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Death for
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Out of
the box
India-China
border issue
Operation
Osama
Internal
divisions surface in China’s ruling party Giant
underground lake in Sudan could replenish the region Delhi
Durbar
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Death for killers More
than 14 years after the Mumbai blasts, that left 257 dead and 713 injured, the marathon trial is at last coming to the conclusion stage. On Wednesday and Thursday, the TADA court handed down death sentences to six persons — three on each day — for planting bombs at four different locations. Interestingly, the convicts had not denied the allegations against them. Instead, they took the plea that the bombs were planted to take revenge for the Babri Masjid demolition. TADA judge P.D. Kode squarely rejected the contention, saying in no uncertain terms that “A criminal has no religion, criminality is the only religion. It was a heinous terrorist act to kill totally innocent Mumbaikars who had no role to play in the Babri demolition and who had not hurt the accused in the riots that followed”. Before this, two accused have already been granted life imprisonment. The judge, who last week had turned down a joint plea made by 16 convicts on June 19 challenging the validity of TADA, had followed it up with the rejection of an application seeking a stay on the sentencing process in the blasts case. He has placed their crimes in the worst-ever man-engineered disaster in the “rarest of rare” category, which justified capital punishment for Abdul Gani Turk, Mushtaq Tarani, Parvez Shaikh, Asgar Mukadam, his cousin Shoaib Ghansar and Shahnawaz Quereshi, who actually placed the explosives at various sites. The court has so far sentenced 84 of the 100 convicted persons. Twentythree accused have been acquitted. All eyes are now on the fate of actor Sanjay Dutt guilty of illegally possessing an AK-56 rifle, and his three co-accused guilty of helping him destroy it. They have been called to court on Saturday. Ironically, the real masterminds, Dawood Ibrahim, Tiger Memon and Mohammad Dossa, have been absconding and cannot be punished as they have not been tried. The government needs to put in more effort to get them back for trial and punishment. |
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Marks for Buddha Chief
Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee is not a reluctant or apologetic follower of capitalism, but is quite emphatic and open about his ideological shift. This is quite unlike his party colleagues who, as he says in an interview to the Hindustan Times Editor-in-Chief, theoretically and academically cannot accept non-socialist policies that their party government pursues in West Bengal. “I cannot build socialism in one part of India. I have to follow capitalism’’, he says and adds quite pragmatically: “We cannot stick to our old dogmas”. In this respect he is closer to Deng Xiaoping — who famously said: “It does not matter what colour the cat is as long as it catches mice” — than some of his party bosses. Mr Bhattacharjee had been quite successful in wooing business tycoons and taming comrades, still saddled with ideological baggage, until Nandigram happened. The police fired at protesters and the Chief Minister’s opponents within the party and outside made it an issue. The Tatas’ small car project, slated to come up at Singur, also got embroiled in controversy. Now a chastened Chief Minister has realised the folly of forcibly acquiring farmers’ land and is trying for the rehabilitation of land losers. But he asserts that there is no going back on FDI, SEZs and World Bank loans. Only multinational companies will not be allowed in retail. The protests at Nandigram and elsewhere have forced the Centre to frame guidelines for land acquisition and rehabilitation of oustees. Industrialisation requires land and capital and capital goes to areas which have reliable infrastructure, peace, rule-based and transparent administration. States are competing for scarce capital and West Bengal under Mr Bhuddhadeb Bhattacharjee is better placed than many others to attract private investment. Apart from the Tatas, Indonesia’s Salim group plans to set up a major
infrastructure-cum-industrial project. The Chief Minister’s hobnobbing with capitalists may annoy the traditional Left, but for him the road is clear. What he needs is avid support from his party.
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Out of the box These
are our lawmakers – the 776 MPs and 4120 MLAs who secured hundreds of thousands of votes. Yet, many of them have to be taught, if not tutored also, how they should cast their ballot in the presidential election. For a country, which boasts of, perhaps, the world’s most tech-savvy President in A P J Abdul Kalam who sought to ignite minds with a quest for knowledge, the voting process of the presidential election is very much behind the times; in terms of both technology and knowledge. India may be an IT superpower but when it comes to casting the ballot in the presidential elections, the medium is the good, old ballot paper; not an electronic voting machine(EVM). If citizens, who are presumably less advanced than the elected elite, can use electronic machines to vote in their MPs and MLAs, why is it harder for MPs and MLAs to have the same equipment for electing the President? The argument that the EVM does not have the option for recording votes in the preferential system just does not wash. All that it would have required is a simple adjustment, which is technologically feasible. But, this was not done. Instead empty ballot boxes were airlifted as cargo to voting centres and would be brought back as co-passengers in the cabin by officials. Therefore, the result of the voting would be known two days later. With EVMs the result could have been declared the same day. Perhaps, it is just as well because voters in this election have to be schooled with a demonstration on how they should mark the ballot paper and cast it in the box. In fact, one party functionary involved in ‘voter education’ is reported as saying. “Don’t use your brain. Just do what is being told”. This can now be adduced as another reason why the presidential system is not suited for India. It is difficult enough to teach EVM manners to 4896 members of the electoral college. Imagine the chaos and time it would take for directly electing the President! And then they are not known for thinking before choosing party candidates lately. Pressing an EVM button may require some thinking.
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I love such mirth as does not make friends ashamed to look upon one another next morning. — Izaak Walton
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India-China border issue
The
Chinese seem to be either testing the waters or ratcheting up the dispute over either the whole of Arunachal Pradesh or part of it with their recent pronouncements on the subject, starting with the statement of the Chinese Ambassador to India, Mr Sun Yuxi. The Chinese have never been quite explicit on how much of Arunachal they seek. The other day I saw an official map displayed in a travel agent’s office in Lhasa that showed only the Tawang tract as Chinese territory. In other maps they have their border running along the foothills, which means all of Arunachal. The Chinese have based their specific claim on the territory on the premise that Tawang was administered from Lhasa, and the contiguous areas owed allegiance to the Dalai Lama, the spiritual and temporal ruler of Tibet. Then the Chinese must also consider this. Sikkim, till the 19th century a vassal of Tibet and Darjeeling, was forcibly taken from it by the British! By extending this logic, could they realistically stake a claim for Sikkim and Darjeeling? Of course, not. It would be preposterous. History has moved on. The times have changed. For the 21st century to be stable, 20th century borders must be stable, whatever be our yearnings. At the crux of this issue is the larger question of the national identities of the two nations and when and how they evolved. It was only in 1886 that the British first forayed out of the Brahmaputra valley when they sent out a punitive expedition into the Lohit valley in pursuit of marauding tribesmen who began raiding the new tea gardens. Apparently, the area was neither under Chinese nor Tibetan control for there were no protests either from the Dalai Lama or the Chinese Amban in Lhasa. Soon the British stayed put. As the adventurers, often military officers masquerading as explorers, began visiting Tibet, the British in India began worrying. Reports that the most well-known of Czarist Russia’s military explorers, Col. Grombchevsky, was sighted in Tibet and had Lord Curzon, the Governor-General of India, most worried. In 1903 Curzon decided to send a military expedition into Tibet led by Grombchevsky’s old antagonist, Col. Francis Younghusband. A brigade-strong mixed force of Gurkhas and Tommies went over the Nathu La into the Chumbi valley and advanced unhindered till Shigatse. A Tibetan military force met them there but offered what can only be described as passive resistance. In 1907 Britain and Russia formally agreed that it was in their interest to leave Tibet “in that state of isolation from which, till recently, she has shown no intention to depart.” It may be of interest to the reader to know that the Great Game nevertheless continued. In 1907 Col. Mannerheim, then of the Russian Army, later Field Marshal Mannerheim and first President of Finland, led a horseback expedition from Kyrgyzstan to Harbin on China’s northeast to identify a route for the cavalry. The next important year was 1913 when the Tibetans declared independence after the collapse of the Qing dynasty and the establishment of a republic in China under Sun Yat Sen. They attacked and drove the Chinese garrisons in Tibet into India over the Nathu La. Also in 1913, the British convened the Simla Conference to demarcate the India-Tibet border. The British proposed the 1914 McMahon Line, as we know it. The Tibetans accepted it. The Chinese Amban, however, initialed the agreement under protest. But his protest seemed mostly about the British negotiating directly with Tibet as a sovereign state and not over the McMahon Line as such. Things moved on then. In 1935 at the insistence of Sir Olaf Caroe, then Deputy Secretary in the Foreign Department, the McMahon Line was notified. In 1944 JP Mills, ICS, established British Indian administration in NEFA, but excluding Tawang which continued to be administered by the Lhasa appointed Head Lama at Tawang despite the fact that it lay well below the McMahon Line. This was largely because Henry Twynam, the Governor of Assam, lost his nerve and did not want to provoke the Tibetans. In 1947 the Dalai Lama (the same gentleman who is now in Dharamshala) sent the newly independent India a note laying claim to some districts in NEFA/Arunachal. On October 7, 1950, the Chinese attacked the Tibetans at seven places on their frontier and made known their intention of reasserting control over all of Tibet. As if in response, on February 16, 1951, Major Relangnao ‘Bob’ Khating, IFAS raised, the India tricolor in Tawang and took over the administration of the tract. The point in this narration is to bring home the fact that India’s claim over Arunachal Pradesh doesn’t rest on any great historical tradition or cultural affinity. We are there because the British went there. But then the Chinese have no basis whatsoever to stake a claim, besides a few dreamy cartographic enlargements of the notion of China among some of the hangers-on in the Qing emperor’s court. The important thing now is that we have been there for over a hundred years and that settles the issue. Arunachal Pradesh has a very interesting population mix. Only less than 10 per cent of its population is Tibetan. Indo-Mongoloid tribes account for 68 per cent of the population. The rest are migrants from Nagaland and Assam. In fact, in future boundary negotiations India could make a case for the inclusion of the few Monpa villages left behind north of the McMahon Line Many knowledgeable observers suggest that the area south of the Huangpo/ Brahmaputra from the Pemako gorge till it enters the Subansiri division of Arunachal would be a logical boundary as the raging and hence unbridgeable river ensures hardly any Chinese administrative presence in the area. It is true that historically India never had a direct border with Tibet till the British took Kumaon and Garhwal from Nepal in 1846 and extended its domain over Arunachal in 1886. On the other hand the formidable Himalayas were always culturally a part of India and formed a natural barrier against ingress from the north, whether Tibetan or Chinese. But times have changed and technology and mankind’s great engineering powers now make it possible for even the most hostile terrain to be subjugated. The Himalayas are no longer the barrier they once were. As China and India emerge as the world’s great economies and powers, can India possibly allow China a strategic trans-Himalayan space just a few miles from the plains? The view from the Chinese side about what exactly constitutes China is no less confused. Apparently, like the British, the Manchu’s who ruled China from the 17th to the early 20th century had a policy of staking claim to the lands that lay ahead of their frontiers in order to provide themselves with military buffers. In a recent article in China Review magazine, Professor Ge Jianxiong, Director of the Institute of Chinese Historical Geography at Fudan University in Shanghai, writes: “To claim that Tibet has always been a part of China since the Tang dynasty; the fact that the Qinghai-Tibetan plateau subsequently became a part of the Chinese dynasties does not substantiate such a claim.” Ge also notes that prior to 1912, when the Republic of China was established, the idea of China was not clearly conceptualised. Even during the late Qing period (Manchu) the term China would on occasion refer to the Qing State, including all the territory that fell within the boundaries of the Qing Empire. At other times it would be taken to refer to only the 18 interior provinces, excluding Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, Tibet and Sinkiang. The Chinese Ambassador told me recently that while he was soundly castigated in India for his unintended comment, he gained a major constituency in China. The mandarins in Beijing would do well to pay heed to Ge Jianxiong’s advice: “If China really wishes to rise peacefully and be on solid footing in the future, we must understand the sum of our history and learn from our experiences.” The same holds true for the babus in South
Block. The writer is associated with the Centre for Policy Alternatives, New Delhi.
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Operation Osama Daughter
sighted it first — among the potted plants in the balcony. I thought it had strayed and would find its out. But soon its tooth-prints came to be noticed on pears, apricots and mangos in the fruit basket on the dining table. Wife drew my attention to it but I dismissing it as a rodent’s legitimate foraging for food. That emboldened it. One morning, wife left kitchen in the middle of preparing breakfast, to answer a telephone call. When she returned, she was horrified to see it nibbling at the butter slab. Well, this time it had bitten off more than it could chew. I was called post haste to inspect the damage and do something about it. First thing I did was to give it a name. Well, you guessed it. In due course, it was declared the Family Enemy No.1 and a general alert was sounded to everyone who lived or worked in the house. Posters could not be brought out because it had yet to be photographed but a plan was worked out. Poison was considered too cruel. Besides, I didn’t want to lose the thrill of catching it alive. So a trap was procured from the old market. For a couple of days, I set the trap at night with a piece of paratha hanging inside as bait. But it didn’t work. Daughter suggested cheese. So, I used a strip of paneer as bait. Next morning, I woke up early to see the result. Well, I found the cage empty and paneer piece hanging forlornly. But wife noticed that the wily intruder had left its tell-tale marks on a whole papaya left in the kitchen. She confronted me, “You are not doing enough!” That sounded familiarly American. “Give me some time”, I said and waited for a lucky break. It came soon. Early morning one day, as I entered kitchen to make tea, I saw it scurrying behind the fridge. Closing the kitchen door, I forced it to enter the cabinet and waited for the orderly. As soon as he came, the operation began. I will spare you the minor detail of the scene that we made, but we managed to catch and force it into the cage. My face beaming with the satisfaction of “mission accomplished”, I showed the catch to daughter and wife. “It’s isn’t what I had seen. That was much bigger”, said daughter pouring cold water over my feat. Wife dittoed her. “Then, it must be the number two or three in the hierarchy”, is all I could say to save face and prepared myself for the long haul to nab the elusive
Osama.
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Internal divisions surface in China’s ruling party BEIJING — A rare open letter signed by 17 former top officials and conservative Marxist scholars ahead of a key Communist Party meeting accuses China’s top leaders of steering the country in the wrong direction, pandering to foreigners, betraying the worker’s revolution and jeopardising social stability. “We’re going down an evil road,” said the letter on the Web site Mao Zedong’s Flag. “The whole country is at a most precarious time.” The challenge is unusual both for the importance of its signatories and for its timing during the run up to this fall’s party congress – an event held once every five years which is a key date on the political calendar. Most public dissent in China generally comes from the embattled ranks of human rights activists and minority religious groups who seek to lessen the party’s power. By contrast, those who affixed their names to this document included former government ministers, a former ambassador to Russia, ex-army officers and academics from elite universities and think tanks. And their emphasis was on restoring party control of an economy that has moved rapidly toward capitalist practices in recent years. The letter gives an unusual look at divisions within the upper ranks of the party, which generally tries to present a unified front in public. “This is probably the first time so many high-ranking people have spoken out like this,” said He Husheng, a professor of party history with People’s University. “The Central Committee is surely not happy at their behavior.” The policies advocated by those signing the letter include reversing a law passed earlier this year that allows private ownership of property, abandoning rules that allow entrepreneurs to join the Communist Party, sharp restrictions on foreign investment, an end to privatisation of state assets and a renewed emphasis on Marxist campaigns and education. The party’s focus on economic liberalisation has led to a dangerous mix of widespread corruption, unemployment, the growing wealth gap and potential social unrest, the letter’s authors argue. If China continues down this path, the letter said, the country will soon “have its own Boris Yeltsin” and “the demise of the party and country would loom.” Those who signed the document can expect a call from propaganda officials “strongly suggesting” they delete their letter, He said. If they don’t agree, it will be deleted for them, he added. Indeed, earlier this week the Mao Zedong’s Flag Web site appeared to be blocked with a “Service Unavailable” notice displayed on the otherwise blank page, a fate more often reserved for Web sites sponsored by human rights activists than party stalwarts. The seven-page letter appeared on the Web site late last week about two weeks after a key speech by President Hu Jintao that appeared to be aimed at silencing critics within the party. The timing suggests that significant differences remain as party leaders try to unify their ranks behind Hu’s policies, which have attempted to open up China’s economy while maintaining party control over the political system. The letter, addressed to President Hu and the party’s Central Committee, targets in particular capitalists and foreigners who have flourished under policies that the writers said had eroded socialism, equality and fairness. “Party secretaries have become capitalists, and capitalists have joined the party,” the letter said. “Foreign corporations are plundering domestic markets and crushing our national economy.” The writers also urged competitive internal elections for central party members and the party secretary, a sign of the group’s displeasure with the Hu leadership. The views expressed in the letter speak to a constituency that has seen its power diminish by China’s ferocious economic growth, rapid social change and growing diversity. The China Daily reported that almost 3 million of the party’s 72.4 million members now work in private business, up from almost none a few years ago. In addition to dissent from conservatives over economic changes, Hu’s leadership has also come under fire from liberals who have pushed for a more open political system. Those views were aired in a cover story in the latest issue of the liberal journal Yanhuang Chunqiu, which roughly translates as “History of Chinese People.” It argued that while China has reformed economically, it continues to drag its heels on important political reforms outlined by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. These include reducing the excessive power of the party and ending its overarching grip on the government. Experts said the 17 signatories of the letter on the Mao Zedong’s Flag Web site sought to influence top leaders through internal party channels but were rebuffed and in frustration decided to go public. The letter by itself is unlikely to alter party ideology, which if anything has become more rigid in recent years as a bulwark against unsettling social change, they said. But it could intensify divisions already in place. “These guys want to turn back the clock, but that’s impossible,” said Wang Yukai, a professor at the National School of Administration in Beijing. “I wouldn’t say they’re bad people. But we must move forward. Such outdated opinions are a leftist tumor.” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post
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Giant underground lake in Sudan could replenish the region In
the dry wasteland of Sudan’s war-wracked Darfur region, the imprint of an ancient 8,000 square mile underground lake has been discovered by geologists from Boston University. If confirmed, the discovery of a lake so large could replenish the region for a century. It is also raising hope hopes that one of the causes behind the devastating civil war could be alleviated if drinking water is eventually pumped to the surface. The Egyptian geologist Farouk El-Baz who led the research hopes that up to 1,000 deep wells will soon be dug in Darfur bringing some relief to an area where conflict between nomadic herders and farmers has been exacerbated by climate change and dwindling water supplies. Using satellite and radar images Baz and a team of 20 researchers discovered what appear to be streams emerging from a 5,000-year-old lake deep underground. The lake, now hidden by the sands of northern Darfur, was once replenished by surging rivers fed by rainfall. Baz says he showed the Sudanese government images of what appears to be an underground lake and plans to return to conduct an aerial survey by helicopter. He made a similar discovery in his home country in the 1980s. That project resulted in construction of 500 wells in Egypt’s most arid regions. Mr Baz, who also worked on NASA’s Apollo program, says he has received a promise of equipment and manpower to drill the first 20 wells in Sudan. A new report by the United Nation Environment programme says that: ‘The scale of historical climate change, as recorded in Northern Darfur, is almost unprecedented: the reduction in rainfall has turned millions of hectares of already marginal semi-desert grazing land into desert. The impact of climate change is considered to be directly related to the conflict in the region, as desertification has added significantly to the stress on the livelihoods of pastoralist societies, forcing them to move south to find pasture.” The idea that climate change can cause wars is increasingly embraced among foreign policy experts. But there are also concerns that a rush to identify global warming as the single root cause of Darner’s troubles, fails to recognise the political realities of the war. One of the first to draw attention to global warming’s capacity to generate conflict was the economist Jeffrey Sachs an adviser to the UN Secretary General: “Recent years have shown that shifts in rainfall can bring down governments and even set off wars. The African Sahel, just south of the Sahara, provides a dramatic and poignant demonstration,” he wrote. “The deadly carnage in Darfur, Sudan, for example, which is almost always discussed in political and military terms, has roots in an ecological crisis directly arising from climate shocks,” Sachs said. A report on how climate change posed a threat to global security was produced earlier this year for by a group of former US military officials: “Darfur provides a case study of how existing marginal situations can be exacerbated beyond the tipping point by climate-related factors. It also shows how lack of essential resources threatens not only individuals and their communities but also the region and the international community at large,” the report commented. The great drought and famine in the region in 1984-85 led to localised conflicts that pitting pastoralists against farmers in a struggle for diminishing resources, culminating in the Fur-Arab war of 1989. But experts on Darfur also caution that focusing on climate change alone may obscure other important factors and hamper the search for solutions. Julie Flint, co-author of Darfur: The Short History of a Long War, says attempts to paint the Darfur conflict as simply resource-based “whitewashes the Sudan government”, The “full-fledged tragedy” starting in 2003, was caused by the government’s response to the rebellion, “for which two people have already been indicted for war crimes by the ICC [International Criminal Court] – not by resource conflict”. Africa’s largest country has been plagued by conflicts rooted, in the economic, political, social and military domination of the country by a narrow elite within northern Sudan. Geoffrey Dabelko at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Centre says that ‘competition between pastoralists and agriculturalists is key to so many conflicts in East Africa, including the crisis in Darfur. But the stories of these conflicts cannot be told without including underlying environmental and demographic stresses.” By arrangement with
The Independent
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Delhi
Durbar Charity
begins at home and Water Resources minister Saifudddin Soz is keen that the message of water conservation reaches homes and offices. He has written a letter to all the Chief Ministers and union Cabinet ministers urging them to prevail upon people to start serving water in small glasses. The minister believes this will inculcate the habit of saving water as guests sometimes take only a sip or two from a glass, resulting in wastage of the precious resource. He insists that guests should get as much water as they like but in small helpings. Soz has also suggested that small water bottles should be used at various conferences as the big bottle represents a culture of wastage. Soz says all bottled water comes from ground water, which is under great pressure due to rising demand.
Taxing television The proposed move by the UPA government to impose a tax on TV sets evoked strong protests, forcing the Information and Broadcasting minister Priya Ranjan Dasmunshi to categorically deny that there was such wishful thinking. He said the news channels for their own TRP ratings had mooted the TV tax idea. Insiders, however, pointed out that it was an attempt by the ministry to gauge the possible reaction if it went ahead with the TV tax suggestion. SMS messages on the topic made the mood clear. “The government should pay the viewers for watching Doordarshan,” said one response.
Not just parties French ambassador Dominique Girard bid adieu to the diplomatic community and the Indian people on the French National day on July 14. Summing up his experience during his four-and-a-half year posting in India, Girard said that India is a wonderful but a very complex country. “I want to say sorry for what I have not done, for what I could have done. It is not possible to fulfill all the promises because time is too short. After all diplomatic life is not only a world of parties but also a world of hard work,” he said, addressing a gathering of diplomats, mediapersons, politicians, film-makers, actors and artists.
True journalism Outgoing President A.P. J. Abdul Kalam penned a poem in praise of the members of the Fourth Estate while giving away the Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism awards at an Indian Express function earlier this week. Journalism, he observed, vitalises the nation. There is no room for sensationalism even if in the short run it might sell. It will be sheer sacrilege. True journalism is courageous, truthful, inspiring and exalting. “Courage, Courage to think differently/Courage to invent/Courage to travel into an unexplored path/Courage to combat problems/And succeed in providing information/Are the unique qualities of achievers,” went the poem. Such journalism can be an effective tool for the economic and political development of the nation, Kalam added. Contributed by Prashant Sood, R. Suryamurthy, Tripti Nath and S. Satyanarayanan
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