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The darkest hour Reforming the police |
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Rising rupee hits exporters
Rising Sensex
Headless chicken
Condi’s dream turned sour When Buddhists are a minority Chatterati
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The darkest hour Gen Pervez Musharraf
has brazenly put the clock far back in Pakistan by imposing what he calls “a state of emergency”. It is more than that. The Provisional Constitutional Order he has issued, putting in “abeyance” the 1973 constitution, is nothing but a cleverly crafted measure to perpetuate his authoritarian rule. All hopes of a return to genuine democracy have been dashed to the ground. It is difficult to say when the elections he has postponed will actually be held. The General, perhaps, got clear hints from some pliable Supreme Court judges that the court verdict, expected in a few days, on the petitions challenging his re-election as President would go against him. That would have negated the victory he had to try to manage in the recently held presidential poll. The General could not tolerate this. He was finding it difficult to run the government the way he wanted after the reinstatement of Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, whom he had suspended in March on baseless charges. The judiciary had begun to assert its independence, which was obviously not to his liking. That is why the first thing General Musharraf did after the proclamation of the emergency was to replace Justice Chaudhry with a new Chief Justice, believed to be in the good books of the General. The text of the proclamation clearly shows that the higher judiciary was seen as the biggest stumbling block in the way of General Musharraf’s rule. He has used the growing militancy in Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas and elsewhere only as an excuse to gag the judiciary as also the media and people. The General has virtually blamed the judiciary for depriving the people of their basic rights like the Press freedom. But he has punished the people, too, as they were showing signs of having no love lost for his rule. Recently Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, chief of the Musharraf-backed PML (Q), had admitted that his party would perform poorly in the January elections, which now stand suspended. The reason he had given was the deal General Musharraf had struck with PPP leader Benazir Bhutto. The Chaudhry, who had been quietly advocating for the imposition of the emergency, wanted the deal to be scuttled. It is the darkest hour for Pakistan, where the people are not allowed to make a difference.
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Reforming the police THE Punjab government’s decision to implement police reforms in the state is welcome. Of course, it has taken over a year to comply with the Supreme Court’s September 22, 2006, directive. The Punjab Police Bill, 2007, approved by the State Cabinet on October 30, will have to be ratified by the State Assembly. The Haryana Assembly passed the Haryana Police Act on March 21 and is now awaiting the President’s assent. Himachal Pradesh has partially complied with the directive. Though the Punjab Bill proposes to set up the police commissioner system in cities like Ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar, the State Cabinet has put it on hold. The other features of the Punjab Bill are separation of the law and order machinery from investigation wing in big urban areas, fixed tenure for officers on operational duties like the DGP and SSPs, a state police board headed by the Chief Minister and a separate cadre for subordinate officers. Unfortunately, most states are taking a long time to comply with the apex court’s directive. States such as Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra have been dilly-dallying over the issue because their chief ministers are reluctant to loosen their grip over the police. Jammu and Kashmir has set up a drafting committee. Drafting is also underway in Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal and Sikkim. Nine small states, mostly from the North-East, have already set up the necessary bodies and made amendments to the rules. When the Supreme Court has issued a directive to the states, the chief ministers have no alternative but to comply with it. Unfortunately, the police has become an instrument in the hands of the ruling party. This has adversely affected law and order and day-to-day governance. With the rising crime rate, the common man feels insecure and is losing confidence in policemen. If the reforms suggested by the Supreme Court are implemented in toto, it will tone up the police machinery and improve its image. Simultaneously, there is need for a general attitudinal change in the police. Efforts to insulate the police machinery from political interference will be of little value if the police doesn’t change its colonial mindset towards the people. Police reforms, if implemented in the right spirit, will go a long way in streamlining the criminal justice system.
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Rising rupee hits exporters THE rupee hit a nine-year high when it touched 39.22 against the dollar on Thursday following a rate cut by the US Federal Reserve. Continuous capital inflows and strengthening of the rupee have unnerved exporters, particularly from the textile sector. The export growth rate has more than halved since last year. This has forced the Centre to offer more incentives to the textile industry. The technology upgradation fund, set up two years ago after the abolition of the European import quotas to help the textile industry, has been expanded with the government offering 10 per cent additional capital subsidy. The rupee appreciation is a result of high growth and the general weakening of the dollar against major currencies. While it helps the government to meet the rising cost of oil imports, exporters have suffered, especially because their competitors in countries like Pakistan, China, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka do not have to cope with a currency problem. A FICCI survey has estimated a 34 per cent drop in exports in rupee terms during April-September this year over the corresponding period last year. Unless effectively controlled, woes of textile exporters can spill over to cotton growers. For the present, there is nothing to worry as cotton exports are buoyant. The textile sector is a major source of employment and any slowdown can affect job creation. According to reports, the sector was expected to generate 1.22 lakh jobs last year, but could not due to adverse conditions. Western importers and NGOs are raising the issue of child labour to discourage imports from India. Commerce Minister Kamal Nath has written to the EU Trade Commissioner about NGOs raising trade barriers for Indian garment exporters and threatened retaliatory action. While the Centre is trying to ease the textile industry’s problems, states too need to pitch in. Karnataka has announced a Rs 500-crore rescue plan for the beleaguered sector. Other states should follow suit.
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Time is that where there is opportunity, and opportunity is that wherein there is no great time. — Hippocrates
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Rising Sensex There is much euphoria about Sensex touching the 20,000 mark within a short period. But what does it indicate — that India is a country much sought after by foreign institutional investors and that it is one of the fastest growing economies in the world? Indeed, everyone should be happy that India is doing well and receiving huge inflows of foreign exchange. The inflow of dollars is, however, making the rupee strong. Even though exporters may not like the strong rupee, many Indians would be happy, just for prestige’s sake, to see their currency gaining in strength. Surprisingly, the Reserve Bank of India is keeping quiet about the influx. Normally, the RBI would step into the market and buy dollars to correct any imbalances in the exchange rate. Now it is not doing so because it would mean the release of more liquidity in the market and this could spur inflation. Economists, however, would like to see an undervalued rupee because it helps exports. If India is to remain competitive, the rupee’s value has to come down in dollar terms. Some Indian exports are already doing rather poorly and if more are hit over time, the question would arise: “ Can this high GDP growth of 9 to 9.5 per cent be sustained”? Perhaps, it can be sustained by the sheer rise in industrial output and a surge in the domestic demand. Thus, industrial growth is an important ingredient of sustainability. Thankfully, industrial growth has again picked up, and in August 2007 it was 10.7 per cent. Agricultural growth also is likely to be better than last year and export growth, too, may remain high due to the various compensatory packages offered by the government to exporters. As predicted by many important policy makers, GDP growth could indeed remain high. But why are there so many agitations taking place all over India and people are not smiling all that much? The truth is that Sensex reaching great heights has little meaning for the common man. Even high industrial growth is not benefiting the common Indian because when it is showing up as higher profits for the corporate sector, it translates to higher salaries and bigger perks for top executives. How is the common person benefiting? Why is the rise in Sensex not affecting the fortunes of all? This is because only a few million people are investing in the equity (shares) of companies. Indians invested only 6.2 per cent of their total savings in equity-related instruments in 2007 and equity and mutual funds accounted for only 1.2 per cent of the GDP in 2007. Most people save in fixed deposits, the PPF and pension funds, which account for 11.9 per cent of the GDP. Most households save a part of their income and the savings rate in India has risen from 24 per cent in 2001 to 32.4 per cent of the GDP in 2007. (China’s savings rate is 42 per cent). Savings by households is contributing 22.3 per cent to the total savings of the country. Most of our investment is by our own savings. The rate of investment has also gone up from 24 per cent in 2001 to 33.8 per cent in 2007 (China’s rate of investment is 39 per cent). Basically, we are not dependent on foreign money for our investment. But more investment is needed to reduce poverty and to improve the lot of the common man. India needs a higher rate of investment in infrastructure and in the social sectors that would empower the poor. India has 260 million people who do not get their basic needs fulfilled and are living below the “official” poverty line. China has only 6 million people who could be termed poor. India can also reduce poverty by having high growth that “trickles down”, which means more jobs for the relatively poorer section of the population - an expansion in the labour force. (India’s labour force is 427 million and China’s 768 million). In India, only a few millions who are below the poverty line are likely to get jobs in the future mainly because they do not possess either education or skills. Even the extension of the Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to all the districts cannot give jobs to all. People can start their own businesses if they had access to credit, but again the story is strange. More credit goes to the same rich people than to the new relatively poorer Indians. The rich have easier access to credit to buy houses and cars while the poor don’t - mainly because they are not literate and do not have sufficient collateral guarantee. Agriculture, too, needs investment and farmers require credit to remain viable. But today most farmers remain poor without having adequate access to credit and have to migrate from farms to towns in search of work, as productivity and output are low and the size of farms small. Most farmers do not even own the land they are tilling. Basically, we are witnessing a situation in which the economic growth the country is experiencing is being directed to raise the incomes and standards of living of the well-to-do and the rich. Only a select section (which in the case of India is around 200 millions) is enjoying the benefits of the high growth India is experiencing. Some in this “creamy” layer are much richer and are living like the rich in industrialised countries. Others (800 million and more) are not able to make their both ends meet and are not happy. Such contrasts are not sustainable, and this is clearly evident from the rising protests, incidents of violence, the crime rate, insurgencies and Naxalite activity. One way out is to raise the rate of savings and investment dramatically and quickly. Unfortunately, only the rich can save and for them there is a big temptation to spend. All magazines and newspapers, TV channels and cinema are full of ads about how to spend your money. There is every kind of luxury good available in the market and big foreign brand names that cater to the most exclusive jet set in the world are now present in the markets of Mumbai and New Delhi. To splurge has become essential for the rich. But somehow money has to be found — saved or raised (not too difficult a task) — for a higher rate of investment (both public and private) in urban and rural infrastructure, schools, low cost housing, hospitals and improving the quality of drinking water. Only such a monumental effort can bring India into the league of developed countries, and not the gyrating Sensex.
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Headless chicken AS young children, we once cut a chicken’s head in true “jhatka” style and then released it. For the next few minutes it violently jumped about in all directions, fluttering its wings and splattering blood all over the place. It was at this very exciting moment that mother arrived on the scene and we were severely admonished. We were reminded of those childhood memories of mischief and mirth by our very capable and able ambassador, Ronnen Sen. He, like us, is probably aware how a headless chicken goes about in its final dance of death and, therefore, seems to discover, during the nuclear debate, some similarity in the behaviour of our Hon’ble members of Parliament, with poultry, and that too when the latter is without its head. It is not very clear if he meant it in the literal sense in that the MPs are without their heads or without brains! However, Ronnen Sen now informs us and the MPs, that the adjective was actually directed at the press, which very cleverly and deftly deflected it to the members of Parliament. May be, the phrase was directed at his personal assistant who was seen moving in and out of his room; restless and jittery while Sen addressed the Press. The media, as often is the case and its won’t, misconstrued and misdirected this inoffensive and well-meaning observation, unnecessarily brought in members of Parliament and equally quoted the whole episode “out of context”. Given our worthy ambassador Ronnen Sen’s long experience and attendant skills in diplomacy, there must be some agreeable and winning content in this expression, which the members of Parliament, in their limited understanding of diplomacy, have misread and misunderstood and taken uncalled for offence. After all Ronnen Sen tells us and the Privileges Committee of Parliament that he often uses this very endearing phrase for his wife, while she goes about doing household chores. Perhaps, every time he uses this expression of love for his wife she gives him a hug. This, of course, was my own conjecture on reading of this very diplomatic move of a husband towards his wife. Since there was some delay in serving breakfast, I entered the kitchen and found my wife shuffling around in trying to locate some item to scramble eggs. I figured out that here was a perfect chance for me to be a little diplomatic and say what Sen so often says to his dear wife. I made bold and told my wife that, “you are shuffling around like a headless chicken”. Having said that in a fairly endearing tone, I stood in cavalry style (cavalry officers have a unique style of standing, with one leg slightly bent) expecting her to rush to me and give a loving hug. Instead, she dispatched a raw egg, at high speed, which caught me square on the face, giving me no time to duck! You see, the Army never spared me for a diplomatic assignment in one of our embassies abroad and, therefore, my wife is not well versed in some of these diplomatic phrases and nuances of diplomatic language!
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Condi’s dream turned sour
WASHINGTON – As Condoleezza Rice jets around the world, she must sometimes wonder where she’s going. Over her three years as secretary of state, she has squandered great opportunities by putting faith and loyalty above her old worldview. The problem isn’t just that she has swerved from the realism that propelled her to prominence; it’s that the result has been a shambles. Rice isn’t used to failure, and most Americans aren’t used to thinking of her as one. In Beltway wisdom, she’s the star of President Bush’s second-term team, someone who has employed smarts, sense and style to try to steer a wiser course in the world. But if she is now veering back to realism, it’s after too long a detour into post-9/11 messianism. Rice remains one of the architects of a fantasy foreign policy, and her record as secretary of state gives little hope that she’ll be able to reverse that verdict in the administration’s final months. The case against Condi starts with her dismal tenure as national security adviser in Bush’s first term – perhaps the worst in the office’s history. Her main task was to coordinate policy, but she was outmaneuvered at every turn by the ruthless infighters around her, especially Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. So she focused on the job’s other mandate: counseling the unschooled president on foreign affairs. As Bush’s tutor in the 2000 campaign, she’d gained his trust, which became the basis of her power: When she spoke, everybody knew that she was speaking on Bush’s behalf, not advancing her own agenda. The State Department seemed a place where she could make the most of that asset. She would finally be a player, a Cabinet secretary with a budget, a bureaucracy and something her beleaguered predecessor, Gen. Colin Powell, never had: unfettered access to the commander in chief. At first, she did things that Bush had previously resisted – reopened nuclear talks with Iran and North Korea, pushed a Security Council resolution on war crimes in Sudan, and (unlike Powell) traveled, a lot. The early reviews were glowing. The media compared her to George Marshall, marveled at her “perfectionist drive” and parsed “the Condi doctrine.” But she was only doing things that most secretaries of state do routinely. The substance of her views and the fruits of her globe-trotting weren’t clear – and still aren’t. The problem was that, in the course of counseling George W. Bush, she fell under his tutelage much more than vice versa. Instead of informing his instincts, she formalised them into doctrine – and came to believe in it herself. In his second inaugural address, Bush declared that his main goal would be to end tyranny and spread democracy around the world. For a few months, some wondered whether freedom might really be “on the march.” Iraq held its first free elections; in Ukraine, hundreds of thousands protested a rigged presidential vote; massive rallies in Beirut forced Syria to end its 30-year occupation of Lebanon. Rice took these as signs that the world was spinning on a new axis, and she took Bush’s words as a mandate to spin it harder. “For 60 years,” she said, “my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region ... and we achieved neither. Now we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people.” A “fully free and democratic world,” she declared, is “inevitable.” Rice had spun 180 degrees from the positions she’d held for the previous 30 years. In the mid-1970s, as a graduate student at the University of Denver, she’d been the star pupil of Josef Korbel (the father of former secretary of state Madeleine Albright). A Czech emigre, Korbel had witnessed the collapse of the world order between the 20th century’s two great wars and concluded that keeping the peace required not laws or ideals but a stable balance of power. In the late ‘80s, Brent Scowcroft, President George H.W. Bush’s national security adviser, hired Rice onto his staff. A protege of Henry Kissinger, the ultimate realist, Scowcroft scorned the idea that morality should dominate foreign policy. While advising Bush’s son during his 2000 presidential campaign, Rice remained firmly in this mold. In an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, she called “power politics” and “power balances” the key elements of national security. Yet just five years later, she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, “the fundamental character of regimes matters more today than the international distribution of power.” And: “Democracy is the only assurance of lasting peace and security between states, because it is the only guarantee of freedom and justice within states.” Her friends and colleagues gasped at the reversal. Cynics ascribed it to a psychological complex about powerful male tutors. The merely skeptical attributed it to a pragmatic realization that she had to adopt Bush’s messianic views to keep her job. Others accepted her own explanation: that the shift was driven by the September 2001 attacks, which traditional realism could not entirely explain or respond to. The 9/11 terrorists, most of them Saudis, were the products of fuming discontent in “stable” but tyrannical regimes – proof that the character of a regime did affect U.S. security. By 2006, the dreams of ‘05 had dissolved into nightmares. Iraq’s elections had only deepened its sectarian fissures; Ukraine’s reformers retreated into a glum compromise with their Moscow-backed foes; Syria’s withdrawal from Lebanon left a vacuum that the Shiite radicals of Hezbollah eagerly filled; and elections in the Palestinian territories, which Rice had insisted upon, were won by the Islamist militants of Hamas. Democracy, it turned out, was no cure-all. Democratic governments thrive or crumble on whether they can mediate conflicting claims without much violence. Had Rice understood this, she might have done more to shore up those fledgling democracies. She could have bolstered Prime Minister Fouad Sinora’s embattled government in Lebanon with investment and aid – but she didn’t. One price was the first Arab-Israeli war in 24 years in Lebanon. When the fighting finally stopped, America’s reputation as a world power had taken another hit; Israel’s image of invincibility was shaken; and a strengthened Hezbollah was crowing. At times this year, Rice seems to have returned to her realist roots, most notably in striking a quick nuclear disarmament deal with North Korea. After years of scorning Arab-Israeli diplomacy, she now hopes to assemble a last-ditch Israeli-Palestinian peace conference; but Washington’s leverage has diminished, the parties know she and Bush are lame ducks, and the region’s ground is burning. She is said to be locked in a face-off with Cheney over Iran policy: He wants to bomb, she wants to keep talking. But it is a sad comment on the endurance of her one great asset – her influence with the president – that nobody knows whose side the decider will take. Finally, there looms Iraq. This war has been Rice’s war as much as anybody’s in the administration. Long after her celebrity and charm have been forgotten, her epitaph will endure: She pursued democracy at the expense of stability, and achieved neither. The writer is the author of the forthcoming “Daydream Believers: How a Few Grand Ideas Wrecked American Power.” By arrangement with
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When Buddhists are a minority MANY years ago, when on assignment with the International Control Commission in Vietnam, one of the first sights that one witnessed in down town Saigon was that of a Buddhist monk protesting the State’s religious discrimination practiced by setting himself on fire and dying without as much as a whimper. It was a singular act of defiance and anger, which unfortunately at the time evoked little interest, except in the Buddhist minority community. In another part of Asia a few years earlier in 1959 in Tibet, the Dalai Lama had fled his land and empire across the Namka Chu river in the hilly Tawang tract of erstwhile NEFA, and a sleepy little post of the Assam Rifles located in the area had welcomed him and his entourage with a hot mug of tea and a few words of comfort. Eventually, Tibet as we know was domesticated and bulldozed into followership. In present times the influx of China’s Han community has virtually swamped the original inhabitants. Today, in Myanmar in Yangon, the ruling military junta is at loggerheads with the Buddhist monks who oppose the harsh ways of the Generals and want the imprisoned Aung San Suu Kyi to be installed as the head to run the government. And this is in spite of the fact that in Myanmar, nearly 89 percent of the population practices Buddhism. And to round off this sorry history of rule by the powerful and the mighty, some years back of course we had the Taliban who thought it fit to destroy and disfigure Buddha’s statue at Bamyan in Afghanistan, without any remorse or thought for history or age old civilisation. In all these cases the question that is slapped across the face is that, can a people, especially those used to the ways of peace and non-confrontation, survive in the present times, and can they ever have some say in the governance of the state in the near or interim future, in whichever part of the world they might be located in? Another associated concern connected with this question is whether world bodies like the United Nations and other human rights organisations, who spend crores on their own upkeep and maintenance, conduct international seminars and world peace conferences in various parts of the world and go about jetting around the world in style and comfort, ever going to do something tangible for the down trodden whose cause they profess they are engaged in promoting? Let us take India first, and the status of our own Buddhists. Except Dharamsala and some other islands of Buddhist strength in the country, there is precious little that this minority can boast of either in state governance or claim to political power. Mortally afraid of what China would say if the Buddhists here raised the ante, this peaceful community is left to protesting outside the Chinese Embassy whenever one of the Chinese leaders passes by, or receiving the Dalai Lama at the airport whenever he returns from one of his frequent visits abroad. On the home front it also needs to be asked as to how and when is the majority community in India going to share governance in the real sense with the religious communities that lie in the minority fringe band and do not have the numbers for electoral victory. Are the Buddhists of India, including those who fled from Tibet in the late 1950s after the military repression there, going to be totally swamped into submission in the hum drum of majority politics and the number game? Is there therefore a case for some representation in nominations for the Buddhists in the Rajya Sabha on the lines of the Anglo-Indian community? Can they even possibly benefit from a quota of seats earmarked for them in the All India Services and other departments of government for a designated number of years, so as to bring them at par with the national stream as is being done in the case of the Dalits? In nearby Nepal known as the Hindu Kingdom and where now the Maoists share power, one wonders whether the large Buddhist population is placed favourably in governance. In Myanmar of course the Buddhists are at the receiving end all the time, and the Indian government for strategic reasons keeps blissfully silent and non-intrusive. It remains an irony of sorts that in spite of both the Dalai Lama and Myanmar’s Suu Kyi having claimed the Nobel prize for peace, both their people remain suffocated and suppressed. What are the world bodies doing about it? The role of our National Minority Commission also needs to be put under the scanner, and as in the case of their endeavours in the case of the Muslims, the Commission’s output towards the betterment of the Buddhists needs to be measured fairly and objectively. If the Indian government can subsidise the visits of our Muslim brethren abroad on the annual Haj, then surely the same yardstick should hold good for the Buddhists and the Sikhs who are in an acute minority in this country, to visit their holy shrines outside India at least once in their lifetime.
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Chatterati THE nation has been waiting for a reaction to the Tehelka expose on Gujarat from the government. But unfortunately, for some odd reason, there is silence. Various disgusting Gujarat politicians have gone gaga over their roles in the shameful post-Godhra killings. It is sickening. These people should be behind bars, not left loose in positions of power, to encourage more people to go the same way. The Congress leadership is, as usual, not ready to take any action. One would have expected President’s rule and all the murderers to be sentenced. What more proof would one need? Even the judiciary is too shocked by the expose to react, it seems. And what about the rest of the media? They can all create havoc over a murder case here and there. But in this case, where mass human slaughtering has been confessed to on camera, even the media seems to have forgotten the story after a couple of days.
Who benefits? There is so much confusion about the impact of the sting on Narendra Modi. If the Congress was truly behind the exposure, then the only objective would have been to have the CBI register a case against Modi and impose President’s Rule immediately, on the eve of the election. But it appears Modi will emerge as the main gainer of the sting, as senior Congressmen were busy last week trying to kill the story from the front page of the newspapers. Why? One wonders. Within the BJP there is confusion as to whether one faction wanted to embarrass Modi. On the other hand, there is also the growing feeling that the whole show boomeranged and duly strengthened the Modi vote.
Sitting around After a major reshuffle, the Congress secretaries have not been allotted any work, even a month after their appointment. As usual, they are busy competing with each other. All are waiting for the assignment of the secretary who will be attached to Rahul Gandhi. Congress president Sonia Gandhi had appointed 34 secretaries while reconstituting her AICC team on September 24. The new general secretary, Rahul Gandhi, has made two trips abroad after his appointment but the other newly-appointed secretaries are only doing the rounds of the AICC headquarters here, hoping that their work allocation would be announced soon. Well, what can one do? They have no place to sit, nor any work to do. The status quo on the work allocations has left the new secretaries confused. The AICC reorganisation was meant to spur the party ahead of the elections in Himachal Pradesh and Gujarat, and amidst speculation about a possible Lok Sabha election next year. This is being considered Mrs Gandhi’s election team, but the party managers are still working on specific assignments.
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