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Bloodletting in Assam Spare the rod |
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Chakki bridge, R.I.P Government neglect mainly to blame THE collapse of the 118-year old Chakki bridge in the heavy rains that pummelled the Punjab-Himachal Pradesh border did not surprise anyone. The old British-built bridge was in a poor state due to sheer age, and it is unclear if the Rs 20 crore earmarked for restoration and repair work by the government was put to good use in extending its life.
Politics is heating up
Brief “encounters”
A voice against violence
in the home Speed-boating together
for Franco-American friendship
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Bloodletting in Assam COMPOUNDING the Centre’s failure in reining in the dreaded United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), a second wave of attacks by a Karbi tribal outfit has left more Hindi-speaking families dead. Working in tandem or separately, the ULFA and Karbi militant outfits have repeatedly targeted people from other parts of India, mostly Hindi-speaking settlers and migrants, in a blatant attempt at ethnic-cleansing. Even as the state government and the Centre’s internal security apparatus struggle to meet the challenge and make the usual conciliatory noises about peace talks, armed goons roam free to loot, extort and kill. The execution-style killings, where people are lined up against their own homes, or taken to mountainsides and river banks, and then gunned down with automatic rifles, show clear intent and ruthlessness. Clearly, there are gaps in the training, equipment, and crucially, proper management of the security forces deployed in the region. While the Army has its role to play, the paramilitary forces and, indeed, the state police, have to get their act together if they have to stop further loss of life, and effectively and forcefully deter the militant groups. Terrorist strikes in the run-up to the Independence Day are an annual feature in the Northeast. The ULFA, as well as other terror groups like the KLNLF, are known to up the ante either before talks or before days of national importance. They apparently believe that they thus not only make a statement, but also gain bargaining power. Statements emanating from both the Centre and the state repeatedly stress the involvement of the Pakistani intelligence outfit, ISI. On the one hand, there is no point in merely raising the bogey of foreign forces if the policing on the ground is deficient. And if such involvement is indeed the case, a concerted effort must be made to identify and locate the cells and their operatives and root them out. Whatever be the case, it is time the Centre and the state acted in concert to end the killing spree in Assam. Human life is too precious to be left to the mercy of the killers
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Spare the rod THE conventional wisdom in India has been “spare the rod and spoil the child”. In practice, regular recourse to corporal punishment has had exactly the opposite effect. The fear of the caning has not only kept many away from the school, but has also left an unhealthy mark on many a student’s psyche for all times to come. Then there are also some sadist teachers who take this fetish for discipline so far that their wards end up in hospital. Why, only recently two school students — one from Udaipur (Rajasthan) and one from Farrukhabad district (UP) — even lost their lives after being beaten up by their teachers. This has made the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) to step in and issue a directive banning any form of corporal punishment. That will be a great relief for many students undergoing the ordeal. But as it normally happens in such cases, the definition of corporal punishment is being expanded so far that it may become counter-productive. Under the new directives, a teacher can be accused of meting out corporal punishment if he asks a student to write sentences repeatedly or condemns his mistake in class. The exhortation of the NCPCR to the parents to fearlessly file FIRs against schools if children complain of abuse can open the floodgates of fictitious complaints and even blackmailing of teachers. Some children are so pampered that they can dub even a routine scolding as an insult or humiliation. What must not be lost sight of is the fact that maintaining discipline in school is also the responsibility of the teachers. If they are made absolutely defenceless against non-serious students, the standard of education will only go down. The ultimate sufferers will be the students themselves. The irony is that if the results are not good, it is the teachers who get the rap. Teachers have indeed no right to beat or humiliate students; but at the same time, it is necessary that there are enough powers in their hands to rein in rowdy elements. |
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Chakki bridge, R.I.P THE collapse of the 118-year old Chakki bridge in the heavy rains that pummelled the Punjab-Himachal Pradesh border did not surprise anyone. The old British-built bridge was in a poor state due to sheer age, and it is unclear if the Rs 20 crore earmarked for restoration and repair work by the government was put to good use in extending its life. Considering that the bridge is a key link to the Kangra valley, it is unforgivable that the authorities did not take into account its poor state of repair well in advance and take remedial action. Environmental factors could not be discounted, and illegal quarrying activities might have well played a role. Union minister T.R. Baalu had laid the foundation stone for a new, alternative bridge in February this year. Such exercises being what they are, it is small wonder that the ceremonial gesture was launched into even before the tendering formalities were completed. It will thus be a while before a new bridge is laid, and the loss of access will sorely inconvenience valley residents, tourists, and the Indian Army, which has a cantonment at Yol in Kangra district. The Pathankot-Mandi road, on which the Chakki bridge lies, is also an alternative access to Ladakh. The people of the area have now started using the railway bridge to walk across, endangering not only themselves but the train passengers as well. Bridges do collapse, and Himachal Pradesh has witnessed a few such before, some of them causing tragic loss of life. While the British bridge stood over a hundred years, it is doubtful if any of the new ones being built will last even half that long. While the Central Road Research Institute and the various IITs have carried out research and development projects of various kinds concerning bridges, an adequate mechanism should exist to translate assessments and techniques into action on the ground. State governments should also be pushed into being more proactive. |
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Cooking is the most ancient of the arts, for Adam was born hungry. — Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
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Politics is heating up IT is said of the American presidential election that campaigning for his successor or his re-election begins almost the day he is sworn in. The US election season is getting longer, much to the delight of all those who stand to gain from the mechanics of campaigning, including, of course, the television channels. It would now appear that Indian politicians and parties are taking a leaf out of the American book to launch their campaigns for the general election due in 2009. There can be no other explanation for the rising political temperature and the vehemence with which parties supporting or opposing the coalition government at the Centre are making their points. First, it was the presidential election and the somewhat controversial Congress compromise choice. The only reason the Bharatiya Janata Party indulged in vigorous flag waving and mounting a political offensive involving the President and the Chief Election Commissioner was to rally the troops although it lost its Maharashtra ally Shiv Sena by the wayside. A second casualty of the presidential election was the newly minted Third Front in the shape of the United National Progressive Alliance, which ultimately decided to abstain, only to find the redoubtable Ms Jayalalithaa break ranks and vote for the BJP candidate, obviously with an eye on the general election, with the other Dravidian party having joined the Congress camp. Admittedly, the UNPA put up a vice-presidential candidate, as did the BJP, the latter to collect the supporters it has lost and make a tactical point. And now the campaign pot is boiling over, with the evocative issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal. However in sync the deal is with a process initiated by the BJP-led government at the Centre (recall the marathon Jaswant Singh-Strobe Talbott talks in different corners of the world), it suits the BJP to oppose it because it is building up its election-eve image of a strong nationalist party hard on terrorists and zealous in guarding the country's national interests as opposed to an allegedly soft Congress-led government. Waving the national flag does no harm. The UNPA has nothing to lose by opposing the nuclear deal because it is seeking the "progressive" image, never mind the Telugu Desam's attachment to the BJP during its six years of power at the Centre. The new incarnation of the Third Front is also burnishing its pro-Muslim credentials because the nuclear deal is more unpopular with Muslims than with other Indians in view of the perceived anti-Muslim nature of American policies, particularly in West Asia. The Left parties oppose the nuclear deal for broader reasons, as do many other Indians, for the perceived pro-American tilt it implies and the fear that the real US objective is to fold India into its unipolar geopolitical scheme of things. But the vehemence with which the Left, in particular the CPM, rejected the text of the deal was something of a surprise not unrelated to the looming general election. Similarly, the boldness of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's assertion to Kolkata's Telegraph newspaper in daring the Left to bring down the government was meant to prove that the Congress government was not in the pocket of the Marxists. In other words, the Congress has a will and policy of its own. The truth is that, given the arithmetic of numbers in the ruling and opposition combinations at the Centre in the fray or the permutations and combinations that go to make coalitions in the states, we are in a particularly fluid state in Indian politics. Judging by the record of the UNPA, the hankering of a Third Front is likely to end up as the earlier attempts. Regional parties are inevitably narrow in their ken, and in their opposition to both the Congress and the BJP, the UNPA has veered round to a vague Left-leaning pro-Muslim secularism that sells in their constituencies but comes a cropper on reconciling the colliding egos of leaders, each a chieftain in his own fiefdom. The Left is both attracted to and repulsed by the Third Front concept. On the one hand, a non-Congress non-BJP front is what the doctor ordered. On the other, the elastic and narrow loyalties of the Third Front constituents can hardly make a credible Left conglomerate. In fact, policy themes are couched in the widest terms while parties pursue their region- and caste-specific agenda. The only regional party that shows promise of piercing state borders is Ms Mayawati's Bahujan Samaj Party. She is building a broad base of Dalits with Brahmins and hopefully Muslims to emerge as a national party. This is, of course, the old Congress formula. Ms Mayawati's remarkable victory in the Uttar Pradesh elections was a revelation and she has since proved a shrewd and hard negotiator bargaining with the Congress at the Centre for the concessions she makes, most recently by supporting the Congress-sponsored presidential candidate. Alarm bells in the Congress party and the BJP are already ringing on the BSP's attempt at raiding their support base in such states as Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. To her credit, Ms Mayawati has made no secret of her desire to be prime minister — in itself, a stunning success for the Indian democratic process that has, despite its many faults, lifted the lower ranks of caste-ridden society to aspire for the most powerful job in the country. Both the BJP and the Congress find themselves in a bind — for different reasons. The BJP is undergoing a painful process of a generational change in its leadership, which has had two consequences. There is an intense jockeying for position among the second rank leadership, with the party president, Mr Rajnath Singh, having failed to measure up. Second, there is no active leader tall enough to tell the most powerful member of the Sangh Parivar, the RSS, to stop micromanaging the affairs of the party. The Congress-led government has been functioning with a two-headed leadership and although the unusual Manmohan Singh-Sonia Gandhi arrangement has worked more smoothly than could have been imagined, the strain is beginning to show. Such an arrangement cannot but take away something from the authority of the Prime Minister's office. And the Congress has failed to revive its army of devoted volunteers and party faithful who were the backbone of the party's traditional vote gatherers, until they were starved at the roots by Indira Gandhi's impatient ways of dealing with power. The prospect then is of sharper political rhetoric as the two main national formations sort out their problems and the regional parties and the Left decide on their new formulations. The nuclear deal is only a foretaste of things to come.
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Brief “encounters”
WE stopped on the way down from Gulmarg. The others went to buy cherries and I was alone in the car. He appeared at my window. His eyes twinkled with an irrepressible mischief that contrasted sharply with the angelic beauty of his face. He glanced quickly from left to right and then spoke in a stage whisper before he handed me a fistful of cherries. I did not need to know the language to understand that I had been drawn into a conspiracy by receiving stolen goods. I ate the cherries while he again glanced quickly first to the left and then to the right. ““What is your name?” “Atiq” he said. “Do you know what it means?” He hesitated. Then decided against telling a lie. “No. Do you?” “It means someone precious.” His cheeks dimpled, he was pleased. “And what is your name?” “Harish” “Do you know what it means?” “Beloved of the Gods.” He pondered over this for a moment then nodded his head in approval. The others returned. I retrieved two packets of biscuits from the glove compartment and gave them to him. “Goodbye Atiq,” I said “Goodbye Harish,” and he raised his hand to his forehead in mock salute, a spin-off from the overbearing presence of the paramilitary forces, in the valley. Then he turned and ran away — to steal more cherries, perhaps. He was about a year and half old. He stood on a parapet on the other side of the railing, bawling his head off. I sat down opposite him and bringing my face close, I struck my tongue out at him. The bawling stopped. There was a look of utter shock, replaced quickly by a crinkled smile and then the sound of gurgling laughter. One podgy little hand shot through the railing and grasped my nose. I waited at the turnstile outside the Baba Rishi shrine. A group of children hung onto the turnstile, with one foot pushing against the ground to make it rotate and give them a ride. I reached out and pushed the turnstile to move it faster and they laughed with delight at their new found speed. Other children now came up and I had to play judge and ensure that they all got a fair turn. But they all wanted more than one turn. I huffed and I puffed but my joy in their joy would not let me stop. “You must have many grandchildren”. I turned to look into a set of soft brown eyes. An extremely handsome Kashmiri matron of indeterminate age stood there, smiling at me: mother or grandmother of one of the children. “Yes,” I said. “How many?” “Fifteen hundred.” For a second there was a look of shocked disbelief and then the laughter welled up into those beautiful eyes. “You are the head of a large school?” “Yes.” I said permitting myself a smile and turned again to push the
turnstile.
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A voice against violence
in the home Little did Neelu Trivedi (then Sharma) know that one day, from teaching public administration to students at Government College, Sector 46, Chandigarh, she would go on to teaching women in the US the ways and means of coping with domestic violence. She spent the better part of her life in Chandigarh as a student and then a lecturer, before settling in the US 12 years ago.
As the daughter of an Air Force officer whose job took him to many countries, it was her schooling in Russia that laid the foundation of her activism. As she says, “Exposure to different cultures and ways of life can surely hone one’s people skills.” Neelu became an impassioned debator, someone who did not believe in mincing words but in putting across her viewpoint forcefully. At present, Neelu is a research associate with Prof Stephen Morewitz, Healthcare Administration Department, California State University. An eminent behavioural and public health scientist, he is considered an authority in this field in the US. Professor Morewitz has to his credit a vast body of work in the field of domestic violence. Neelu’s project is titled “The impact of intimate partner violence amongst the Asian immigrant population”. Neelu is also an HR manager with United Airlines and is in charge of their Employee Assistance Programme. In fact, her work in the UA complements her role as social worker. As soon as she landed in the US, she acquired a domestic violence certification and in addition did a course in counselling. Neelu is also the founding member of an NGO, Women Defending Ourselves (WDO), and is involved with the Women’s Safety Project in the Bay area. On the panel of the 24-hour crisis helpline, Neelu feels thankful whenever she can render assistance to those women who know little or no English. She describes how a woman from Jalandhar was ill-treated by her husband and in-laws. She was forced to live like a servant with her husband who was already married to a white woman. The woman approached the organisation when the physical torture became unbearable but wanted to go back to India – her familiar environment. She knew no English and was terribly traumatised. The fact that I could communicate in Punjabi put her at ease. Gradually, her confidence returned but she insisted on returning to Jalandhar. “I had to convince her that problems would begin when she returned. Now she is in the US and updating her skills and working. She is a different person now. The same happened to a 23-year-old from Rawalpindi in Pakistan who had been married off to a 50-plus father of two grown up kids. From an affluent family, her parents had paid a huge sum to marry her off. She too wanted to flee back to Pakistan but was persuaded to give independence a shot. Fortunately, she is studying and on the way to becoming independent.” Neelu’s involvement in this began when as an immigrant living in Denver in 1999 she befriended her neighbour, Mitzi Guido. “Very often she had bruises, once even a black eye. Each time she would make an excuse about how she had hurt herself. “After discussing it with my husband, we decided to intervene and called the police” says Neelu of her first ‘case’. Today Mitzy is remarried and she and Neelu are still good friends. According to Neelu, there are different stages in domestic violence. An impediment towards seeking a recourse to the problem is the “self-denial stage”. The victim goes into denial as she refuses to confront the reality of her situation. Since it is all about power and control so name-calling and blaming follow. Then comes the stage where the victim is alienated and all lines of support are cut off. As a member of the world coalition against domestic violence, she has to counsel and help women from every part of the world settled in the Bay area. According to Neelu, it is a fallacy to believe that only South Asian women tolerate abuse. The incidence of white women doing so is equally high. Neelu gives tips to women to empower themselves. She says women must recognise abuse for what it is instead of denying it consistently and believing they have done something to bring it upon themselves. This tendency to blame themselves rather than defending themselves delays the preparation for a safety plan. Even the most educated girls continue to tolerate enormous amounts of abuse and neither keep their documents in order nor have access to finances. Neelu sounds a warning bell to those who allow their dollar dreams to make them oblivious to the many dangers that a life abroad entails. She insists: “They must equip themselves to face it”.
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Speed-boating together
for Franco-American friendship
Much of the media commentary in France dwelled, however, on the failure of President Sarkozy’s wife, Cecilia, to turn up at the Bush family compound in Kennebunkport for what was, in theory, an informal lunch invitation from one First Lady to another. Mme Sarkozy apologised to Laura Bush on the telephone and said that she was suffering from a sore throat. The Elysee Palace was, however, obliged yesterday to quash rumours that Mme Sarkozy had returned home early from the luxury ranch in New Hampshire where she has been holidaying with Sarkozy and two of her children. The lunch, or picnic, at Kennebunkport was the first encounter between the two presidents since Sarkozy was elected in May. After a lunch of hot-dogs and hamburgers, the president’s father, the former president, George Bush Senior, took the wheel of the family speed-boat. The meeting marked the restoration of friendly, personal relations between American and French heads of state, interrupted by the former president, Jacques Chirac’s strenuous opposition to the invasion of Iraq in 2003. Although the two presidents rebuilt a working relationship, the American president famously let it be known that Chirac would “not be coming to the ranch anytime soon”. Before his election in the spring, Sarkozy said that he disapproved of the “arrogant” manner in which President Chirac, had resisted the US policy in Iraq. The handshakes and back-slapping in Kennenbunkport in Saturday do not signal any weakening of French opposition to US policy in Iraq. They were nevertheless important to Sarkozy as another sign that the Chirac era is over. “France and the United States have been allies and friends for almost 250 years,” President Sarkozy said. “When you see, on the French Atlantic coast, all those cemeteries with white crosses (you are reminded) of the young Americans who came to die for us.” “In a family, you can have disagreements but you are still in the same family,” Sarkozy went on. France was in the “same family” as the “great American democracy”. Before the French president arrived, the American president told waiting journalists – in an apparent dig at Chirac – that he liked Sarkozy’s “straight-talking”. “He says what he thinks,” he said President Bush said that the US and France had “had their disagreements, on Iraq especially” but had always found “ways of working together”. Even before Chirac stepped down, France and the US have been working closely together on a range of issues from Afghanistan to Lebanon. The Kennebunkport meeting was closely watched in France, however, for signs that Sarkozy would be less independent-minded in his relations with Washington than his predecessor. The former Socialist minister for Europe, Pierre Moscovici, said yesterday that it was entirely correct for Sarkozy to establish good relations with Mr Bush. “However, this is a president who has committed an enormous number of errors and it would be a serious mistake to strike up an open friendship with such a man...Nicolas Sarkozy should be talking to him with great firmness.” In an opinion poll yesterday, only one in three French people – 33 per cent – said that they would like to see much closer diplomatic relations with the US. The same poll, in the Journal du Dimanche, showed President Sarkozy’s approval rating to be still stratospherically high at 64 per cent. By arrangement with The Independent
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Delhi Durbar The newly launched Air India flight between Mumbai and New York on a brand new Boeing 777 200-LR aircraft is still to see optimum capacity levels. Although, Air India is widely advertising the facilities it is offering on the non-stop flight, especially in the First Class, it has not been able to attract optimum capacity levels even for the Economy Class. Interestingly, Air India, after elaborate calculations, had initially fixed a price tag of Rs 4.5 lakh for a First Class seat, only eight of which are available. However, this did not go down well with Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel. He wisely intervened and forced Air India to bring down the price to Rs 3.5 lakh. Any takers? Sorry, but... This slip of the tongue actually takes the cake. After he arrived at 8 pm instead of 6.30 pm for the Jashne-Bahar mushaira at the Siri Fort auditorium recently, chief guest Panchayati Raj minister Mani Shankar Aiyar told the audience, which had been waiting patiently for the programme to begin for the past one-and-a-half hours, that he would like to tender an apology on their behalf to the organiser of the programme Kamna Prasad. Actually the slip of the tongue sounds much better the way it was actually spoken. The minister said “main aap sabki taraf se Kamanaji se maafi mangta hoon,” leaving the poor and perlexed audience wondering as to what indiscretion they had committed. Memorial site The Centre’s decision to allot a bungalow in Lutyen’s Delhi for a memorial of BSP founder Kanshi Ram has spawned other such demands from other political parties. The UNPA, which saw the move as a step by the Congress-led government to appease BSP leader Mayawati, who had supported the UPA during the Presidential elections, later demanded that such memorials be built for some other national leaders. TDP leader Chandrababu Naidu, who was the most vocal among the UNPA leaders in raising the issue, said the Congress-led government had failed to have a cremation site in the capital for former Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao. Demanding a memorial for him, Naidu said the government should not be discriminatory. Five star appeal Though dinners hosted at five-star hotels by UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi, ahead of the Presidential and Vice-Presidential elections, were not for Congress MPs alone, these struck a discordant note among those who admire her for the code of ethics she has propounded for the Congress leaders. Sonia Gandhi has on several occasions laid stress on simplicity and austerity in public life. While the dinner ahead of the Presidential polls was hosted at a state run hotel, the venue for the dinner ahead of the Vice-Presidential polls was seemingly more corporate. Contributed by Girja Shankar Kaura, Vibha Sharma and Prashant Sood
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