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Taming recovery agents Transparency pays |
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Scrapping house tax Who will foot cities’ bills? In a populist measure that ought to have been avoided, the Haryana Chief Minister last Thursday waived the house tax in the urban areas and the “chullah” tax in the rural areas from April, 2008, provided the tax payees clear their arrears, if any, by then. Though the house tax waiver will benefit some nine lakh urban families, the decision will leave the municipalities poorer by Rs 35 crore a year.
Strategic aspect of N-deal
Musclemen of Laspazia
Constrained hegemon Off target in the war on cancer Inside Pakistan
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Taming recovery agents No
doubt, the Rs 55-lakh fine imposed by the Delhi Consumer Commission on ICICI Bank for hiring goons, who beat up a youth with iron rods to recover a loan, is exemplary, it is still not enough. A criminal case should have been registered against the bank’s recovery agents as the victim, left bleeding on the road, was not even the car owner who had taken the loan. No one cared to identify the man who had actually taken the loan and who did not know that his cheques had bounced. This shows how these authorised goons operate. This is not an isolated case. There have been instances of banks’ musclemen driving loan defaulters to suicide. In February the Supreme Court had deprecated the practice of private banks engaging agents to recover their dues. Lately, the RBI Governor called for a review of the policy of hiring goons to recover loans and threatened banks with a ban, temporary or permanent, if the practice persisted. Now the Union Government has started groundwork for a lenders’ liability Act to address bank customers’ grievances. The Finance Ministry is studying similar legislation in other countries before coming out with a proposal. The US has strictly regulated recovery agencies which get back a bank’s dues for a fee. In Britain there is a code of conduct for the recovery agents. However, the banks themselves are partly to blame for the increasing loan defaults. As rising middle class incomes have fuelled consumerism in the post-reform era, banks have tended to be lax in following their own lending rules. In their hurry to make quick profits, they not only overlook the loan repaying capacity of a potential customer, but also coax and lure the unwilling with gifts to take loans. There is no denying the fact that loans have to be repaid. But first the banks should be careful about whom to lend and then follow the due process of law in case of a default. The new law will, hopefully, take care of customers’ rights and banks’ duties. |
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Transparency pays
Defence Minister A.K. Antony’s declaration that “every reference from every quarter” on corruption issues would be taken cognizance of and the necessary probes carried out, is in keeping with his character. The man is known for jealously guarding an image of probity and integrity, and in Kerala political circles, the word is that he always carries a resignation letter in his pocket to be unleashed if challenged. In fact, it is this image which prompted New Delhi to draft him to head a ministry notorious for kickbacks from purchases of extremely expensive weapons. This stress on probity is commendable. Mr Antony insists that in the much-needed modernisation process, where the services are provided with the modern equipment that they badly need, transparency will not become a casualty. It is, however, problematic if the issue is cast in terms of speedy modernisation vs safe, above-the-board dealing. While the sanctity of the deals must be ensured, the procedure cannot be held ransom to slow decision-making. Efficient defence procurement is also a function of several other factors, after all, and the ministry must ensure that the effort does not run into bottlenecks anywhere. Delays are the bane of the modernisation process. The most glaring example is the case of the Advanced Jet Trainer for the airforce. While the IAF will rejoice as the first of the Hawk 100s start arriving soon, many will remember the two-decades of painful negotiations that elapsed before the deal could happen. They are keeping their fingers crossed on the new 126 aircraft deal, the ‘Requests for Proposals’ for which have just gone out. While the big-ticket items grab the public eye, several others, affecting everything from the Army’s artillery to the Navy’s effectiveness at sea, tend to fight lonely battles. The test for Mr Antony is clear — kick out the corruption, and keep modernisation moving apace. |
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Scrapping house tax In
a populist measure that ought to have been avoided, the Haryana Chief Minister last Thursday waived the house tax in the urban areas and the “chullah” tax in the rural areas from April, 2008, provided the tax payees clear their arrears, if any, by then. Though the house tax waiver will benefit some nine lakh urban families, the decision will leave the municipalities poorer by Rs 35 crore a year. Haryana Chief Parliamentary Secretary Dharamvir Singh has ruled out any new tax to replace the two outgoing levies. Despite a steady rise in the tax collections and an over-all improvement in the state’s fiscal condition, the government must not have extended the tax relief to the urban rich. A steep rise in the real estate prices has tremendously benefited the urban property owners in the recent past and the government could have even raised the house tax to generate additional income for the civic bodies, which are starved of funds. A recent survey by an NGO, Participatory Research in Asia, highlighted the dismal condition of the municipalities in Haryana. Low revenue collections, flawed account-keeping practices, poor governance and rampant political interference have hampered the functioning of the civic bodies. Any further dent into their already limited sources of income is bound to hit their development works. Haryana’s languishing cities suffer from poor upkeep, insanitation, mushrooming of illegal and unplanned colonies, lack of clean drinking water and sewerage, and insufficient health facilities. The municipalities and panchayat bodies need to be financially empowered to meet the challenges of fast urbanisation and growth. The local area development tax levied in Haryana has been held void by the Punjab and Haryana High Court. Scrapping the house tax will dry up another source of income. Since no alternative to the tax has been announced, it shows lack of proper planning prior to the sudden axing of the existing tax. |
Strategic aspect of N-deal
When
India blasted its way out of nuclear ambiguity on May
11-13, 1998, and caused a major setback to the US non-proliferation policies, the US reaction was immediate and severe. It took 14 rounds of dialogue between June 1998 and September 2000 to enable India and the US to develop a mutually understandable perspective on strategic issues, which was absent in the previous five decades. That dialogue laid the fundamentals for a gradual change in the basic paradigm of Indo-US relations. The two sides thereafter began to find ways for accommodating each other’s concerns with acknowledged common strategic interests and principles. The US showed willingness to move beyond the narrow agenda of nuclear non-proliferation and take the relations to a higher plane encompassing economic, strategic and political interactions. In the last five years, two Indian governments have discussed strategic partnership and a civil nuclear energy deal with a view to improving India's technological, economic, diplomatic and security interests. As the negotiations progressed, the going, predictably, became more and more difficult. And now, when the negotiated deal is about to be operationalised, India’s deeply divided polity has managed to pull the rug from under its own feet. On the face of it, the Indo-US civil nuclear energy deal is about pollution-free nuclear power generation. The deal will ensure immediate supply of uranium to India’s existing nuclear plants, which are already reduced to 50 per cent output due to fuel shortage when we need more energy to keep pace with the growing economy. With an assured supply of fuel and other technological requirements for nuclear power generation in the future, we can expect to increase its capacity to 20,000 MWe by 2020. The deal will unlock techno-commercial activity worth 100-150 billion US dollars with the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) members in the coming years. The real issue in the deal, however, is strategic. It is about India getting accepted as a responsible state with advanced nuclear technology, amounting to tacit recognition of India’s status as a de-facto nuclear weapons state outside the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The 123 Agreement and its operation are expected to give access to nuclear technology from the US and other NSG nations, which are strongly influenced by the US nuclear policies. Non-operation of the deal will not only deny access to US nuclear technology but also affect cooperation in this field with Russia, France, Germany, Japan, Australia and many other nations. Indo-US negotiations for cooperation in civilian nuclear and space programmes and high technology trade were initiated by the NDA government in November 2001. The idea was to get the nuclear technology apartheid lifted and get access to the NSG. These negotiations led to the Next Steps in Strategic Partnership (NSSP) in January 2004. The NSSP included expanded engagement on nuclear regulatory and safety issues, missile defence, space technology and steps to create an appropriate environment for successful high technology commerce. It allowed India to chip away at the restrictions and sanctions imposed by the non-proliferation regime. There was a change of government in New Delhi at this stage. The UPA government, seeing the importance of the issues involved, continued with this policy initiative. The efforts culminated into the Indo-US civil nuclear energy deal and the 123 Agreement. But now the Left Front, coalition partners in the UPA government, and the BJP, prime mover of the past negotiations, argue that the deal will cost India’s strategic autonomy and tie it to US foreign objectives! From the BJP side, former National Security Adviser Brajesh Mishra, who understands the implications of the deal better than anyone else, has raised three doubts: the right to process spent nuclear fuel, adequacy of reprocessed fuel for future military weapons programme, and conduct of joint military exercises like the recent quadrilateral exercise involving the US, Japan, Australia and India in the Bay of Bengal. The issue of the right to process spent fuel has been clarified and stands resolved. The other doubts, too, can be discussed and resolved. But the problem is the lack of communication between our two major political parties on national interest issues. Personally, I do not see why China or any other nation should feel “provoked” over the quadrilateral military exercise in the Bay of Bengal. China needs to look at its own strategic/military relations with Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar. Besides, we are carrying out joint military exercises with several nations, including China and Russia. The Indian Navy has been carrying out Exercise Milan near the Andaman and Nicobar group of islands for decades. All this is a part of military diplomacy, confidence building and maintaining stability and security. Only a naïve national leader will accept that the US has or will have the ability to dictate India’s foreign policy decisions. We have seldom done it in the past and there will be no need to do so in the future. I do not see Indo-US strategic “partnership” turning into an “alliance”. There is no need for India to let this partnership dilute strategic relations with other nations like Russia and China. In the present world order, a nation of India's stature and potential can and should play an independent role and cooperate or compete on issues with other nations, depending upon its national interests. As far as the Left Front is concerned, it is obviously its deeply ensconced dislike for the US and whatever it stands for which makes it see red over India’s foreign and domestic policies. The end of the Cold War and new geo-political and strategic realities seems to have made no difference to their leaders. It is true that the Hyde Act carries some harsh clauses, which tend to compromise some of the assurances given by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Parliament. But we need to recognise that there is a strong non-proliferation lobby with considerable influence in the US Congress. The deal has been a highly contentious issue in the US. There are many international jurists who believe that the Hyde Act is internal US legislation; it will only be a guideline for the US President and cannot override an international agreement. But as a worst case scenario, let us assume that India goes for another nuclear test and the US does annul the deal. This scene needs to be analysed pragmatically. India has declared a voluntary moratorium on further tests. Another nuclear test would obviously be conducted under exceptional circumstances when our national security is seriously jeopardised. Under such circumstances, a nation must do what is essential in its national interest --- just as we did in May 1998. The US President will either have to understand our compulsions or try and impose some sanctions. Have we not faced sanctions earlier, at a time when we were relatively weak? While envisioning India’s future, we must take into account our rising national power status and influence in geo-politics and strategy. Historically and culturally, Indian polity tends to remain internalised, fixing each other rather than fixing outsiders. There is too much of political infighting and too less political consensus. India’s negotiated effort of the last nine years may now become a lost opportunity to build and demonstrate its credibility and rise on the world stage. Yet another case of fractured politics leading to fractured national policies and interests!n The writer, a former Chief of Army Staff, is currently President, ORF Institute of Security Studies,
New Delhi.
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Musclemen of Laspazia
Laspazia
is a quiet town located between Rome and Genoa on the west coast of Italy. During World War II this port had become notorious for harbouring pirates and gangsters who helped Germans to smuggle out gold in bulk to selected destinations just before Italian and German forces took charge. During 1976 we arrived there with a cargo of soyabean meal from France. General public was friendly. Amongst them there were a former Indian soldier who had got married to an Italian nurse and settled there permanently. He was Basanti, originally belonging to Ambala City. He introduced me to some of this neighbourhood friends, quietly hinting at the same time that they were hardcore smugglers and the town itself abounded in such shady persons who indulged in all sorts of nefarious activities and we must be careful. We were scheduled to stay in that harbour for about 10 days. We met Konte, an accomplished Ferrari owner who had made his name in many races. Konte and his wife visited our ship and enjoyed our hospitality. They also took us to their farmhouse located near Milano, northern Italy. They mentioned to us about law and order situation prevailing in Italy at that time and pointed out that very recently mafia gangs from Laspazia had killed a senior executive of Fiat motor car company. One day Konte offered to take us for short trip from Laspazia to Pisa. We were delighted as we never had a chance to ride a Ferrari before. We started from Laspazia on Mongini road at about 5 pm expecting to reach Pisa about 6 pm and return for dinner after visiting the famous leaning tower there. Within an hour we reached a “T” junction on the outskirts of Pisa town where one road turned towards Pisa town while the other headed straight toward Rome. There on roadside we noticed a rough-looking man with two more besides him waving us to a stop. Close to them we could see a blue Fiat car. The guy spoke to Konte asking for a lift to Rome as their car had failed. The man’s stern look and commanding voice gave no choice to Konte but to give way and allow them in. They assured us that they would release the Ferrari once they reached Rome. Very discreetly they made us to look at the pistol they were carrying. Konte realised that this was a near hijack while we sat frozen and mum. We thanked our stars as we returned to Laspazia the next morning from Rome without visiting the leaning tower of Pisa enroute!n |
Constrained hegemon The
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice dissuaded General Musharraf from imposing an Emergency a few weeks ago. The US State Department, through its repeated pronouncements, including that of the Secretary of State Dr. Rice, made it clear that they were against Pakistan straying away from the constitutional path.
Sensing that the imposition of Emergency was imminent the US despatched the Central Command Commander, Admiral Fallon, to Islamabad to impress upon the General the US concerns. General Musharraf ignored all these exhortations and has imposed Emergency. It has not imposed under the provisions of the Pakistani Constitution, as amended after the military takeover in 1999. It has been imposed by General Musharraf in his capacity as the Chief of Army Staf,f indicating that it was, in fact, an imposition of Martial Law. It has been made clear that it was being done after a review with the Prime Minister, the governors of the four provinces, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, the Chief of Armed Forces, the Vice-Chief of Army Staff and the Corps Commanders. That emphasises that this is a military action -- backed by the entire military establishment -- and that the Army Chief was suspending the Constitution, indicating that this action was outside the purview of the Pakistani Constitution. This was happening in Islamabad even as the UN envoy, Mr Ibrahim Gambari, was arriving in Yangon to discuss with the military Junta of Myanmar the relaxation of the military rule which has been in place for seventeen years. While President George Bush pleads with China and India to exert pressure on Myanmar to liberalise the military rule, he is careful not to mention the third country which has the longest frontier with Myanmar and has perhaps the most intimate relations – Thailand. The reason is Thailand, an ally of the US for over sixty years, is presently under military rule, though a very liberal military rule with a commitment to revert back to democracy in the near future. But military rule, all the same. Even as the UN envoy reached Myanmar the Military Junta expelled the UN representative in Yangon. This is not the first time the Pakistani military leadership has ignored a US exhortation against a military take over. In September 1999, the then Prime Minister’s brother Shahbaz Sharif travelled to Washington and apprised the US authorities of the likely threat to Nawaz Sharif’s elected Government from the Pakistani military. The US State Department issued a statement asserting that any military takeover in Pakistan would be disfavoured by Washington. The Chief of General Staff of Pakistan General Aziz and the Corps Commanders ignored the US and deposed Nawaz Sharif on October 12, 1999. President Bush and Secretary Rice have now come out with plaintive pleas to General Musharraf that he should return to constitutionality, shed his uniform, as promised, and hold elections, as scheduled. The country which is at present in an angry confrontation with US is its ally of 58 years, and a member of NATO - Turkey. Provoked by terrorist attacks on its soldiers patrolling the border with Iraq, Turkey has mobilised its forces to attack the launch bases of PKK in Iraqi territory. The Turkish Parliament has passed a resolution authorising the Turkish Government to launch punitive attacks into Iraqi territory. PKK is a Turkish Kurdish organisation fighting for a separate Kurdistan and has been declared an international terrorist organisation. The Turks refused to provide passage for US forces to launch its attack on Iraq in 2003. They are now demanding US to put pressure on the Iraqi Government and the Iraqi Kurdish administration to prevent PKK from using Iraqi Kurdish territory. Turkey has warned about taking counteraction if the US fails to act effectively. Meanwhile, Turkey is holding talks with Iran on common security measures against Kurds, though the US does not favour its allies holding talks with Iran which it wants to be isolated. There are reports that Turkey may hold talks with Syria, another US outcaste. Leaderships of Afghanistan and Pakistan are negotiating with Iran in spite of US disapproval. Pakistan is close to finalising its pipeline deal. In spite of all pressure from the US, Pakistan has not allowed either the US or the International Atomic Energy Agency to have access to the notorious nuclear proliferators, Dr. A Q Khan. It would appear that the leaderships of countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, even Iraq and Turkey, are not worried about US imperialist dominance and are in a position to take a stand against US. The Thai and Burmese generals too are not frightened of the US. The preachings of the US President and the Secretary of State about the virtues of democracy have left Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Islamic countries, all closely allied to the US, virtually unmoved. The US could launch a military attack on Afghanistan because the Taliban regime was already ostracised by the entire international community except for Pakistan, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. It could stupidly invade Iraq because Saddam Hussain, by his invasion of Kuwait, and his subsequent conduct, had by and large isolated himself and estranged the entire Arab World. The US developed a successfully technology-denial regime against India during the Cold War when most of the industrialised nations and China followed the US lead and only the Soviet Union was a countervailer. Though the Cold War is over and the bipolar world has transformed into a six-power balance-of-power system, the technology denial system against India has survived. Most of the nations of the 45-nation nuclear suppliers group are keen to dismantle the technology denial regime against India and for that the 123 agreement is procedurally the first step and the key one. The dismantling of the technology denial regime against India, once done, is an irreversible one. Today the US is a constrained hegemon. This has been realised all over the world including by General Mushrraf. Excessive fear of US imperialist domination is a hangover of the colonial and Cold War eras. No doubt the US is a mighty military, economic, technological power, but today’s international system does not permit domination of the hoary imperialist kind. Whether it is allies like France, Germany and Turkey or developing states like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Egypt, Thailand, Myanmar and others, they are able to exercise their sovereignty without shuddering about US dominance. Unfortunately, beliefs and dogmas inherited from the past affect some people’s political perceptions as much as they do religious ones in the case of fundamentalists. |
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Off target in the war on cancer It’s
time to admit that our efforts in the decades-old war against cancer have often targeted the wrong enemies and used the wrong weapons. Throughout the industrial world, the war on cancer remains focused on commercially fueled efforts to develop drugs and technologies that can find and treat the disease - to the tune of more than $100 billion a year in the United States alone. Meanwhile, the struggle basically ignores most of the things known to cause cancer, such as tobacco, radiation, sunlight, benzene, asbestos, solvents, and some drugs and hormones. Even now, modern cancer-causing agents such as gasoline exhaust, pesticides and other air pollutants are simply deemed the inevitable price of progress. They’re not. Scientists understand that most cancer is not born but made. Although identical twins start life with amazingly similar genetic material, as adults they do not develop the same cancers. As with most of us, where they live and work and the habits that they develop do more to determine their health than their genes do. I’m calling for prudence and prevention, not panic. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Environmental Working Group have confirmed that American children are being born with dozens of chemicals in their bodies that did not exist just two decades earlier, including toxic flame retardants from fabrics. A new study by Barbara Cohn and other scientists at the Public Health Institute in Berkeley, Calif., finds that girls exposed to elevated levels of the pesticide DDT before age 14 are five times more likely to develop breast cancer when they reach middle age. But new cases of cancer not linked to smoking or aging are on the rise, such as cancer in children and non-Hodgkin lymphoma in people older than 55. Even our triumphs in battling cancer can leave us with tragic shortcomings. Consider one irony of oncology: Many of the agents that can so effectively rout cancer early in life, such as chemotherapy and radiation, can also increase the risks of falling prey to other forms of the disease later on. According to a study in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, one out of every three girls treated with radiation before age 16 to arrest Hodgkin’s disease – a cancer of the lymphatic system that often occurs in young people – will develop breast cancer by age 40. Most parents (and many emergency-medicine physicians) don’t know that a single CT scan of a child’s head can deliver the same radioactive dose as that in 200 to 6,000 chest X-rays. Some pediatric experts recommend that CT scans of children be restricted to medical emergencies and kept at doses as low as reasonably possible. Of the nearly 80,000 chemicals regularly bought and sold today, according to the National Academy of Sciences, fewer than 10 percent have been tested for their capacity to cause cancer or do other damage. In fact, our growing dependence on many unstudied modern conveniences makes us the subjects of vast, uncontrolled experiments to which none of us ever consents. Consider cellphones, whose long-term health consequences could prove disastrous. Experimental findings show that cellphone radiation damages living cells and can penetrate the skull. Widely publicised research on cellphone use in the early 1990s indicates that the phones are safe, but those studies did not include any children and excluded all business users. While exposure levels are much lower on newer phones, the effects of gadgets that have increasingly become part of our children’s lives remain unstudied. That’s unwise. Recent reports from Sweden and France, published in the journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, reveal that adults who have used cellphones for 10 years or more have twice as much brain cancer on the side of their heads most frequently exposed to the phone. The Swiss and Chinese governments have set official exposure limits for cellphone microwave emissions that are 500 times lower than those the United States mandates. No matter how much our efforts to treat cancer may advance, the best way to reduce cancer’s toll is to keep people from getting it. We must reduce the hazards faced by those working to build our homes, transport our goods and make the products we consume. We should restrict CT scans of children to medical emergencies, limit the use of diagnostic radiation in general, ban young children. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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Inside Pakistan Through
the November 3 proclamation of the state of emergency, General Pervez Musharraf has tried to send across a clear message that the army's supremacy cannot be challenged in Pakistan. The judiciary was giving the impression through its activist role that the days of the army having the upper hand were over and the rule of law would prevail. The proclamation seems to be aimed at removing this impression, besides achieving other objectives. Let us see what exactly the proclamation, as carried in certain newspapers, says: “Whereas some members of the judiciary are working at cross purposes with the executive and legislature in the fight against terrorism and extremism, thereby weakening the government and the nation's resolve and diluting the efficacy of its actions to control this menace; “Whereas there has been increasing interference by some members of the judiciary in government policy, adversely affecting economic growth, in particular; “Whereas constant interference in executive functions, including but not limited to the control of the terrorist activity, economic policy, price controls, downsizing of corporations and urban planning, has weakened the writ of the government; the police force has been completely demoralised and is fast losing its efficacy to fight terrorism, and intelligence agencies have been thwarted in their activities and prevented from pursuing terrorists; “Whereas some hardcore militants, extremists, terrorists and suicide bombers, who were arrested and being investigated, were ordered to be released…; “Whereas some judges by overstepping the limits of judicial authority have taken over the executive and legislative functions; “Whereas the government is committed to the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law, and holds the superior judiciary in high esteem, it is nonetheless of paramount importance that the honourable judges confine the scope of their activity to the judicial function and not assume the charge of administration.” These are the operative paragraphs. The proclamation, clearly targeted at the judiciary, says at the end, “Now, therefore, … I, General Pervez Musharraf, Chief of the Army Staff, proclaim emergency throughout Pakistan.” Thus, the members of the judiciary and the rest of the Pakistanis have been told that it is the General’s writ that has to run. This viewpoint is supported by the information given by Fasi Zaka in an article carried in The News, “At 6 p.m. on November 3, the state television had the following headline, ‘Chief of Army Staff General Pervez Musharraf declares a state of emergency and proclaims a Provisional Constitutional Order’.” The writer adds, “We all wondered: did the COAS, General Pervez Musharraf, inform the President of Pakistan, Mr Pervez Musharraf, of this decision?” Interestingly, as Fasi points out, “one newscaster had to repeat the headline thrice because he had no other information.”
Soon after the declaration of the emergency General Musharraf promulgated two ordinances prohibiting the print and electronic media from publishing or broadcasting “statements that abet terrorist activities or terrorism”. But media people actually do not know what to publish and what to ignore. As The Frontier Post (November 6) says, “The language of the new amendments (to the Press, Newspapers, News Agencies and Books Registration Ordinance 2002 and the Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority Ordinance 2002) is general and vague and they create more confusion than provide any guidance to the members of the media as to how to cope with the situation…” Obviously, the military regime does not want the people to be aware of the developments in the wake of the emergency declaration. But is this possible today? So far as the TV channels are concerned, “One cannot turn the clock back to the time when PTV was the only source of information – or disinformation. In today’s high-tech world when information can be found on the Internet or obtained through cell phones, the move against television channels will be counterproductive”, Dawn warns the government. One must admire the struggle being carried on by the media against the repressive rules introduced by the Musharraf regime. “The old adage ‘Don’t shoot me, I’m only the messenger’ seems to have failed to surface in the collective minds of the latest dispensation… Shooting the messenger is only an option when you don’t want to hear the news he bears.‘There are none so deaf as those who don’t want to hear’. These ending lines in one of the editorials carried in The News on Tuesday truly depict the situation that prevails in Pakistan today. |
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