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Rioters at large High altitude boost |
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Squatting netas
Weak right to information
Death of a dream
How Moscow is planning to tower over the world ‘Asian brown cloud’ and climate change Inside Pakistan
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Rioters at large THE successful culmination of the trial in the 1993 Mumbai blast case has focused attention on the 1992-’93 Mumbai riot cases that preceded the serial blasts. While 100 persons have been found guilty and punished in the blast case, only a dozen or so have been punished so far for the riots that took a heavier toll of lives. Sanjay Dutt has been punished for procuring assault weapons but a senior politician, who was arrested with such weapons while taking an active part in the riots, has been roaming free in Mumbai. It is not for want of evidence that the riot cases have not been pursued to their logical culmination. The Srikrishna Commission, which inquired into the riots, had gathered voluminous evidence against the guilty and recommended deterrent action against them. Among the guilty the commission identified were political leaders and senior police officers. Successive governments have been so lax in dealing with them that there is every reason to believe that there is no political will to punish them. The Maharashtra government has submitted three action-taken reports on the Srikrishna Commission report to the Supreme Court. Given the sorry state of the riot cases, the reports seem to be an exercise in obfuscation. How else can the government explain the fact that some of the police officers who were indicted by the commission were promoted, rather than punished, during the interregnum? Nearly 1,000 people were killed in the riots, mainly through arson and stabbing, which means there are at least 1,000 people who have blood on their hands. It is a failure of the criminal justice system if they are allowed to roam free. But for the proactive stance of the Supreme Court, the Gujarat government would not have begun prosecution of those accused of perpetrating the post-Godhra riots in the state. In the instant case, too, the court has indicated that it would not hesitate to intervene if the Maharashtra government is lackadaisical in bringing the guilty to book. If the government is sincere in upholding the rule of law, it should not waste any time in dusting the Srikrishna commission report and acting on all the recommendations it made. Otherwise, it would be committing a grave injustice to the victims of the Mumbai riots, whether Muslim or Hindu. |
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High altitude boost THE hikes in perks and allowances for troops posted in high altitude areas will come as a morale booster for our men and women in uniform. Officers and other personnel posted along the infiltration and militancy-prone borders have to contend with the harsh terrain and climatic conditions of the mountains, besides the mortal perils of enemy action. These sectors have been responsible for the maximum number of suicides, besides various incidents of fratricidal killings by jawans of their own men, including their officers. While 64 cases of fratricide have been reported over the last six years, the year 2006 alone saw 23 cases. The toll this year has reached six. A staggering 528 personnel have committed suicide since 2003. These tragic incidents, however, are not the sole justification for the hikes, as the demanding conditions warrant the increases. The move will particularly benefit those who are posted at over 14,000 feet, in the Kargil and Drass sectors, with officers getting Rs 5600 pm and personnel below officer rank (PBOR) getting Rs 3,734 pm, against the Rs 400 to Rs 720 pm they were getting before. The earlier allowances were clearly too low. While the Indian soldier has been known to give his best whatever the conditions, better pay and facilities will definitely improve his morale and fighting spirit. Another way in which these high altitude postings are particularly taxing is the prolonged absence from home, often with minimal or no communication, and accompanying family worries. The rationalisation of a British-era travel policy is welcome - an absurd restriction of 1450 kms has now been revoked. Personnel will now also get two free railway warrants a year as against the earlier rule of one. A rational leave and home travel policy, apart from treatment that does not lower the self-esteem of the men, is key to keeping stress levels low. The government should now extend this approach to cover other border areas and, subsequently, all sections of the forces. Pending a major pay revision in the sixth pay commission, such steps will also help in making service in the forces more attractive than it is at present. |
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Squatting netas THEY don’t become MPs or MLAs for life, but once some leaders occupy official bungalows in Delhi or state capitals, they think that these are theirs for ever. Even when the adjective “former” is attached to their designation, they continue to be in occupation of these palatial houses. The government is always willing to go easy on them. Things have come to such a pass that today there are thousands of houses all over the country in illegal possession of these high-profile encroachers and squatters. That has prompted the Supreme Court to take the government to task for “deliberate laxity” in tackling the menace. Worse, the government has not even recovered rent arrears and penal rent from them and the arrears have gone above Rs 50 crore. Had the government been firm, things would not have degenerated to this level. But the enforcement of laws seems flexible when it comes to the high and mighty. Bungalows are allotted to three general secretaries of the Congress in Delhi but are actually used for office purposes by the Youth Congress, the Congress Seva Dal and a party functionary, without any questions being asked. The Supreme Court directive asking the government to hurry up with the affidavit detailing the steps taken to evict the encroachers and recover penal rent from them will, hopefully, curtail such blatant illegalities. When the lawmakers themselves bend the law, a message goes out down the line that it is OK to follow suit. What the MPs and MLAs do is emulated by IAS and IPS officers. States like Bihar go one up. During the RJD regime, as many as 180 official quarters were given to rank outsiders who had nothing to do with the government at all. With the change of government, these worthies have vanished without a trace. The apex court has asked a pertinent question: “Have they gone out of India? Can the state government not find them?” |
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A faithful friend is the medicine of life.
— Apocrypha |
Weak right to information Autonomy
that Jammu and Kashmir enjoys and demand for its enlargement would be justified only if it is used in the interest of the people and not merely to strengthen repressive and arbitrary powers of the rulers. Exclusion of jurisdiction of the National Human Rights Commission, 73rd and 74th amendment to the constitution of India to empower local self governments and the Right to Information Act to the state are just a few examples of how Article 370 of the constitution guaranteeing special status to the state has been used to deny the people their democratic rights. Without compromising its power under the Article, the state could use to enact better laws than the national laws after studying the working of the latter. As the RTI Act is the latest and glaring example of the misuse of Article 370, it is discussed here in the hope that some remedial measures might still be considered. The working group in its report on good governance in J&K presented to the Third Roundtable Conference simply recommended that “there should be senitisation of the Right to Information Act, to bring about transparency in government.” It should have investigated the reasons for its conspicuous failure in the state. In fact, not a single case is reported or is known in which any person got redressal under the RTI Act. The reason for the indifference of the people of the state to its RTI Act and seek information about any case is not merely due to lack of their interest in their problems or that they do not need such information. Lack of a strong voluntary effort to make people conscious of the right to information also does not fully explain why they are not asserting this right. The main reason is limitations inherent in the state act and lack of will of the state government to implement it. The main difference of the state law with the central RTI Act is that unlike the latter, it does not provide for the institution of the Information Commi-ssion. For the rest of the country, Information Commission is appointed at the Centre by the President on the recommendation of a committee consisting of the Prime Minister, leader of the opposition in Lok Sabha and, a union cabinet minister to be nominated by the Prime Minister. The state commissions have similarly been assured of their autonomous character and are appointed by the Governor on the recommendation of a committee consisting of the chief minister, leader of the opposition and a cabinet minister. The commission headed by the chief information commissioner is a vital link between the people and the government. It has the same powers as are vested in a civil court. It can summon and enforce attendance of persons and compel them to give oral or written evidence and to produce the document. The commission, during the inquiry of any complaint under the RTI act, can examine any record which is under the control of the public authority and “no such record may be withheld from it on any grounds.” As the J&K RTI act does not provide appointment of Information Commission, the complainant is not only deprived of any guidance about the procedure of filing a complaint, there is also no compulsion on public authority to supply the information sought. Most of the people, including educated people, are unaware of the procedure for filing a complaint and patience to follow it up. Further the list of subjects on which the state government can withhold information is as long as 15. It includes advice, including legal advice, opinion or recommendation made by any officer of a public authority during the decision-making process, information which would affect the enforcement of any law, information the disclosure of which would affect the government’s ability to manage economy and in general “any record and information which under the Evidence Act is claimed to be privileged.” The incharge of an office can also regret to supply information to an applicant if the information cannot be complied without considerable financial expenditure or without considerable extra work. Further, a public authority can deny information if it would interfere with its functioning. There is no commission which a person seeking information from the government can approach for guidance if his/her request is rejected. Nor any court “shall entertain any suit, application or other proceedings in respect of any order made under this Act and no such order shall be called to question”, the Act states categorically and somewhat ominiously. The corresponding provisions in the central Act are far more liberal. In any case the Central Information Commission and the State Information Commissions have wide powers to force the public authorities to provide the necessary information sought by the applicant. Apart from obvious weaknesses in the state RTI Act which handicap and discourage any person to seek requisite information, an additional factor to the same end may be the general practice of the ministers and legislators to hold durbars to listen to public grievances and offer redressal. But that is no substitute for institutional system for receiving grievances and their redressal, for everybody cannot have access to such durbars. In sum, as far as Right to Information Act of the state is concerned, it is in every sense much worse and regressive than the central act. Finally, people of J&K state are in greater and not less in need of good and less corrupt governance through empowerment and information about administrative working to reduce the level of popular alienation that does exist
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Death of a dream Snow-capped mountains, roads lined with poplars, rivers with willows, and smoke rising from a humble home mingling with clouds. Seeing all this with eyes shut on a sultry afternoon under a creaky fan, woke me up in Delhi. For quite sometime, I had been toying with the idea of returning to my ancestral home in downtown Srinagar in Kashmir.Where tin-roofed houses stood choc-a-bloc, sewage flowed in open drains along rutted roads. Used to in-fashion conveniences, I drew out a plan to rebuild the house. Cash to live, that too well, remained a problem. Being a person with a limited earning skill — imagination — I have very few takers. The dream of extricating myself from the noise, heat and callousness of Delhi and living neck-deep amidst my people began to fill up my sleeping hours. What a relief it would be! I won’t be fumbling for words in national or regional languages. Only those who live out the mother culture know the pleasure of giving the choicest ones in the mother tongue. Away from the valley, I have to bite my tongue as and when sarcasm or abuses fills its tip. One can’t be mad with others. One needs to be amidst one’s own people to suffer the consequences of free speech. The others just haul you over the coals. It was the winter of 1989, when my folks were sweating on my doorstep. More then 10 of them crammed in my dump. With their frail bodies prone, they sputtered their close shaves with death machines. It blew up my dream and its soot blackened my mind. The creaky windows couldn’t withstand the fury of Islamic militants. Walls trembled and my folks huddled in mud-plastered corners as mullahs called out their names; held out threats if they ignored their “Quit Kashmir” diktat. The earth under their feet heaved and cleaved. Fears buried since childhood erupted as winged dragons with fiery eyes and smoky nostrils. They left, some barefoot, in the night leaving behind ululating jackals, bats and owls. My Brahminic knowledge tells me, a sudden death, even of a dream, needs special mantic cremation. I taxed my memory but wasn’t able to recall a ritual which would cremate the dream. One summer morning, I was going through the morning routine, when I read in a column that my ancestral home had been burnt. It added that it wasn’t clear who had started the fire — militants or the Army. Since then I haven’t been seeing the tin-roofed home where my white-collar folks lived. Instead of the home, I see a mound of rubble floating in the salubrious Dal, Wular and Manasbal lakes. Burnt or broken bricks jutting out of it from here and there. Further back grandpa’s almirah laying charred along with hundreds of illuminated and hand-written texts on rituals of life, death and after. The colours of lakes would change from sea green to blue to red. The colours would never mingle. Every time these would vanish only after turning into tar black. The words from the charred texts would swivel around me faster and faster till I would wake up drenched in
sweat. |
How Moscow is planning to tower over the world
MOSCOW — For centuries, Red Square and the Kremlin have been the heart of Moscow. But a 21st-century downtown is rising, with skyscrapers set to reshape the image of Europe’s largest city. The $10-billion “Moskva-City” complex of offices, hotels, apartments, restaurants, shops and entertainment centers will feature about 25 high-rises, including at least seven buildings taller than any others in Europe. Dominating the site will be the 2,008-foot Russia Tower, which will be one of the tallest buildings in the world and is due for completion in 2012. By comparison, New York’s Empire State Building is 1,454 feet tall, including its lightning rod. The rest of the center is scheduled to open in 2009 and 2010. Capital officials have been working on the Moskva-City project since 1990, but few took it seriously until the turn of the century. Fueled by an oil-based boom in Russia’s economy, the 148-acre site now is a place of frenzied construction. “When I started doing this in 1990, Moscow shops had nothing on their counters,” Deputy Mayor Iosif Ordzhonikidze said. “The country lived very poorly. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, hot spots emerged and refugees came to Moscow. In 1991, when I said we will be building this Moskva-City and showed the first drawings, nobody would believe it.” One purpose of the project is to keep the demand for office space from driving other activities out of central Moscow, said Gennady Sirota, head of the city agency that designed the complex situated on the banks of the Moscow River 2 1/2 miles from the Kremlin. “Russia is very rapidly getting integrated into the outside world,” Sirota said. “Naturally the living function of the center of the city began gradually to be replaced by office functions. ... Moscow was faced with the task to create a business center analogous to La Defense in Paris or Canary Wharf in London.” The site, also known as the Moscow International Business Center, is divided into 20 plots where Russian and foreign investors are putting up buildings designed by their own architects but coordinated with Sirota’s office. “The design level of the entire complex is very high level. It’s good. It will be much higher level than La Defense or Canary Wharf,” said Frank Williams, a New York-based architect whose company is working with a Russian company on the 1,246-foot-tall Mercury City Tower. The Russia Tower will taper like a pyramid, and some of the other skyscrapers will have curved exteriors or outer walls leaning at an angle. The 712-foot Wedding Palace Tower, a multifunctional building that will provide the service implied by its name, is designed to twist dramatically as it rises. The Moscow city government will move to the site, which also will boast an aqua park with indoor beach usable even in the bleakest winters. “Until 1998, not a single investor believed it was possible,” Ordzhonikidze said. “Now one space plot in the complex costs a minimum of $300 million. So the idea was materialized. Naturally, everybody who took part in it, including myself, feels really great satisfaction.” The complex, expected to draw 500,000 people a day, will have a large open plaza roughly the size of Red Square at its center. “We tried to create a situation where after 6 p.m., this will not become a dead city like many business centers in the world, where doors get locked, people leave and the buildings stand there dark,” he said. “We wanted our Moskva-City to work nonstop. A big number of shops will be open round-the-clock, and the aqua park will work until late. In summer, the Moscow River will be a transportation route practically the whole night.” Space in the complex is divided roughly 60 percent for offices, 10 percent for hotels, 10 percent for apartments and 20 percent for shops, restaurants, the aqua park and other entertainment facilities or services. Total floor space will be about 44 million square feet – roughly equivalent to 16 Empire State buildings. Direct rail lines will link the center with two of Moscow’s airports, with one line due for completion in 2009 and the other in 2010. An eventual link to the third main airport also is planned. “You will be able to come here, check in your luggage, park your car, get through customs, get on the train and end up on the airplane,” Ordzhonikidze said. An underground tunnel will link the complex to a nearby port on the river. Goods will be unloaded there from barges, railway cars or trucks and loaded onto unpiloted capsules set on rails to be brought through the tunnel, which links to elevators opening in the basements of all the high-rise towers. Floodlights will bathe the towers in colors at night. The high-level design and grand scale of Moskva-City reflects the wealth that Russia enjoys from oil, natural gas and other resources, Williams said. “The energy of cities goes through cycles,” he said. “This is
Moscow’s time.”
By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post |
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‘Asian brown cloud’ and climate change Dirty
brown clouds created by millions of cooking fires in Asia contribute as much to global warming as greenhouse gas emissions and are major factor in the melting of the Himalayan glaciers, scientists have announced. Experts had previously thought the clouds, which hang in a haze over the Indian Ocean, actually acted to deflect sunlight and cooled the atmosphere. The new findings have serious implications and will give weight to the voice of those seeking to lure India and other developing nations to do more to use renewable energy and find alternatives to wood-burning stoves. “All we are saying is that there is one other thing contributing to atmospheric warming and that is the brown cloud,” said Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a senior scientist at the University of California who led the research into the clouds, which was carried out in the spring of 2006. Ramanathan and his colleagues dispatched unmanned measuring devices at different altitudes into the pollution, technically known as Atmospheric Brown Clouds, over the Indian Ocean in March 2006, above the Maldives. They were able to measure aerosol concentrations, soot levels as well as solar radiation and concluded that the pollution added to the heating of the atmosphere by around 50 percent. They suggested that around half of recent global temperature increases could be the result of the pollution. Mr Ramanathan, whose team’s findings are contained in the current edition of Nature, said: “The conventional thinking is that brown clouds have masked as much as 50 percent of the global warming by greenhouse gases through the so-called global dimming. While this is true globally this study reveals that over southern and eastern Asia, the soot particles in the brown clouds are intensifying the atmospheric warming trend caused by greenhouse gases by as much as 50 percent.” In Asia there is widespread concern about the plight of Himalayan glaciers, many of which are in rapid retreat. Scientists fear that if they melt entirely – some are already retreating at a rate of 15 metres a year – many rivers fed by the glaciers will disappear for months at a time. In those cases the rivers would only run when there was sufficient seasonal rain from the monsoon to feed them. Billions of people in Asia rely on water from rivers such as the Yangtze, the Ganges and the Indus. Mr Ramanathan is currently working on a project in the foothills of the Himalayas to find alternatives to wood-burning stoves for more than 1,000 families. “If the pollution increases, the glacier retreat will be much worse than projected,” he and his colleagues wrote. “It now depends on what energy path that Indian, China and Asia will take. The rapid melting of these glaciers, the third-largest ice mass on the planet, if it becomes widespread and continues for several more decades, will have unprecedented downstream effects on southern and eastern Asia.” Professor Syed Iqbal Hasnain, a glacier expert at the Centre For Policy Research in Delhi told the Associated Press that the brown clouds could be a factor in the melting of the glaciers. But he said more research was needed to understand the entire background to what was happening. Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme that helped fund the project, said: “It is likely that in curbing greenhouse gases we can tackle the twin challenges of climate change and brown clouds and, in doing so, reap wider benefits, from reduced air pollution to improved agriculture yields.” By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Inside Pakistan The Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the North-West Frontier Province are today drawing greater attention of the world than ever before because of the ongoing extremist activities there. There is increasing uneasiness in Islamabad with an unconfirmed US plan for unilaterally destroying the terrorist bases in FATA. In the meantime, Benazir Bhutto’s PPP has approached the judiciary, pleading for the extension of the Political Parties’ Act, 1962, to FATA with a view to bringing it into Pakistan’s political mainstream. The area bordering Afghanistan is governed by tribal customs and traditions with “maliks” (tribal elders) dominating the scene. However, according to an editorial in Dawn (August 1), “.the rise of the Taliban and the inroads made by the foreign militants there have tended to erode the maliks’ position. The Afghan war, the rise of jihadi organisations, and the money and arms they received from America, Saudi Arabia and Egypt with Islamabad’s full approval completely upset FATA’s social equilibrium. The factories which were set up there since independence were closed down, increasing joblessness in an area which has very few economic opportunities. “Today, the scene is grim. Waziristan especially has turned into a safe haven for Al-Qaeda, and there they are training suicide bombers and sending them outside FATA, even as far as Islamabad, to kill security men and innocent civilians to destabilise a government whose policies they do not approve of.” The tribal areas, “known as ‘ilaqa ghair’, cover an area of around 27,000 square miles, mostly along the border with Afghanistan. There is free movement in and out of the region, and no one can be sure about the frequent ‘injections’ of foreigners into the seven ‘agencies’ that FATA comprises”, points out Daily Times. Is money driving the deal? Whether President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto have finally struck a deal to protect each other’s political interests continues to remain a subject of speculation. But this is definitely one of the most discussed subjects in the newspaper columns today. Daily Times, quoting Hong Kong-based Asia Times, carried a report in its August 1 issue saying that “an agreement has been reached” between General Musharraf and Bhutto “whereby he as civilian President will deal with national security and foreign affairs, while she as Prime Minister will act as the chief executive, apparently exercising the remainder of the powers”. According to the report, “the new army chief is likely to be the present Inter-Services Intelligence chief, Lt-Gen Ashfaq Pervaiz Kiyani”. But former ISI chief Gen Hamid Gul refuses to believe such a possibility, saying that “once Musharraf steps down as military chief, no chief of army staff will listen to him”. But more interesting than all this is the theory that Bhutto is desperate to finalise the deal because of the huge financial gains involved. A report in The News of August 3 says: “Does Benazir Bhutto really own more than $1.5 billion frozen wealth that is considered even by some of her senior party-men as the sole reason for her frustration to strike a deal with General Musharraf at the earliest?” “She just wants her money back and is not really interested in the party or its future,” The News said, quoting a disgruntled PPP leader, who did not want his identity to be disclosed. Madarsas and politics “Like the growth in real estate and services, Pakistan is witnessing a massive boom in the madarsa sector; according to researchers, during the last eight years, there has been over 150 per cent increase in the number of madarsas in and around Islamabad alone, a trend following the rise of the real estate value in the capital.” This is what M. Ismail Khan says in an article carried in The News on July 31. Poverty has often been given as the reason for the boom in the madarsa sector. But in the opinion of Khan, “there is more to it than the so-called poverty” factor. Among the other reasons he points out is “the failure of the formal education system, social safety nets, and simply madarsas outperforming the formal education sector through better packages – i.e. free education, food, boarding and almost free educational material.” The phenomenal growth of the madarsa sector explains why the General has enter into a deal with Ms Benazir Bhutto, the most popular non-religious leader in Pakistan, to take his fight against terrorism and extremism to its logical end. According to Business Recorder (July 30), “Pervez Musharraf, who now appears to have driven himself to a corner as much for his own doings as for the unforeseen international developments, has rightly concluded that if he has to choose a new partner for the rest of his political journey, nothing fits into that definition as perfectly as the Benazir Bhutto-headed PPP.” |
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