institute of Ocean Technology, also distributed seawater-turned-fresh water in bottles among the scribes. Union Minister for Earth Sciences Kapil Sibal was not satisfied with that. He ensured that all the journos opened the seal of the bottle and had a sip. "This is the purest of pure waters. It has a TDS of less than 10 ppm whereas the BIS accepted level is 2000 ppm," observed Sibal.
Cost-cutting Uttarakhand Chief Minister Maj Gen (retd) B C Khanduri is resorting to common sense cost cutting which is causing avoidable embarassment to the Congress which held the reins of power before being defeated in the assembly elections in February. He is also setting an example for his own ministers even as the people at large are commending the Chief Minister. An ex-fauji, Khanduri has withdrawn 300 security personnel of the Uttarakhand police assigned to VIPs, in contrast to the previous Congress government which was more than liberal in providing security to all and sundry. He has also given up the Z plus security for himself and other eye sore paraphernalia which has reduced the burden on the exchequer by more Rs 2 crore annually.
Persistent nuisance The public conveniences set up by the New Delhi Municipal Committee and Sulabh Shauchalaya at several places across the national Capital do not seem to have disciplined those Delhi-ites who prefer easing themselves under the open sky. The malaise afflicts many roads in the heart of the city. The area in front of the National Commission for Women on Deen Dayal Upadhyay Marg has become one such spot. One wonders why the much empowered Commission has chosen to look the other way. Contributed by S. Satyanarayanan, Vibha Sharma, R. Suryamurthy and Tripti Nath |
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