 |
|
Mission
accomplished Tame the
Khaps |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Steady
and stable
Saint or
hypocrite?
Infantry:
three-in-one
Social
churning aggravates atrocities against dalits in Haryana Tread
carefully on 9/11 debris Delhi Durbar
|
Mission accomplished WITH the successful flight of the GSLV-F04, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has exorcised the ghost of the failed launch of the GSLV-F02 on July 10 last year. After two “developmental flights” and the launching of EDUSAT in its first operational flight, the F02’s failure broke a record string of successful launches. That flight was carrying INSAT 4-C. The destruction of the launch vehicle, after a failure in one of the early stage boosters put the rocket irretrievably off course, also meant that INSAT 4-C went up in flames, putting paid to the Direct to Home (DTH) aspirations of several companies and their customers. The GSLV failure drew even more attention, coming as it did on the heels of the failure of the first Agni III launch. Agni III has since redeemed itself, and the GSLV programme, too, can now claim to be fully back on track. In any case, the Failure Analysis Committee (FAC) was clear that there was no flaw in the design of the GSLV and tighter control was required over the fabrication, inspection and acceptance of manufactured parts. The regulator that failed on that flight had functioned satisfactorily in 50 similar rocket engines made and tested earlier, but a manufacturing error on this piece had not been detected. The GSLV programme cannot afford such costly oversights and ISRO has done well to learn from the mistake. While the PSLV has set up a superb track record, and is now even doing commercial flights, the GSLV is crucial in its ability to launch heavy satellites into geo-synchronous orbit. If GSLV, too, can be commercialised, with the more powerful GSLV Mk III waiting in the wings, there is a lot to be gained. As for the booming DTH television market, it is providing viewers with tremendous choice in channels and incomparable picture quality. DTH uses transponders on satellites to beam their programmes, and the additional capacity on the new INSAT will allow existing players to expand their services and enable new players who have been waiting for a while now. Expect more fare on your small screen. |
|
Tame the Khaps THE caste panchayats have done so much of the unthinkable that every time they punish someone without any jurisdiction, it seems they cannot plunge any deeper. But they always break their own record and do even worse. They have hounded and excommunicated those who had the “temerity” to go in for an inter-caste marriage. They have ordered a husband and his wife to live like siblings because they belonged to the same “gotra” and they have also forced men who married in the same village to separate from their wives. And, now, a khap panchayat of Balmikis in a Karnal village has even deprived one couple, who had allegedly married within the “gotra”, of its eight-day-old infant. Nothing could be more traumatic for a parent, but they issued this “fatwa” as a matter of routine. The baby has been restored to the parents after a media hue and cry, but that does not mitigate the gravity of their crime. Now that they have crossed all limits of acceptable behaviour, the government has no option but to come down on them with a heavy hand. Only exemplary punishment can make them fall in line. In fact, this should have been done long ago. But since even those who are in a responsible position have a soft corner for such kangaroo courts, nothing much is done. A minister had no business to justify their action. Such worthies have no right to be in the ministry. Haryana Chief Minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda will be spoiling his own name by allowing such a renegade to continue to be there. Such fatwas are not only a crime against humanity, but are also patently illegal. The Punjab and Haryana High Court has come down heavily on such instant justice. That is one more reason for the government to intervene forcefully. No person or organisation can be allowed to have overriding powers over the law of the land.
|
|
Steady and stable THE Central Statistical Organisation’s announcement on Friday that the economy had grown at 9.3 per cent in the first quarter of the current financial year could not have come at a better time. Clouds of gloom hovering over the Indian horizon after the US sub-prime crisis rattled the global financial markets have started dispersing. To spread the cheer further came the report that inflation had slipped below the 4-per cent level for the first time in 15 months. What is more, the Left-government standoff over the nuclear deal, which had depressed the market sentiment following speculation about mid-term elections, too, has been brought under control. Another reason for celebrating the 9.3 per cent GDP growth, compared to last year’s 9.6 per cent, is that the country passed through a tough financial phase during this period. As the interest rates went up following RBI interventions to rein in prices, the economy witnessed a slowdown in the real estate and automobile sectors. The hardening of the rupee against the dollar dented the profitability of IT companies. Yet, the growth, fuelled by manufacturing and services, has been robust. A surprise turnaround is in agriculture, which grew at 3.8 per cent as against last year’s 2.8 per cent. And a normal monsoon this year augurs well for agriculture. While the recent upswing in the stock markets reflects the brighter side of the picture, experts, however, differ on the future prospects of the Indian economy. The RBI, cautious as ever, sticks to its 8.5 per cent forecast for 2007-08 and has even warned of sub-prime fallout on India. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram and the IMF believe it will be 9 per cent in the current fiscal. India’s growth is investment-driven. If there is an export slowdown due to the rupee appreciation or any global factor, it could well be compensated by a rise in local industrial activity because of high domestic demand.
|
|
Slums may well be breeding-grounds of crime, but middle-class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium. — Cyril Connolly
|
Saint or hypocrite?
FROM where do you get so much energy?”, I was constrained to ask a frail-looking Mother Teresa after watching her eat a frugal lunch at her centre in Bhopal she had come to open nearly three decades ago. Pat came her reply, “From my prayers”, reminding me of the Biblical verse, “Man does not live by bread alone”. Nothing surprising, for prayer is the Christian’s vital breath, his native air. For at least two generations of people, the most memorable picture of Mother Teresa, born in what is now Macedonia, that comes to mind is the one with her head bowed deep in prayers and her slender hands clutching at the rosary. Her life-size statue in such a posture is placed in the prayer room at the headquarters of the Missionaries of Charity in Kolkata so that members of the order can feel her physical and spiritual presence as they do their routine prayers. For millions of people who saw her as the embodiment of all that is great in Christianity, it was a shock to read the revelatory contents of a yet-to-be-released book with a pious but misleading title Mother Teresa: Come Be My Light. Ever since Time magazine featured it in a cover story last month, every Christian theologian has been busy trying to understand, if not explain, the spiritual travails the nun experienced. About the time I met Mother Teresa, she wrote in a letter to a spiritual confidant, the Rev. Michael van der Peet, "Jesus has a very special love for you. [But] as for me, the silence and the emptiness is so great, that I look and do not see, — Listen and do not hear - the tongue moves [in prayer] but does not speak ... I want you to pray for me - that I let Him have (a) free hand." This sharply contrasts with what she said three months later while accepting the Nobel Prize for Peace at Oslo in 1979. "It is not enough for us to say, ‘I love God, but I do not love my neighbour,'" she said, since in dying on the cross, God had "(made) himself the hungry one — the naked one — the homeless one." Jesus' hunger, she said, is what "you and I must find" and alleviate. She suggested that the upcoming Christmas holiday should remind the world "that radiating joy is real" because Christ is everywhere - "Christ in our hearts, Christ in the poor we meet, Christ in the smile we give and in the smile that we receive." Which one of these statements represented the real state of Mother Teresa’s mind? If it was the former, it is easy to conclude that she was no better than a religious hypocrite, who could not be truthful when it came to the crunch. If, on the other hand, her assertion at Oslo, which was in conformity with what she had been doing ever since she found the dying Jesus in a dying destitute in Kolkata, picked him up, attended to his physical and spiritual needs and dedicated her life to serving the poor and the destitute, was truthful, how could she have ever felt such a spiritual vacuum? For all the universal acclaim she received in her lifetime and after as one of the most popular icons of the 20th century, she had her detractors like Christopher Hitchens who wrote The Missionary Position, which seeks to demolish her work from an atheistic point of view. But this book cannot be dismissed as a polemical work as it consists primarily of correspondence between Mother Teresa and her confessors and superiors over a long period of 66 years. The compiler and editor of the book is the Rev. Brian Kolodiejchuk, a senior Missionaries of Charity member. He is her postulator, responsible for petitioning for her sainthood and collecting the supporting materials. The letters in the book were gathered as part of that lengthy process. Though Mother Teresa wanted the letters to be destroyed, the church rightly decided against it, given the importance of what she felt and wrote. The letters make it clear that for nearly half a century, she did not feel Christ either “in her heart or in the Eucharist." The revelations are bound to initiate a debate on whether Mother Teresa led a vacuous Christian life. Theologians have a ready explanation for what she experienced. There are “dark periods” in every believer’s life when prayers do not seem to answer, when the very existence of God is in doubt, when everything seems dark and there is no light at the end of the tunnel. Every saint from St. Augustine, who is to Christianity what Aadi Shankara is to Hinduism, to 18th century mystic, St. Paul of the Cross, to almost every Christian has at one time or the other experienced fallow periods in their lives when religious uncertainties stared them in the face. Why, for a moment, even Christ had doubts about God’s command when he beseeched Him from the cross, “Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?' that is to say, 'My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me”. But 50 years is too long a period for a nun, on the way to becoming a Saint, i.e., when the canonisation process now underway is completed, to experience “darkness within faith”. Many may see it as a clash between reason and faith. But are they really contradictory? Man, with all his God-given reasoning powers, cannot find God out, but faith accepts Him as a living, bright reality. Faith trusts God where reason cannot trace him. Reason argues from things seen that there must be an unseen realm. Faith enters that unseen world and endures as seeing Him who is invisible. After all, “the Christian walks by faith, not by sight”. It would be fallacious to suggest, let alone argue, that Mother Teresa, who spent a lifetime in prayers, did not see prayer in a proper light. For Christians, prayer is second only to faith. Church history is replete with instances when saints of God stormed heaven with their prayers and became mighty enough to pull down what seemed like impenetrable fortresses. Her own ministry among the poor and ‘the unwanted’ is a living testimony to the power of prayer. Of course, it is not always that prayers are answered. Mother Teresa’s spiritual desperation found its reflection in these letters, but that does not mean she led a vacuous life. Far from that, she practised what she believed was service to God, which compelled her at one point to declare that she was not a social worker but a worker in the vineyard of Christ. In that immortal classic, The Pilgrim’s Progress, Mr Bradman’s wife was deeply concerned over the lost estate of her husband, but John Bunyan makes her say, “Are my prayers lost? Are they forgotten? Are they thrown over the bar? No! They are hanged upon the horns of the Golden Altar and I must have the benefit of them myself, that moment that I shall enter the gate at which the righteous nation that keepeth truth shall enter. My prayers are not lost. My tears are yet in God’s bottle”. Despite all the self-doubts she had, Mother Teresa never wavered in her dedication to the cause of serving the poor, for she knew that for a Christian “these surface troubles come and go,/Like ruffles of the sea;/ The deeper depth is out of reach,/ To all, my God, but Thee.”
|
Infantry: three-in-one Stories
of repeated assaults during Kargil operations till the capture of those inhospitable peaks and the valour of our brave jawans and junior leaders often bring back memories of our experiences in similar terrain. For eight of us from 4 Jat, a day in Feb 1966 remains fresh in our memory. None of us hoped to survive the snowstorm at 15000 ft on a ridge west of Se La. We were on a mission of reconnaissance requiring us to traverse one of the most rugged terrains in the harshest winter month. On day three, we were on top of a ridge when the weather gods began to frown. A severe blizzard started with temperatures dropping to minus 40° C. The intensity was such that we had to cling to each other and virtually crawl. The only hope of surviving in such conditions is to keep moving till one finds a suitable place to camp. As light began to fade so did our hopes of survival. But just then, as by a miracle, we sighted a ‘grazier hut.’ We made it just in time. The intensity of the wind was such that the snow kept coming inside like bullets through the crevices of the stone walls. We spent an anxious night clearing the snow in and around the hut. The blizzard stopped early in the morning leaving six feet of fresh snow that makes movement extremely difficult. Two wooden planks were extracted from the roof of the hut and utilised to compress a narrow path to facilitate leap- frogging. We managed to inch our way back to a safe location. The next night we were back in the HQ waiting to tell our heroic tale of survival. We were, however, shocked when a very gruff and angry General Officer Commanding told us that we had failed in our mission and were a blot to the fair name of our Regiment. He told us to complete the task within a week — which we did with the blessing of the weather gods. For some of us, it is not difficult to imagine what it takes to assault high-altitude peaks and that too at night. Even in good weather, the elements remain the most formidable opponent. The fortified enemy is just another force multiplier. It takes exceptional motivation, mental and physical toughness to carry out such tasks. A famous military historian had stated years earlier, “ infantry tactics are an art, whereas the operation of the other arms is predominantly a technique. The more intelligent and educated the man, the more quickly he can acquire proficiency in technique. To produce a skilled infantry man, tria uncta in uno (three in one) – stalker, athlete and marksman — is more
difficult.”
|
Social churning aggravates atrocities against dalits in Haryana There
has been an alarming increase in the incidents of atrocities on the Scheduled Castes in Haryana. These have to be ascribed to the breakdown of the Jajmani system, implementation of the 73rd Amendment to the Indian Constitution (1993), affluence in a section of the Scheduled Castes and the identity crisis in a segment of the land-owning castes due to
its pauperisation. The Jajmani system, in which there existed the traditional inter-dependence between the land-owning families from the peasant castes and the landless agricultural labourers’ families from the Scheduled Castes, broke down after the advent of the Green Revolution in the 1970s. This happened, in the first instance, on account of the increased mechanisation of agriculture and the consequent decrease in the demand for farm labour. Secondly, it was the availability of cheaper migrant labourers which enabled the land-owning families to jettison their traditional farm labourers from the Scheduled Castes. This in a way liberated the Scheduled Castes from the bondage of the land-owning castes. Hence they began to exercise their vote in the parliamentary and assembly elections in an independent manner instead of remaining the captive vote-banks of the land owners. This has led to the emergence of a conflict between them, which has, at times, assumed the form of atrocities on the Scheduled Castes. The problem has been further aggravated by the implementation of the 73rd Amendment. As a result, the membership and chairpersonship of the gram panchayats, panchayat samitis and the zilla parishads was reserved for the Scheduled Castes in accordance with their one-fourth share in the population of the state. The traditional leaders of the rural society from the land-owning castes, who had been having hegemony over the rural power structure, find it difficult to come to terms with this changed situation. They view it as a threat to their authority and has started resorting to, at some places, atrocities on the Scheduled Castes for re-asserting their supremacy. Another factor that has contributed to the rise of this phenomenon is the creation of new affluence in that section of the Scheduled Castes which was able to take advantage of the reservations in government jobs due to its relatively superior position
among these castes. Besides, some of the enterprising Scheduled Castes persons were able to acquire affluence by switching over to the non-traditional vocations. This neo-affluent section of the Scheduled Castes began to emulate the lifestyle of the land-owning castes. A segment of the land-owning castes having the feudal mindset found the adoption of their lifestyle by the castes, perceived by them as the low castes, intolerable. This, in turn, culminated in the instances of atrocities on the Scheduled Castes such as were committed at Gohana. Last but not the least, this retrograde phenomenon may be ascribed to the identity crisis from which a large section of the peasantry has begun to suffer due to the fragmentation of land-holdings, owing to which most of the land-owners from the peasant castes have become such marginal farmers as find agriculture non-profitable. They are pursuing it because they have neither the skill nor capital for switching over to non-agricultural vocations. The large-scale indebtedness has further added to their woes. And, they have also begun to apprehend that they will have to sooner or later sell their land. They also fear that it may be acquired by the state government in the times to come. As a result, they will ultimately become landless. This will not only mean loss of land but also loss of their status as the Zamindars (land owners) which will mean joining the ranks of landless from the backward castes and the Scheduled Castes and losing their caste identity of which they are very proud. Since their position has become worse than that of the Scheduled Castes, some of them resort to atrocities on the Scheduled Castes for resolving the problem of identity crisis. This leads us to the question: What can be done to check the malady? This requires a change in the mindset of the rural society in general and of the peasant castes in particular. They need to be liberated from the neo-feudal culture through the inculcation liberal and democratic values. This task will have to be performed by the civil society – the media, the academia, and the NGOs. The administration in general and the police in particular will also have to be sensitised for acting in a pro-active manner for preventing these atrocities. It is encouraging to know that the Haryana Police Academy, Madhuban, is making all-out efforts in
this direction. The panchayati raj institutions will also have to perform their role of promoting social justice for this purpose instead of remaining confined to the agenda of construction of streets and drains. The problem of marginal farmers will also have to be resolved by devising suitable strategies for making agriculture profitable for them. Their skills will also have to be developed so that they could supplement their income through other activities. Be that as it may, the problem requires urgent policy interventions. Otherwise, it will sow the seeds of extremism in the state.
|
|
Tread carefully on 9/11 debris
On
the morning of September 11, 2001, for most people around the world (and outside of New York) eyes and minds were quickly saturated with the actual, endlessly replayed images of the World Trade Center destruction in lower Manhattan. Nobody needed to be told that this was not a movie. And at the same time few could feel its impact beyond images. Except for those jumping off the towers because they could no longer bear the heat of the burning jet fuel, those who answered the cell phone calls from passengers on the hijacked jet-lines whispering their last goodbyes and those rescue workers who rushed to help victims only to be buried under
the rubble… So when a filmmaker decides to revisit 9/11, what he or she must keep in mind is that 9/11 is not simply about its aftermath (the murky, angry swirl of American politics and the Iraq War) but about the 2,974 men and women who suddenly and tragically died that fateful morning. In Bollywood, Naseeruddin Shah, an otherwise well-respected actor, sat on the director’s seat and decided to tackle 9/11. Shah’s directorial debut, Yun Hota To Kya Hota, unfortunately, leaves a bad taste for those who bore witness to 9/11 and those for whom 9/11 is much more real than a television image. The film revolves around six lives which inadvertently intersect and end on the planes and ground zero. While Shah attempts to convert 9/11 into an Indian immigrant experience, what he succeeds in doing is turning 9/11 into a comic-tragedy about dodging the American visa process, unrequited love and, of all things, in-law troubles. There have been a handful of directors who have portrayed 9/11 on screen and to do it with Shah’s clumsiness is unforgivable. Ironically, it is another Indian director, Mira Nair, who cinematically dealt with 9/11 in a profoundly moving way. Nair was one of the 12 ensemble directors (the others were well-known names such as Ken Loach, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, Sean Penn, Claude Lelouch and others) who made a brilliant montage of films, 11’09’’01 (released in 2002). Each short-film was a brief story lasting about ten minutes. Nair’s contribution to that montage, simply titled, “India”, is exquisite film-making. The film, shot in three scenes, is about a mother searching for her missing son amid the twisted metal and burning debris of the towers. Nair’s bold brushstroke reveals a mother’s toughness without overstating it, and a complicated personality underneath the panic and grief. Like her son, she is a Muslim and an immigrant from India but, instead of focusing on her marginalisation, Nair focuses on the solidarity and concern – the love – that was part of the tragedy. Nair, who lives a few blocks from the World Trade Center and watched the destruction from her home, is astonishingly faithful in her re-creation of the emotional reality of the day producing a curious kind of nostalgia. It’s not that anyone would wish to live through such agony again, but rather that the extraordinary upsurge of fellow feeling that the attacks produced seemed precious. Nair’s film took a public tragedy and turned it into a personal allegory, something at once genuinely stirring and
terribly sad. A cautionary note to Shah: So much died that day that it hasn’t all been buried. So, tread carefully. |
|
Delhi Durbar Known
for his quick wit and repartee, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee generally remains unfazed even when faced with the most embarrassing query. But even he had to do a doubletake when confronted with a real googly from a delegation of visiting German parliamentarians who called on him recently. Chatterjee spoke at length about the great Indian democratic system, how Indians participate in it in large numbers and the wisdom of the Indian electorate who changed governments at the Centre six out of 14 times the country went to polls. He was, however totally unprepared when a member of the delegation asked him: “When are the people of your state going to change the government?” The veteran parliamentarian was taken aback momentarily but came up with a quick answer: “I believe not in the lifetime of any of us sitting here.”
Delightfully vague Days after the UPA and the Left parties ceased hostilities over the contentious Indo-US civil nuclear agreement, there is still no clear answer as to the winners and losers of this prolonged battle. The statement issued by the ruling combine on the composition of the special committee to study the deal ends on such a delightfully vague note that it has resulted in a raging debate on its correct interpretation. But it is external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee, the UPA’s main troubleshooter in this crisis, who is having the last laugh, for he is the man responsible for drafting the open-ended one-liner which has resulted in all this confusion. When it was brought to his notice that the word “operationalisation’, which almost brought the UPA government down, does not exist in the dictionary, Mukherjee feigned ignorance. He went on to study various dictionaries with a magnifying glass after which he declared, “The word is in the statement precisely because it has no meaning.”
Chak de, Dasmunsi Parliamentary affairs minister Priyaranjan Dasmunsi clearly has two passions in life – politics and football – and not necessarily in that order. The minister was a much relieved man when normalcy was restored in Parliament last week as he could take time off from his parliamentary duties to devote some time to football. Dasmunsi, who is also the Indian head of the Federation of International Football Association (FIFA), was a nervous wreck before the final game of the Nehru Cup tournament but could barely contain his excitement when the Indian team defeated Syria to lift the cup. He virtually danced into a dinner party soon after the match and kept hugging everybody around, exclaiming loudly, “We have won, we have won”. Needless to say, the celebrations continued the next day when endless boxes of mithai were served to visitors in his office. As for Dasmunsi, he has not stopped talking about the game since then. Contributed by Rajeev Sharma, Anita Katyal and Prashant Sood
|
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
