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To vote or abstain Suicide bombings |
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Renuka vs Lalu Sex education key to fighting AIDS Railway Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav is known to put forth his views on every subject in his own way. So is Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury. Ministers are supposed to be unanimous on official policies because of collective responsibility of the Union Cabinet.
Maoists the real
gainers
Horse sense
Rowling, a good
author in a bad industry Legal
Notes Political lessons
from the thriller Jaws
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Suicide bombings The Lal Masjid military operation ordered by General Pervez Musharraf immediately led to two suicide attacks on the troops deployed in Pakistan’s tribal areas, claiming a number of lives. This must have been apprehended as most of the killed madarsa students belonged to the NWFP. General Musharraf’s plane came under attack while the army action was still on. But Tuesday’s incident in which a suicide bomber blew himself up in Islamabad, killing 15 people a little before suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry was to address a gathering of lawyers, shows that the backlash after the masjid crackdown is taking a more serious turn. According to PPP leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Islamabad’s suicide bombing was directed against her party as it occurred near her party’s booth set up to welcome Justice Chaudhry. She appears to have a point as the PPP has openly supported the Lal Masjid operation. But, surprisingly, she has blamed a “hidden hand” working to create a condition for the imposition of an emergency so that the 2008 elections can be postponed by the Musharraf regime. The possibility of the ruling General, in desperation, exercising the emergency option has been mentioned by others also. Anything can happen in the fluid situation that prevails in Pakistan. However, General Musharraf must fight against religious extremism first. The environment today is in favour of such a course of action. Reports suggest that most people even in the tribal areas are sick of the activities of extremists. General Musharraf already has the support of the international community for a crackdown on the extremists. His drive against extremism itself may create a different political situation in Pakistan. If he succeeds in curbing extremism the General can improve his electoral prospects. Whatever the political implications, Pakistan will have to defeat religious extremism in the interest of peace and its own stability. |
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Renuka vs Lalu Railway
Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav is known to put forth his views on every subject in his own way. So is Women and Child Development Minister Renuka Chowdhury. Ministers are supposed to be unanimous on official policies because of collective responsibility of the Union Cabinet. But the views of these two ministers happen to differ diametrically on sex education in the schools of the country. While Mr Yadav has opposed it fiercely, saying it was having a bad impact on them as also destroying Indian culture, Mrs Chowdhury has rubbished this line of thinking, retorting that opposing sex education is “moral hypocrisy” and it will amount to national shame if children are not protected from HIV/AIDS. One cannot help lauding her views because the hesitation to discuss this sensitive matter has cost India dear and the dreaded disease is spreading its reach fast to most parts of the country. Mr Yadav should have shown greater understanding and grasp about the danger the country is facing from HIV/AIDS than he has. Besides the AIDS spectre, our population too has been growing unbridled. Depriving the school children of facts of life would only worsen the situation. Does Mr Yadav think that children remain ignorant about the birds and the bees just because men like him are unwilling to tell them? They get all the information they need, and from all the wrong sources. Often they get a warped idea about the adult topic, which they are never able to shed. One just hopes that Mrs Chowdhury’s line of thinking prevails in the Cabinet and not that of her prudish colleague. Her advice to women that they should not trust men or their husbands in the matter of sex also makes sense. As she has said rather colourfully, you cannot expect a husband returning home drunk late at night to be carrying a condom. “If you believe that men will be careful, then you can forget about protecting yourself,” the minister says. That may shock some, but is harsh truth. The country has suffered a lot because some self-styled moralists refuse to understand the gravity of the situation. |
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Nature does nothing without purpose or uselessly.
— Aristotle |
Maoists the real gainers Here
are a few snapshots of Nepal taken last month. These discount holding of an election in November. The picture in Kathmandu is peaceful and calm; Indians are on package tours in droves, and the Nepalese relaxed despite frequent strikes and bandhs. Law and order continues to be the single biggest worry for all. The Maoists are clearly in command of the capital as well as the countryside. They are part of the interim government and the parallel government in rural areas, which has not been dismantled so far. The Nepali Congress-led government under Prime Minister G.P. Koirala is so careful about not rocking the peace process that it has perfected the appeasement of the Maoists to a fine art. It is so much in awe of the Maoists that it is almost scared of acting against them. While the Army is confined to barracks, the United Nations Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) mandate is limited to arms and armies’ management and conduct of elections. That leaves the much-maligned US Ambassador, Mr James Francis Moriarty, who has been periodically urging the Maoists to implement agreements and reform their behaviour. He is currently acting as the headmaster of Nepal while UNMIN chief Ian Martin is the referee without a whistle. Unfortunately, the indigenous peace process has no external mechanism for resolving differences and enforcing agreements. Eventually, people and civil society will have to confront the Maoists. The Maoists have introduced a new wild card: Young Communist League (YCL). It predates the PLA. From 1993 to 2001, the Maoist fighting force was the YCL. It was only after the attack on the Army at Dang in 2001 that it was redesignated as the PLA. It was resurrected last year with armed hardcore PLA acting as Prachanda’s storm troopers. Around 3000 YCL activists are known to be in Kathmandu under Commander Sagar, while the overall YCL commander is Barsaman Pun. Its present number is 50,000 and is expected to grow to 200,000 and even 500,000. The YCL, the self-appointed custodians of law and justice, are under daily attack for their misdemeanours from political parties and civil society all across Nepal. A UN official had suggested that it might be possible to demobilise the YCL by converting into a Central Industrial Task Force. There were no takers for the idea. The challenges confronting Nepal are the turbulence in the Terai area with the Madhesh problem, the YCL and the rising expectations of marginalised groups. Two other concerns are holding a free and fair election in November and the uncertain health of Mr G.P. Koirala. Political congruence among the Seven-Party Alliance (SPA) is conspicuously absent and this allows the Maoists to call the shots. In the last one year, hardly any development work has taken place in Nepal. The Maoists had destroyed infrastructure worth $80 million during the war. The situation in Madhesh has been complicated by at least five political formations and nine armed groups in the Terai. The Maoists are being challenged by their own splinter groups as well as the Madhesh Janadhikar Forum (MJF). Hardly a day passes when one or the other group does not shut down some part of the Terai. For the government, the political and security situation in Madhesh represents a formidable challenge and requires some creative pre-emptive action. The election has been fixed for November 22, giving the Election Commission more than the mandatory 110 days required for its operationalisation. But there are problems - political parties being unable to go back to the villages on account of the YCL, which is yet to return confiscated property or stop extortion and intimidation. “Till the time of peace-building, appeasement of the Maoists was fine. But now they have led us into a trap”, confessed an NC leader. No one is sure if an election can be held later this year, mainly due to the YCL. Further, none of the elected or nominated legislators in the interim Parliament wants to fight an election. The Maoists are enjoying the best of both worlds. Their political goal of dismantling the monarchy and bringing the Army under civilian control has been achieved. Their long-term objective of making Nepal a single-party republic is uppermost on their mind. A provision for an interim Parliament to declare Nepal a republic by a two-thirds vote has been incorporated. Though they will not admit it, the Maoists are unsure of their electoral popularity. As some have argued, they could emerge as the third largest political party. Maoist watchers believe that they may try to seize power by subverting the system from within. No force can deter them from this goal except, they admit, the US and India. It appears the Maoists don’t care so much about the US as they do about India and realise that they can’t objectively run Nepal without India’s help. Even if the political parties and the Maoists muster the political will to hold an election, it will be difficult to ensure its credibility. With security forces’ morale in its boots, the YCL on the rise and no reliable security apparatus available, the UN would find it impossible to conduct a free and fair election. The UN has no political mandate, not even an advisory or enforcement role. Its role has been circumscribed by India which fears UNMIN is on a mission-creep. Mr Ian Martin is confident his team can help organise an election if political parties and Maoists create an appropriate ambience for it. The onus of persuading the Nepalese polity that an election is the only way to transform the country into a new Nepal is on India. Creating suitable pressure points and incentives for the Maoists to give up their bad habits is a task for Delhi’s Left allies. Meanwhile, Mr Ian Martin has suggested the formation of a National Peace Monitoring Committee and revitalisation of the National Human Rights Commission King Gyanendra has been lying low and has admitted for the first time to friends that he made mistakes. These friends find him a changed man, but “I will still not trust him”, adds one of them. The King does not want to go into exile and has been enquiring about ceremonial monarchy. Meanwhile, his son Paras, who is confined to the Gokarna Golf resort outside Kathmandu, was heard telling a friend: “Why am I being punished for my father’s mistakes?” A senior Maoist leader said it was ironic that India, which abolished monarchy at the time of independence, “is trying to impose it on us”. India is supposed to be operating behind the scenes. Ambassador Shiv Shankar Mukherjee is identified with hundreds of ongoing projects, mainly in the countryside. He has made the criticality of the elections and India’s intention to respect the mandate of the people clear. “We will provide whatever help Nepal needs for the election,” he said. India’s twin challenges are ensuring that the Madhesh problem is not misused by the foes of Nepal’s peace process and muzzling the YCL. No one I met over two weeks in Nepal seriously believed an election could be held though everyone advocated it was the only way to move
forward.
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Horse sense India
runs on bribery, they say. I don’t know but my house does. My doctor wife and abundant children must have 2-3 big holidays in a year so that I may continue living with them. Obtaining NOC from my patients is, of course, her job which she manages without much ado. Last week she said, “Why not Patnitop this time?” I gathered some courage, “You have been the ruler and on ‘top’ right through — why would you need a reconfirmation or reassertion.?” A car-maverick that I am, this would be a good chance, I thought, to renew my rally-skills in advancing age; reflexes and eye-sight including. Then it suddenly struck me that why not score some extra points in my deeply religious wife’s book. “Shall I take you to Mata Vaishno Devi as well? She instantly started jumping in joy just as anybody does after Sachin hits a ton; but was as much bewildered to receive for the first time some religious offer from me. Our helicopter flight from Katra reminded me of ragged and battered Indian roads, and late Dhirendra Brahmchari. And once back on pedestrian track, my inequisitive mind got me the answer that there are over 15000 horses along the pilgrimage path (what horse power); jostling with each other and with devotees. With people sitting on the horses’ back and their care-takers cajoling them from the tail to achieve “greater heights”, I wondered why has this still not caught Maneka Gandhi’s imagination. And with horses emptying their wastes — solid, semi-solid and liquid at will spreading a peculiar stink all over, prompted my little daughter to quip, putting thumb and index finger on her nose, “Pop, this easily can be the world’s largest stable! Why don’t they apply to the Guinness book people?” The authorities will most definitely narrate their helplessness to prevent nature’s call of the horses and divert my attention, “Why should you people spill all the garbage, plastic bottles and chips’ wrappers down the hill where they can never be cleaned?”. Agreed there were more dustbins than donation boxes; but where there is a will, there is a way. Ask me the remedy. Give the horses (their masters) disposable bags, spray freshners, foul-repellants, perfumes, lit dhoop-agarbatti and toilet-train them etc. If wishes were horses…. As one of the foreigners said long ago ( or is this a joke), “No one works in India, still the work goes on. It seems God really lives in
India.” |
Rowling, a good author
in a bad industry The J.K. Rowling fairy tale has it all: rags to riches, temptations for our heroine, endless and various assaults from the forces of darkness and a satisfying conclusion. Many stories start briskly and fizzle out; this one has gone from strength to strength. Its moral is rather more complicated, combining as it does personal triumph with corporate idiocy. J K Rowling’s extraordinary personal achievement has been to follow her imagination over the years, to keep faith, as the world went mad around her, with the idea which had emerged when she was unknown. The pressures of failure and obscurity on an author are tough enough, but are nothing beside the toll that can be exacted by instant success. Most writers whose work makes it to the bestseller list have a book or two to get used to the weird change of status from being a writing nobody to becoming one of what publishers like to call their “crown jewels”. For Rowling, the pressure of expectation as she wrote – the business of being in competition with her last successful book – was part of her life from the second Harry Potter novel onwards. As her characters and ideas became public property, not only readers but film executives and publishers from all over the world will have had their say as to what should happen in future stories. All, it seems, were ignored. The glamour and apparent literary unworldliness which made Rowling so promotable soon posed a problem: she became a celebrity, the stuff of mad websites, and a target for stalkers and sleazebag journalism. Her private life was pored over, an ex-husband told his story in a Sunday paper. On holiday, she was given the long-lens treatment by photographers, lurking for a bikini shot. When she was snapped buying some underwear in Agent Provocateur, the photograph made the national press. Then there were the sneerers and the nutters. Not too many nights’ sleep were probably lost at the Rowling residence when A S Byatt grandly declared that “J.K. Rowling’s magic world has no place for numinous” and that her books were “written for people whose imaginative lives are confined to TV cartoons and the exaggerated mirror world of soaps, reality TV and gossip”. On the other hand, the accusations of plagiarism and the increasingly nutty attacks by religious zealots must have been distressing until they became too obviously ludicrous to take seriously – a spiritually-minded Potter fan has just announced on her website that the series has been an extended religious allegory, and that in the last book Harry will die and rise again. Celebrity is peculiarly problematic for a writer of stories. The watcher suddenly becomes the watched. The stuff from normal everyday life which provides the raw material of fiction is suddenly difficult to reach. Rowling managed to guard her privacy and was attacked for doing so by journalists used to celebrities prepared to play the fame game. Success had gone to her head, they said. She was difficult, grumpy. She was a recluse, all of which, being translated, meant that while she was writing, she preferred not to talk to the press. Her literary agent and her publisher deserve credit for the way they handled what was a difficult, high-pressure situation, but the true hero was Rowling herself. She has struck a blow for the old-fashioned power of storytelling in a reality-addled culture, and has proved that what matters is not publicity or image, but the words on the page. But if Rowling kept the lunacy at bay, the same cannot be said for the books business. Publishers and booksellers have a very precise model when it comes to the perfect long-term project; they want “the same, but different”, year after year. Ideally, a successful series of books, appealing to the same market but with different stories, should appear at regular intervals. The Potter series was that fantasy personified. One bookshop expressed relief that this is the last Harry Potter book. J.K. Rowling probably feels the same, but must sometimes wonder about the industry that she has done so much to help.
By arrangement with The Independent |
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Legal Notes Various
legal problems faced by NRIs due to non-recognition of the verdicts of the Indian courts by foreign countries in family disputes had its echo in the 20th conference of Lawasia in Hong Kong recently, which was attended by Chief Justice of India K.G. Balakrishnan. Lawasia is an organisation of jurists with a membership of over 1,200, from 50 countries of the Asia Pacific region. The organisation has been striving for legal reforms in matters pertaining to inter-continental marriages, divorce, maintenance, adoption, child abduction in the event of breakdown of marriages and settlement of property disputes among parting couples. Two Chandigarh-based lawyers, Anil Malhotra and Ranjit Malhotra, practicing in such cases in the country and abroad, were part of the Indian delegation in the conference. They sought to create a campaign to overcome international barriers in tackling common human problems arising from breakdown of marriages. In the Indian context, they raised the issue of the inadequate number of family courts, particularly in states like Punjab, Gujarat, and Kerala, where there were a high number of NRIs. The Indiana Government was asked to take the initiative to resolve the issues, keeping in view the fast-growing NRI population. Lawasia plans to hold the next conference on these matters in Malaysia later this year, and again in Hong Kong in 2008. A lawyers’ colloquium was set up for exchanging views on development of family laws in the countries of the region and to keep the members informed. Town planning authority The Punjab Housing Development Board has been declared by the Supreme Court as the sole authority for drawing up town development plans in the state. Its powers relating to declaration of planning area could not be delegated to any other agency, the court said. It is exclusively the job of the Board to define the limits of the area to enable its physical identification under the Punjab Regional and Town Planning and Development Act, 1995. The power vested in the Board under Section 56 of the Act was not an empty formality but a mandatory exercise cast on it, the apex court held, while declaring the plan for the proposed Anandgarh town in Ropar district as “invalid” because the Punjab Government had not bothered to consult the Board while acquiring 9,354 acres of land for the township in 2000. It declared the Punjab government’s arguments that it was the final authority to take a decision on land acquisition as without any legal force. The apex court said the intent of the legislature while enacting the Act had been specifically made clear by providing a proper procedure for declaration of the town planning area, which involved consideration of objections and suggestions from the public and publication of the notifications for acquisition of land in the official gazette. The government is not permitted to adopt any other parallel procedure by completely ignoring the existence and authority of the Board. After laying down the law, the apex court directed the Punjab and Haryana High Court to dispose of the petition pertaining to the Anandgarh township case before it accordingly. Chandigarh expansion The fast developing Union Territory of Chandigarh got a fillip with the Supreme Court approving the city expansion plan as provided in the Government’s Scheme 2 and 3 spread over eleven pockets in the Mani Majra area. The approval came with the dismissal of a bunch of appeals by several land owners against the Punjab and Haryana High Court order, which had also given a green signal to the project. Since the notified area of Mani Majra has been vested with the Municipal Corporation of Chandigarh, there was no reason for interference, the apex court held. Of the acquired eleven pockets, 1 to 6 were under Scheme-1 and the remaining in Scheme-3. Different acquisition notifications were issued by the Government between May 25 and October 12, 1989. The land owners’ appeals were rejected mainly on the ground that they had already got compensation in several awards. The land acquisition was challenged on two counts – that no building scheme was in place as required under Section 192 of the Punjab Municipal Act and there was no due publication of the notification under Section 4 in the locality concerned. But these objections were rejected by the apex court holding that the High Court had gone into details of all these aspects by examining the voluminous material placed on record. The grounds of challenge, urged by the land owners, were “untenable” in the face of the evidence produced by the Chandigarh Administration, the apex court ruled. |
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Political lessons from the thriller
Jaws FOR more than 30 years, the bungling mayor in the hit thriller Jaws has been a byword for municipal folly. But the movie’s hapless mayor Larry Vaughn, who urged townsfolk to swim into the shark-infested waters has emerged as the unlikely hero of would-be London mayor Boris Johnson. Johnson, who finally launched his bid to become the Conservative candidate for London mayor this week, has long praised the fictional Mayor of Amity from the Stephen Spielberg classic for his refusal to bow to public hysteria about the risk of shark attacks. His comments may have been relatively light-hearted, but from now on Johnson can expect all of his more maverick asides to be subjected to electoral-campaign style scrutiny. And he may live to regret some of them. He said this year: “The real hero of Jaws is the mayor, a wonderful politician. A gigantic fish is eating all your constituents and he decides to keep the beach open. OK in that instance he was actually wrong, but in principle we need more politicians like the mayor, we are often the only obstacle against all the nonsense.” In the 1977 movie, mayor Vaughn, played by Murray Hamilton, ignores warnings of a brutal shark attack after the mangled body of holidaymaker Chrissie Watkins has washed ashore. He refuses to close local beaches for fear of frightening away the valuable tourist trade. Vaughn insists that the death could have been caused by a motorboat and attempts to claim that the threat has been lifted, but a string of people are mauled to death in the water. In one scene the mayor berates a local councillor on the beach, demanding: “Will you please get in that ocean.” He waves at the man’s family, insisting: “Nobody’s going in – move! Them, too!” Stephen Pound, the Labour MP for Ealing North, said: “The mayor in Jaws was in a complete state of denial. He put his own ego in front of the needs of his citizens and that is a pretty poor precedent for the people of London. “If elected as Mayor of London, Boris Johnson would be more Calamity than Amity.” The Jaws anecdote has been a staple for Johnson, who wrote in 2003 that he was “heroically right in principle”. He wrote: ‘In any other context but a Spielberg movie, his conduct would have been wholly intellectually defensible, He just wanted the people of Amity to go about their business without fear, and he did not want the tourist trade to be blighted. ‘Of course, it would have been safest, politically, to join the panic. No-one would have blamed him if he had also started waving his arms and screaming that there was a big white monster eating people. But he didn’t. He did the brave thing. He did nothing, and even if he was proved wrong that in no way negates his courage and correctness.” By arrangement with
The Independent |
He who comprehends the Divine Order of the King, O dear! attains to the Truth and receives honour. — Guru Nanak We must love those who are nearest to us, in our own family. From there, love spreads toward whoever may need us. — Mother Teresa The true and the false are determined in God’s court. — Guru Nanak |
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