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Revolt against Modi YSR’s purple prose |
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Enforce SC fiat
Euthanasia or murder of
PSB?
My grandpa’s buggy
Pakistani forces in Congo aided gold smugglers A movie with a heart, a soul, and
a message Family feud in US media giant
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Revolt against Modi The
Keshubhai Patel-led group has been engaging in a running battle with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi for long, but things have rarely come to such a boil as now. The central leadership of the party has been forced to suspend five MLAs who had a reason for running an anti-Narendra Modi campaign, but are also believed to have cross-voted during the recent Presidential election in favour of UPA-Left candidate Pratibha Patil. Not only that, some of them even reportedly said that they had voted for Mrs Patil to teach Mr Modi and his mentor, Mr L.K. Advani, a lesson. It was inevitable that the BJP would be forced to suspend them from the party. But it is doubtful that this will curb the anti-Modi anger of the dissidents, considering that the BJP base has been shrinking lately. Rather the revolt might be encouraged to come out openly against his “authoritarian” style of functioning. What matters is that the rebels have now also started targeting the central leadership. That is a clear pointer to the weakening hold of the party over its ranks. With the Assembly elections only months away, that should set alarm bells ringing. The party had fared poorly in the last Lok Sabha elections too. It had led in only 90 Assembly segments while the Congress led in 92 in Gujarat. Officially, it has been said that the suspended MLAs would be expelled from the party, unless they apologise and promise to refrain from anti-party activities. But the moot point is whether the party can afford to lose support at this crucial stage and bring about a complete rupture in the state party. For all one knows, the MLAs may be rehabilitated soon enough following a face-saving compromise. The example of the Uma Bharati episode is already there. In any case, the party has not dared to take on senior leaders like Mr Keshubhai Patel, Mr Suresh Mehta and Mr Kashiram Rana who are the prime movers of the rebellion. |
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YSR’s purple prose If language is defining of stature, responsibility, honour, decency and decorum, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy has fallen very low indeed. The barrage of foul invectives and what not he let loose against former Chief Minister and Leader of the Opposition N Chandrababu Naidu in the state assembly is shocking. To say that such abusive language is unbecoming of a Chief Minister would be an understatement; such language has no place in any civilised debate and least of all in a parliamentary forum. In behaving as he did, Mr Reddy has demeaned himself, dishonoured the assembly and invited disrespect for the office of Chief Minister. Instead of responding to the issue — of the arrest of Telugu Desam MLAs who were agitating against allegedly large-scale illegal mining operations in Anantapur district — Mr Reddy personalised the conflict and stonewalled any debate by heaping abuse on the TDP chief. He even went so far as to say that Mr Naidu would regret having come into his mother’s womb and regret having been born. This is certainly a new low even by the standards of the many unseemly exchanges that have occurred on the floors of our legislature. No provocation, no matter how extreme, can condone such language by a Chief Minister. He has insulted and abused not just Mr Naidu but the House itself by such conduct. It is shocking that the Speaker did not immediately expunge the Chief Minister’s purple prose from the Assembly’s records, although such a decision would not have mitigated Mr Reddy’s offence. He owes it to the members of the assembly, and the people of the state who elected the assembly, to make ample amends. This is an issue of which the Congress party leadership, too, should take note because it is a slur on the party. Mr Reddy deserves to be reprimanded and if he remains unrepentant, then the Congress party should take the most deterrent action to ensure that its functionaries do not demean public offices as Mr Reddy has done. |
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Enforce SC fiat The Supreme Court has rightly reiterated the imperative need to make the registration of marriages compulsory for all, irrespective of one’s caste, community, colour, creed or religion. The Bench consisting of Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice L.S. Panta has expressed its unhappiness over the casual manner in which many states have treated the apex court’s earlier order of February 14, 2006. There is no valid reason for any state to have reservations about the ruling. Compulsory registration of marriages is a progressive measure. It will help protect the woman’s interests in today’s male-dominated society. Often women are forced to shoulder the entire family burden and face all kinds of harassment, indignities and insecurity. All the states must implement the SC’s order. Compulsory registration of marriages, among other things, will deter men from peremptorily deserting their wives, check bigamy and polygamy, enable married women to claim the right to live in at home without the fear of being thrown out by their husbands, help widows to claim inheritance and, above all, prevent child marriages. This much-needed measure has been hanging fire for over 16 years and there should be no more delay in its implementation. Significantly, the Bench has emphasised the need to make the law on registration of marriages uniform in all the states and Union Territories. Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh have provisions for compulsory registration of marriages. However, Assam, Bihar, West Bengal, Orissa and Meghalaya have laws for voluntary registration of Muslim marriages. Under the Hindu Marriage Act (1955), though registration is compulsory, the Act specifies that non-registration should not affect the validity of a marriage. The apex court’s 2006 order rectifies this major loophole in the law and makes the state governments frame rules by clearly spelling out the “consequences of non-registration” of a marriage. When the courts are bursting at the seams with a huge backlog of cases, the order, when fully implemented, will help courts save time to prove the authenticity of a marriage and spare a litigating spouse avoidable harassment. |
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An intellectual hatred is the
worst, |
Euthanasia or murder of PSB?
The
uninformed clamour of outrage that greeted a still speculative report that government is considering a television licence fee to fund Doordarshan, the public service broadcaster (PSB), is instructive and saddening. When will they ever learn? The proposal, as reported, is that an annual Rs 500 and Rs 200 licence fee be levied on colour and B&W TV sets, respectively, to support DD. Additionally, there was mention of a further levy on the purchase price of TV sets. The question posed in fevered TV discussion was whether it was fair to tax the viewer and manufacturer to subsidise an “inefficient” and unaccountable official trumpet like DD. Instant TV polls via SMS damned the idea in no uncertain terms. QED. Is that truly so? For a start, there was a misjoinder of principle and modalities. Broadcast licence fees are common enough worldwide, witness the Prasar Bharati Act, the BBC and other systems. An earlier Indian scheme failed because small sums had to be paid annually by way of radio and TV licence fees at particular post offices. The sheer labour and harassment made for widespread evasion and collection costs ate away much of the revenue. The Akash Bharati Committee (1978) and everybody since has suggested a simple, prospective, non-evasive one-time licence fee equivalent to, say, 10 per cent of the purchase price, at the time and point of purchase but only on colour sets, so as to exempt poorer households. No separate charge should be levied on manufacturers and the system would operate like the one-time collection of road tax on automobiles. There should be radio licensing as well, exempting single-band transistors but not car radios. The purpose would be to fund Prasar Bharati in a somewhat painless manner in a bid to bolster its autonomy by according it a measure of financial viability together with programme revenues, product sales and returns from advertising. All instructional, community development and social or empowerment programming (relating to schools, open learning, public health, farm extension, social awareness building), and government-mandated and external broadcasts should be paid for by the state(s) or relevant public agencies. The norms could be fixed after due public discussion and the PSB made accountable to Parliament and an independent complaints and standards commission (as envisaged) without being a handmaid of the government. Unfortunately, the scheme was scuttled. Monies earned by Prasar Bharati go to the consolidated fund; personnel remain government servants (in violation of the PB Act); finances and reporting requirements are controlled through the I&B Ministry, which mistakenly believes that it (not PB) is accountable to Parliament and therefore PB is accountable to it. The Board of PB has by dereliction and default seldom been fully constituted since 1997 and key personnel like DGs and Finance and Personnel Directors are preferentially selected from among government officials. Prasar Bharati has remained a pompous signboard without autonomy and afraid to exercise it, with too much kow-towing to the powers that be. The I&B Ministry and even the government as a whole, Parliament, advertisers, the entertainment world, private broadcasters and cable operators, many within PB itself, and most of the public at large have not been supportive of the very idea of PSB. The concept of PSB has simply not been understood, let alone fairly tried, and a mutilated creature is tauntingly asked why it has not worked and whether it deserves to live at all when burgeoning, thriving, innovating private channels can do the job. And there lies the fallacy. The private channels are market driven and work for the consumer. Nothing wrong there. The public service broadcaster, per contra, is intended to serve the citizen in a situation where around half the population hovers around or lives below the poverty line, outside the market. Broadcasting is surely more than glitzy entertainment, spectacles and the breathless babble of “breaking news”. These cannot crowd out programmes that empower millions of marginalised, made in their multifarious languages, idiom and locales. Who is to cater to them? They are information-needy and require a ready PSB medium (TV and radio) that can make them dialogic partners in development, growth and governance and consumers of knowledge as much as of goods, services and entitlements. PSB, well run, could be a most immediate source of information, access to and participation in life’s unfolding opportunities, and a mechanism of grievance redressal. Very little of this is “commercial” and will not earn rating points to win advertising. Who has given any of this a thought or its net gain to GDP, the unity and stability of our extraordinarily diverse and upwardly mobile country, its cultural enrichment and the well-being and happiness of the forgotten “we” who constitute the bulk of “the people”? Radio has been crassly neglected and local and community radio crippled. Only a fool would suggest that PSB is a panacea or magic wand. Equally, only the callously unthinking can rest with the thought that we can disdain an obvious, cost-effective option to speed the country on its way. Not to fund PSB is almost like abandoning universal education to the market. President Kalam got it right: the media must be for a billion people.n
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My grandpa’s buggy
I
was overjoyed when I heard that horse-and-buggy days would be in Chandigarh very soon. The news that people could now take a ride from the Rock Garden to the Sukhna Lake in a buggy, of course on payment, was really exhilarating. But the joy seems to be short-lived since there is no more talk about it as if the plan has been shelved. The news nostalgically stirred my memory and I recalled the good old days in Farrukhabad when I could take a ride in our very own buggy in the forties. I have a faint image of my grandpa’s buggy in my mind. It was a closed, six-seat, four-wheeled horse-drawn carriage. Though the celebrated beauty had grown old and haggard and looked like a tired, old woman, my grandfather, Shambhu Nath, was fond of using it. The courts being at a distance from our place of residence, my magistrate grandfather needed and readily acquired a new smaller buggy, a four-wheeled one drawn by a single horse. His coachman, or sayees as he is called in Urdu, named Bachchu drove the buggy. But soon to my grandfather’s dismay the use of buggies by Indians was banned for obvious reasons. The old man would still travel in his buggy and pay the fine fixed for the offence and readily deposit it in the district treasury each time he used the buggy. His obstinacy paid. The government relented and exempted him from the prohibitory order. My father and his two younger brothers followed their father’s profession and used and maintained the buggy for some time after their father’s death. Later on, my younger uncle got it repaired and used it for going to the Town Hall, where he started working as Executive Officer. And when finally one day it was declared unsafe, unusable and abandoned, the buggy was retained as a souvenir. Despite being the youngest of 10 children, I consider myself fortunate to have had several rides in my grandfather’s buggy though I could not even see the celebrated buggy brought from Patna. To maintain his family status, my father did use his father’s buggy, which was soon supplemented by a Willy’s, and later by a Chevrolet and a Ford between the twenties and the forties. Petrol rationing during World War II resulted in limited use of the cars. Petrol then used to cost eleven annas a gallon! The buggy and the cars were parked in a large stable. Later, car garages were constructed. My grandfather and later my father cherished the older, bigger buggy greatly and would often speak of it with pride and gusto while reciting their Urdu poetry among members of our joint family. Alas! I wish I could replace my car with a buggy.n |
Pakistani forces in Congo aided gold smugglers UNITED NATIONS — Pakistani peacekeepers serving under the UN flag “aided and abetted” a network of Kenyan businessmen smuggling gold from a mine in eastern Congo, providing them with food, housing, transportation and security, according to the findings of a confidential UN investigation. The report – issued by the United Nations’ Office of Internal Oversight – concluded that the Pakistanis “indirectly contributed” to the illegal exploitation of gold by Congolese government troops and a militia accused of war crimes. However, it found no evidence supporting allegations that Pakistani peacekeepers in the town of Mongbwalu supplied arms to the militia, known as the Nationalist and Integrationist Front. “There can be little doubt that Pakistani peacekeepers were directly involved in illegal gold smuggling,” said Anneke Van Woudenberg, a London-based researcher with Human Rights Watch, which had conducted its own investigation. “The Pakistanis had a very friendly and cozy relationship with the leaders of the armed group they were supposed to be protecting the population from.” Pakistan’s UN ambassador, Munir Akram, said his government will conduct its own investigation and “take the appropriate disciplinary action depending on the determination that we make.” Akram emphasised that the more than 10,000 Pakistani peacekeepers play a vital role in bringing peace to Congo and elsewhere. “You will have some lapses,” he said. “But this should not blur the larger picture, which is the exemplary conduct and contribution of the Pakistani peacekeepers.” The Pakistani contingent is part of a force that the United Nations sent to Congo in 2000 to help end a regional war pitting Congo, Angola and Zimbabwe against Rwanda and Uganda. The UN peacekeepers, who now number more than 17,000, are responsible for disarming Congolese militias, particularly in mineral-rich eastern Congo. Critics said the findings raise questions about the United Nations’ ability to enforce discipline in a mission already tarnished by revelations of widespread sexual abuse by UN peacekeepers. They also follow the disclosure in the Financial Times last month that Bangladeshi peacekeepers may have killed at least one militia member in retaliation for a 2005 ambush that killed nine Bangladeshi soldiers. The incident has triggered a UN inquiry. UN investigators are also reviewing allegations that Indian peacekeepers in eastern Congo traded food rations and intelligence to Rwandan Hutu rebels for gold, according to a senior UN official in New York. UN officials said the problems in Congo raise concerns for future UN operations in the Darfur region of Sudan and in Chad. “I’m very nervous ... that we would forget the lessons that we’ve learned the hard way and put peacekeepers in places where they will be set up for failure,” Jean-Marie Guehenno, the United Nations’ undersecretary general for peacekeeping, said in an interview. But Pakistani officials say that the episode in Mongbwalu was isolated to a lone Pakistani contingent stationed there from September 2005 to October 2006. The United Nations has urged the Pakistani government to conduct an investigation into possible wrongdoing by the units’ commander, Major Mohammed Javed. A summary of more than 200 pages of internal documents, e-mails and eyewitness testimony obtained by The Washington Post suggests that more than one contingent of Pakistanis in Mongbwalu was implicated in the illicit trade and that the crimes were potentially more serious than those contained in the UN report. Those allegations were first reported in the spring by the BBC. Pakistani commanders established commercial links with two Nationalist and Integrationist Front leaders, Gen. Mateso Nyinga – known as Kung Fu – and Col. Drati Massasi – known as Dragon – as early as spring 2005, according to accounts by a UN interpreter and the two militia leaders. The illegal trade continued with commanders of the Congolese armed forces after the militia was driven from the area in October 2005 and its two commanders were jailed, according to testimony from a Congolese officer and internal documents. Pakistani peacekeepers supplied the militia with food rations, computers and other goods that were sold in shops owned by Nyinga, according to testimony by the translator working for the Pakistanis in 2005. One Pakistani commander, Major Ali Zaman, supplied the militia with weapons so it could protect the Pakistani troops and promised to tip the militia off before raids by government forces, according to the sources. The UN interpreter recalled hearing Zaman erupt in anger twice after militia leaders informed him that they had lost weapons and four computers, according to a confidential transcript of the interpreter’s testimony. “Give me my gold or my computers!” Zaman shouted at Massasi. Nyinga and Massasi, meanwhile, issued a handwritten confession from their jail cells in May. The note was delivered to Human Rights Watch and others by a source close to the two militia leaders, according to Van Woudenberg. By arrangement with |
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A movie with a heart, a soul, and
a message I had read and watched the incessant news reports on Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s visit to India earlier this year with some degree of cynicism and derision. Their trip was shadowed by an incident where parents at a school in south Mumbai, where Jolie was shooting for the film, The Mighty Heart, alleged that Jolie and Pitt’s three bodyguards had hurled racial abuses. The hoopla following the incident propelled Pitt to appear on Barkha Dutt’s show to proclaim, “I have never seen a country like India. I love Indian food. I love chicken masala, dal and nan.” Yet, walking out of The Mighty Heart after it opened to packed theatres in the US (distributors plan to release the film in India next month), the various controversies surrounding the shooting of the film in Mumbai seemed inconsequential. Directed by Michael Winterbottom (who earlier made the excellent docudrama, Road to Guantanamo) the film is based on Mariane Pearl’s book by the same name, about the kidnapping and killing of her husband, Wall Street Journal’s South Asian Bureau Chief, Daniel Pearl. The Mighty Heart is an ode to people’s power to rise above religious bigotry. The film, set in the streets of Karachi, begins with the abduction of Pearl one warm evening where he is enticed to a meeting with the radical Imam, Sheik Mubarek Gilani. Pearl never meets up with Gilani but instead spends ten days in confinement at a house at the outskirts of the city and then on Februrary 1, 2002, when all negotiations fail, he is beheaded and the gruesome tape of the killing sent to the American consulate. Mariane Pearl’s wrenching cry (soulfully rendered by Jolie) when she receives the news of her husband’s death is the pulse of the film as is the stoic presence of Captain, a Pakistani police inspector, played with indomitable realism by Irfan Khan (whose earlier films include equally moving performances in The Namesake, Deadline: Sirf 24 Ghante, Rog and Salaam Bombay). The Mighty Heart comes to us at an apocalyptic moment. Pakistan is ravaged by Taliban militancy in the northwest tribal areas, rise of Islamic fundamentalism, and a despotic control by a weak President. United States and other international actors appear more interested in seeing the end of Al Qaeda rather than a stable South Asia. The Mighty Heart does not challenge Pakistani government’s schizophrenic policies of trying to appease -- albeit unsuccessfully -- both the mullahs and the moderates but rather it tracks the heartbreaking story of a pregnant wife whose life, within a few hours, is changed forever. It is also a parallel story of a police officer whose painstaking job is to unravel the network of information, the identity of those who set Pearl up, their contacts and history, possible connections to 9/11, and their web of supporters. These are two people whose lives can’t be more different – one an Afro-Cuban journalist raised in Paris who deeply loves her Jewish American husband and the other a Pakistani cop whose work sometimes requires torture. But as their lives merge, they become paragons of how to transcend politics of hate. For a moment we ought to forget the media circus that followed Jolie and Pitt to India and watch The Mighty Heart as a movie with a heart, a soul and a message. |
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Family feud in US media giant NEW YORK — An octogenarian media mogul surveys the empire he has created over three hard-fighting decades. One of the world’s most successful film studios. One of America’s most-watched television networks. A string of other pioneering, profitable and politically powerful assets in broadcasting With the fire dimming in his eyes, you might think his mind has turned to how best to secure his legacy, to keep the business intact and under the control of his descendants. Not Sumner Redstone. Aged 84 and facing growing questions about his health, the mogul is nevertheless living up to his reputation as the most unpredictable man in the media jungle. He has embarked on an extraordinary public slanging match with his 53-year-old daughter, Shari, until now his presumed successor, that could blow apart one of the world’s biggest media companies. At stake is the future control of some icons ranging from the CBS television network and the pioneering MTV, to the Paramount Pictures film studio and publishers Simon & Schuster. But more than this, too. The falling out with Shari could mean the final unravelling of the Redstone family, once a dynasty-in-waiting that seemed likely to rival for generations with the Murdochs or the Packers. Redstone has fallen out with many people over the years. Trusted business lieutenants have fled and he has bawled out even stars as mighty as Tom Cruise, but now his feuds are with his own children. Coming on the heels of a bitter legal battle with his only son, Brent, the rift opening up with his only daughter suggests that the story is heading toward a tragic, lonely ending. “It must be remembered that I gave to my children their stock, and it is I, with little or no contribution on their part, who built these great media companies,” Redstone thundered, in a letter faxed for publication in Forbes magazine. Shari had been put in place as heir-apparent three years ago, taking roles as chief executive of National Amusements, the private family company which owns a chain of cinemas and, most importantly, big stakes in two public companies, Viacom, which owns Paramount, MTV and VH1, amongst other things, and CBS. Already vice-chairman of the two public companies, Shari, had been expected to succeed her father as chairman. The origins of the feud are obscure and probably manifold, but they appear to revolve around issues such as whether she needed the approval of other board members to succeed to the top job, and a row over her attempts to tie her father’s pay to the performance of the companies’ share prices. The two sides are now talking about a resolution that would involve Redstone buying out his daughter’s 20 per cent stake in National Amusements; she hints she wants $1.6billion; he says he will consider only a “reasonable” price. Whatever the outcome, it seems it will be impossible to describe it as amicable. By arrangement with |
Money can fetch you bread alone. Do not consider it as your sole end and aim. The only way love punishes is by suffering.
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