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Darkness at noon Why ‘no’ to Pugwash? |
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Fear of influx
Enlarge peace constituency
Woolmer’s message
A flight into history Who will be President? Guns and roses: a tragic love story
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Darkness at noon THE thrust of the Chief Ministers’ conference on power in Delhi on Monday was obviously on controlling transmission and distribution losses and enhancing generation capacity. By equating power theft to cancer, the Prime Minister was clearly pointing to the urgency of checking the malady. Despite much talk about the pilferage and wastage of electricity, little has actually been done to cut the losses, which account for an alarming 30-45 per cent. Given the peak-time shortage of 25 per cent, India can ill-afford such waste. Interestingly, there was no mention of free power given to farmers in some states. The Centre seems to have accepted this as a political necessity despite the noises it has been making to the contrary. If there is one area that has remained in the dark in an otherwise shinning India, it is the acute shortage of power. The Centre’s own failure is glaring. The Tenth Plan saw a capacity addition of 41,000 MW, which was only half of the set target. The setting up of committees and launching of “crash programmes” will not do much unless the staggering amount of Rs 6,00,000 crore required for power generation during the Eleventh Plan is made available. Private investment will have to be encouraged vigorously. After the collapse of Enron, foreign investment has kept away from this sector. Why blame the Centre alone? The states’ track record, by and large, is equally dismal. Reforms have not been pushed hard enough for electoral reasons. In the absence of competition, power boards are inefficiently run. Most of them are deeply in the red due to freebies and political interference in their functioning. At least bulk power consumers can be allowed to buy power from private sources, but are forced to depend on the state utilities through the levy of surcharge. They find it easy to ask the Centre for help. Thermal power is expensive, hydel power potential remains untapped and nuclear power generation faces uninformed opposition, often for extraneous reasons. There is little light on the road ahead for India wanting to be an economic giant of the 21st century. |
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Why ‘no’ to Pugwash? IT is hard to understand why the government has for the second time in a row created a situation that the Pugwash conference on Kashmir does not take place in India. The much-awaited conference was initially to be held on April 21 at Kochi, but it had to be rescheduled after New Delhi changed its mind. The conference was rescheduled and supposed to be held in Mumbai on June 3 and 4 following a green signal from the Foreign Secretary. But it has again been cancelled with New Delhi suddenly developing cold feet and deciding to deny visas to several participants from Pakistan for reasons known to itself. It is difficult to understand why the Indian government is afraid of discussions at a respected international forum where Indian participants could have competently explained India’s position on Kashmir and countered what Pakistan has been telling the world. The Pugwash conference is an independent forum for exchange of views between independent thinkers, intellectuals, scientists and others who are genuinely concerned about tensions in different parts of the world. The first Pugwash conference held in Kathmandu in December 2004 got wholehearted support from the PMO. Last year the Pugwash conference was held in Islamabad and Gen Pervez Musharraf made use of it to sell his ideas on Kashmir, urging India to respond. Rather than sneering at the respected voices, India could have allowed the conference in Mumbai and highlighted the efforts it has been making for ensuring peace and stability in the region. No government should lose an opportunity to put across its viewpoint to the kind of audience Pugwash provides. India has nothing to feel shy of its stand on Kashmir. To convey that such a conference is unwelcome does not go well with the Prime Minister’s stressing that the people-to-people contacts should be promoted between India and Pakistan and borders made irrelevant. India cannot afford to miss an opportunity to educate the world opinion about its case on Kashmir. Modern diplomacy is not conducted only by exchanges at the level of officials and through Press notes, but it also requires greater sophistication by decision-makers in New Delhi than they have shown lately. |
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Fear of influx THE “people first” focus of the tribal rights Act is well known. Another dimension to the issue of tribal welfare has been highlighted with an expert committee constituted by the Tribal Affairs Ministry recommending a restriction on the influx of people into the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. The committee has been tasked to prepare policies and action plans for the protection of the primitive tribal groups of the islands, and it held its first meeting in the Capital recently. While a policy exists for the Jarawas, the committee has recommended similar policies for four other tribal groups within three months, and proper implementation of the policy for Jarawas. Any restriction of movement of people anywhere within Indian territory is obviously a problematic affair, but there is no doubt that the location of the islands and their ecological vulnerability and value, mandate special treatment. While no ban should be considered, some regulation like the Inner Line Permit system in Arunachal Pradesh is desirable. A “carrying capacity” study has reportedly been ordered and the committee’s recommendation for restricting influx follows the view that the matter is urgent and the government should not wait for the results of the study. This may well be the case, as severe water shortages and environmentally reckless development and construction activities have already begun to affect the islands’ ecology. While the tribal rights Act became controversial because of its presumed conflict with wildlife conservation objectives, particularly with regard to the tiger, policies for tribal groups also have a difficult balance to strike. As the draft policy on tribals recognises, it will become important to protect the tribal way of life even as access to healthcare and education is provided to them. But there is no doubt that such traditional groups all over the country represent an important part of national heritage. Conservation of precious ecologies such as those of the Andaman and Nicobar islands will in itself be a great achievement for the country. |
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A man will turn over half a library to make one book. |
Enlarge peace constituency
KASHMIR’S separatist polity is steadily getting radicalised. This is agonising but true. Obviously, the question that needs to be asked now is: how and why does the situation come to such a pass, and who does this benefit? Ever since the advent of militancy in Jammu and Kashmir, the moderate space has been under assault. But then there were forces within the separatist camp who all along believed that the problem here was of political nature and not a religious one. Even as the outfits like the Jamiat-ul-Mujahideen, in the early stages of militancy, tried to wrest control from the nationalists, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) had enough grounding to thwart the move. And the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen has all along resisted the assertion of the likes of Lashker and Jaish to make Kashmir militancy as part of a pan-Islamic agenda. But today, in 2007, when moderate voices like that of Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Yaseen Malik and others in the separatist camp are losing relevance, who is gaining the ground? It is certainly the hardliners like Syed Ali Shah Geelani. Due to the lackadaisical attitude of New Delhi, the peace process has almost produced no results. It is not only the dejection that is creeping in the moderates but a sense of frustration is also clearly evident from the statements of Hurriyat leaders. Explaining the status of its dialogue process with New Delhi, the Mirwaiz said the other day: “There was a gap of 18 months between our second round of talks in March 2004 and the third round in September 2005.” And again there is a gap of more than a year when they last met the Prime Minister on May 3, 2006. Amidst this gloom, the most stunning statement has come from one of the most progressive voices in Kashmir, People’s Conference chairman Sajjad Ghani Lone. Speaking at a public gathering on the occasion of the fifth death anniversary of his slain father Abdul Gani Lone, Sajjad said: “They (non-Muslims of Ladakh and Jammu) hold a different religion and culture. They do not subscribe to our movement; rather they call it terrorism. They should be permanently merged with India. The valley should be declared independent.” No wonder, the newspapers next morning carried screaming headlines: “Independent Muslim Kashmir”. Although there was a sharp reaction to the statement from almost all mainstream and separatist political parties, rejecting any idea of division of the state on the basis of religion, barring, of course, the Panun Kashmir and the Jammu State Morcha. The Jammu State Morcha, which is spearheading the demand for separate Jammu Pradesh (state), welcomed Sajjad Lone’s statement “favouring trifurcation of Jammu and Kashmir State”. Panun Kashmir president Ajay Chrangoo said: “Mr Lone has built a logic for separate homeland as his statement indicates that they (separatists) don’t want to live with Pandits. This has vindicated our stand on homeland as Pandits, too, don’t want to live with them.” The statements like these indicate the worst kind of polarisation in the Kashmir polity on ethno-religious lines. Apart from the communal undertones of the trifurcation proposal on the basis of religious affinities, the statement itself seems lacking proper application of the mind. As a matter of principle, this not only belies the very idea of a “rights movement” but also (impliedly) puts the whole Kashmiri assertion into a communal frame. Looking at the history since 1947, it is amply clear that the majority view in Jammu and Ladakh has all the time been different from that in Kashmir. Jammu and Ladakh have been comfortable with India while Kashmir is not. If this provides a sound basis for balkanisation of Jammu and Kashmir, then why this facade of “independent Jammu and Kashmir”? Either Jammu and Kashmir has an indigenous character, spanning over thousands of years of recorded history and partition of the subcontinent, is incidental (though it has had profound impact on its future) in its quest for destiny, or the “dispute” over Kashmir is the residual problem of Partition based on the Two-Nation Theory. Even if history is taken as beginning in 1947, who is prepared for a colossal social cost of another division? How it is possible to carve out a Muslim Jammu from a Hindu Jammu or for that matter a Muslim Kargil from a Buddhist Ladakh without any bloodshed? Since the spread of the population is not neat anywhere, it requires a huge transfer of population from one area to another. Complexities of a situation don’t simplify by merely looking at it in a simplistic manner; they remain as complex as ever. A division on the basis of religion does not carry conviction with the idea of “azadi” (freedom). If sub-nationalism fails to find accommodation, separatism will rise. This is what Kashmir has been witness to over the years. Moderate nationalism is in danger of being swept away by violent extremism and obscurantism. This may even suit a blinkered view in New Delhi, which is pushing the Kashmiri aspirations into a deep trench where any dialogue with it becomes unattainable. Violence in Kashmir is getting institutionalised and ideologies are finding roots in the social milieu. There are numerous instances wherein a slain militant’s son has picked up the gun; some of them have even been killed or apprehended by the security forces -- a viscous circle, of course! Whosoever picks up the gun today has his task cut out with a tactical sophistication that automatically comes with the second generation. Their ideology is very simple: it’s black and white; nothing falls in the grey area. It is good or evil; it is “with us or against us”! The marginalisation of the “moderate” space shall obviously cause damage to the Kashmiris first, but it will have far-reaching consequences for India as well. In the ultimate analysis, India cannot afford to put its problems in Kashmir in the basket of international “fight against terrorism”. That is not only a short-cut but also akin to treading into an unknown territory as nobody can guess today as to where this “fight against terrorism” is going to head to. Prudence is in minimising the scope of the problem rather than in enlarging it. There still is a constituency for peace and scope for a negotiated settlement of the problem in Kashmir. New Delhi needs to engage it with a purpose and sincerity. That is the only hope left in an otherwise hopeless
situation.
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Woolmer’s message
MY tortured soul can’t take it any longer. I’m sick and tired of tossing and turning in my grave. Therefore, I have no option but to break my post-death silence. I’m sending this message to all newspapers and TV channels around the world because I don’t want them to dish out any more “exclusive” stories about my case. It won’t be good for their readership/viewership to have the mystery solved so soon, but I’m sure they will promptly find some other sensational matter to keep people engrossed. All those who are keen to cash in on the “Woolmer wave” by writing books or making films should do so at their own risk. Just because I’m dead doesn’t mean they can get away with anything. I strongly urge them not to distort facts or bypass the truth while telling my story. I know you all want me to answer the all-important question: How did I die? Let me first ask a counter-question: Does it really matter to you? Most probably, it doesn’t, but still I won’t disappoint you, lest the vulturous media (or the police) comes up with another bizarre theory. Ladies and gentlemen, here’s the revelation — I died of “cricket cancer”. This is the malady that has afflicted the game and is fast eroding its magical appeal. Cricket has become enslaved to crass commercialism. No effort is being spared to abuse the goose that has laid umpteen golden eggs. What happens on the field is usually overshadowed by what goes on off it. Betting is talked about more often than batting; quantity is the buzz-word instead of quality. With matches being played all round the year, there is no breather for players as well as viewers. Stress, fatigue, ennui — the game is now about as lively as beer without fizz. There is so much mediocrity that no team is good enough to challenge the all-conquering Aussies. And the fact that the ruthless world champions are not liked by a majority of cricket fans worldwide says a lot about the current scenario. Being a passionate devotee of this glorious game, I couldn’t bear to witness its degradation and dehumanisation. I was widely regarded as a futuristic coach, but in my dying moments, I shuddered to think what cricket’s future would be. Despite my pessimism, I still pride myself on being an ideal citizen of the cricketing world — born in India, played for England, coached South Africa and Pakistan, and died in the Caribbean. I guess all is not lost yet, since the voices against overkill and burnout are getting louder by the day. It’s up to those who care for the game to revive the hypnotic appeal that made legendary mathematician G.H. Hardy say, “If I knew I was to die today, I think I would still want to hear the cricket scores.” |
A flight into history MOSCOW —The single-engine Cessna aircraft, flying just 10 yards off the ground, buzzed Moscow’s Red Square three times as the pilot looked for a place to land. But too many people were on the square that May evening. So the plane pulled up and circled the Kremlin walls before setting down on the nearby Moskvoretsky Bridge and taxiing to St. Basil’s Cathedral to park. Twenty years ago this week, Mathias Rust, a 19-year-old dreamer from West Germany, pierced the Soviet Union’s air defenses on what seemed like a delusional mission to unite East and West. But in one of the Cold War’s most iconic footnotes, he handed Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev an excuse to purge his defense minister and other military hard-liners opposed to his glasnost reforms, an important step toward the fall of communism. In 1987, Rust, now a wealthy investor and high-stakes poker player who divides his time between Germany and the former Soviet republic of Estonia, was upset over the continuing U.S.-Soviet standoff and deeply disappointed with the failure the previous year of the Reykjavik summit between Gorbachev and President Reagan. “I was full of dreams then, and I believed everything was possible,” Rust said in a telephone interview from Hamburg, where he has an apartment. “My intention with the flight was to build a kind of imaginary bridge between East and West.” May 28 was, and still is, Border Guards Day. In Moscow’s Gorky Park that day 20 years ago, border guards were whooping it up with vodka and songs. The geeky-looking teen-ager, however, was about to sober everyone up fast. Rust, an avid amateur pilot, began his adventure in Helsinki. He filed a flight plan to Stockholm and took off, unsure whether he could go through with his plan. But 20 minutes into the flight, he switched off his communications equipment and turned east. Finnish traffic controllers feared he had crashed. “The whole flight I was in a trance; it was like an out-of-body experience,” he said. “I remember flying over a beach in Estonia. And I said to myself, `I’m in the Soviet Union now.’” Moscow was 400 miles away, but a series of fortunate events kept Rust headed in its direction. A MiG-23 interceptor jet was scrambled and came so close, Rust said, that he could see the helmet and oxygen mask over the pilot’s face and the red star on the plane. “I was very scared at that moment, because I didn’t know what they would do,” Rust said. “But when I set out, I didn’t believe they would shoot me down. I thought maybe they would force me to land before I got to Moscow.” In 1983, the Soviets shot down a Korean Air Lines Boeing 747, killing 269 people; Rust believed that that experience, which had outraged the world, would make the Soviet air force reluctant to fire on him. The pilot who approached Rust’s aircraft reported spotting a “sports plane” under the clouds, but senior officers on the ground argued over whether that was possible. There were no private planes in the Soviet Union. By the time more jets were scrambled, Rust had vanished in the clouds, and generals on the ground continued to debate whether the blip on their screens was really a plane or just birds or a weather formation, according to later accounts. “We will conclude that it was geese,” said a commander in the national air defense system, brushing aside those who argued that the MiG’s pilot could not have been mistaken. Rust spent more than an hour on Red Square, he said, before the KGB showed up. Some of the ordinary police and soldiers on the square didn’t know what to make of him when he landed, he said. The KGB officers asked to see his passport and were at first bewildered that he had no visa, thinking he must have commandeered the plane inside Russia. “I said I wanted to meet Gorbachev,” Rust recalled. The KGB agents took him to a police station for interrogation. Rust was later sentenced to four years in a Soviet labor camp for illegally entering the Soviet Union and hooliganism. He served 14 months in Moscow’s Lefortovo prison before he was paroled. “I was treated very well,” he said, recalling that he shared a cell with an English-speaking prisoner. In the years since his release, Rust has had a checkered life, still tilting at windmills and having run-ins with the law. He said he suffered psychological problems after his captivity. In 1989, he served five months in prison in Germany for stabbing and wounding a woman who spurned his advances. Early this decade, he was convicted of theft and fraud. Rust said that he invested money earned from his notoriety in property and other businesses and that he is now independently wealthy. He and a partner run an investment company in Estonia. He also plays high-stakes poker and says he walked away from one sitting of high rollers with $1 million in winnings. Rust has returned to Russia once, for a three-week visit in 1994. But he has not met Gorbachev despite various efforts over the years. The former Soviet leader, in East Germany when Rust landed by Red Square, described the event as a “national shame.” Gorbachev quickly seized the opportunity to move against Defense Minister Sergei Sokolov and the commander of Soviet air defense forces, Alexander Koldunov. “If I were you, I would resign at once,” Gorbachev is said to have told Sokolov at an emergency Politburo meeting the day after Rust’s flight. “I made them look funny around the world, but I helped Gorbachev in some way,” Rust said. “I only did it because of my love for peace.” By arrangement with
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Who will be President? LOSING A.P.J. Abdul Kalam as Head of State will be like shedding one’s soul. In 1939, when the British Labour Party expelled Sir Stafford Cripps for supporting a ‘united front’ with the Communists, it was said that the party had blown its brains out. Here the nation is the victim and the cost, the precious soul. Dr. Kalam ranks with Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan and Dr. Zakir Husain among the greatest Indian Presidents. In the case of both Dr. Radhakrishnan and Dr. Husain we were denied second terms of their moral and intellectual leadership. (In fact, Zakir Sa’ab had died in harness) It was a pleasant surprise when Dr. Kalam, who had been keen to return to his teaching life, was said to have assented to stay on. If he were a V.V. Giri, and if the electoral college for Presidential election had not been as constricted as it is, the people of India would have opted for Dr. Kalam overwhelmingly. But neither is the case. The Congress party and the Communists are against Dr. Kalam. His rejection of the Bill on Office of Profit had angered the hereditary head of the Holy Family, while the Communists were scandalised by Dr. Kalam’s advocacy for a two-party system. Isn’t it blasphemous for the President to voice his personal preference for the two-party system when the Communists had been striving for a one-party set-up in West Bengal – objectively at least? In 2002 itself, when Dr. Kalam was being put up for presidentship, he was opposed on the grounds that he was ‘a nuclear scientist,’ whose election as President of India would put General Pervez Musharraf’s hackles up? Does the General have a two-party system in Pakistan? With Dr. Kalam out, the field is wide open for a descent from the sublime to bathos. In the descending bathetic order Shilpa Shetty fills the bill superbly at the base. She will flood Rashtrapati Bhavan with colour and more. Of course, the tenant of Rashtrapati Bhavan is no match for hardened photo opportunists but Shilpa also is no pushover either. She could elevate the ‘cultural’ level of Rashtrapati Bhavan by passionately kissing, in front of strobe lights, aged, white-skinned visitors. Next comes Mayawati, naturally at a much higher level, among claimants for Presidentship. But she now sees herself as a maker of the President rather than the President. It is said that Soniaji and she had agreed on a joint candidate but she would not disclose the name until her Bahujana Samaj Party, a democratic organisation, endorsed the leader’s decision. Meanwhile, Laloo Yadav has suggested Jyoti Basu for the top post. If, accordingly, Jyoti Basu moves to Rashtrapati Bhawan, the hoary Great Eastern Hotel at Chowringhee in Kolkata will cease to be the veteran’s habitat and the State Government could go ahead with its plans for its disposal. If, on the other hand, the Communists return the compliment by proposing Rabri Devi’s name, provision has to be made for a consort for the Rashtrapati. That should be no problem because Lalu is there, larger than life. Ever since he had formally passed the baton on to Rabri Devi in July 1997 – following his prosecution and arrest in connection with the Rs.1,500-crore fodder scam, arising out of the upkeep for twenty years of non-existent livestock – he had been bearing the burden of office de facto. The snag, however, is that Presidentship is not the same as chief ministership of Bihar. Not because Rashtrapati Bhawan does not have enough room for a cow farm, but in the little matter of pending corruption cases. It would be invidious for the President’s consort to be hauled up day in and day out before the courts. So power has to be invoked for the President to scrap the cases once and for all. As the Lok Sabha Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, has declared, the judiciary has to function within limits. As we go up the ascending order from bathos, we have Jayalalithaa, the AI ADMK supremo, and Brinda Karat, in that immediate order. Jayalalithaa should be happy to be at the Rashtrapati Bhawan, especially now that Karunanidhi is unleashing his family in the nation’s service, blocking her chances of rehabilitation in the son/daughter-in-law saturated Tamil Nadu. Still, she could insist on the deposition of the Shankaracharya of Kanchi Kamakoti Peetham and the transfer of its wordly assets to her. Finally, we have Soniaji as the apogee of choices away from the bathetic order. But would she exchange the hereditary presidentship of the Congress party to be the President? If, as Rashtrapati she would de jure appoint Dr. Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister, she does it de facto now. So what is the big deal? Unless, the Constitution is amended to provide for dynastic succession. But just because renunciation is Soniaji’s second nature, one should not be unreasonable. |
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Guns and roses: a tragic love story DODA, J&K: Love transcends all barriers. But, for the love of a beautiful village belle, can a dreaded terrorist lay down his arms? This is exactly what happened in this quaint, militant-infested tehsil of Thathri, in the mountainous Doda district of Jammu and Kashmir, situated on the banks of the gushing river Chenab. For the love of a girl, a militant surrendered, gave up his guns, and was all set to settle down to life of domestic bliss. But, in a cruel twist of fate, this love story does not quite have a happy ending. A young Irshad Ahmed alias Abu Tallah, just eighteen years old, had joined pan-Islamic terrorist outfit Lashker-e-Toiba a couple of years ago at a very tender age. Most of the terrorists of Lashker operating in Doda region would pass through his house, situated among thick forests in Bhargi village, in the upper reaches of Thathri. Motivated and indoctrinated by them, he too picked up the gun and followed them everywhere in the region. This simple village lad metamorphosed into a dreaded terrorist, operating in the areas of Doda, Poonch and Rajouri. Destiny had other things in store for young Irshad. Cupid struck when he came across a beautiful girl in the village Mendhar in Poonch, which was his area of operation for a few months. It was love at first sight for the young couple. Smitten by the village belle, Irshad wanted to marry her, but she wanted him to give up the gun first. It was tough choice: on the one hand was the cause he was fighting for, on the other was the love of his life. He chose the latter. Abu Tallah surrendered before the army authorities on 6th April last year at Thathri. With him he brought one SLR rifle, one SLR magazine and 10 SLR rounds of ammunition. “As I was madly in love with her (he refuses to disclose her name), I agreed to surrender but after I surrendered and was arrested, the parents of my lady love took her away because they didn’t want her to get married to me,” says Abu. “She was with my family here but her parents and the Mendhar police took the girl back to Mendhar forcibly,” he says, adding that her parents had registered a complaint with the police that he had abducted their girl. But, in reality, it was she who had persuaded him to give up the gun so that they could have a safe and secure
future ahead. Abu Tallah is today a broken person. The man who struck terror in the hearts of security forces is a shadow of his former self. He clings on to the feeble hope that he will find his beloved one day. – Charkha Features |
To wear torn clothes is a sign of laziness and, therefore, of shame, but to wear patched clothes proclaims poverty or renunciation, and industry. When your good work gives you pleasure and your evil work grieves you, you are true to Ishwara. |
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