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Killings in Karachi Head for the exit door |
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EC
Wins
The AIDS challenge
Sweet dream
Desperate migrants Gauhar Ayub’s thesis is
hogwash Chatterati
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Killings in Karachi Saturday’s
pitched battle in Karachi between armed activists of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) and supporters of suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, claiming at least 30 lives, has further intensified the movement against General Pervez Musharraf’s rule. Trouble could be expected in the commercial capital of Pakistan when the MQM, a partner in the coalition that runs the government in Sindh as also in Islamabad, announced to hold a rally to counter the one to be addressed by Mr Justice Chaudhry. But few people could have thought that guns would be used freely to totally paralyse the law and order machinery in Karachi. Of course, the MQM is known for resorting to violence on the slightest pretext, but there may have been encouragement from a desperate official machinery keen to frustrate Mr Justice Chaudhry’s efforts to extend his mission to Karachi. The massive turnout during a rally in Lahore earlier and the crowds that gathered along the road from Islamabad to Lahore to greet Mr Justice Chaudhry had forced Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to declare that the government could impose an emergency to handle the situation. The General has ruled out any plan for an emergency raj, but there is reason for him to worry about the worsening scenario. The happenings in Karachi have indeed added to his troubles. His accusation that the activities of Mr Justice Chaudhry and his supporters are leading to instability in Pakistan cannot help him. He himself is to blame for the alarming state of affairs, exposing his weakening grip over power. The General indirectly helped the opposition parties in their drive against his rule when he took action against the Chief Justice on March 9, levelling unjustifiable charges. They found the best opportunity to expose his game plan. The judicial crisis, in fact, provided greater strength to the opposition parties, which were finding it difficult to put up a united fight. President Musharraf is reaping what he has sown. His striking a deal with PPP leader Benazir Bhutto can become uncertain if the present crisis remains uncontrollable. Under the circumstances, it will be unwise for Ms Bhutto to have any kind of arrangement with the General, who is losing political ground practically every day. She has been demanding that the General should give up his uniform. But now she may not accept any offer from him even if he chooses to make on this account. The political situation in Pakistan has become more uncertain than General Musharraf has ever faced as President. |
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Head for the exit door As
much as the losers in the Uttar Pradesh assembly election, the proliferating tribe of psephologists wantonly went ahead with their projections of perceived results and channels poured out statistics and analyses with both ease and often profundity. With the voting drawn out over several weeks, the pollsters — who lost no time in coming up with their own version of what the result would be after every round of polling —made merry, and, probably, money, too. If any of the figures have turned out to be closer to the mark — such as the number of seats bagged by the Samajwadi Party — it was by sheer chance. These pollsters and psephologists are generally arm-chair commentators out of touch with the ground reality and work on small samples that often lead them to guess work. Not one of the so-called polls could offer the remotest clue that the BSP would make a clean sweep. In the event, Ms Mayawati’s BSP proved to be way ahead of not only her political rivals but also the pollsters and TV channels. And, these pollsters were clueless not just about the votes for the BSP; they were equally clueless about the BJP being hammered to the third position. As for the Congress coming a poor fourth, anyone could have predicted that. The pollsters hedged their bets, with the proverbial margins of error, in such a way that regardless of how many seats the BSP, the SP or the BJP won, they could come up with some lame rationalisation. In the event, as the results have panned out, there is no room for escaping the stark reality: that they could not have been more wrong if they wanted to. There can be no excuses any longer for continuing with this exercise, which right-thinking sections and the Election Commission have consistently scorned. Now that the pollsters have been put on the defensive, at least, some of them should call it a day to return only after evolving credible ways to forecast. |
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EC
Wins The
peaceful completion of the Uttar Pradesh assembly elections calls for a pat on the back of the Election Commission team led by CEC N. Gopalaswamy. The State had perhaps the fairest election in living memory. There was not even one election-related death reported from anywhere or a polling booth hijacked. Some elderly persons from vulnerable sections voted for the first time. What an achievement that is can be understood only by those who have grown up witnessing large-scale bogus voting in the previous elections and tempering of the ballot boxes. The no-nonsense approach adopted by the Election Commission was both exhaustive and expensive. But the benefits that accrued were phenomenal. The victory of wrong people and by wrong means vitiates the entire democratic process. This was the first time that the central paramilitary forces were deployed on “active duty” at every polling station. No wonder the musclemen who used to have a free run thought it wiser to stay under wraps. The very fact that the vanquished Mulayam Singh Yadav is accusing the Election Commission of scaring away his voters is proof enough that the election results could not be manipulated. The low percentage of voting also shows that bogus voting could not be arranged. Nor could he post “favourable” officers at the desired spots. If there was a flaw, it was the staggered nature of the elections. Since electioneering was spread over seven phases, it led to voter fatigue. Development work also remained moribund during this long period. It must have led to more money spending by the candidates and parties. Perhaps now that the Election Commission has established that free and fair elections are possible even in Uttar Pradesh, it will attempt to do so in a far shorter period the next time around. The CEC has spoken of failure: the inability to curb money power. Yes, all parties spent lavishly, making a mockery of the model code of conduct. But now that violence has been reined in, other shortcomings in the election process can also be tackled. |
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Truth will come to light; murder cannot be hid
long. — William Shakespeare |
The AIDS challenge
By the
time this appears, Phase-III of the National Aids Control Programme (NACP-III) is likely to have been formally launched or awaiting auspicious announcement. Perhaps, at the new Thai-style Condom Bar in Chandigarh, considered a new “progressive” model. Presently, NACP-III awaits the approval of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. It has already crossed various government processes supposedly instituted to ensure full scrutiny. Earlier, the Union Finance Minister, in his Budget speech, had declared a forthcoming programme for high-risk persons in every district of the country, making generous provisioning for HIV/AIDS. Despite its current turmoil, the World Bank on April 26 announced $250 million credit for NACP-III. The NACP-III investment plan of Rs11,585 crore constitutes five-fold-plus jump to intensify strategies and the implementation carried out during NACP-II that officially ended on March 31, 2006 (Now, retroactively covered by World Bank NACP-III). Interestingly, only Rs 8023 crore is within the national budget. Direct donor funding of Rs 3,562 crore is committed outside the government. To whom and for what is not clarified even in the Union Cabinet papers. At the same time, a government committed to downsizing will add 1371 new posts, plus 1200 contractual posts to service NACP-III, the quadrupling NACO staff. Ironically, NACP-II is currently being evaluated by a consortium of three agencies, including an American university. The nod to proceed with more of the same, therefore, precedes final feedback on a programme already seriously censured by the Public Accounts Committee and the Comptroller-General of Audits and Accounts. Expediently, directions to incorporate recommendations as available are given. Why this hurry? Unfortunately, no one of consequence in the august corridors of power nor in the now airconditioned halls of civil society is asking questions. Not on the massive resources committed prior to end-evaluation (scheduled for several years earlier) nor on the absence of public disclosure/debate on evaluation findings integral to a democracy before forging ahead on a scale in a tricky societal area. Nor is there questioning on Rs 3562 crore committed outside the government by the Gates Foundation, the Clinton Foundation, bilaterals/others, altogether 20 donor agencies, big and small. By now we are used to governmental cavalier in disregard of resources and priorities. Civil society’s conspicuous silence on this issue is curious. But then, stakes exist from Rs 800 crore already distributed during NACP-II to 1200 NGOs for the controversial Targeted Interventions for High Risk Persons (TIs) plus more through the donors permitted functioning outside government budgets/ accountability. The huge funding commitment complacently shrugged off in government expenditure circles as “mostly not our money” and so implicitly a free lunch (an oxymoron) is earmarked for a roadmap based on numbers seriously challenged as almost half the NACO, UNAIDS, World Bank 5-6 million HIV-infected count in India. (Earlier, external agencies’ estimates scaled 20-30 million HIV infected by 2005-07!). The challenge on the estimate-size comes from diverse, including impeccable, sources this time. No less than the erstwhile global-HIV/AIDS surveillance chief of the WHO has unequivocally stated publicly: “HIV/AIDS figures in India will have to be drastically slashed as a result of more accurate data.” Dr James Chin provides insights on over-inflation of India’s HIV numbers, also that UNAIDS estimates across the world were grossly inflated; many African countries’ figures stand halved following new evidence underlining past miscalculations. The ground data from an extensive study in Andhra Pradesh’s high prevalence Guntur district by the prestigious Hyderabad-based Administrative Institute highlights a correction of 60 per cent in that district’s surveillance figures and, by extrapolation, nation-wide. Similar drastically lower levels are reflected in the data from over one lakh blood samples taken during the Third National Health and Fertility Survey findings that stand suppressed under re-analysis. Estimating the size of HIV-infected numbers is no idle number-crunching game but a basic scientific prerequisite for sound and accountable government policy design/direction. Therefore, it needs sorting out before NACP-III commences if more are not to become party to the scam of ever-higher budgets committed for dealing with what does not exist on that magnified scale. At the same time, the primary health care sector is so starved of resources as to be dysfunctional. Two-thirds of NACP-III’s Rs11,585 crore is for prevention and Rs2000 crore of the Government of India’s Rs2861 crore contribution on condoms alone. Topping operational targets described as “core indicators for monitoring NACP-III” is its central TI prevention package for high risk/vulnerable population — setting up 2100 collectives comprising one million women-in-prostitution, 1.5 million men-having-sex-with-men, 0.19 million injecting drug users and distribution of 3500 million condoms. Two major issues need flagging in this context. One, estimates of persons in high-risk sexual practices comprising NACP-III’s key operational targets are even more cavalierly estimated than overall HIV estimates. The Report of the Expert Group on High Risk Estimation — availed of under the Right to Information Act — is an eye-opener. The expensive “mappings” funded as a major NACP-II research activity are dismissed as “crude estimates”. Thereafter, arbitrary manifold number hiking takes place on the basis of untested assumptions and small studies. Thus, “mappings” of half a million women-in-prostitution escalates to 1.2 million. The extrapolation of men-having-sex-with-men is even more extraordinary: from mappings of just .01 per cent of the adult male population with homosexual experience the expert group accomplishes a swift climb, assuming 5 per cent of the two-thirds of all adult males in this category, one-fifth further assumed to have more than five partners, thus yielding 2.3 million men-having-sex-with men- more-than-five-men category. Operational targets are 80 per cent of such incestuous expert committee-based target sketching. Other ethical issues aside, serious issues arise on the fiscal and administrative integrity of ill-founded programming, consuming the lion’s share of the NACP-III resources. Two, despite explicit instructions to NACO from the HRD Parliamentary Standing Committee examining amendments to the Immoral Traffic Prevention Act-immoral traffic being inextricably linked with HIV/AIDS issues - to broad-based TIs to focus on rescue, skill-building, rehabilitation and reintegration of prostituted persons, there is no provision. The sum-total currently available with the Women and Child Department to fund rehabilitation for all destitute/needy women and children in the country, including victims of immoral trafficking, is Rs22 crore. These figures illumine the mockery of rescue and rehabilitation efforts. Rescue and rehabilitation is rendered untenable when faced with the onslaught of Rs800 crore-plus already disbursed, another nearly Rs3000 crore (not counting Rs2000 crore for condoms) available only for “non-judgemental” mobilisation and collectivisation of high-risk sex persons around the limited services package of condoms/ STD /ART referrals with society mandated to assist dignity in sex-sale activity, even to ensure “safe spaces” for “safe sex”! Could it get more flawed conceptually? We are currently witnessing a backlash in as many as six states that have withdrawn from the Adolescent Sex Education programme developed by NACO/UN agencies and launched despite the NCERT’s written caution on its explicit materials development and disassociation. Human intimacy is one of the most sensitive areas of human life. Cavalier interference in this arena has dangerous consequences as we learnt - to our grief — with family planning. Steam-rolling of all dissent and disregard of the actual field facts to suit donor directions will become the most expensive political lunch yet
ever.
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Sweet dream
This
was a special naka. The road in front of the chowki was teeming with cops — some in khaki uniform, others in white kurta-pyjama. They were stopping everybody — men and women, children and senior citizens, haves and have-nots. For a change, the policemen didn’t have frowns on their faces or curses on their lips. For a change, the common man didn’t have fear or mistrust in his eyes while facing the law-enforcers. The temperature was moving up into the scorching 40s, but surprisingly the tempers were not rising at all. This wasn’t the routine business of checking and challaning, yet no one could leave without obeying the “command”. A pint-sized rickshaw-puller, his shirt drenched with sweat, was instructed to take It. He did so once — that seemed to be enough for him — but a burly constable told him to have It again. How could he refuse? After all, he and his brethren had suffered verbal as well as physical abuse at the hands of policemen many a time. The latter seemed to be in a good mood at the moment, but one couldn’t afford to offend or provoke them in any way. He complied for the second time, and the third too. Only then was he free to go. He said thanks with folded hands and heaved a huge sigh of relief since nothing untoward had happened. Wiping his brow, he wondered whether It was just a dream. A bullet-borne youngster, sporting branded glasses and golden-streaked hair, promptly applied the brakes when he got the signal. He had no helmet, no RC, not even a driving licence. On any other day, he would have thrown caution to the winds and sped away like a tracer bullet. Today, he coolly parked his bike on the roadside and confidently stepped forward to take It from a pot-bellied ASI. The irony of the situation amused him. At the same time, he knew very well that the cat-and-mouse game would resume tomorrow. An elderly gentleman, holding onto a walking-stick, wasn’t keen on having It. Decades of witnessing corruption and apathy had made him embittered and disillusioned. However, when an SI addressed him as “Uncleji” with unheard-of politeness, even this cynic couldn’t help obliging. On his way back home, he felt that policemen could behave nicely with the public if they wanted to. Indeed, It was too good to be true. To tell you the truth, It was sweetened water, and the cops themselves had organised this
chhabeel! |
Desperate migrants Why
are youngsters from Punjab, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and other states so desperate to go abroad that they even put their own lives at a great risk to achieve their goal? Recall for a while the Malta boat tragedy in which several youths from Punjab’s Doaba region were killed a few years ago. The question calls for the attention of politicians, who rule the states, administrators and all others concerned including academicians. The involvement of certain Members of Parliament (MPs) and other VIPs from Andhra Pradesh in cases of smuggling people out of the country and duping of thousands of youths by greedy travel agents has brought the issue to the fore. Rasheed, a travel agent, had revealed to police that certain politicians of Andhra Pradesh had been lending their diplomatic or ordinary passports for several lakh rupees, to smuggle out Gujarati, and Punjabi men and women abroad. Travel agents have made politicians part of their nefarious multi-crore business of sending people abroad. But why is there so much demand to go abroad? The answer is not difficult to find. Take the case of Punjab. A few decades ago, Punjab was a land of great opportunities. Now it has become a state of limited opportunities. Job opportunities in Punjab have shrunk. Employment growth has fallen even below 1 per cent. Emotionally distressed youth are falling prey to drugs. The agriculture sector is facing a great crisis. Because of the small size of landholdings, farming has become unviable. Farmers of Punjab cannot buy land in the neighbouring Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh. Due to this reason, growth in farming sector has been impeded. The state’s economy is growing at the slowest pace compared to other states. Burden of debt on the state is so high that it cannot hope to come out of it for decades to come. School and college education is in a complete mess. Universities in the state are now known for their abusive and hullabaloo culture instead of academic excellence and scholars. The rule of ‘might is right’ prevails instead of rule of law in the state. Corruption rules the roost. The level of corruption is very high in all aspects of administrative functioning. Justice has gone beyond the reach of the common man. The blatant truth is that Punjab has stopped inspiring its ambitious youth. The dismal scenario in the countryside has made the youth to look outward. An uncertain future makes them take all kinds of risks to leave the state to settle abroad. Socially conscious Punjabi youth are not ready to do any petty work in the native land but abroad, they feel no shame even in cleaning washrooms. It is mostly the wards of small and marginal farmers who go abroad through the illegal route to take labour oriented jobs. Wards of the rich and famous and the middle class go, obviously through legal routes, for higher studies and white collar jobs. Most tragic is the use of daughters by small and marginal farmers to go abroad. Many farmers marry off their daughters to semi-literate, aged and undeserving NRIs. Then the daughter is forced to call her entire family abroad. Girls are virtually being used by parents as ladders to go across the sea. There is no exact count of the youth who were killed or ended up in jails in various countries while trying to reach America, England, Canada and other European countries. It is said that 30,000 Punjabi youth are in various jails abroad. What has gone wrong with Punjab and who are the people responsible for its decay? Obviously, politicians and bureaucrats have brought the state down to its knees. Punjab cannot be saved without political wisdom and sagacity. Punjab has long been ruled by self-serving politicians. Not a single statesman has been seen on the state’s political horizon for a long period of time. In fact, politicians, with feudal mindsets, prefer to settle personal scores and have competed with each other to loot the state and its people. Youth and their employment had never been on the agenda of politicians. Since the 1950s, Punjab has moved about with an unprecedented speed on political and agrarian fronts. It led to its destruction on both fronts. Political actors – mainly the Congress and the Akalis – contributed to its downfall. Agitation for Punjabi Suba started in 1950s and culminated in the mid-1960s. The dubious role played by the Congress, which had been in power in the Centre for long years after Independence, and the short-sighted approach adopted by the Akalis with regard to the issues related to Punjab, climaxed into the state’s destruction in the 80s and 90s, a period when thousands of people lost their lives in a mindless violence. The same thing happened on the agrarian front in Punjab. Farmers worked hard to usher the state into the green revolution. They invested huge sums of money on improving the health of the soil, creating irrigation facilities, farm machinery and to adopt new technology to produce more and more food grains. At the end of the day, they found that the return from the farm sector is far below the money invested by them. However, as they had no alternative, they continued to invest more and more money. Now farming has become a noose round the neck of lakhs of farmers. Many have ended their lives by committing suicide. And their wards with uncertain future in the state are left no alternative except to use fair or foul means go abroad. |
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Gauhar Ayub’s thesis is
hogwash Nearly
two years ago, in the summer of 2005, Gauhar Ayub, the son of late Field Marshal Ayub Khan of Pakistan, had startled the region by making some preposterous claims about a mole in the Indian military and tall claims about what the Pakistani military had achieved during the 1965 India-Pakistan war. These claims were apparently contained in a biography of his father, which he was about to release shortly. Then we heard nothing from Gauhar Sahib; perhaps he had developed cold feet after the reaction from India as well as from within Pakistan, where everyone had roundly criticized his fanciful ruminations, with well argued realities. He has suddenly reappeared, after nearly two years of hibernation, with even more preposterous claims. He has virtually stated that the so called mole in the Indian military was none other than Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw and that this had been stated in the diaries of his father. He went on to claim that the Indian Army had prepared war plans to secure the then East Pakistan as early as 1967 and that the victories the Indian military had achieved in 1971 were the result of these war plans. He is as confusing about dates now as he was two years back. Earlier, he had claimed that the war plans related to the 1965 conflict. He now states that they related to the 1971 war when India was instrumental in creating a new nation, Bangladesh. Even if one accepts his statements at face value, it is quite clear that they cast the Pakistani military in extremely poor light indeed, for even with the Indian war plans in their pockets, they suffered their biggest defeat in 1971! Other questions that arise are why now or why two years earlier? If the diaries of Ayub Khan have been in existence and in the custody of Gauhar since the passing away of the first military dictator of Pakistan, a couple of decades back, why has he waited all these years. Why are such sensational claims, which have the potential of derailing the current peace process between India and Pakistan, being made at this juncture? What does Gauhar, and by implication the Pakistani military establishment, hope to achieve by trying to malign a hero of India, an icon ingrained in the psyche of all Indians? Is it one more effort to somehow show the comprehensive Indian victory of 1971 in poor light? Is it nothing more than seeking publicity and boosting sales of the forthcoming book, which incidentally has been under publication for endless years, by taking a cue from President Musharraf, who had also taken recourse to sensationalism to promote his book? Firstly, perhaps this is atonement for the acts of omission and commission of Gauhar’s father for ushering in military dictatorship in Pakistan, which still flourishes and which has been smothering democracy at periodic intervals. The culture of military rule set by Ayub Khan continues unabated in Pakistan, while the polity suffers. Secondly, since the internal situation in Pakistan at present is explosive, to put it mildly, it is time to dish out a red herring to divert the attention of the masses, a ploy in which the Pakistani establishment excels. Let me, in the end, reflect on the serious insinuation of a Director of Military Operations (DMO) – now Director General – of the Indian Army being a mole. The selection for this appointment is based not only on professional competence but also on the impeccable character of the officer. He is privy to highly sensitive secrets of the nation, which he usually carries to his grave. In addition, there are numerous checks and balances, which ensure that operational secrets remain so. Having served in our MO Directorate in every rank bar two – captain and colonel – one is perhaps singularly placed to comment on how war plans are handled in MO Directorate. As far as national offensive plans are concerned, only three persons have access to them. These are the Chief, the Vice Chief and the DMO (now DGMO). Documents containing details of such plans are kept to the minimum and are retained in the personal custody of the DMO. In any case, these are only outline plans, based on which the concerned commands and corps prepare their detailed plans. In this entire episode, it is not Sam Bahadur but Gauhar Ayub and by implication the Pakistani military establishment, which have come out in extremely poor light. The author is a former Vice Chief of Army Staff |
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Chatterati Healthy
cooking – how we mint money on that mantra! On selling expensive yoghurts, drinks, marshmallows, jams and even sweets on the promise that they contain special “scientific” ingredients, such as collagen, enzymes and even Botox, that could make consumers look younger and more beautiful, simply by ingesting them. It’s called the beauty-food revolution. Last month Delhi’s hoity-toity kitty ladies launched a new “wrinkle-free lunch”, which contains “ingredients known for their anti-ageing properties to help diners have longer, youthful lives”. The range of lunches and dinners includes roast Gressingham duck with acai berry sauce. Duck is a good source of selenium, an antioxidant claimed to improve skin tone. The acai berry is one of the latest “superfoods” to hit the UK. The purple berry contains a remarkable concentration of anthocyanins, antioxidants that lower the risk of heart disease. But who would order wrinkle-free food in front of someone they wanted to impress? Well! Beauty-enhancing foods are already highly popular in global sales. Beauty foods are a natural extension of our pricey love affair with anti-ageing cosmetics. The personal-care arena draws on and feeds the food arena. Green tea is now big in food, collagen filled marshmallows are coming in from Japan and it is all over Saddi Dilli.
Divine flattery Flattering the Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje is an old game. Now posters depicting Raje as Goddess Annapurna are pasted by some BJP guy in Jodhpur who is a priest by professional. The latest poster of Raje shows her showering the blessings on her ministers. Two ministers are shown as Kuber and Indra, the gods of wealth and rain respectively. And there is more. Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Leader of the Opposition in the Lok Sabha L.K. Advani and BJP National President Rajnath Singh have also found place in the poster as Lord Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva respectively. They are shown showering their blessings on Raje. Below the picture of the Vasundhara Darbar is the Vasundhara Chalisa, depicting her as Annapurna Mata, the goddess of cooking and food. According to them, Vasundhara provides food to so many across the state and takes care of the Rajasthanis as her own children, so obviously she has to be worshipped. Raje already has to her name a batisha (collection of 32 couplets), chalisa (collection of 40 couplets) and an aarti. A few months ago, there appeared a poster which depicted Raje as Goddess Durga. Wonder why Vasundhara Raje has not discouraged anyone from all this nonsense. |
Some seek bliss in this life; some seek bliss in the other life. Wise is he who seeks bliss both in this life and hereafter. I tell you the truth: there is nothing wrong in your being in the world. But you must direct your mind towards God. God has neither form nor material sign. The best of alms is that which right hand gives and the left hand knows not of. So live likewise. That is what Ishwara ordains. Be not a traitor in your thoughts. Be sincere. Act according to your thoughts and you shall surely succeed. Pray with a sincere and simple heart, and your prayers will be heard. Pain sorrow, feelings of loneliness are nothing but the kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close that He can kiss you. |
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