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Justice at last Merkel makes a mark |
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Be civil, banks
Opportunity in N-deal
Those enduring sounds
US military aid to Pak not fruitful Argentina’s first couple makes history Defence Notes
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Justice at last MANY brutalities were perpetrated during the post-Godhra riots in Gujarat. But few matched the inhumanity and barbarity of the one that took place in Eral village in Panchamahals district on March 3, 2002. Seven members of the family of Mustapha Ismail were murdered, including two minor girls, despite having paid “protection money”. Women were raped, killed and their bodies set on fire, as Ismail’s wife Madina Biwi looked on dazed from behind the maize plants where she had been hiding on that fateful day. Some of the perpetrators of that crime have finally been served their just desserts with eight persons sentenced to life imprisonment by a Godhra court. Among them is a former panchayat president who belongs to the BJP. While five have been convicted for murder, three will spend their lives behind bars for rape and murder. Another three have been sentenced to three years’ rigorous imprisonment. Many such beasts dare to do the unthinkable only because of the belief that they can get away with it. Certainty of punishment will, hopefully, keep them on a leash. One shudders to think what society will be like if even those who commit such heinous crimes manage to hoodwink the law either through their own influence or through the machinations of the government of the day. Unfortunately, that has happened repeatedly in Mr Narendra Modi’s Gujarat. To that extent, the conviction in the Eral case is quite significant. The culprits could be punished only because Madina Biwi stood firm in the face of all threats and allurements. She was the prime eyewitness like Zahira Sheikh in the Best Bakery case. She was reportedly offered Rs 30 lakh to turn hostile but she spurned the offer with the contempt that it deserved. If only there were more Madina Biwis, there will be fewer rapists and killers. It is a pity that even in this case, 29 others have been acquitted for lack of sufficient evidence against them. Clearly, they would not have gone scot-free if the prosecution had been more methodical and result-oriented in its work.
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Merkel makes a mark MOST of the agreements signed between India and Germany during the New Delhi visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel are related to promoting cooperation in science and technology. The significance of the pacts is obvious, as Germany is known for its achievements in these fields. The two countries are now going to give a big push to public-private partnership in scientific and industrial research. They have agreed to set up jointly an advanced science and technology centre for the purpose. With a view to generating enough interest in pure sciences among India’s youth, an interactive train exhibition, “Science Express”, designed in collaboration with Germany, was flagged off on Tuesday for moving around the country for seven months. Germany is keen on helping India in generating nuclear energy on a large scale. That is why Chancellor Merkel appreciated the efforts to operationalise the India-US nuclear deal. In her opinion, it is not only an “honourable deal” but also “good for the world and good for the cause of non-proliferation”. The comment has its own significance as it comes from the leader of a country going to be the next head of the Nuclear Suppliers Group. New Delhi, as she indicated, must fulfil the requirements to make the deal a reality as only then can India and Germany do “a lot together in the peaceful uses of nuclear power”. The bilateral trade between India and Germany has doubled in just three years. If German entrepreneurs have found India an attractive investment destination, Indian investors, too, are showing a marked preference for Germany. At present the fourth largest trading partner with India after the US, the UK and Japan, Germany is expected to occupy the second position soon. India must do all it can to facilitate the inflow of investments from Germany.
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Be civil, banks TAKING note of the increasing complaints of abusive practices adopted by bank loan recovery agents, the RBI has called for a review of the “policy, practice and procedure” involved in engaging such agents. While unfolding the credit policy review on Tuesday, the apex bank even threatened to impose a “temporary or permanent ban” if the practice of hiring musclemen, usually by private banks, persisted. There have been cases of borrowers committing or threatening to commit suicide following humiliation at the hands of recovery agents. The police and courts, too, are now acting against the high-handedness of bank agents. It is the duty of a borrower to repay a loan, and in case of a default, it is the right of the bank to act tough to recover it. But in a civil society a due process sanctioned by the law has to be followed. In case of a genuine problem, a bank ought to be compassionate towards the loanee. The problem, however, arises in case of wilful defaulters, who tend to take advantage of the dilatory legal system. If bank loans are not paid back, it is the responsible borrowers who bear the brunt as bank services become more expensive. Public sector banks are notorious for accumulating huge non-performing assets, as bad loans are called. Litigation tends to prolong and costs them dearly. Bankruptcy laws are to the advantage of the defaulters. A growing economy cannot function without an efficient banking system and the need is to plug the legal and systemic loopholes. HDFC Bank Chairman Deepak Parekh has suggested that recovery agents should be licensed and their behaviour monitored to weed out irresponsible elements. In the US there are strictly regulated recovery agencies which get back a bank’s money for a fee. In the UK the recovery agents are required to follow a code of conduct. Banks, too, have to be careful while advancing loans and should not break their own rules in their greed for profiteering.
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Misery acquaints a man with strange bedfellows. — William Shakespeare
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Opportunity in N-deal
AS the debate rages in India on the Indo-US nuclear deal, one got a rather interesting perspective of how the outside world views contemporary nuclear issues, nuclear disarmament and the nuclear deal, at the annual conference of the Nobel Prize-wining Pugwash organisation in Italy last week. The conference was attended by eminent scientists and experts from over 40 countries and focused attention on nuclear and other issues affecting peace and security. The focus was mainly on the Iranian nuclear impasse, the forthcoming review conference of the NPT scheduled for 2010, the breakdown in conventional and nuclear CBMs in Europe, new nonproliferation measures like ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) and the conclusion of a Fissile Material Control Treaty (FMCT) and, finally, the impact of the Indo-US nuclear deal on the global nonproliferation regime. One of the noteworthy features of the deliberations was the recognition that following the failure of the NPT review conference in 2005, there were, for the first time, calls for nuclear disarmament as constituting the only sustainable basis for enduring peace and stability. When the NPT was signed in 1968 there were two clear understandings. Firstly, in return for renouncing nuclear weapons, non-nuclear weapon states would be assisted to develop nuclear power. Secondly, the nuclear weapons states agreed to undertake serious efforts to eliminate their nuclear arsenals. By 2005 it became obvious that not only were the nuclear weapon states unwilling to eliminate their nuclear arsenals, they also had developed strategies, both nationally and multilaterally, through military alliances like NATO to attack non-nuclear weapon states with nuclear weapon should they deem it necessary to do so in order to promote their security interests. The US Nuclear Posture Review, made public in 2002, and NATO strategy documents contain such provisions. Discussions in Italy and earlier exchange of views in Washington indicated that efforts to force India to cap and subsequently rollback its nuclear weapons programme will undoubtedly pick up momentum if, as it seems possible, Americans elect Ms Hillary Clinton or another Democratic Party nominee as President. A Hillary Clinton dispensation will not hesitate to co-opt China in such an effort. It will endeavour to make an end to nuclear sanctions contingent on India acceding to the CTBT and ending production of fissile materials for nuclear weapons. At the Pugwash conference, American nonproliferation Ayatollahs were joined by experts and scientists from European countries (who ironically depend on American nuclear weapons on their soil for their security) and representatives from Arab countries and Iran to claim that the US-India nuclear deal was a violation of the NPT and should not be brought into force till India acceded to the CTBT and ended the production of fissile materials for making nuclear weapons. What one could not help noticing during the discussions on disarmament and nonproliferation is the bewilderment of India’s friends — countries like Russia, France, Canada and the UK — as to why India was rejecting an opportunity to end its nuclear isolation and avail the benefit of nuclear cooperation from reliable partners. Experts from these countries note that the Indo-US agreement, only the first step in a process through which leading industrial powers and reliable partners of India in the past, will end their sanctions and assist India in accelerating the pace of its nuclear power programme, which will inevitably remain severely curtailed by the shortage of indigenous uranium ore. While it has been argued in India that the nuclear agreement with the US will circumscribe India’s nuclear weapons programme, Pakistani representatives argued that the Indo-US nuclear deal will actually enable India to enhance its nuclear stockpile, as it would help India to use imported material for power production and divert its indigenous uranium ore for its weapons programme. While Chinese representatives remained mum on the issue, China is known to have urged several nuclear supplier countries to reject the Indo-US nuclear agreement. The growing tensions between Iran and the US over the Iranian nuclear programme remain the primary focus of attention today. There was universal opposition to any American military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities in the discussions in Italy. Queries about whether notorious scientist A.Q. Khan transferred merely uranium-enrichment technology and equipment to Iran, or whether he transferred weapons designs also, as he had done in Libya, remain unanswered. Moreover, Iran disclosed its clandestine nuclear enrichment programme in 2003 only after it became clear that the Americans knew about their exchanges with A.Q. Khan. The Iranians, however, claim that the compulsive hostility of the Americans was such that any early disclosure of their enrichment programme would have inevitably led to American pressures to end the programme. The Iranians are also justified in claiming that there is nothing in the NPT that debars them from developing enrichment capabilities. But their virulent rhetoric against Israel evokes widespread revulsion and vitiates the atmosphere for negotiations The IAEA recently certified that there has been no diversion of nuclear materials for weapons use by Iran. IAEA officials also appear to have concluded that it will take around five years for Iran to be able to put together a nuclear weapon. With Russia, China and Iran’s regional neighbours pressing for a negotiated settlement, it appears that the only viable solution would be to link levels and quantities of uranium enrichment by Iran strictly to its needs for nuclear fuel, with international safeguards under the Additional Protocol of the IAEA. This can only come about by serious diplomacy involving talks between all interested parties and not by threats, coercion or sanctions. It emerged at the Pugwash conference that while the Manmohan Singh government had been claiming that it would accede to a FMCT only if the treaty is nondiscriminatory and internationally verifiable, its diplomats in the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva have evidently been instructed not to press this point within the conference, for fear of offending American sensitivities. This is a serious mistake and can undermine national security. India obviously requires more years for fissile material production for building a credible nuclear deterrent. Further, we should not, in principle, accede to any treaty that is discriminatory, or not internationally verifiable. It is also time for India to reiterate its abiding commitment to the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free world. A clear and comprehensive enunciation of a policy on the lines of the 1988 Rajiv Gandhi Action Plan for nuclear disarmament is essential, if India is to credibly deal with pressures it is likely to face in the coming years on its nuclear independence.
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Those enduring sounds IT is truly amazing to see the lengths to which some people will go in order to merit a headline in the world press. The latest venture to be so reported was by one Adam Cronin in the U.K. who has been sneezing an average of 18,000 times a day. The odd thing about Adam’s daily bout was that it started at 5 am and stopped precisely at 5 pm, almost as if he were a member of a trade union. But if Adam Cronin is in the sneezing racket to get into the Guinness Book of World Records, he still has a long way to go before he can finally wipe his nose. The present world record in sneezing is held by another Briton. Tricia Reay, aged 14, started sneezing on October 15, 2004, after catching a cold, and did not stop till April 25, 2005, a period of 194 days. While on the subject of uncontrollable afflictions, I see from my Guinness book that the record breaker in hiccupping is an American, living in Iowa, who has been unable to stop his involuntary performance for 23 years. I wonder if he is still at it, or has hiccupped his way to the next world! I then looked for the record breaker in belching but drew a blank. The omission seems to be yet another instance of how the Third World countries, particularly India, are ignored by the western media. I am quite sure that if the publishers of the Guinness Book of World Records were to take the trouble to look for the champion belcher on our planet, they would find such a person in our country. Belching is one of our most endearing national characteristics, though prissy Westerners may look shocked at the sound of a good, loud belch at the dining table. It is, after all, nothing more than showing one’s appreciation of a satisfying meal in a natural and uninhibited fashion. Englishmen of the old school, who once ruled our fair land, would not have been put out of countenance by their Indian host, or guest, producing an honest, down-to-earth belch at the end of a good meal. In fact a poetically-inclined civilian once issued the following instructions to his juniors: ‘If peptic noises puncture The flow of conversation, Politely pause till they abate No gentleman should deprecate An honest
eructation.’
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US military aid to Pak not fruitful
WASHINGTON: Five years ago, elite Pakistani troops stationed near the border with Afghanistan began receiving hundreds of pairs of US-made night-vision goggles that would enable them to see and fight al-Qaida and Taliban insurgents in the dark. The sophisticated goggles, supplied by the Bush administration at a cost of up to $9,000 a pair, came with an implicit message: Step up the attacks. But every three months, the troops had to turn in their goggles for two weeks to be inventoried, because the US military wanted to make sure none were stolen or given away, US and Pakistani officials said. Militants perceived a pattern and scurried into the open without fear during the two-week counts. “They knew exactly when we didn’t have the goggles, and they took full advantage,” said a senior Pakistani government official who closely tracks military operations on the border. The goggles are but a fragment of the massive military aid Washington sends to Pakistan, but the frustrations expressed by Pakistani officials are emblematic of a widening gulf between two military forces that express a common interest in defeating terrorism. The Bush administration has provided nearly $11 billion in aid to Pakistan since 2001, most of it in military hardware and cash support for the country’s operating budget. But frustrations are rising among military officers on both sides because the aid has produced neither battlefield success nor great trust, said government officials and independent experts who study relations between the two countries. US officials say part of the problem is that the Pakistani government has lacked sufficient commitment to engage the enemy, a task that may be further undermined by the country’s growing political instability as its leadership is challenged by an invigorated opposition. US equipment is not being used “in a sustained way,” said Seth Jones, a Rand researcher who recently visited the region. “The army is not very effective, and there have been elements of the government that have worked with the Taliban in the tribal areas in the past,” making them ambivalent about the current fight against those forces, he said. Independent Western experts also wonder whether Pakistan is devoting too much of US aid to large weapons systems, while shortchanging its own counterinsurgency forces; they say it also is not spending enough on social problems that might address the root causes of terrorism. Of $1.6 billion in US aid dedicated to security assistance in Pakistan since 2002, for example, more than half went for purchases of major weapons systems sought by Pakistan’s army, including F-16 fighters, according to US officials. The officials and experts also say US aid has typically lacked sufficient oversight, or any means of measuring its effectiveness. The aid spigot – now pegged at more than $150 million a month - has remained open even during periods when Pakistan’s leadership ordered its counterterrorism forces confined to barracks under a cease-fire agreement with the insurgents, the officials note. Pakistani officials, for their part, say that strict US controls over equipment and a failure to provide other equipment, such as spare parts, has impeded their ability to hunt down Taliban and al-Qaida sympathizers. In addition to complaining about the goggles, they cite US-made attack helicopters that are grounded for weeks because of parts shortages. Pakistani officials acknowledge slow progress in driving terrorists out of the frontier provinces, but they chafe at suggestions that US military aid is being squandered. Pakistan needs still more help, including persistent access to night-vision goggles, helicopters and other gear that is particularly useful in fighting an insurgency, said Mahmud Ali Durrani, Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States. “Is our military effort going as well as we hoped? No. But is Iraq going as well as hoped?” Durrani asked. “We will fight terrorism because it is for our own good. But it is a very big job.” By most measures, the country’s security problems are worsening. Hundreds of government troops have died in clashes with militants since August. US intelligence officials said two months ago that al-Qaida has managed to build an operating base inside autonomous tribal areas ostensibly controlled by Pakistan. “The billions of American taxpayer dollars to Pakistan since September 11 have clearly failed to prevent our number one enemy from setting up shop in that country,” said Sen. Robert Menendez, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a frequent critic of Bush administration policies in Pakistan. Advanced night-vision equipment of the type provided to Pakistan - which amplifies tiny amounts of infrared light to spot people, equipment and other heat sources – has been used by American GIs for more than a decade. But when President Pervez Musharraf’s government requested them in 2002 and 2003 for use against insurgents fleeing across the border from Afghanistan, US officials initially voiced serious reservations. Eventually, after the accounting procedures were put in place, Washington provided more than 1,600 to Pakistani forces, according to figures compiled by Alan Kronstadt, a South Asia specialist with the Congressional Research Service. Pakistan was allowed to purchase about 300 from a US contractor, and the rest – some 1,300 pairs of goggles valued at $6.4 million – were provided without charge by the Defense and State departments, Kronstadt said. A small number were also provided to Pakistan by US intelligence agencies, said US officials and independent experts. The Pentagon’s monitoring is conducted under a special program – EUM, or Enhanced End-Use Monitoring – that allows US officials in Pakistan to check all the serial numbers every three months. The policy also was considered insulting. “It says, ‘We don’t trust you,’ “ said Durrani. “We need more night-vision equipment, but every three months you withdraw what we have. This is what happens when bureaucrats dictate policy.” A Pentagon official acknowledged the complaints and said the department plans to conduct less frequent checks. “We are working closely with Pakistani authorities to ensure a proper balance of security and accountability requirements with their operational needs,” said Air Force Lt. Col Todd Vician, a Defense Department spokesman. But US-Pakistan frictions extend to other parts of the US aid program. No other country receives more assistance from Washington for military training, and since 2001, Pakistan has received more than $6 billion from the Coalition Support Fund, government documents show. That’s 10 times as much as Poland, the No. 2 recipient, according to Pentagon documents obtained by the Center for Public Integrity, a Washington nonprofit group. The fund reimburses US allies for costs incurred in fighting global terrorism. The aid has not bought much goodwill: A poll in August conducted for the Washington-based nonprofit group Terror Free Tomorrow found that 19 percent of Pakistanis held a favorable view of the US, down from 26 percent the previous year. Osama bin Laden had a far higher approval rating, at 46 percent, than either Musharraf (38 percent) or President Bush (9 percent). The large weapons systems Washington has funded have little relevance to terrorism and counterinsurgency, said Hassan Abbas, a former Pakistani government official who is now at Harvard University. “The money is mostly to make Musharraf happy and to engage the Pakistani army as an institution,” he said. Meanwhile, civilian law enforcement agencies scramble for adequate training and weapons.
By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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Argentina’s first couple makes history
Cristina
Fernandez de Kirchner has became the first woman elected to the presidency of Argentina . Her victory is not difficult to explain. Her political party, under President Nestor Kirchner, her husband, led a dramatic economic turnaround that made Argentina the fastest-growing economy in the Western Hemisphere over the last 5 1/2 years. More than 11 million people, or 28 percent of the population, were pulled above the poverty line as Argentina’s economy grew by more than 50 percent. Its 8.2 percent annual economic growth was more than twice the average for Latin America. Unemployment has dropped from 21.5 percent to 8.5 percent, and real (inflation-adjusted) wages have grown by more than 40 percent. Fernandez’s victory was thus predictable and relatively easy. But the economic recovery that drove it was not so simple, and the people who led it deserve more credit than they have generally received. The Kirchners and their allies had to take on not only the conventional wisdom of the economics profession but also powerful international institutions such as the International Monetary Fund. Argentina’s success may have some important implications for other developing countries. When Argentina defaulted on a record $100 billion of debt at the end of 2001, almost all of the experts predicted that this would be the beginning of a long period of punishment. International financial markets and foreign investors would shun the nation, they said, and this would be very damaging. The government had better reach an agreement with the IMF and follow its advice. And it had better play nice with the defaulted foreign creditors. The experts could hardly have been more wrong. The economy contracted for just three months after the default and then began to grow. It hasn’t stopped since. Contrary to a common belief, Argentina’s expansion was not based on exports or high commodity prices: Only about 13 percent of the growth during the expansion was because of exports. What did Argentina do right? Most important, the government got its basic macroeconomic policies right. After years of seeing its domestic economy crippled by an overvalued currency that made imports artificially cheap, the Argentine central bank targeted a stable and competitive real exchange rate. In other words, the authorities made sure that their currency didn’t rise too high and didn’t swing wildly as a result of movements in financial markets. (The US has shed more than 3 million manufacturing jobs since 2001 – the bulk of them lost because of an overvalued dollar). They also kept interest rates low and made growth, rather than the lowest possible inflation, the top priority. These policies are mostly a no-no among central bankers and economists, and Argentina had a few showdowns with the IMF, including a brief temporary default to the fund in September 2003. But the fund backed down, and most of the defaulted international creditors ended up settling for 35 cents on the dollar in 2005. Of course, Argentina hasn’t gotten a lot of foreign direct investment in the last five years, and it cannot directly borrow in international bond markets. But these handicaps -- which if you read the business news should spell doom -- turned out not to be all that important. Nor are they permanent. In time, foreign investors and lenders will find their way back to a fast-growing economy. The lesson? Just as “all politics are local,” so too are the most important economic policies for most countries. Getting basic macroeconomic policies right for your own economy is a lot more important than pleasing international financial markets. That goes double for failed international financial institutions like the IMF. The fund not only oversaw the train wreck that collapsed Argentina’s economy from 1998 to 2002, it opposed the major policies that drove Argentina’s remarkable recovery. The fact that Argentina’s break with the IMF and its policies was key to the country’s economic success also has implications for other countries. Over the last quarter of a century, the fund and its allied institutions – run from Washington – have presided over Latin America’s worst long-term growth performance in more than a century. As a result, most governments in the region have moved away from the IMF. Its loan portfolio in the region has shrunk from $49 billion just four years ago to less than $1 billion today. But it still holds sway in many poor countries. Argentina’s new government will face challenges, the kind brought about by a fast-growing economy: keeping inflation in check and assuring adequate supplies of energy. But these problems are manageable. Of course, there are analysts who argue otherwise, but their forecasts over the last five years have not been very accurate.
By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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Defence Notes Serious
efforts put in by the Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the Indian Armed Forces have led to a substantial decline in the number of HIV/AIDS cases being reported from the three arms of the country’s military. Figures have shown a declining trend from 501 cases in the year 2001 to 377 cases in 2006. An elaborate HIIV/AIDS control programme has been put in place by the MoD and the armed forces, which includes health education of the troops and their families, surveillance of High Risk Groups such as blood donors, patients of sexually transmitted diseases, tuberculosis patients, ante-natal cases, and personnel proceeding abroad in peace keeping missions and returning from there.
Flight safety The Army’s annual Flight Safety Trophy for the year 2006-07 has been awarded to 28 Recce and Observation Flight of Army Aviation. The trophy was presented by Chief of Army Staff General Deepak Kapoor. Flying more than 50,000 hours every year, Army Aviation helicopters are a lifeline for far flung isolated posts, ferrying in men, material and evacuating casualties. One Army Aviation unit is also actively deployed in Congo as part of UN forces. The Corps has also rendered yeoman service to the nation in times of natural calamities.
Land records Minister of State for Defence M M Pallam Raju recently released the Military Land Register (MLR) software which is a step further towards digitising Defence Land Records for all defence lands located outside notified cantonments. The software has been launched with the idea of effective land management and safeguarding one of the most important assets of the Defence Ministry – land. With a fast paced economy, the pressure on land has multiplied and it is now a precious commodity which requires judicious exploitation. Defence Estates are voluminous since the Defence Ministry is the biggest landholder in the Central Government and is flooded with litigations over lands held by it across the country.
Soldier craftsmen A coffee table book titled ‘Techno Warriors of the Indian Army: Corps of Electronics and Mechanical Engineers in Operations’ was released by Chief of Army Staff General Deepak Kapoor on the occasion of the 64th anniversary of the Corps of EME. The book, which is a visual delight, captures the glorious contributions made by the Corps. It traces the lineage of the soldier craftsman, covers the formation of the Corps and highlights important facets of the growth of the Corps over every decade of its existence. The battle accounts encapsulated are hitherto untold sagas of personal and collective valour, dogged determination and sacrifice to keep the wheels of the Army moving and the guns firing.
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