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General under
siege Attack on Taslima Surviving on Rs 20 a day |
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India as a maritime power
Happily ever after
India at Sixty Inside Pakistan
For Hashmi, a ‘new Pakistan’
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General under siege PAKISTAN President General Pervez Musharraf backed away from his move to impose emergency under pressure from the US, whose Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice spoke to him in the small hours of Thursday. This exposes the president’s inability to take decisions and execute them. He is undoubtedly at his weakest since he seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999. His presidency is passing through one of its most critical periods. At the root of the General’s problem is his desire to retain power while giving Pakistan a façade of democracy. While he wants to continue as president and army chief, he is not sure whether the supreme court will allow him to retain the uniform. He is equally unclear whether the existing national assembly can elect him or he will have to wait for the new house after the elections in which case, there is an uncertainty about even his continuance. While Musharraf has sewed up an understanding with Pakistan People’s Party leader Benazir Bhutto, the details are still to be worked out. The return of another exiled leader Nawaz Sharif can create thorns for his presidency, given the fact that there is no love lost between the two. The Islamic parties, which once supported him, have, of late, been drifting away from him, particularly after the army assault on Lal Masjid in Islamabad. Suicide attacks, mainly against the army, have become so frequent that it is difficult to keep count of the lives lost. Militant threats in tribal areas are too real to be wished away. And on top of all this, the US has not been happy with his contribution to its “war on terror”. Suggestions that the US should militarily intervene if there is “actionable intelligence” about Al-Qaida modules in Pakistan as made by US presidential candidate Barack Obama could not have but rattled Musharraf. Reports suggest that the US has been pressurising him to have Dawood Ibrahim, wanted also by India for plotting the Mumbai blasts in 1993, arrested and brought to justice. All this constitutes the collective threat to his presidency, which he thought he could ward off for sometime by imposing emergency. Condoleezza Rice’s early morning phone call warning him against overstepping the boundaries seems to have deprived him of even this option. All said, it is a bleak future that awaits General Pervez
Musharraf. |
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Attack on
Taslima THURSDAY’s
attack on Bangladeshi writer Taslima Nasreen at a book release function in
Hyderabad needs to be condemned in the strongest possible terms. Surprisingly,
three MLAs of the Majlis-e-Itehadul Musalmeen (MIM) were among the 40-odd
activists who threw books, bags, bouquets, chairs and whatever they could lay
their hands on at her. Luckily, she escaped unhurt because of the protective ring thrown around her by the organisers. But questions arise on the state government’s failure to provide security to her. Where was the police? The police appeared on the scene only after the hoodlums had finished their job. Since Taslima had to flee her country following death threats and is currently living in India, the police should have given her security. Worse, the MLAs and their activists, who were arrested, have been released on bail. Apparently, the police officials wanted to play safe because the MIM is an ally of the Congress government in the state. The ends of justice will be met only if action is taken against all those involved in the episode. Disturbingly, some of the MIM leaders have threatened to kill Taslima if she dare visit Hyderabad again! In a democratic, pluralist and enlightened society, violence has no place and is totally unacceptable. How will countries grow and flourish if people are prevented from voicing their opinions freely and independently? One may differ or disagree with another’s views, but no one has the right to suppress one’s voice of dissent by force or through violence. The attack on Taslima once again raises the question of increasing intolerance among fundamentalists to bold and independent views. In her novel Lajja (shame), the 45-year-old writer targeted religious extremism and had earned the ire of radical Islamic groups in Bangladesh in 1994. Since then, she has been forced to live in exile in Sweden, Germany, the United States and France. Since 2005, she is based in Kolkata. The Indian Government has now extended her residential permit for another six months, beginning August 17. Since all religions — not just Islam — oppress women, she says that she has the right to fight for women’s empowerment. What is wrong with her just and reasonable fight? |
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Surviving on Rs 20 a day Despite
60 years of claims of progress since Independence, there are 457 million workers in the country and of them 394.9 million work in the unorganised sector, getting Rs 20 or less a day. Many of them may be above the poverty line — earning more than Rs 12 a day— but it is not hard to imagine the kind of life they lead with that meager amount. For the first time an authoritative survey of employment has been done by the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector. The work force, largely engaged in agriculture, comprises SCs, STs, OBCs and Muslims. Agriculture has been described as “a fertile ground for poverty” and 84 per cent of small and marginal farmers spend more than what they earn and are thus caught in a debt trap. It is true there has been reduction in poverty after the reforms were launched in 1991, but income inequalities have also grown. That is because the upper and middle classes have gained more from India’s industrial resurgence than the poor. The 8-9 per cent GDP growth does not make sense to the downtrodden. The inflation at 4.45 per cent provides little comfort to them if they have to buy wheat and dal at exorbitant rates. Reports that China and the US have greater income inequalities than India are no source of solace. After the rural poor voted out the BJP in the last general election for harping on “India Shining”, the UPA government has taken initiatives like the rural job guarantee scheme and Bharat Nirman to raise rural incomes and alleviate poverty. The government proposes to introduce in the monsoon session a Bill to provide life and disability insurance cover, health benefits and old age pension to workers in the unorganised sector. That it has taken so long for the government to wake up to the need for providing social security to a vast majority of the workers reflects on governmental priorities. |
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Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for awhile and leave footprints on our hearts. And we are never, ever the same.
— Anonymous |
India as a maritime power Without
much fuss or fanfare, but showing both determination and consistency, India has moved swiftly in the last few years to establish its position as a major player in the Indian Ocean region. The new proactive strategy first took root with the increasing spectrum and quality of the Malabar series of naval exercises between elements of the Indian and US navies. Starting with basic activities such as search and rescue, replenishment at sea and the like, Malabar has now reached a level where both sides deploy their frontline ships, including aircraft carriers and submarines, and strive towards higher degrees of interoperability. It is not being suggested that these are on a par with the way in which the US and NATO navies operate and that is not possible given the equipment disparities in the two sides, or even desirable given the different motivations which guide the two relationships. However, the fact that the quantum and quality of the interface is being continuously upgraded shows that there is synergy of interests, both politically and in the maritime domain. From a bilateral nature, which marked the first few of these exercises, the engagement moved informally to trilateral as ships of third countries “embedded” with the US forces in the Arabian Sea joined in. Thus, ships of the British Navy were the first to come followed by those of the French. The exercises were carried out in the Arabian Sea on the west coast of India. In February this year, another watershed was crossed when, for the first time, a formal trilateral Malabar was scheduled with ships of the Indian, US and Japanese navies as participants. Even more significant, these exercises took place in the Pacific Ocean, far away from the Indian waters. During that same deployment, Indian ships separately exercised with ships of the Russian and Chinese navies. This is not all; in September, Malabar is taking a much larger multilateral dimension with ships of the Japanese, Singapore and Australian navies also joining in. These exercises are to be carried out in the Bay of Bengal on India’s eastern seaboard. Things have surely come a long way since 1995 when India hesitated to exercise with any country, much less with two or more. This forward movement has not taken place without good reason. First, any military must frequently exercise with another to understand its own strengths and weaknesses and, indeed, those of the other. Confidence in one’s own professionalism grows if one performs well and the reverse is equally true. Malabar exercises have helped the Indian Navy grow not only by watching how a much larger navy, that of the US, operates but also created a healthy respect for its own capabilities among American navy professionals. The fact that both sides regularly deploy their submarines in these exercises reflects the growing degree of mutual confidence. At another level, the trust generated by such exposures among personnel becomes a key factor in promoting cooperation at sea. Why is such cooperation needed? The threats that prevail today or are likely to be faced in future are not just much from nation-states but increasingly from non-state actors. Proliferation of WMDs, transportation of narcotics and of arms purchased from their sale for terrorism, safety of sea-borne commerce from acts of piracy, hijacking of ships for criminal use and maritime terrorism fall in this category. These crimes are transnational. It is not well known that the great majority of merchant vessels are owned in one country, registered in another whose flag they fly, and crewed by people from several others. A vessel might be hijacked in one place, its cargoes belonging to exporters in many countries sold in another, and taken for criminal activities far away in a third location. These crimes cannot be countered unless there is sharing of information and intelligence. There is need for close coordination among several agencies operating in the maritime domain, within a country and between them and their counterparts in other countries. Stringent and, more or less, compatible laws and adherence to well-defined international agreements is also essential. These are more difficult to ensure than might be imagined. Without mutual trust and confidence in one another, this is a non-starter. This is where cooperation comes in. As the principal executing agencies operating in the maritime domain, navies must play the lead role in promoting cooperation. This is where India comes in. Situated as it is in the middle of the North Indian Ocean and astride the important east-west shipping routes across which is transported more than 75 per cent of the oil and gas coming out of the Gulf, and with rapidly increasing maritime interests of its own, it must play a leading role in promoting cooperation both with external stakeholders and regional forces. India now has cooperation agreements with several littorals — Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Mozambique. It has similar interfaces with the US, the UK, Russia, South Africa, France and Australia, and those with Japan cannot be too distant. Indian naval forces have carried out joint patrols in the Malacca Straits with those of the US Navy and coordinated patrols with Indonesian and Thai counterparts have also been instituted. We have provided offshore security to Mozambique at its request and carried out patrols in the exclusive economic zone of Mauritius. So, the exchanges are substantial and what is more, they are increasing. Such interfaces at sea are not feasible without political synergies between the interests of the cooperating nations. These maritime engagements flow from shared strategic and security concerns already highlighted earlier. The other participants recognise that India is an important country in the Indian Ocean region without which ensuring the safety of shipping routes and other concerns would be very difficult. For India, the relationship, apart from meeting the same specific needs, serves to establish its legitimacy as the predominant maritime power in the region. From every point of view, it is a win-win
situation. The writer is a former Commander-in-Chief of the Eastern Naval Command.
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Happily ever after
Newspapers
report a galloping increase in Indian divorce rates. Are Indian marriages headed for euthanasia? An actor is reported as saying that he beheld his sleeping wife and realised what the pattern of his life would be: “..waking up next to the same woman each morning”. Expectedly, he walked out on her shortly thereafter. My father, and mother who recently marked 46 years together, would perhaps have reacted differently. To my father, his sleeping wife’s form may have evoked initial concern for her well-being, followed by irritation for her tardiness. And conversely, I am certain that when my father lies supine and snoring, my mother does not ever stop to ponder if that is the blueprint for her life. She arrived in her husband’s home in a Doli and will leave there only on an “Arthi” (bier). I often see melancholy but never despondency in her eyes. She still believes that she can and will reform my Father. But aren’t they the Generation-Past? Gen-Now raised on Chat and action @ speed of thought possess short attention spans and faster rates of ennui. My older teenager started his innings in the girlfriend stakes two years ago, assuring me solemnly that he was a one-woman man. A year later, he had worked his way through several successive girlfriends. The girls aren’t crying their hearts out for him, either. They are moving on, with different boyfriends. Maybe just teenagers growing up or maybe the shape of things to come ? Men, with some honorable exceptions, are chauvinistic. Marriages in India survived because women lacked choice and were raised with a strong socialisation in being the good daughter, wife and mother. Augmenting this was the stigma attached to divorce. Gen-Now women have lower flashpoints and the time-honored traditions of sacrificial dogsbody are fading. Girls today are reared with far more equitable choices than the social-stereotyping of yore. Education has empowered them with financial independence and endowed them with choice. It’s when the realisation dawns on a woman that she doesn’t need a man to bring to fruition her aspirations, or tolerate shabby treatment, that perhaps the countdown to the end of a marriage begins. Divorced and single women are also increasingly finding surrogate families in friends and colleagues, ie the new “Urban Tribes”. Modern-day stories are thus not reading, “…and they lived happily ever after”. The message for marriages to survive is perhaps for men to evolve, because women are evolving and exercising their choices. But if, like my mother, 46 years on, the presence of a silver-haired man fighting a losing battle with his waistline, still fills you with a warm sense of well-being, then do start coordinating the buntings, crockery and napkins for your golden or diamond anniversaries. After all love, tolerance and marriage deserve to be saluted and what better tribute than an anniversary
celebration. |
India at Sixty The
Indian political leadership over the last 60 years should be given credit for steering the country’s foreign policy in the best national interests of the country. They foresaw in time the onset of the Cold War and kept India out of the two confronting power blocs. As the Cold War came to an end and it was realised that economic liberalisation and joining the globalisation process will put India on a high growth trajectory. India switched to a policy of engagement with all major powers in a balance- of-power world. India realised that it was in a position to play the role of one of the six balancers of power in the international system. This switch-over started with Narasimha Rao and was pursued more vigorously by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, especially after the “Shakti” tests. Manmohan Singh has continued the Vajpayee policy of putting India in an appropriate place in the emerging international balance of power. Manmohan Singh clearly spelt out his world view in the Combined Commanders’ Conference of October 20, 2005. He said: “The end of the Cold War, increasing global interdependence and the global nature of many threats have made strategic concepts developed in a bipolar world irrelevant. The United States has emerged as the dominant economic, military, technological and cultural power. However, the European Union, Russia, China, Japan and India will consolidate their individual position and will be required to play a global role. We must evolve a new paradigm of security cooperation relevant to an emerging multipolar world in which global threats will require global response”. He further added: “It is clear that each of the major powers will seek normal and mutually beneficial relations with the United States. They will also seek to improve bilateral relations with each other, independent of their relations, with the US. Our strategic policy must orient itself to this new complexity. We must shed our Cold War shibholeths, rework our relationships with all major powers and emerging economies and improve our relations with all our economic partners and neighbours.” It is in pursuance of this world view that India has sought strategic partnership with the US, European Union and Russia. India is embarked upon a strategic dialogue with Japan and China . As India’s relationship with the US improved, the South East Asian countries which distanced themselves from India because of their support to the US during the Vietnam war, mended their relationship with India in response to the “look east” initiative launched by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao. India is also cultivating the emerging economies of Brazil and South Africa. There is widespread recognition over the world that the economic centre of gravity of the world is shifting from the Atlantic area to Asia. China and India are fast growing economies and in the next few decades they are likely to become third and fourth largest markets in the world. That Asia will have Japan, China, India, South Korea, Russia and Indonesia as major economies. There is concern among Western nations that unless India is helped to balance China, Asia may lack the much-needed balance. The present international situation is therefore conductive to fast growth of India. The faster India grows and its stake in the international market becomes weightier, more the interest of other great powers to have partnerships with India. In the fifties and sixties India was importing food, was in need of economic aid and was militarily weak. There were concerns about Indian unity and integrity. Therefore India did not command respect from the countries of the industrial world, from China and even its own neighbours. All this has changed with the 8 per cent growth rate, India’s IT prowess, our space and nuclear achievements and performance of Indian companies and Indian diaspora. While in a balance of power world India would like to develop mutually beneficial relations with all major powers and emerging economies, it is inescapable that India’s relationship with some countries are likely to be closer than with others depending on the circumstances and growth of economic and human interactions. Of all major powers, the United States has moved closer to India in the last two decades and the prospects of Indo-US friendship growing are becoming brighter. There are already two-and-half million people of Indian origin in the US and the number is growing. Top industrialists like Bill Gates are pleading with US legislature to remove all caps on Indian talent immigration into the US. The US has the largest Indian student population. Manmohan Singh, addressing the joint session of the US Congress on July 19, 2005 said: “The 21st century will be driven by knowledge-based production and India is well placed in this area. We have a large and relatively young population with a social tradition that values higher education. Our educated young people are also English speaking. That makes us potentially an attractive location for production of high end services whether in software, engineering design or research in pharmaceuticals and other area… The presence of a large number of Indian Americans in high technology industries here makes the US and India natural partners. It gives you confidence about India’s human resource capability. It also gives you an edge over your competitors in the ease with which you can operate The US wants to sustain its preeminence as the world’s leading power. The US understands that the 21st century is a century with knowledge as the currency of power. The US concerns are about China with its larger population, catching up with the US by out producing engineers, scientists and doctors. The US is interested in importing brain power and in outsourcing its scientific tasks to a partner with whom it is not likely to have any clash of national interests. Of the five major nations in today’s balance of power, European Union, Russia, Japan and China are likely to have ageing populations. India will have both younger age population as well as English speaking one. It is for these reasons the US is making attempts to make India a close strategic partner. India’s strategic partner-relationships with European Union, Japan and Russia will depend upon the growth of commerce and technological interaction between those countries and India. However, the relationship between India and Russia in defence will continue. India is the second largest market for Russian arms (the first being China) and facing mostly Chinese and Pakistani threats. Russian arms, likely to be cheaper than American ones will be adequate to meet the threats. Russia may also become the largest supplier of It is difficult to predict the relationship with China . It can perhaps be said with reasonable certainty that the probability of a military conflict with China is virtually nil. Of late, China has taken steps to push up its trade and economic interaction with this country. However, it has to be borne in mind what Manmohan Singh said to the Combined Comman-ders’ Conference on October 20, 2005: “We cannot also ignore the strategic cooperation that Pakistan has secured from China in many ways. We cannot rule out the desire of some countries to keep us engaged in low-intensity conflict with some of our neighbours as a means
of getting India bogged down in
low level equilibrium.” So long as China continues to arm Pakistan with missiles and nuclear technology it can never become a truly strategic partner for India. More the strategic cooperation between China and Pakistan, more the compulsion on India to seek closer military cooperation (not as an ally but in terms of defence procurement) from US, Russia and European Union. It is China’s continued proliferation to Pakistan and to other countries via Dr A Q Khan that raises worldwide concern about Chinese ambitions about Asian dominance. In international politics there is no nation which could be termed benign and altruistic in nature. All nations attempt to maximise their national interests. The US is the preeminent power and wants to continue to maintain its position. China is a rising power which is likely to overtake US in terms of gross domestic product in terms of purchase parity prices. China also hopes to overtake US in terms of knowledge power and become first, dominant power in Asia and then in the world. These developments are likely to take place through peaceful competition and not through war. The US seeks India’s strategic partnership to tap India’s knowledge potential. China wants to tie down India at a low equilibrium using Pakistan as a proxy even while maintaining apparently normal relations with India. Japan and European Union are interested in keeping the present status quo of having the US as the preeminent power. Russia has very legitimate grievances against the US for its efforts to deny Russia its due role in the post Cold War international system. While Russia has improved its relations with China in the balance of power game vis-à-vis US and has become a major arms supplier and energy exporter to China, Russia also has concerns about China’s emerging dominance in Central Asia and Chinese demographic pressures on Siberia. Therefore, while Russia resents US policy of cutting Russia down to its size, it has no interest in allowing China to overtake the US as the number one power of the world. |
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Inside Pakistan President
General Pervez Musharraf held a special meeting late in the evening on Tuesday which “decided to impose an emergency”, but he did not proclaim it, fearing a severe public reaction, Daily Times reported quoting Geo TV. But was it a unanimous decision? According to Geo TV, surprisingly, among those who participated in the meeting were also leaders who opposed an emergency proclamation. They were Muttahida Qaumi Movement leaders, Balochistan Chief Minister Jam Muhammad Yousaf, PML Secretary-General Syed Mushahid Hussain and the chief of an intelligence agency. But, going by newspaper reports, there is a general belief that General Musharraf abandoned his emergency plan after receiving two calls from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice – one on Wednesday evening and the other on Thursday morning. Even otherwise, as Daily Times commented, “An emergency will not work whereas the holding of free and fair elections will resolve the dangerous political divide in the country. High-handedness of the State during an emergency will alienate the people further and produce more anarchy than we see today.” In the opinion of Dawn, “The implications of such a move are profound and could shape the future of politics for a long time to come. In some ways, the emergency could prove dangerous for the State and strengthen those very forces and political elements the government is afraid of. ” Under the circumstances, the emergency idea could have amounted to the General further endangering his own political survival. As The Nation said, the “Emergency would not only have met with resistance but also proved to be a recipe for disaster. The courts, keen to assert their independence, could have either struck down the action or declared void the suspension of fundamental rights as it happened when the state of emergency was imposed in the wake of the nuclear tests. This could have provided lawyers and sections of civil society a cause celebre to initiate protests. The entire opposition had rejected emergency, and two mainstream parties vowed to challenge it in courts and resist it in the streets.”
The increasing threat to peace and stability from the Al-Qaida and Taliban elements in the tribal areas on both sides of the Durand Line have led to the convening of a Pakistan-Afghanistan jirga in Kabul. Reports, however, suggest that the tribal peace initiative, which began on Thursday, is unlikely to bring about the desired results because of its having been boycotted by many tribal elders, including some from North and South Waziristan. Their refusal to associate themselves with the grand jirga is based on their perception that it is a US-sponsored show. Even otherwise, most jirga watchers believe that it will be nothing “more than a public relations exercise” as former Foreign Secretary Najmuddin A. Shaikh said in an article in Dawn (Aug 8). S. Mudassir Ali Shah (The Nation, Aug 9) agrees with this view when he says that “on both sides of the divide, pessimism about the outcome of the so-called peace offensive runs deep. As in Afghanistan, rightwing politicians and independent-minded tribal elders in Pakistan don’t take kindly to the move mainly for what they call a lack of consensus.” “The efficacy of jirgas stemmed from the fact that their participants had genuine following in their respective areas”, as The Nation commented in an editorial on August 9. This is a major weakness in the case of most of the participants in the Kabul jirga.
For Hashmi, a ‘new Pakistan’ There is new-found confidence, particularly among the opposition politicians, after the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. Their confidence has got reinforced with the release of Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) leader Javed Hashmi, who was sentenced for 19 years in 2003 because of being a vocal critic of the Musharraf regime. As The News (Aug 7) said, Hashmi was imprisoned after he addressed a press conference in the cafeteria of Parliament House “where he was accused of having circulated a letter that he claimed was written by an army officer. As a result of this, he was tried by a court whose proceedings were held inside the jail (Kot Lakhpat, Lahore), and found guilty of an assortment of charges, including inciting the general public against the army.” According to Business Recorder (Aug 9), after reoccupying his seat in the National Assembly “Makhdoom Javed Hashmi philosophised that it is a ‘new Pakistan’ that he has come back to. The change that he noticed is what we all see and that is the prevalence of judicial activism and emergence of civil society as the fifth pillar of the polity.” His release is the latest setback for the military-backed government. |
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