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Sensex on the rise Good news on HIV |
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King in limbo Go when the going is good NEPAL’S disgraced king, Gyanendra, surely does not know when to call it quits. Despite clear signals from the people, government, political parties and the international community that he should either fit in or flee the country, the king refuses to see that he is unwanted in a democratic Nepal.
Chandra Shekhar the
loner
Muddy past, uneasy
present
Sensitive
leadership key to arresting Army suicides The forgotten art
of handwriting Chatterati
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Good news on HIV THE government has claimed that the national adult HIV prevalence in India has come down to 0.36 in 2006. Shorn of technical jargon, it means there are only two or three million people in the country who are HIV positive, as compared to the previous figure of 5.2 million. If this is true, it comprises the best news on the AIDS front. Health Minister Anbumani Ramadoss has called this reduction “only marginal”, but it happens to be fairly dramatic. Naturally, there are bound to be incredulous stares. The government must explain how this reduction has come about and in which areas. Ironically, a noted India-born researcher in the US has said almost simultaneously that defective or sub-standard medical kits have been supplied by the government’s National AIDS Control Organisation for testing HIV in different blood banks and hospitals in India and have put a large number of Indians at serious health risk. Could there be such error in calculating the number of HIV positive people also? In any case, even if the lower figure now given out by the government is correct, it still means that there are 20 lakh to 30 lakh HIV positive people in the country. It is an alarming number indeed, and makes India the country with the third largest number of HIV infected people in the world, behind only South Africa and Nigeria. Needless to say, there is no scope for complacency. The dreaded disease multiplies exponentially and even one patient is one too many. The fight against AIDS has to fire on all cylinders. The cageyness about discussing this sensitive subject has been the bane of India. Till this ignorance vanishes completely, the spectre will continue to loom large. Then there is also the prejudice against the patients. It ensures that disease carriers do not disclose their condition till it is already too late. When even doctors refuse to help an AIDS-afflicted woman to deliver her child and make her husband do so, how can the stigma attached to it be removed? |
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King in limbo NEPAL’S disgraced king, Gyanendra, surely does not know when to call it quits. Despite clear signals from the people, government, political parties and the international community that he should either fit in or flee the country, the king refuses to see that he is unwanted in a democratic Nepal. Far from showing any repentance and submitting to the people’s mood and expectations, he has decided to brazen it out. The elaborately planned birthday bash, probably intended to stir trouble, is of a piece with his brazenness. Not surprisingly, the prime minister, ministers and officials, diplomats and a host of other dignitaries stayed away from his birthday celebrations. In fact, he was openly snubbed by the entire diplomatic community with British Ambassador Andrew Hall making it clear before the event that none of the EU envoys would join in. Adding to the general boycott was the massive turnout of Maoist activists to protest against the monarchy. If the king entertained any lingering doubt about his total political isolation, it ought to be banished now. Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala, ever the voice of moderation, was all for a ceremonial monarch -- if the king and his son Paras abdicated in favour of the five-year-old grandson - despite the Maoists being opposed to it. But palace machinations and the political mischief being caused by royalists have forced Mr Koirala’s hand. He has now declared that the king should abdicate and, with the royal family, leave Nepal before the elections re-scheduled for November 22. This is in tune with the prevalent democratic sentiment in Nepal. Had the king chosen to lie low in deference to the popular mood, he could have continued living in what was once his kingdom. Obviously, the political cost of keeping the royal family in the country is proving to be not only heavy and but also destabilising to the process of democratisation. In the event, the king has to go, and go far away. Few tears will be shed for the autocrat. |
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The best of all monopoly profits is a quiet life.
— J. R. Hicks |
Chandra Shekhar the loner Chandra
Shekhar, the last of the legendary leaders who inspired masses not only to fight for independence but also for social and economic equality, passed away after a long illness on Sunday morning. He has, however, left many questions unanswered. He was a loner who felt that he might have to make many compromises if he carried a large following. He constantly endeavoured to find an answer to one question that has remained unanswered by history. He was in a dilemma whether he was suited more for a role inside the establishment with a seat of power under him or he was more suited for an anti-establishment role. He made a tremendous contribution to pushing the economic and social policies of the Indian National Congress to the left of the Centre during the tumultuous years when the Congress was in the process of transformation to regain the lost ground in the fourth general election in February 1967 when the party had lost power in seven states and its majority in the Lok Sabha had become razor thin. Indira Gandhi, who was struggling against the old guard, the colleagues of her father Jawahar Lal Nehru and responsible for her victory in the only ballot held for the leadership of the Congress Party in Parliament in January 1966 to retain her position, found in Chandra Shekhar a capably ally. She was in despair after she lost in the Congress Parliamentary Board during the selection of the party candidate for the presidential election in June 1969 at the Bangalore session of the All-India Congress Committee (AICC) and was on the verge of resigning when Chandra Shekhar prevailed on her to fight it out rather than give in to the old guard. He was instrumental in the defeat of the Parliamentary Board during the June 1967 session of the AICC when he as a Young Turk forced an amendment to the party resolution on the economy to seek nationalisation of top private banks. He had promised Indira Gandhi in his first meeting with her in 1963 that he would convert the Congress into a socialist party or he would break it. He had joined the Congress in 1964 after his differences with the leadership of the Praja Socialist Party, where he had launched his political career from student days. He revered the leadership of Acharya Narendra Deo and was an admirer of Jayaprakash Narayan, another socialist leader who conscientiously stayed away from the seat of power. Chandra Shekhar, born on April 17, 1927, in a poor Rajput farmer’s family at Ibrahim Patti in UP’s Ballia district that played a historic role during the freedom struggle, was a postgraduate from Allahabad University and was the leading light of the students’ movement. He joined the Socialist Party after his studies and carried on his work under the tutelage of Acharya Narendra Deo. There is no doubt that he built his political career with an anti-establishment stance and had the courage to take on the mighty in political and industrial fields. His campaign against the growth of monopolies of 20 industrial houses in the post-Independence era had forced the Indira Gandhi government to go in for legislation against monopolies and restrictive trade practices. He played a crucial role during the two years that ended in the great divide of the Indian National Congress in November 1969 with the majority remaining on the side of Indira Gandhi. He was confident of her victory in the March 1971 elections against the entire Opposition and the industrial barons opposing her with full media support, but he was also disillusioned when Indira Gandhi displayed no sign of delivering on her electoral promises. He again played a crucial role when JP had launched a movement against corruption in 1974 with his call for “Total Revolution” and had the courage of conviction as exhibited by holding a tea party at his house to honour JP in March 1975. Most Congressmen stayed away from the reception lest the leadership might construe their presence differently. Initially, he was the only one to oppose the imposition of the Emergency after Indira Gandhi lost her election petition and was unseated by the Allahabad High Court. In the Congress party his was the lone voice that demanded her resignation on moral grounds as she had lost the legal battle. He was kept in solitary confinement at the Patiala jail from July 1975 to January 1977 and resisted the second attempt by supporters of Indira Gandhi to enlist his services on her side. He clearly told the middlemen that he could not side with the people who had tried to smother democracy in the country. He headed the Janata Party that had emerged to face Indira Gandhi for the March 1977 election to the Lok Sabha. But he refused to join the Morarji Desai Cabinet despite pressure on him. He clearly told JP that he could not agree to join the Cabinet of a person whom he did not accept as a leader. Again he was faced with a similar situation in December 1989 when the caucus of a few leaders in the Janata Dal that had emerged to oppose Rajiv Gandhi manipulated the leadership issue in favour of Vishwanath Pratap Singh by keeping him in the dark of their eventual design. He refused to join the VP Singh government. As he said later, his joining would be tantamount to undermining the government. But he could not escape the pressure to accept the post of Prime Minister thrust on him when the country was in flames ignited by a political move of VP Singh to perpetuate his leadership by imposing the reservations policy for the Other Backward Classes based on the Mandal Commission report. He knew that his government would not last long as he was not willing to compromise on issues or willing to give in to undue pressures. He preferred to resign when Rajiv Gandhi refused to support the Motion of Thanks to the President for his Address to the joint session of Parliament in April 1991 than stay on even after Rajiv promised his support unconditionally. He refused to don the mantle again saying that it would expose him to blackmail. But he made sincere efforts with his courage to resolve the issues of terrorism in Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir, and the controversy over the Ayodhya shrine during his short tenure. He did not regret his short tenure. But he ended his political career as an unhappy statesman as he saw the all-round deterioration in politics and the upper hand gained by the advocates of the market economy. He was loath to intervene in debates in Parliament for the fear that the new elements that had come to the House would not show tolerance to hear a differing viewpoint. There was no dearth of controversies surrounding him, but he never made an attempt to issue denials. In July 1979 when he was under attack from several politicians, he refused to clarify his position with regard to the issues concerned though the campaign was affecting his image. He said if his image was so fragile to be fractured by such a misdirected campaign, let it be shattered now but he would not join an issue with bankrupt
minds.
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Muddy past, uneasy present I have served both in the armed forces and the police and am proud of both. If the armed forces defend our sovereignty, the police produce the precious wealth of peace. Yet, our people think poorly of the police while they have high opinion about our armed forces. It would be of interest to know why soldiers are seen as heroes and the policemen as villains. The East India Company was understandably profit-oriented and keen to repatriate maximum money home. They, nonetheless, had plenty of political power to play with. So, they went for cheap policing based on the S.H.O.s who were paid a pittance, but otherwise vested with an awful amount of raw authority to overawe and oppress the natives in imperial interest. Thus, the past of our policemen raises considerable stink. Besides, their present-day masters also have a vested interest in the old imperial model — they resent it only when they are at the wrong end of the stick. Left to themselves, our police officers would like to have a purely professional profile and earn the love and respect of the citizens. I commanded 51st Battalion of the C.R.P. Force deployed for election duties in Kashmir in 1977. The main contestants in the field were the National Conference and the Janata Party/ Awami Action Committee combine (The Congress was then licking its wounds of the parliamentary elections). The National Conference and the Awami Action Committee, going by the appellations of “Sher” and “Bakra”, had been at loggersheads with each other for years. It was this historic hostility that had come to the fore in these elections. The activists from both sides would be at each other’s throat on slightest provocation. At one point in the city I encountered a mob stoning a residential building. Rather than resorting to force to disperse the miscreants, I got into their midst to know why they had chosen to attack the house. The frenzied men were nearly stunned by my gesture and opened their heart to me. I then learnt that they suspected that the residents of the house had abducted their boy and they were likely to kill him. I invited five of their representatives to come with me to search the house and assured them if the boy was found held there, the guilty would be straightaway arrested. After some hesitation, the occupants finally agreed to the search of their house by the representatives of the crowd in tow with me. The boy was not found on the premises. True to their word, the crowd leaders signalled their people to disperse. I was delighted to see them dispersing peacefully without any use of force by us. The rest of my time in the valley was devoted to treating the injured from both the warring parties. My jeep, with my doctor and his medical staff, came to be seen as an ambulance rather than a police vehicle. I am sure many of my brother policemen routinely take such risks and do humanitarian work day in and day out. They are very much human. Only the system they work in is
inhuman. |
Sensitive leadership key to arresting Army suicides The
high level meeting called last week by Defence Minister A.K. Antony, following the suspected suicide of Captain Megha Razdan of 113 Engineers’ Regiment, which was also the day another soldier of the Indian Army committed suicide, reflected the urgency and near-panic which has set into the Indian defence establishment over the disturbing trend of rising “suicides” among soldiers. This was the second time in the last 15 days that the Defence Minister stressed on the need to arrest this trend, which is among the highest in any of the armed forces anywhere in the world. Earlier on June 18, he had to urge the top commanders of the country gathered at New Delhi for the Unified Commanders conference, to take all possible steps to reduce the stress level on our jawans. He emphasised the urgent need for more humane man management. The Indian Army is losing more soldiers to this new “disease” than to the insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir and in the North East. While between 2003 and 2006 over 450 soldiers committed suicide all over the country, already this year the number has touched 55. The difficult winter months in the hard postings in the insurgency hit areas, are still to come. The fact that India lost as many as 120 soldiers through suicides last year in comparison to losing 72 in the fight against militants, reflects poorly on the efforts being put in to instill confidence among the jawans and reduce their stress levels. It is the suicides by its women officers which has hit the establishment, especially the Indian Army, particularly hard. Women officers are just a miniscule number, about 1000, from among the over 34,000 officers in over a million-strong Indian Army. But the percentage of suicides shows a much higher trend of the malady among them. Since January 5, 2005, as many as five women officers of the Indian Army have committed suicide for reasons ranging from pressure at postings to the discriminating attitude of their superiors, mostly men, and of their colleagues, again men. Before Capt Magha Razdan, it was Lt. Sushmita Chakravarty, who shot herself with an automatic rifle at Udhampur on June 15, 2006. With over a quarter of a million of India’s army engaged in counter-insurgency, the question being asked is whether the Indian Army is feeling the heat of being in perpetual danger of facing a bullet from any quarter, even while the country is not “at war”. Are the stress levels of our soldiers tipping over the danger mark, making them prone to acts of indiscriminate violence? Antony had called for a study after the spurt in cases of suicide and fragging (to kill a fellow soldier or superior) by the Defence Institute of Psychological Research (DIPR), which was submitted to him in January last and following which he had asked the establishment to take certain measures. He himself had spoken to the Chief Ministers of all the States to ensure that local Sainik Boards take more interest in the family problems of the jawans posted in these insurgency hit areas. The report said that army officers needed to inculcate some genuine OLQs (officer-like qualities), as humiliation at the hands of their seniors is what often pushes them over the brink. The jawans cited perceived humiliation and harassment, over and above occupational and familial causes, as the triggering factor which forced them to take such extreme steps, said the report. It recommended “sensitising the leadership” on a war-footing to tackle the mounting problem. “A soldier, worried about a problem his family is facing, looks forward to getting help, guidance and assistance from his superior officer. The officer or JCO (junior commissioned officer) need to be approachable to soldiers at the time of crisis,” says the report. “They need to have a humane approach towards problems of soldiers and should not use any abusive or derogatory language. Any act or statement on the leader’s part that hurts the ego and lowers the self-esteem of the individual usually becomes the precipitating factor for suicide and fratricide incidents,” it adds. The DIPR report collected data, through questionnaires and interviews, on over 2,000 soldiers serving in 15 Corps (Srinagar) and 16 Corps (Nagrota) under the Northern Command at Udhampur and 3 Corps (Dimapur) and 4 Corps (Tezpur) under the Kolkata-based Eastern Command. Dividing its recommendations into three categories – immediate, intermediate and long-term – the report says enhancing leadership qualities among young officers and JCOs and drastically improving interpersonal ties between officers and jawans needs to be done immediately. Other “immediate” measures include rationalising the grant of leave, giving adequate rest and recuperation time, improving the organisational climate, controlling the zero-error syndrome and improving manpower management. The “intermediate” and “long-term” recommendations, in turn, include improved selection and training of soldiers; better basic facilities and salaries; good weapons and equipment; and use of religious teachers as counsellors. The other harsh reality is that men in uniform no longer command the respect they did in the early years after independence. While Army salaries were never a fortune, the dignity and recognition they got made soldiers feel compensated. But now, as society values money far more than valour, most soldiers complain that society shows little respect for the sacrifices they make. Clearly, there also has to be a more sensitive approach from society towards the jawans. |
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The forgotten art of handwriting My
father always complained about my handwriting. His accountant’s script was measured, careful, full of lots of little squiggles which I noticed he also used in his long-ago war diary, written in the 1918 trenches when he was 19 years old. My writing was sloppy by comparison and I notice, as the years pass, that it gets worse. My Lebanese civil war notebooks – many scribbled reports from 1976 and 1977 – are still quite legible. But today, I can return from an interview and find to my horror that I’ve been writing not words but the representation of words – interspersed with bits of old Pitman shorthand – and of course I blame the computer. With an instrument that can almost run at the speed of imagination, it’s infuriating to return to a handwriting that simply cannot keep up with my thoughts. So it was a relief to visit the Musee des Lettres et Manuscripts in Paris the other day to find that the great and the good also wrote in frustration and fury and sadness and -- often -- almost illegibly. I was greatly struck by Napoleon’s script, a dogged, soldier’s hand but sometimes signed merely “Nap”. Churchill sometimes drew pigs on his letters to his wife. The great artists enjoyed covering their letters in pictures – Jean Cocteau, I notice, often adorned his letters with astonished faces. Matisse wrote to Martin Fabiani in March of 1943 with a sketch of a girl reading a newspaper. Gauguin once illustrated a missive with a drawing of a huge tube of paint at the bottom of the page. It reminded me bleakly of a terrible scene I witnessed in Hebron in 2001 when a Palestinian crowd had lynched three collaborators and hanged them semi-naked from lamp posts. So foul was the sight that I drew into my notebook a sketch of their stark figures hanging in front of me; only later could I open it and describe in my report to The Independent the pictures
I had drawn. Handwriting is supposed to betray character – mine is scrappy, uneven and hurried – but I noticed that Catherine de Medici’s script sometimes sloped unevenly and Robespierre’s could be
almost illegible. In the French museum, there’s now a Titanic exhibition with a terrifying telegram, recording the death of Thomas Stead, one of the greatest journalists of his time. It expresses – in the compact, official handwriting of the clerk – that with “deep regret” there was “no hope whatsoever” of finding Stead among the survivors. “No hope” is always a killer; but the addition of that word “whatsoever” – with its awful finality – must have left the telegram’s recipient in silence. Then there’s Helen Churchill Condee’s account of the sinking, a survivor’s notes written shortly after the tragedy in sometimes surprisingly short paragraphs, as if the ship was sinking again in her memory as she wrote. “I was in my bathroom ready for a stinging hot bath. “The music of the engines was beating and singing, rhythm and harmony. “Then the shock came. “Ararat’s moment with the Ark stuck fast on top of it, was the mental image. The impact was below me. It toppled me over. We had struck the top of
a mountain in the sea, a mountain never before discovered. It must be so. “With the door of the cabin thrown open two or three things were sinister, a silence absolute, a brilliance of light as in a ballroom, and an utter absence of human presence...” In later pages, Condee’s handwriting begins to slide about and she makes corrections with her fountain pen as she describes, from her lifeboat, the end of the Titanic. “The only space of deck slopes high towards the stern and on this diminished point huddle the close pack awaiting death with the transcendent courage and grief that had been theirs for the last two hours. “I await the end transfixed. It is inevitable. May God delay it. No, may He in mercy
hasten it. “At last the end of the world...” (Condee has underlined the E of “end” and the W of “world”. “Over the waters only a heavy moan as of one being from whom ultimate agony forces a single sound.” Condee originally wrote “final agony” but later substituted “ultimate agony”, as a composer might choose a different bar to end his
tragic opera. Condee was 12 years old when the Titanic went down. I suppose the laptop has brought all that to an
end. By arrangement with The Independent |
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Chatterati The
President of India is more selected than elected. Now that Pratibha Patil is a “shoo-in” for the post, it’s likely that the Congress will happily claim victory. But unfortunately, this victory may seem a bit hollow. Never before has a Presidential race been so ugly. The range of accusations against both Patil and Shekhawat has been unprecedented. Both the BJP and the Congress have been busy digging mud and flinging it as hard as they can. Having plucked Patil from obscurity the party must have hoped that it would be a simple matter of Electoral College calculations. But it was not to be. The skeletons that have continuously stumbled out of the closet refuse to go back in. The latest defence now that all else seem to have failed is that the candidate cannot be accused of the failings of family members. But in India, where politicians routinely route their covert deals through the convenient network of family members, the public will laugh at this weak defence. After all, in almost every scam involving politicians, the involvement of their kith and kin is usually the starting point. What is strange in this case is that while both Presidential contestants held high constitutional posts till recently nobody had bothered to look any further. But despite the general dismay about the violent personal attacks, the widespread impression is that the flaws are too many to be ignored on both sides. In an age of greater public scrutiny than before and where the RTI ensures that nothing can be hidden for too long, those in public life will have to get used to this scrutiny. So, Pratibha Patil will have to watch out even after she becomes President. Raisina Hill can attract even more attention and opportunity. So, unless the first woman President of India does not, like Caeser’s wife, remain above even a hint of suspicion, the Patil Presidency may be a damaging one for the institution. Lucrative birthdays If Patna was full of hoardings of Ram Vilas Paswan wearing a golden crown, long before his birthday, the actual birthday was a big day in itself. So what if his biggest political rivals could not make it. Some vague excuses were made by Lalu and Nitish. Paswan’s big day started with his distributing charity tricycles for 500 physically challenged persons. He cut a huge cake depicting the various portfolios he has held like railways, communications, steel etc. It weighed 60 kilos and Paswan is also 60 now. Mayawati is not the only one to accept cash. Paswan got a bag of Rs 51 lakh and two gold crowns. Wow! One from the LJP’s legislature party and the second from the Dalit Sena. But no one can come anywhere near Maya Behanji’s birthday celebrations. Last month Lalu celebrated his big day with the P.M. and Sonia was clapping as he cut his cake. Leaders are no doubt struggling to move into Mayaji’s shoes but they have a long way to go. Collecting 10 bucks adds up to crores in Maya’s case! |
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