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Ten commandments Politics of idiot box |
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Evading law
Tunnel vision
Lost dreams
Terror cannot solve
problems: Kanu Sanyal Babies face threat from chemicals Inside Pakistan
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Ten commandments Two
years before the next elections, the Prime Minister unveiled a 10-point social charter at the CII’s annual conference in Delhi on Thursday, indicating a shift in official thinking from India to Bharat, from industry to aam aadmi. The proposed social security legislation, which aims at providing life and disability cover as well as health and pension benefits to 37 crore workers in the unorganised sector, is also the result of such policy shifting. The 8-9 per cent growth rate, commendable as it is, benefits the urban rich in general and industrialists in particular with the housewife paying through the nose for dal-roti. Dr Manmohan Singh knows it very well that the big business, barring some honourable exceptions, will not take his commandments seriously. The concept of corporate social responsibility is yet to take root in India. Profit-driven industry will not avoid cartels unless some law is enacted. Asking industry to check corruption is like expecting the cat to guard milk. For that the administration itself has to be transparent with minimum controls and automatic clearances and easy public access to computerised information and records. Corruption has to be dealt with firmly and the drive must start at the higher echelons of the Central and the state governments. Apparently, the Prime Minister seems less inclined to use tax as a weapon to get his ideas implemented. The government cannot stop corporates from offering “excessive” remuneration to promoters and senior executives, but it can always tax what it feels is “excessive”. Similarly, no amount of advice will possibly be able to check conspicuous consumption or the “vulgar display of wealth” as the Prime Minister puts it, but what prevents the Finance Minister from garnering some revenue out of it? Industry ought to realise that the growing income disparities can fuel social unrest and vitiate the pro-industry environment. The Prime Minister might have got positive response from the big-wigs sitting in the audience, but they are unlikely to remember the implied moral lesson when back in their offices. Industry is hardly taking affirmative action despite repeated advice given by the government. Social harmony is a pre-condition to continuing high growth, but the business thinks it is for the government to ensure it. Dr Manmohan Singh has to be more assertive to ensure that the 10 commandments are taken seriously. |
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Politics of idiot box While
most political parties in India are vying for airtime to field their talking heads, in Tamil Nadu the parties are battling it out with their own channels. That is only to be expected, for the marriage between media and politics is a part of the state’s history. The DMK’s rise to political power is rooted in the media - from newspapers and posters to theatre and cinema. DMK Chief Minister M Karunanidhi has been a scriptwriter of repute for much longer than he has been in political office. However, sometimes the script can go awfully wrong as the DMK discovered when MGR split the party to form the AIADMK, which has been inherited by Ms J Jayalalithaa. The Tamil film world is also divided along political lines. With cinema’s influence receding in the age of television, it was only natural that Tamil parties would carve out their territories on this new frontier. The DMK, as always, was first off the mark to add a TV channel and cable network to its media stable of newspapers and magazines, all of which proved to be both good business and politics for the Maran family; that is, until Mr Dayananidhi Maran fell out with Mr Karunanidhi earlier this month. Ms Jayalalithaa’s AIADMK depends on her Jaya TV and the PMK’s Dr S. Ramadoss has his own Makkal TV. As IT minister, Mr Dayananidhi Maran made sure that his family venture Sun TV flourished while rivals like Raj TV found themselves denied of the licence for uplinking. With the Karunanidhi and Maran families falling foul of each other, the DMK is moving swiftly to launch its own Kalaignar TV. That should give Sun TV, now bereft of a political umbrella, also a run for its money. There are no prizes for guessing that Kalaignar TV will get all the necessary clearances within a matter of days, unless the UPA government wants to invite trouble. The next big thing on the political calendar is Mr Karunanidhi’s birthday — on June 3. Again, no prizes for guessing what the gift would be. |
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Evading law The
case of Bitihotra Mohanty, a 25-year-old rape convict, who jumped parole from a Rajasthan jail six months ago, is becoming murkier and murkier. The speed with which a fast track court convicted him last year to seven years imprisonment for having raped a German tourist at Alwar attracted nation-wide attention. However, the questionable manner in which he jumped parole and disappeared obviously puts his father, Bidya Bhushan Mohanty, Orissa’s Director-General of Police (Home Guards and Fire Services), under scanner. The Rajasthan government circumvented the rules to facilitate Biti’s parole under his father’s influence. And once Biti was out, his father has been trying every stratagem to evade arrest because he stood surety for his son’s parole. Biti’s father first got anticipatory bail from the Orissa High Court and then the Supreme Court. The apex court’s six-week deadline for him to surrender before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Jaipur, ended on May 21. It is indeed surprising why the Rajasthan government did not take prompt steps to arrest him following his failure to turn up at Jaipur on May 21. Mr Mohanty’s claim of enjoying the protection of the Supreme Court (which is presently closed for summer vacation) is nothing but an excuse for evasion. The Rajasthan Police wasted time in seeking the Jaipur court’s permission for a non-bailable warrant to arrest Orissa’s top cop. Not surprisingly, the court said that a non-bailable warrant was not necessary to arrest him. Justice demands that Biti Senior must be arrested immediately for having violated the surety. At the same time, both the Orissa and Rajasthan governments should step up efforts to catch Biti. The Orissa DGP has every right to take legal recourse as a citizen. However, in this case, it is not strictly a citizen seeking to exercise his right to go to court for justice. Being a senior IPS officer, he should have set an example by surrendering himself before the Orissa Police or the Rajasthan Police once his son jumped bail and did not report back at Jaipur jail on December 4, 2006. Where will the rule of law be if top cops look for escape routes to hoodwink justice? |
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The quietly pacifist peaceful/always die/to make room for men/who shout. |
Tunnel vision
Among
the appellations used to describe Mr M. Karunanidhi on the completion of his 50th year as a legislator in Tamil Nadu was the phrase “deep thinker” with a capital D and a capital T. In recent days, however, the DMK leader seems to have used all his cognitive powers to bolster the political position of his two sons, whose reputations do not seem to match their father’s affection for them. The axe has fallen, therefore, on Mr Karunanidhi’s seemingly more sophisticated grand-nephew, Mr Dayanidhi Maran, following the publication of a controversial opinion poll in a newspaper in Madurai run by Mr Maran’s family. Since the poll had shown Mr M.K.Stalin, the Chief Minister’s second son by his second wife, ahead of his elder brother, Mr M.K.Azhagiri, in the popularity stakes, the latter’s supporters went on a rampage during which three people died. But, surprisingly, it is Mr Maran who has had to pay the price and not Mr Azhagiri, although the latter’s complicity in the outbreak is widely suspected. This strange response to the Madurai violence suggests an unfortunate propensity to use such incidents for partisan and, in this case, familial purposes. It also shows how the canker of dynastic politics is spreading in a blatant manner. Mr Karunanidhi’s silence on the violence in Madurai is in contrast to his recent reference to the possibility of an “eruption” against the Supreme Court’s stay order on quotas for OBCs in institutes of higher learning. Arguably, if this statement was made by a lesser functionary, it might have been ignored. After all, the record of some of the smaller parties in Tamil Nadu has not been worthy of emulation. For instance, Mr Karunanidhi’s former ally, V.Gopalasamy, aka Vaiko, of the MDMK has been known for his pro-LTTE views, which are often dangerously close to being anti-national. Much of this overblown rhetoric can be ascribed to the need for small-time political operators to make their presence felt. Mr Karunanidhi does not belong to this category. He is not only the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu, but has also been the foremost leader of a major party for several decades. One might have expected that his long stint in the corridors of power would have made him less susceptible to the temptation of playing to the gallery. Just as he was expected to be more even-handed between his sons and grand-nephew. But as his conduct suggests, a regional party like the DMK, which is in danger of becoming a family enterprise, is seemingly forever circumscribed by its locale and personal ambitions. It rarely develops a broad outlook capable of looking beyond the provincial confines. It begins and ends its political journey with a tunnel vision. It may also be that such parties with their influence confined to certain castes are simply incapable of overcoming the restrictions imposed by their social and political base. The result is that an element of negativism creeps into their politics. The DMK’s growth, for instance, was based on an accentuation of the north-south divide. The party cannot, therefore, even think of spreading beyond its present-day area of influence. Such an attitude in itself militates against the development of a wider vision. In addition, its longstanding animus against the upper castes, which led to the exodus of Brahmins from Tamil Nadu, mainly to America, has also had a stultifying effect on the party. How the state, and the country, have suffered because of such casteist policies can never be properly assessed. But since many of the upper castes were some of the brightest people, it can be confidently said that Tamil Nadu’s loss has been America’s gain. The most distressing aspect of the north vs south attitude was the separatism which prevailed in Tamil Nadu till the upsurge of nationalistic feelings at the time of the Chinese invasion of 1962 helped to eradicate it. But it was a disturbing reality which cannot be ignored because only a few months before the invasion, the DMK’s founder, C.N. Annadurai, told the Rajya Sabha, “Dravidians want the right of self-determination … We want a separate country for southern India”. Not surprisingly, the DMK adopted a standoffish attitude when the Indian Peace-Keeping Force from Sri Lanka arrived in Chennai, indicating that the party was not too pleased with its role against the LTTE, which wants an independent Tamil Eelam in Sri Lanka. What this coldness towards the IPKF showed was that the spirit of sub-nationalism was very much alive in Tamil Nadu. It is probably this aspect of the Tamil political psyche which was responsible for the DMK’s outrageous demand for scrapping the Constitution in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s decision against the immunity from legal scrutiny given by the Ninth Schedule to legislative enactments. Mr Karunanidhi’s latest diatribe against the Supreme Court has shown the same reckless attitude. It is noteworthy that when the judiciary made known its reluctance to give a blanket approval to reservations, Tamil Nadu took the unilateral step of introducing quotas for Christian and Muslim segments of the population in an obvious act of defiance. There is a confrontationist element in such a brazen attitude, which is evidently the result of the game of one-upmanship which the DMK plays with its arch-rival in the state, the AIADMK. The latter would have possibly behaved in a similar bellicose manner had it been in power. But this explanation cannot be an excuse for challenging a widely respected institution such as the judiciary with the purpose of undermining its authority. It is axiomatic that in a democracy, the autonomy of the various “estates”, including the media, is indispensable since they act as the much-needed checks on arbitrary political conduct. Yet, it is precisely because of their inhibiting role that the politicians want to curtail their independence. In recent months, the judiciary has been a specific target not only of the DMK but also of other parties, including the Left. While the latter has predictably adopted a class-based approach by claiming that the judges are showing a bias in favour of the so-called neo-liberal economic policies, the DMK’s concern is not about class, but caste. The party can claim, of course, that there are others on its side not only in Tamil Nadu but also in north India, where the OBC-dominated parties such as the RJD, the Janata Dal (United) and the Samajwadi Party have been displeased with the judiciary’s stance against reservations. Of the pro-Dalit parties, only the BSP has been less vocal because it is now reaching out to the upper castes as a part of a new political tactic. Among the “national” parties, the Congress and the BJP have been hedging their bets since their support bases extend beyond the numerically predominant OBCs. So, even while insisting on preserving the quota system, they are more restrained in their comments on the judiciary. Besides, they are well aware that if they give any hint of trying to seriously erode the authority of the judiciary, they will incur the wrath of the middle and upper classes. Unlike these parties, which are more circumspect in this matter, the DMK combines the worst traits of the narrow-minded casteist parties of the Hindi belt with the ethnic parochialism of Dravidian politics. Now, it has displayed the worst attributes of dynastic politics as
well.
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Lost dreams
The
first dream I lost was that of becoming a concert pianist. I worked hard at my lessons, passed all my exams with honours and won the music prize every year. Then, in my final year in school, I was offered a scholarship to the Trinity College of Music. My father was sent for and listened in silence as the Headmaster gave him the news. Once out of earshot, he gave me a resounding slap and asked. “Did I spend so much money to make you a mirasi?” In all fairness to him, I know now that I had some mechanical skill but no talent. What else can explain the fact that in spite of repeated opportunities coming my way, I have not taken up music again? The second dream to go was one of becoming a world-class artist. I was good at art in school and pursued it in Hobbies’ classes all through college. Friends and relatives adored the paintings I gave them. I was sure it was only a matter of time before I had my first solo exhibition with a “sold” tag on every painting. I lost my dream when a cousin came to me and said: “Could you do a twelve-foot-by-six-foot painting to cover the big damp patch on my living room wall? Please do it in shades of blue to match my curtains and upholstery.” The third dream that I lost was one of becoming a well-known writer. Even after nine published books getting anything published remains an uphill task. I had sporadic success with my short stories, but unfortunately most magazines that published my stories, including the venerable Illustrated Weekly of India, folded up shortly afterwards. The death knell to this dream was sounded by the fate of my last effort. After two years of shuttling between publishers, it came back with an offer to publish if I put up the cost of production. It now lies on a shelf gathering dust, a mute reminder of another lost dream. Sometimes on quiet winter evenings the memory of these lost dreams creeps into my mind and heart and brings with it a deep sadness. Then yesterday the phone rang. It was the spokesman of a group of NRIs who wanted to set up a residential school in Goa. They wanted me as their consultant and, if possible, their first headmaster. They would give me a completely free hand. I felt hope taking wing again in my heart. Here, at last was the chance to set up the school I had always dreamt of — a school that would be a trailblazer, a blueprint for other schools. I know this dream, will probably, be lost privately owned schools do not usually live up to the promises they make. But it does not matter. I am content. I will stop mourning my lost dreams and rejoice instead at having retained the ability to dream
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Terror cannot solve
problems: Kanu Sanyal The recent peasant activism in West Bengal’s Singur and Nandigram areas, where thousands protested the takeover of their farmland for industry, has only given a new lease of life to his revolutionary ideals. Even as the bachelor 78-year-old founding leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) continues to believe in the ideology that led to what came to be known as the Naxalite movement in 1967, he abhors violence unleashed by today’s Maoists though he passionately hates the mainstream communists as well. “Terror campaign cannot solve problems. A single conspiratorial killing cannot bring change. Such actions only will cause harm to the movement and alienate the masses,” said Sanyal, who was once a key leader behind a peasant insurrection in this village four decades ago. May 25 is considered the birth anniversary of Naxalism. But Kanu Sanyal wants to correct some misconception about the date. “May 25 is the martyr’s day because on that day in 1967 the police shot dead seven women and a child to avenge the incidents a day before when the farmers attacked landlords. So May 24 is the birthday of the Naxalbari movement,” Sanyal told IANS in an interview. The peasant uprising in Naxalbari village - until then an unknown spot on West Bengal’s northern map - became a revolutionary affair when radical members of the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) broke away from the party in support of the revolt and two years later formed the CPI-ML. In the communist world then where China and the Soviet Union never saw eye to eye, the Chinese promptly came out in support of the Naxalbari uprising, giving a new word to leftwing dictionary: Naxalites. In no time, the Naxalite movement spread all over the country. Maoist groups even in neighbouring countries came to be known as Naxalites. Sanyal was the right hand of the CPI-ML’s founder general secretary Charu Mazumdar, who died while in police custody on July 28, 1972. By then, the Naxalite movement was in tatters. Today, the dominant Maoist or Naxalite group goes by the name of the Communist Party of India-Maoist. While Sanyal, now the general secretary of one of the factions of CPI-ML, shuns the violence adopted by Maoists in states like Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh, he never regrets the path adopted 40 years ago. Again and again he harps on the “injustice” done to the poor set to lose land in places like Singur. “Singur, where the government is bent upon handing over land to the Tatas by grabbing it from the farmers, proved the real face of the CPI-M, which believes in capitalism. Both in Singur and Nandigram the CPI-M is following the path of America which grabbed land from Red Indians,” said Sanyal. “While the Naxalbari movement was in the model of French revolution, the CPI-M is a follower of the British and American ways of land grabbing,” he went on. “The CPI-M is a party of the corrupt. Once former West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu asked us to return to the party, but I said: ‘We have burnt out bridges in 1967, we cannot go back.’ “The CPI-M did good work only in its first five years of ruling West Bengal and never after that. Actually, the CPI-M or the CPI (Communist Party of India) does not believe in total land reforms,” he said. Sanyal also admits the mistakes committed by his party. “The CPI-ML formed in 1969 was communist in name but anarchist in deeds just like the CPI-M which is communist in name but revisionist (modification of Marxism-Leninism) in deed,” he said. “The CPI-ML I lead now is not the one of 1969.”
— IANS |
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Babies face threat from chemicals IN a strongly worded declaration, many of the world's leading environmental scientists warned Thursday that exposure to common chemicals makes babies more likely to develop an array of health problems later in life, including diabetes, attention deficit disorders, prostate cancer, fertility problems, thyroid disorders and even obesity. The declaration by about 200 scientists from five continents amounts to a vote of confidence in a growing body of evidence that humans are vulnerable to long-term harm from toxic exposures in the womb and during the first years after birth. Convening in the Faroe Islands in the North Atlantic, toxicologists, pediatricians, epidemiologists and other experts warned that when fetuses and newborns encounter various toxic substances, growth of critical organs and functions can be skewed. In a process called ``fetal programming,'' the children then are susceptible to diseases later in life -- and perhaps could even pass on those altered traits to their children and grandchildren. The scientists' statement also contained a rare international call to action. The effort was led by Dr. Philippe Grandjean of Harvard University and University of Southern Denmark, and Dr. Pal Weihe of the Faroese Hospital System, who both have studied children exposed to mercury for more than 20 years. Many governmental agencies and industry groups, particularly in the United States, have said there is no or little human evidence to support concerns about most toxic residue in air, water, food and consumer products. About 80,000 chemicals are registered in the United States. Yet, the scientists urged government leaders not to wait for more scientific certainty and recommended that governments revise regulations and procedures to take into account subtle effects on fetal and infant development. ``Given the ubiquitous exposure to many environmental toxicants, there needs to be renewed efforts to prevent harm. Such prevention should not await detailed evidence on individual hazards,'' the scientists wrote in the four-page statement. The scientists are particularly concerned that the newest animal research suggests that chemicals can alter gene expression -- turning on or off genes that predispose people to disease. Although the DNA itself would not be altered, such genetic misfires in the womb may be permanent, and all of the subsequent generations could be at greater risk of diseases, too. ``Toxic exposures to chemical pollutants during these windows of increased susceptibility can cause disease and disability in childhood and across the entire span of human life,'' the scientists concluded. ``Recent research now shows that even subtle effects caused by chemical exposures during early development may lead to important functional deficits and increased risks of disease.'' The Barker Hypothesis, conceived by a British scientist in 1992, says human fetuses are ``programmed'' for diseases by their early environment. The scientists concluded that this is now well-documented for toxic exposures by a large collection of animal experiments and some human data. ``A sad aspect with many of these prenatal exposures is that they leave the mother unscathed while causing injury to her fetus,'' said Dr. Philip Landrigan, a pediatrician who chairs the Mount Sinai School of Medicine's Department of Community and Preventive Medicine. He was one of the statement's authors. In a more optimistic vein, the researchers said that if contaminants do play a big role in human health problems, some diseases could be prevented. ``Reducing exposure would lead to tremendous benefits,'' said Dr. Bruce Lanphear, director of the Environmental Health Center at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. ``We shouldn't wait for an epidemic to fully mature before we develop policies to protect children.'' For centuries, the basic rule of toxicology has been ``the dose makes the poison.'' Now, the scientists say ``the timing makes the poison'' -- in other words, when a toxic exposure occurs is as important as how much people are exposed to. The fetus ``is extraordinarily susceptible to perturbation of the intrauterine environment,'' they wrote. The growing brain is the most sensitive. Mothers' exposure to mercury and polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in fish and other seafood can cause slight declines in IQ and motor skills. In addition, early exposure to pesticides might trigger Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases. Also, children exposed to lead, organophosphate pesticides or cigarette smoke have greater risk of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. One of every three cases of the neurological disorder, affecting an estimated 560,000 children in the United States, can be attributed to either lead exposure or prenatal tobacco smoke exposure, Lanphear reported in a study published last December. The immune, reproductive and cardiovascular systems also are vulnerable to early damage. Children exposed prenatally to PCBs have a high rate of infections and weak response to vaccinations. Many chemicals also can mimic hormones, and in animal tests, they feminize newborns, lowering sperm counts and promoting prostate, testicular, uterine and breast cancers. In the newest area of research, metabolic systems -- which control how nutrients are converted into energy -- have been altered by chemicals administered in animal experiments, changes that may contribute to obesity and diabetes. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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Inside Pakistan General
Pervez Musharraf gave interviews to three media organisations during the past few days-BBC Urdu, Canadian Globe and Mail and Aaj TV. What he has said makes it clear that he will continue to be the President of Pakistan as well as the Chief of Army Staff. After all, his Army uniform is like his “second skin” and he cannot “even think of taking it off”, as he told BBC Urdu. He remains the “centre of gravity” in the power structure, but he accepts that the value of his uniform has declined. According to Business Recorder, in the course of his interview with Aaj TV he made “the surprising remark that it is not because of his military position but because of his stature as an ‘elder brother’ in the present scheme of things that he is looked up to for advice.” “People don’t come to me because I am in uniform. The uniform does not have the same influence as it had some three years back. People are not afraid of me. They respect me like an elder brother”, the Recorder quoted him as saying. He is the least bothered about the opinion of his critics and even some of his own party (PML-Q) leaders, who want the General to free the government from the clutches of the Army to prevent Pakistan from sliding into chaos. “When politicians do not know how to run the country’s affairs, the Army has no choice but to step in and set things right” is the latest explanation he has given. There could be no better justification to perpetuate his rule. As Dawn lamented in an editorial on May 24, “The army chief being also the head of state not only constitutes an affront to the rudimentary concept of democracy and constitutional government, it makes the whole electoral process (yet to begin) virtually meaningless.”
The ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) is showing signs of nervousness with the elections for the National and Provincial Assemblies approaching fast. This was clearly evident during the two-day meeting of the party’s Central Executive Committee that concluded on Tuesday. Going by newspaper reports, the PML (Q) has lost considerable ground in the wake of the judicial crisis and the killings in Karachi. That is why party leaders asked the government to do all it could to bring the crisis to an end soon. General Pervez Musharraf, too, is feeling uneasy which could be noticed, according to The News, when he told a PML (Q) rally in Manshera on May 21 that he would “cry” if the Opposition succeeds in snatching power from him with the help of “lies and deception”. The problems of the Musharraf-backed party, derisively called the King’s Party, have multiplied with a section of its leaders not happy with the functioning of its chief, Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain. Former Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali, heading the group of the disenchanted leaders, has already resigned from the primary membership of the party. According to Daily Times, Mr Jamali presented “a four-page charge-sheet against the government and PML (Q) president Chaudhary Shujaat” at the Executive meeting. Later, he also met General Musharraf with the charge-sheet, giving a new twist to the party crisis. All efforts for a rapprochement between Mr Jamali and Chaudhary Shujaat have failed to produce the desired result.
Nilofar wins
first round
Pressures from various quarters over Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz have resulted in the rejection of Tourism Minister Nilofar Bakhtiar’s resignation from the Federal Cabinet. But whether she has been given back her party post — chairmanship of the PML (Q) women’s wing — is not known. She had lost both positions after the publication of her pictures hugging her instructor after a paragliding event in April in France. Daily Times carried a hard-hitting editorial on May 23 criticising the government for succumbing to threats from clerics. Giving the sequence of the happenings leading to her isolation in her party, the paper said: “She had, by the official account, participated in the event to raise money for child victims of the October 2005 earthquake victims. Inevitably, the pictures (of Ms Bakhtiar) led to hypocritical outrage among right-wing circles in the country with the Lal Masjid clerics taking the lead in condemning the minister, issuing a fatwa against her and asking the government to sack her.” As a result, she was not only indirectly told to leave the government, but also made to feel that a “troublemaker” like her had no place in the PML (Q), already passing through difficult times. Ms Bakhtiar has won the first round, but ultimately she is going to be a loser. The reason, as Daily Times pointed out, is: “the government is all too ready to placate the hardliners; and Mr Aziz is not a boss who is ready to stand up and defend his colleagues..” |
He who is Gurmukh is imbued with the holy name. |
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