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Raje buys peace Pulling out troops |
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Heated debate
Politics in the heartland
Man of the mountains
Genocide in Darfur Industry profiteering hurts consumers, creates social unrest Defence Notes
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Raje buys peace It
is good that Rajasthan is limping back to normal after the Gujjars called off their week-long agitation in support of their demand for the Scheduled Tribe status. The violent protests, having claimed 30 lives, have left a trail of bitterness. The Gujjars blocked the highways, stopped bus and train services, and paralysed normal life in most parts of the state. Worse, the agitation had spread to border states like Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi where a bandh was observed on Monday. Not surprisingly, the Supreme Court called the bandh a “national shame”. On Tuesday, it has sent suo motu notices to the police chiefs of Rajasthan, Haryana, UP and Delhi and asked them to explain why they failed to stop protestors from blocking arterial roads and burning buses. Unfortunately, Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje failed to correctly judge the mood of the Gujjars and anticipate their agitation. When the protests erupted, she was unable to nip it in the bud and the administrative machinery was caught napping. Raje was indecisive and she did not take the initiative to hold talks with Gujjar leader Col K.S. Baisala even though he had served an ultimatum to the government last month. Moreover, she did not learn any lesson from the Gujjars’ protests in September last year when they had damaged railway tracks and property near Hindon railway station and disrupted train services on the Mumbai-Delhi section. Surely, the government could have tackled the situation much earlier by holding talks with Col Baisala and appointing a commission to examine their demand (Tuesday’s decision). A three-member commission, headed by a retired high court judge, will give its report to the government on the Gujjar’s demand within three months. However, the government has a challenging task ahead. While trying to meet the Gujjars’ expectations, it should also keep in mind the Meena community’s concerns. The Meenas fear that the Gujjars will eat into their share of reservation if they are accorded the ST status. In fact, they had threatened to launch a counter-agitation if the government sought to bow to the Gujjars’ demand. Under the Constitution, though the Centre takes the decision on the ST status, the state government will have to take the initiative and make the recommendation. And herein lies the challenge to Vasundhara Raje. |
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Pulling out troops External
Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee rightly made it clear at Shimla on Sunday that demilitarisation in Jammu and Kashmir was not possible under the present circumstances. The troops were needed because cross-border terrorism continued to remain a serious threat to peace in the state. Demilitarisation had figured in General Pervez Musharraf’s four-point formula which he floated some time ago. India’s position has been that it cannot allow any laxity in its security arrangements as Pakistan is yet to fulfil its commitment on not allowing any territory under its control to be used by terrorists. Adequate deployment of security forces is, therefore, in the interest of the people of the state. Militancy-related incidents, which had come down during winter, are going up again, according to a study by the United Command in J and K. Reports suggest that terrorists continue to get instructions from their friends across the border to step up their activities, particularly in south Kashmir and the Rajouri and Poonch areas in Jammu division. There has been an increase in infiltration in the past two months, double than what it was during the corresponding period last year. The situation at the ground level does not favour demilitarisation. However, it seems the Central government is not averse to troop deployment as per its needs. It has already constituted a committee to find out whether such a course is possible without endangering the state’s security. Any step towards demilitarisation in Jammu and Kashmir can be thought of only after taking into consideration the opinion of all those concerned, including the security forces. One does not know what exactly is going on at the Track II level. But there must be some reason why the Union Home Ministry told the state government in April to withdraw armed forces from civilian properties in the towns and villages as also from certain government buildings. There may be a move which can give the impression of some redeployment of security forces. Whatever the truth, the Centre cannot do anything that makes militants feel emboldened. |
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Heated debate As
we commemorate another World Environment Day, there is little doubt that climate change is a reality that calls for urgent, collective action. Evolving and accepting a global framework to arrest the emission of greenhouse gases is the challenge that leaders face. The issue is as contentious as ever. America’s traditional hostility to the Kyoto protocol is well known. President George Bush has now proposed, however, that the 15 most polluting countries, including the US, China and India, agree to a target to reduce greenhouse gases by 2008. Bush sees the talks as eventually leading to a framework that may replace the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. European countries, which have always seen themselves as being on the frontline of the fight against global warming, are none too impressed with what they see as vague proposals. Since the talks will be US-led, some, like the German environment minister, have gone so far as to suggest that the US is merely hijacking the process without any serious intentions to put in place a tough regime. The US never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, which also exempts developing countries. There will now be increasing pressure on countries like India, China and Brazil to join a new protocol. Developing countries have always argued that their efforts cannot be proscribed by the environmental concerns of developed countries, who have done the bulk of their polluting in the early stages and would like now to pull back. Indian officials have already indicated their wariness of any cap on emissions, which could affect development plans and poverty alleviation. But an emissions target that takes into account all concerns and ensures a fair outcome for all parties needs to be attempted in right earnest. India has its own share of urgent environmental concerns that need to be addressed if our air, soil and waterways are to be kept healthy. And while the state should do its part, a World Environment Day is nothing if not an opportunity for all of us to reflect on our own practices and excesses. |
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It is hard for a woman to define her feelings in language which is chiefly made by men to express theirs.
— Thomas Hardy |
Politics in the heartland
Political
analysts have surmised that the caste system has made the electoral scene more complex in UP than in any other state. If it is so, there can be many reasons it. For example, first, that UP has more castes than most other states; second, more of them have the numbers needed for tilting the electoral balance one way or another; third, more of them are more flexible in their political loyalties and, therefore, are more free to take unpredictable turns. The result of all that is that at very short notice UP can change the caste combination which may be expected to win an impending election, and thus it can undermine the latest forecast. Much of that is true. But then, does it make any sense to ask whether elections in UP can ever be freed from calculations of caste? May be, it does not. But then, since the earliest years of the history of castes more things have been happening to them in UP than in most other states, and some of their latest manifestations can loosen the hold of caste on the voter’s mind. This is at the root of the possibility that the caste of the voter — and his religion too — may come to matter less in UP than in other major states. It was in the river basins of UP that the caste structure of present-day Hindus took shape in the course of complex interactions between, on the one hand, the early Hindus and the still earlier non-Hindu inhabitants of these basins and on the other between the recent generations of Hindus and Muslims. The earlier interaction gradually gave birth to intricate and growingly rigid gradations of status between castes, both within the evolving Hindu society and between those who were counted to be within that society and those who were excluded from it. But in later centuries came multilateral interactions between those who were absorbed much earlier into their caste categories and those later arrivals who found their places in it much later. Many among the latter kind were markedly different from the earlier categories in their race, customs, religious beliefs, physical appearance and, most important, in the degree of esteem in which they held themselves, or were so held by others, and thus got ranked accordingly in the still evolving caste and sub-caste hierarchies. New and sometimes harder dimensions were added to this process of differentiation by the arrival of those, like the later Muslims, who came as conquerors but chose to settle down in India, moving further south or east in the wake of the expanding frontiers of their imperial orders, which too were mostly based in the same river basins and cities of UP. But there are other reasons, too, why UP figured more in this process than other states did. First, by the time the later Muslims came, the new arrivals and their hosts were no longer total strangers to each other. Each side had known something of the other through the experience of the earlier waves of Muslim arrivals. Interaction between the two sides was, therefore, smoother and soon became more productive. Second, and as a consequence of the first, this is where they chose to set up the seats of what was to become their imperial reach into other parts of India. Third, and as a further consequence, UP is where the maximum interaction occurred between Muslims and non-Muslims, no matter who was whose subject. Fourth, in the course of this interaction many occupational affinities developed between the corresponding strata of the two sides. Fifth, a recent consequence of that has been that when the question of occupation-based job reservations came up, as it did in UP more than in other states, Muslims began to emphasise their occupational affinities with corresponding classes of non-Muslims, mostly meaning Hindus, bypassing the communal differences between the two communities. As seen so clearly in the most recent election in UP, caste differences between the lower and higher caste Hindus can melt when their political interests require that they come closer. So, the first question is: can similar requirements recur, and if they did could they produce similar voting alliances, and if they did that as well what would they do to the present rigidity of caste differences within the Hindu society in UP? Elections in UP have also thrown up a second question, and more than once. They have shown again, as they did in the Mulyam Singh period, how pressing electoral requirements can themselves convert electoral needs into hefty socio-political bridges across the communal and caste divides between a substantial number of the relatively poor Muslim voters, and the increasingly important political party of lower caste and class Hindus, such as the SP first and the BSP now. Therefore, the next question now is: what will these bridges do to the communal differences between upper caste and lower class Hindus on the one hand their Muslim counterparts on the other? Will sharing the same bridge bring them closer together or will their caste and communal differences keep them as far apart as in the past? Any loyalty of any voter to any group identity of any kind can influence the way a voter casts his vote. Conversely, shared voting habits can bring them closer despite the caste-communal divide between them. In most elections landowners will vote in one way on certain issues and the landless in another. Similarly, on certain other issues urban voters will vote one way and rural voters in another. But the group loyalty of any kind of group can change with a change in the issue at stake. In the elections held in the 1950s, in which linguistic reorganisation of states was a major issue, most people of Andhra must have voted for the separation of Andhra from Tamil Nadu. On the other hand, two Andhra voters living in Calcutta (as the city was called then ) might have voted quite differently if the question before them had been whether Gujarat should be separated from Bombay, or they would have voted whichever way was shown to them by their economic or other interests. Therefore, there is nothing immutable about the voting preferences of any voter or group of voters. They can change with changes in his or the group’s wishes and interests. Let us assume, for example, that Mayawati’s government lasts a few years and produces great benefits for Hindu as well as non-Hindu castes and classes. They would then have no reason to change over to or to form any other voting group, consisting of other castes, classes or communities. And if they stayed with their present grouping for the next couple of elections it would be possible to look back upon the subject of this essay as not a question but a prophecy.
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Man of the mountains
Ever
since her marriage to me some 47 years back, my wife has been nostalgic about the areas around the Rohtang La, the Himalayan pass that can now take you to Leh and from there to Karakorem, Yarkand and Khotan to link up with the legendary “Silk Road”. During the course of my service in the armed forces, I took her around the entire length and breadth of the country and even abroad. But, we somehow missed the Kullu-Manali belt. My son, Ajay, and his wife, Sakshi, were aware about their mother’s longing for this valley where she had spent the formative years of her childhood and finally lost her father to the mountains. Her father, Dr Brij Lal Laroia, had seen service in the most inhospitable parts of the Himalayas like Skardu (now in PoK), Kargil, Lahaul, Spiti and Beas valleys, etc. He was some sort of Dr Kotnis for the mountain villages, always on the move to bring succour to these scattered people. Our children snatched some time from their busy schedule as paediatricians to arrange for a trip to Manali this May. It was to be a journey down the memory lane for my wife. On the way, she was keen to locate their wooden house at Bhunter where she had spent her babyhood and still often dreamt of apples, plums and pears heaped in their verandah. Sadly, there was no trace of the building and even the landmarks around. The vast open space in front where once “devtas” (deities) were ceremonially brought during the Dasehra festivities was now the Kullu airport. On our further drive to Manali, we could see the mountains sprinkled with snow, the rubber rafts being buffeted in the gushing waters of the Beas, tall conical trees positioned like ballistic missiles ready to shoot into the skies, hill peaks peeping above the clouds and the greenery spread on the ground in its myriad forms. Manali, however, was bustling with vehicles and people many times more than the place could take. In fact, one felt like being in an overcrowded Punjab Roadways bus. The next day we left for the Rohtang La. We had to stop short by 3 km as further ahead vehicles were lined up right up to the 13050 feet high pass. Myself and Ajay were able to make to the pass wading through snow and mud. Sakshi and the kids had to be content with throwing snow at one another at the spot. My wife, however, sat solemn on a stone by the roadside. She was obviously thinking of her father who, some 52 years back, sat similarly for rest somewhere here after a hard day’s trek on duty and froze to death. Manali is known as the “Valley of the gods”. He was no less a god to his patients in mountain villages around. After all, he lived and died for them. |
Genocide in Darfur In
my decades teaching English literature, I’ve experienced nothing so painful as the final scene of “King Lear.” Howling in bereavement, Shakespeare’s profoundly humbled king enters holding his dead daughter, Cordelia, and subsequently dies of grief. But in the arid regions of Darfur province in western Sudan, such agony as Lear’s is common. It’s recorded in only the tersest accounts from the bereaved, distinguished by neither poetry nor dramatic shape. The fiercest suffering is muffled within a vast and growing arena of violence. On July 29, 2004, a group of schoolgirls were chained together in their classroom in the village of Suleia, in west Darfur. The Janjaweed, the notorious Arab militiamen who work as the proxies of the Khartoum regime, then burned the school to the ground. Family members heard the screams of the dying children; most of the relatives were also slaughtered. African Union investigators found the schoolgirls’ bodies, charred together. I can report that this happened, but I dare not fully imagine such suffering. Like Johnson, I have my limits; some pain is not to be endured. Consider what a young woman in South Darfur experienced in July 2004, according to a Knight Ridder report: “Kaltoma Idris, 23, was inside her hut when the Janjaweed arrived. Outside, her sister was boiling water on a small fire, her recently born twins next to her. ‘The Janjaweed came and took the water and poured it over the babies,’ recalled Idris, who stayed in the hut and kept silent. ‘They tied my sister up.’ Idris fled out the back. As she ran for cover, she said she saw children being thrown into flaming huts.” Such barbarism has defined Darfur for four years, with no end in sight. Here we should recall that at the same time as Kaltoma Idris’s ordeal, more than 2 1/2 years ago, the radical Islamic regime in Khartoum – the same men who used to harbor Osama bin Laden – agreed to U.N. Security Council demands to disarm the Janjaweed. But Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has not complied; a UN panel of experts found last September that his regime was arming these vicious militias more heavily than ever, in concert with a renewed military offensive by Khartoum’s regular army troops against rebel forces in Darfur. Major insurgency began there in February 2003, following years of severe political and economic marginalisation. The primary victims of attacks from the Janjaweed and Sudan’s military (which often coordinate with each other) have come from Darfur’s non-Arab or African tribal groups, which Bashir sees as the rebels’ civilian support base. Has the world responded to this genocide? Barely. Almost three years of obscene violence have passed since Khartoum promised to disarm the Janjaweed. The region has grown steadily more chaotic and violent since the signing of an expedient and ill-conceived peace agreement last May. The rebel groups fighting Bashir’s government have fractured, unsure about how to engage with a regime that has consistently proved its bad faith and is determined to deny the people of Darfur a legitimate role in national affairs or meaningful autonomy. Most urgent, the rebel groups want international guarantors for any cease-fire or security arrangements. As the regime has waged a steady war of attrition against the world’s largest humanitarian-relief operation, the civilian population at risk has grown steadily. The United Nations estimates that a mind-numbing 4.5 million people in Darfur and eastern Chad now need assistance – food, medicine, clean water, shelter. Last September, the Security Council passed yet another resolution, this time authorising the deployment of 22,500 troops and civilian police to protect civilians and boost humanitarian efforts. To date, approximately 200 technical personnel have been deployed – because Khartoum refuses to accept a more robust U.N. force that might effectively supplement the hopelessly inadequate African Union force on the ground. That’s easy enough to understand. Khartoum hasn’t finished its genocidal counterinsurgency war. And if it can’t complete the task militarily, the regime has clearly resolved to do so by gradually starving the people of Darfur or letting them die of the diseases that stalk the camps. The international community – including the United States, Europe and Africa – has done nothing to change this most ruthless of calculations. So the only country that can now change the regime’s logic is China, Khartoum’s primary arms supplier, economic partner, oil importer and diplomatic protector. But China abstained on the Security Council vote to authorise a U.N. force for Darfur, and it has subsequently insisted that even a partial deployment of this force be contingent upon Khartoum’s acceptance. This is all the encouragement Khartoum needs to persist in its defiance. The Bush administration and the Europeans are no more willing to confront Beijing than they are Khartoum. Unless China senses that Darfur has truly become a first-tier foreign policy issue for Western nations, it will continue to mouth meaningless words of concern even as it holds fast to a course of rapacious indifference. The writer is the author of “A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide.” By arrangement with
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Industry profiteering hurts consumers, creates social unrest Instead
of adversely reacting to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ten commandments on inclusive growth, social responsibility and the checking of vulgar display of wealth, Indian corporate bosses should be thankful to the PM for tolerating a culture of “corporate greed” that is flourishing in the country without any check by the UPA government. As the Prime Minister is a mild-mannered person, he did not directly tell the heads of corporate houses that they should bring down the level of exploitation of their customers, which they practice in a bid to maximise their wealth in the shortest possible time. Otherwise, there is strong evidence to prove the point that corporate houses and financial institutions such as banks are exploiting the customers, workers and employees to maximise their profit and wealth. Evidence is available in the form of the growth in percentage of profit that ranges from 40 per cent to even above 100 per cent, of various corporate houses, which released their performance results for year 2006-07 during the last few weeks. Such a high percentage of profit means maximum exploitation of customers, consumers, workers and employees. The most unfortunate aspect is that the Indian media has not begun focusing on “corporate greed”, which is the subject of intense discussion and comment in capitalist countries. Bedazzled by expansion and growth figures of corporate houses, financial commentators take pleasure in writing about the boom in Indian industry and economy, but have been avoiding a critical evaluation of the operations of such corporate houses. In his speech, the Prime Minister had urged the members of the corporate club to rein in the salaries of promoters, top executives of companies etc, as income and wealth inequalities across the country could lead to social unrest. CII head Mr Sunil Mittal’s claim that salaries cannot be legislated is questionable, and the government has every right to legislate and fix the upper limit of the percentage of profit that can be earned by a corporate house in a fiscal year. The Government has the power to check the questionable behaviour of corporate bosses by tightening product safety standards, framing effective laws to protect consumers’ interests, and wielding the stick against those industrialists who have not returned loans worth several hundred crores availed from public sector banks. The Prime Minister’s take on corporate bosses with regard to “corporate greed” was: “Cartels are a crime and go against the grain of any open economy. Even profit maximisation should be within the bounds of decency and greed.” According to reports, the combined net profit of 539 companies is up by 46.1 per cent to Rs 21,050 crore. In the last quarter of 2006, the average net profit grew by 57.6 per cent for these companies. The net profit of some of the companies was in the range of 90 to 152 per cent. Banks are taking all sorts of service charges from their customers. Most of the corporate houses operating in information technology and the services sector are minting money by exploiting the human capital available in abundance at a cheap rate in the country. Why do American companies outsource their work to Indian companies? Because human capital is available at a cheap rate in this country. The modus operandi of corporate houses is clear. In the service sector, hefty pay-packets are given to top employees, who are given targets to perform. Such top executives exploit lower employees to the maximum to achieve targets and performance. At the lower end, employees in services sector are treated like bonded labour. A policy of hire and fire is practiced without any expression of concern for human feelings. Workers at lower level get less wages for working maximum number of hours in a day. The most interesting aspect, which has not been studied at any level, is that the middle and lower middle class is providing the best human capital to corporate houses, which they exploit to the maximum to generate wealth for themselves. The middle class spends a lot of money on their wards to give them the best education. They spend their entire fortune on their wards. And their wards then serve corporate houses to make the fortune of corporate bosses. Obviously, the time has come to check the profiteering tendency of corporate houses. |
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Defence Notes As
part of the effort to promote adventure sport, the Chief of Air Staff, Air Chief Marshal F.H. Major recently flagged off a round-the-world microlight aircraft expedition, which will attempt to cover more than 39,000 kms in about 45 days. The expedition is being undertaken in a German “CSTW Advance” microlight aircraft and would attempt to set a new world record for the fastest time in circumnavigating the globe in a 300-500 kg plane. Flagging off the expedition, the Air Chief Marshal said that as the prime custodian of aviation in India, the IAF also has the responsibility to promote aero-sport activity in the country. Striking a nostalgic note, he said that he wished he could take the place of the expedition’s crew as what they were planning to accomplish had all the ingredients of a great adventure. The expedition would require great fortitude as it will be a true test of both men and machine. The flight will wind its way through Myanmar, Thailand, China, Russia, Canada, Alaska, Greeland, the European Union countries, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates and Oman before returning to India.
LCA cost overruns The Parliament’s Standing Committee on Defence has severely criticised the costs overruns and delays in the country's prestigious light combat aircraft (LCA) project and expressed dismay that even after 20 years since its inception, only the structure of the fighter was ready. The committee recommended that the government fix a strict deadline for the project, failing which it should be thrown open to foreign collaboration. Stating that the delay in going ahead with the arming of the fighter and the development of an indigenous aero engine was hitting the defence preparedness of the country, the committee stressed that the time had come for government to take the hard option and set a deadline for the project. It also stressed that IAF experts and personnel should be closly associated with the project.
Korean ties India has been witnessing a large number of high profile visits from a number of countries which are looking at forging greater defence ties with India. One that virtually went unnoticed was the visit of the Defence Minister of the Republic of Korea, Kim Jang Soo. Kim called on Defence Minister A.K. Antony and discussed various steps to strengthen the existing defence cooperation between the two countries, which includes training of personnel, exchange visits, and strengthening the mutual cooperation between the Coast Guard of the two countries and widening the scope of sea-lane communications. India and Korea signed a Memorandum of Understanding on Defence Logistics and Supplies in the year 2005. This was the first ever visit by any Korean Defence Minister to India. |
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