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Reforms on
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Discord
in Malaysia
Pain in the heart of
Europe
Wild
delights
The bad, the boring
and the ugly Delhi Durbar
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Reforms on hold ONE may not share the optimism Finance Minister P. Chidambaram expressed on Sunday at the India Economic Summit that “some breakthrough” would take place in pushing reforms during the remaining 16-month tenure of the UPA government because, as elections approach, populism takes precedence over any hard, unpleasant decisions. Besides, if the Left has scaled down its opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal, it has more to do with timing the elections to its advantage than any sudden policy shift or rethinking on reforms. It may not let go unchallenged the government’s unfinished reform agenda. Even in sectors where opposition is minimal, the government has been lax in implementing its agenda of reforms for fear of antagonising the electorate. Mr Chidambaram, quite candidly, admitted that the government’s performance was below expectation on two fronts: in implementing banking, pension and insurance reforms and improving the delivery mechanism for various social security programmes. The failure to carry forward financial reforms may be due to the Leftist opposition, but there is no excuse for continuing with the much-maligned delivery system, which becomes notoriously leaky at the hands of implementing agencies at the state level. The UPA government’s enhanced budgetary allocations for education, health and rural employment schemes are in danger of being swallowed by entrenched interests. Few expect any better outcomes from increased outlays. The Finance Minister has described the bureaucracy as a “hurdle” in achieving inclusive growth. More than the bureaucracy it is the poor quality of political leadership at the state level which fritters away scarce resources or diverts funds to achieve their short-term electoral goals. Red tape and corruption continue to hamper growth, again more at the state than at the Central level. An effective political leadership can electrify the laid-back bureaucracy. Quite often, the political leadership and the bureaucracy join hands to share the spoils of office as they have in Punjab and then development and reforms take a back seat. The Prime Minister’s administrative reforms seem to have got lost in bureaucratic cupboards. It is not too late to retrieve and implement them in the long-term interest of economic growth.
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Bhajan Lal party HOW one rates the significance of the Haryana Janhit Congress (BL), floated by former Chief Minister Bhajan Lal and his MP son Kuldeep Bishnoi full two years after rebelling from the Congress, depends on which side of the political fence one happens to be. But this much is for sure that it has added a new dimension to the two-horse race fight which has been the norm all these years. Regional parties like the INLD have been giving stiff competition to the Congress in the state in election after election. The BJP, which is not much of a force in the state, has been siding with such regional outfits. The Bhajan Lal party, too, can garner sufficient votes to make things all the more difficult for the grand old Congress. Caste factor is something that cannot be wished away in Haryana. Let’s face it, Bhajan Lal enjoys considerable clout in his own community and can also attract sufficient anti-Jat votes. To that extent, his party can be a major player in the days to come. [In the last Lok Sabha elections in 2004, the Congress swept the polls winning as many as nine of the 10 seats, with one going to the BJP. Even in the Assembly elections in 2005, it captured 67 of the 90 seats. It will find it very difficult to repeat the performance following the new development, because Bhajan Lal had a significant role to play in many of the victories. It is remarkable that Kuldeep Bishnoi, who is to be the president of the new party, has tendered his resignation from the Lok Sabha not with immediate effect but from June 1, 2008. Dalit votes have been traditionally going to the Congress in the state all these years. Things will become even more interesting if the BSP gains ground in Haryana, as it has been doing in several neighbouring states. That will set the stage for a contest which will be truly multi-cornered. Which way the other son of Bhajan Lal, Deputy Chief Minister Chander Mohan, jumps will also be watched closely.
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Discord in Malaysia THE ethnic Indians in Malaysia are up in arms against the indifference of Kuala Lumpur to their socio-economic plight. They are denied opportunities of growth available to the majority Malays or ethnic Chinese. They are Malaysian nationals, constituting about 7 per cent of the country’s total 26 million population, but they have been treated differently because of their Indian origin. “This is a matter which concerns us” as Indians, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pointed out on Friday last. India’s expression of resentment did not go in vain. The Malaysian authorities have set up a “special committee” to find out what should be done to end their suffering. But this cannot satisfy the aggrieved people unless some concrete measures are taken to address their grievances. The difficulties being faced by the ethnic Indians were highlighted when the Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) organised a demonstration in Kuala Lumpur a week ago. Hindraf wants the matter to be referred to the International Court of Justice. The aggrieved community is among the economically deprived sections of Malaysian society. It has the highest rate of suicides, illiteracy and infant mortality. This is so despite the fact that it has a political organisation — the Malaysian Indian Congress (MIC) — to fight for its rights. Interestingly, the MIC is a constituent of Malaysia’s multiethnic coalition government led by the United Malays National Organisation of Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, who has denied the charges levelled by Hindraf. The root cause of the problem is a programme launched soon after Malaysia became independent. The programme, aimed at ending widespread poverty among the Malays, included helping them financially in their entrepreneurial projects and subsidising their children’s education in the country and abroad. All this could be justified then, as only 2.4 per cent of Malaysia’s wealth was in the hands of the Malays till 1970. The affirmative action continues even today. As a result, there is growing social unrest in the country which is, otherwise, admired for its economic achievements. To build an inclusive society it is necessary to win the confidence of every community.
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I have climbed to the top of the greasy pole. — Benjamin Disraeli
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Pain in the heart of Europe The
affliction of disintegration is a curse confined to new emerging states finding their feet or the former communist countries bereft of the glue and authoritarian systems of the past. The most dramatic in the latter category were the demise of the Soviet Union and the tragic break-up of Tito's Yugoslavia. The separation of Slovakia from the Czech Republic was, by contrast, a civilised affair. Ironically, the West would now have the province of Kosovo severed from Serbia. But what is one to make of a crisis of statehood in the heart of prosperous Western Europe, to boot the headquarters of the remarkable European Union project. Belgium has been without a government for long periods earlier, generally a cause for some merriment and snide jokes. But the jokes are turning sour this time around as a second attempt at forming a coalition government failed last Saturday 174 days after elections were held on June 10, with the Flemish Christian Democrats and the smaller New Flemish Alliance (NFA) winning most of the seats in Parliament. Support for the NFA is growing and the deputy leader of the party, Jan Jambon, has declared apocalyptically, "There is no reason for Belgium to exist". As every schoolboy knows, Belgium is divided between the Flemish-speaking north and French-speaking Walloons in the south, the linguistic division being 6 million to 4.5 million. In recent decades, prosperity has moved to the north while the south is poorer, home to the rust-belt industries. There has never been much of the tub-thumping American variety of nationalism in a nation of what is described as an almost accidental union of two people in 1870. It was indeed rare to see a recent pro-unity demonstration of a few thousands carrying Belgian flags in Brussels. The two linguistic groups have for the most part lived next to each other reading different newspapers and watching different television channels. Brussels is a particularly difficult nut to crack because it is a francophone enclave in Flemish territory and is at the heart of the crisis created by the Flemish desire for greater devolution of power to the two entities. Indeed, the crisis worsened because the Flemish parties used their majority in Parliament to vote for carving out a bilingual district in and around Brussels against the wishes of the French-speaking Walloons, depriving the latter of voting for the parties of their linguistic kin. The Flemings, on their part, wish to stop subsidising the south with its high unemployment and want more powers in areas as far-reaching as justice, transport, unemployment and social security. Polls recently carried out by the French Liberation and the Flemish VRT News provide interesting results. According to the former, a majority in Wallonia is for joining France and 45 per cent of the Dutch in the latter survey would favour a Flemish merger with the Netherlands. There are, on the other hand, many Belgians who believe, in the words of the former Belgian Foreign Minister, Karel de Gucht, that "separation is an illusory scenario". A former Prime Minister, Jean-Luc Dehaene, has pronounced, "We'll live together". Even as the departing centre-left government of Guy Verhofstadt soldiers on in a caretaker capacity, the two main dividing issues remain to be reconciled: the rights of the French-speaking minority in Flanders and the future devolution of powers. King Albert II had given the leader of the Flemish Christian Democrats, Yves Leterne, the task of forming a coalition twice before the latter threw his hands up. The initiative remains with the King but only the politicians can solve a problem that is casting a long shadow on the basis of Belgium's existence. Belgium has not had a francophone prime minister since the 1970s. The caretaker government cannot take major decisions to tackle unemployment and cope with such problems as the rising price of oil impacting on the lives of the majority. While Belgians are generally in the habit of taking crises in government formation in their stride, some are drawing other conclusions, apart from the tendency to blame the tribe of politicians for all their problems. One suggestion gaining credence is that the federalists in the European Union, as opposed to others who want a looser union (the latter view is gaining currency), would encourage the demotion of the nation-state in favour of regions dealing directly with other regions in the EU. An increasing worry for Belgians looking ahead is that a divorce between the Flemings and Walloons is likely to be messy. The Brussels district is an obvious focal point; another is the feeling of many Walloons that the Flemish-speakers are being selfish in their desire to keep their wealth, instead of sharing it with fellow Belgians. To complicate matters, the French language has traditionally had a snobbish appeal in the country denied the Dutch the Flemings speak. Ironically, the Dutch in the Netherlands make fun of the variety of their language spoken in Belgium. Apart from the ability of the Belgian political establishment to seek a viable political compromise to keep the nation united notionally, if not in every respect, the prevailing crisis is a test for the European Union. What is the point of a union that aspires to a political role on the world stage, in addition to its undoubted success economically, if it cannot come to the aid of a founder member in its hour of travail? Why cannot France and the Netherlands come together to help their linguistic brothers find a solution to stay together? There are obvious sensitivities in other countries seeking to solve an internal problem of another country, but the cement of the European Union should be strong enough to withstand friendly overtures from fellow members. We live in different times from the halcyon days of Jacques Delors presiding over the destinies of the then European Economic Community charting a brave new world. The present head of the EU commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, was a compromise choice precisely because those seeking a looser union such as Britain won the argument against the so-called federalists. The changed times nevertheless do not preclude informal approaches by France and the Netherlands to help steady Belgium's roiling
waters.
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Wild delights
The
jungle lore of Gir sanctuary in Gujarat has it that when the Duke of Edinburgh toured the place in the 1980s, the king of jungle — the Asiatic lion, did not oblige him with a darshan. The duke, say old timers, was so disappointed that he expressed doubts over the existence of lions in Gir. The royal scepticism was, however, misplaced. The fault was not the lion’s but of the duke’s itinerary makers who chose afternoon time for the visit forgetting that it is lion’s siesta time. The teeming security personnel did the rest. But looked from a different angle, the duke’s disappointment was due to the disregard of a simple rule of jungle visit — don’t expect too much. It has always kept me in good stead. In 1990, when I first visited the Gir sanctuary with my wife, all we wanted was to soak the ambience of the wild. But luckily, we sighted not only a pride of lions but also a beautiful panther, which leaped across the road ahead of us and vanished in the foliage. We also saw two panther cubs — hardly a few days old — found by the forest guards. We were told the panther we had seen was their mother who was scouring the jungle in a state of confusion after she had somehow got separated from them. Recently, on a visit to the wild ass sanctuary in little Rann of Kutch, we were told that the place is also home to some rare bird species, including the Great Indian Bustard. Our eyes lit up but we kept our hopes in check. Next morning while crisscrossing the small islands dotting the rann that are the habitat of the Bustard, wife spotted a biggish bird at distance. We were thrilled. Though it turned out to be the less rare Macqueen’s Bustard our day was made. But more was to come. We discovered what a beautiful animal wild ass is when an excited horde of these kept pace with our jeep touching 70 kmph. Imagine the irony of running at that speed and yet be called an ass! We left these and moved towards the marshes and witnessed the rare sight of hundreds of Flamingos taking off into the sky in a rippling canopy of pink, white and black. The piece de resistance, however, came when a grayish speck at distance looked out of place in the vast khaki expanse. Focusing binoculars on it, I found it was a falcon - Shaheen falcon. The mere mention of the name drew an excited response from our guide, “You’re lucky! It hasn’t been sighted here in last five years.” Thrilled, we moved closer and had an eyeful of the lion of the sky. What more could one ask in the span of one morning?
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The bad, the boring and the ugly The Independent’s foreign correspondents, who travel all over the world, each nominate what in their experience is the world’s worst airport. Here is their litany of sufferings, in no particular order. So many unpleasant things can happen at airports. Flights missed at great cost, and greater inconvenience; terminal delays; rudeness at immigration; body searches at Customs; interrogation at security; missed connections; lost luggage; or bomb alerts that force everyone out into the cold. Then there’s the merely dull: the interminable queues, the hours before take-off, the boring shopping, the long walks to the departure gate. And when you’ve almost, finally, got through it all, there’s the mild stress you feel as you reach your seat and your hand baggage is stowed overhead. A few of the 2.2 billion travellers who fly annually suffer a far worse fate. A new guide to the world’s most awful airports, by Foreign Policy offers in its top five: Dakar in Senegal; New Delhi in India; Mineralnye Vody in Russia; Baghdad International, Iraq; and Charles de Gaulle in Paris. Starting with the most dangerous, it notes that planes landing in Baghdad have to execute a “stomach-churning” descent in case of missiles, before travellers head downtown on the “highway of death”. Delhi? Aggressive beggars, syringes on the terminal floor, filthy bathrooms. Why are airports so bad? Perhaps it’s because travellers are not so much customers as captives, and airports exploit them without mercy. — Martin Hickman
Beijing This is no consumer paradise – mostly what’s on offer is shrink-wrapped fruit and cheap panda dolls. And don’t even think about buying a foreign newspaper – most are banned from its precincts. A lack of slots means that domestic flights are sometimes parked in what feels like the city of Tianjin, leaving you stuck on a bus for half an hour as you head back to the terminal. Initial changes ahead of the Olympics include the removal of the emergency exit notice reading: “No entry on peacetime”. And I shall miss the hands-free sign above the taps saying: “Unnecessary touching”. Delhi The marble walls and floors of Delhi’s Indira Gandhi international airport are the colour of dead flesh under the fluorescent lights, the carpeting is a thin scarlet runner, and paan stains are splattered in corners. Creature comforts are negligible. Passport control takes an eternity. Half the trolleys are broken down. They force you to x-ray your luggage coming in to the country as well as going out. The taxi stands strategically located before the exits snare innocent tourists and charge them several times the rate of the regular taxi wallahs outside. The duty-free shops are a joke. Still, there are others; Heathrow is horrible; Frankfurt destroys the soul; Dhaka had no signboards the last time I was there, and Mae Sot (in Thailand), has no airplanes. — Peter Popham — Clifford Coonan
Paris, de Gaulle I nominate Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris. The old part is a cramped and crumbling concrete doughnut with no windows; and the new part, or second terminal, is actually six terminals, scattered and difficult to find your way around. Part of it fell down in 2004, killing five people. Marginally less awful, but only just, is Beauvais, north-west of Paris (a Ryanair hub). This has developed in past 10 years from a prefab in a muddy field to a tent in a muddy field and, now, a new cardboard building in a muddy field. It’s miles away from Paris, and only reachable by a long coach-ride. Bad airports aren’t exclusive to France, however. John F Kennedy in New York is tatty, scattered about and poorly interconnected. Dublin is always being torn down and rebuilt; it never seems to be finished and never seems adequate enough to cope with all the extra air-passenger traffic generated by the budget airline Ryanair and the Irish economic boom. — John Lichfield
London, Heathrow The former Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd once described Heathrow as a “camp” – and he was getting the full VIP treatment every time he passed through. The very word conjures images that are almost wholly negative: the foreigner-baffling approach to Terminal Four, which always feels like a temporary diversion, but isn’t; the massive, shuffling queue of arrivals at passport control on, say, a Saturday evening, calculated to dissipate any surge of homecoming euphoria; the mournful stocks of hairspray and aftershave discarded at departures; the breathtaking costs incurred by anyone ignorant enough to take a taxi into the city, and – more personally – the peculiar humiliation of being forced, on a bleak winter’s morning after a sleepless 20-hour flight from the Far East, to pay in duty half the cost of a Hong Kong-made suit that falls apart two days later. Maybe it’s no one’s fault. Security is a fact of life – though Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, apart from the too-well documented harassment of even Israeli Arabs, seems to do it so much more efficiently. — Donald Macintyre
Baghdad Baghdad airport is hell. It is approached down a dangerous highway. Suitcases and cars are searched, and searched again. Everything is done in a miasma of fear. Everywhere, there are cement blast walls and razor wire to impede the enterprising suicide bomber. On reaching the terminal, there are four more searches to go through. Some passengers fall at the first hurdle: they do not have an exit visa. Why this is necessary is unclear, but it adds to the earnings of the Interior Ministry. Last year, I saw a wounded French photographer with shrapnel through his shoulder being turned back. You cannot get in to the airport complex without a ticket, but this may not be enough. Some airline staff systematically sell more seats than there are on the plane. One American whom I was standing next to almost had a nervous breakdown when he was “bumped”, and paid a $1,100 (£500) bribe to get back on. The departure lounge is also testing, because there are no announcements. — Patrick Cockburn
Los Angeles/LAX It can be argued that all American airports became the world’s worst after September 11, as queues for security became hellish, and struggling carriers cancelled flights. I retain a special dislike for LAX. Nothing approaches the horror of American Airlines losing control of Terminal 4 when – at least on a couple of occasions – it refused to staff the check-in desks adequately and made no provision for passengers with imminent departures. I missed my flight, and I’m guessing at least half of the distressed crowds did, too. Over at terminal one, the security queue often snakes hundreds of yards outside. Experts have pointed out that the queue itself is a risk – any terrorist could drive by with a sub-machine gun. The scrapping of in-flight meals on domestic flights has caused fresh hell on the other side of the security gates, too, giving passengers the choice of queuing all over again for overpriced sandwiches and coffee, or going hungry for hours on end. — Andrew Gumbel
Mogadishu The approach into Mogadishu’s international airport – swooping over unspoilt white and orange beaches, the deep, blue waves of the Indian Ocean crashing into the shore – is one of the most beautiful in Africa. The arrival is quite different. Insurgents battling government and Ethiopian troops throughout the city have been known to lob the odd shell in the direction of the airport. A week after The Independent last visited, a plane was shot down. To leave the airport requires an escort of at least four men with AK-47s. In a country where Al-Qa’ida’s East African wing is now considered fully operational, Somali immigration officials are naturally keen to ensure no one unauthorised smuggles their way through immigration. Unfortunately, the checks seem to consist of little more than handing out letters informing disembarking passengers: “After a thorough investigation it has been established that ‘insert name here’ is not a member of Al-Qa’ida.” No other African airport is likely to be bombed as the plane attempts to land. But there are a handful of others which scare passengers in different ways. In Freetown, Sierra Leone, the seven-minute helicopter ride from airport to city on old, rusty Russian-made helicopters (flown by old, rusty Russian-made pilots) makes it an experience to forget. At some airports the corruption is low key. At Kinshasa things are far more upfront and strangely businesslike. Want to collect your bag? That will be $20. Want to get your passport stamped? That will be $10, plus an extra $10 if you want it done today. —Steve Bloomfield
London, Gatwick Disappointing is the word that best sums up the world’s busiest single-runway airport. Nowhere makes me more eager to leave the country, while making it more difficult to do so. It’s the South Terminal I really loathe. Once you’ve made it to the end of the interminable security queue, past the understaffed security checks and into the claustrophobically circular airside concourse, you’re in a maelstrom of human traffic, hemmed in by mediocre shops. Want a coffee? Choose from a array of fast-food outlets. They serve a proper coffee at the North Terminal, so why not here? Still, at least they’ve got ride of the depressing smoker’s box, sandwiched between McDonald’s, Wetherspoon and Garfunkel’s. Once you’ve managed to get out, the passages leading to departure gates seem to be in a permanent state of renovation. Arrive back late and you’re faced with an £80 taxi fare into London or a miserable wait in the run-down station. — Sophie Lam
Moscow Moscow Sheremetyevo, a drab shoebox of an airport I have the misfortune to find myself in every couple of weeks, gets my vote. Reachable by a single road that also leads to Ikea, St Petersburg and half the world’s dachas, it can take three hours to get there from the city centre. Once there, the only acceptable food option is a TGI Friday’s that takes an age to prepare the simplest order, frequently meaning you throw the money down and run to check-in without being fed. At passport control, scan each line for anyone of black or Asian appearance and pick the one with the fewest such people – the border guards give anyone who isn’t Caucasian extra hassle. Finally, you’ll be accosted by an army of taxi sharks demanding £50 or more to get to the city centre. Bargain them down to £25, get into a Lada that reeks of petrol fumes, and look forward to that three-hour drive. Welcome to Russia! — Shaun Walker By arrangement with
The Independent
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Delhi Durbar Nothing succeeds like personal loyalty in the Congress and being on the right side at the right time. Himachal Pradesh food and civil supplies minister Singhi Ram denied a ticket this time after winning six consecutive elections since 1982, seems to have forgotten this mantra. He was considered a dependable loyalist of Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh, who was not even ready to listen to any complaint against him. He fell from grace this time for his attempts to come out of the shackles of the Raja of Bushahar and emerge as a Dalit leader in the state, forgetting that he had been brought into politics when just a postal clerk by the Raja himself. All last minute efforts by Singhi Ram to plead his case with the central high command failed and the writ of Virbhadra prevailed in giving the ticket from the reserved constituency in Rampur to former ITBP DIG Nand Lal, who also had the 10-Janpath “loyalty” tag pinned firmly to his chest, having served there as SPG commandant.
Abdullah hogs
the show Former Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah is a good orator but his weakness for an audience sometimes embarasses and upsets others. Recently, the leaders of the United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA) including Telegu Desam party chief Nara Chandrababu Naidu faced some awkward moments when Abdullah took charge of the media briefing ahead of the public rally “Rythuru Garjana” (Farmers’ Roar) in Vijayawada. He virtually hijacked the UNPA press conference by launching a scathing attack on controversial Bangladesh writer Taslima Nasreen. He did not stop at that but started arguing with mediapersons on the issue. Other UNPA leaders were getting restless because they were keen to primarily focus on the farmers’ issue. As Abdullah continued to harp on the Taslima issue, INLD leader and former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala picked up another mike, drawing the attention of the mediapersons to the farmers’ issues and cutting short Abdullah.
Film demystifying AIDS Prior to World Aids Day on Saturday, Oxfam (India) Trust organised a special screening of a 45-minute film Bewaqt barish a multiplex in the capital most frequented by the youth. Financed by the European Union, the film has been made by noted directors Sumitra Bhave and Sunil Suthankar. The story is based on Oxfam’s work with rural and tribal people in Rajasthan and Orissa. The film intends to demystify issues around sex, sexuality and HIV/Aids and encourage people to discuss issues related to sex easily and not treat them as taboo. On World Aids Day the film was also made available on the web (www.bewaqt-barish.org) in a format that can be downloaded. Contributed by S.S.
Negi, S. Satyanarayanan and Tripti Nath
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The worst airport is the one I have to use most often: Beijing Capital International Airport. Although generally very efficient, it is blighted with nervous ticks and quirks as to make it both lovable and infuriating at the same time. The introduction of Norman Foster’s new terminal in time for the Olympic Games will most likely change air travel in the Chinese capital completely. It has had some minor cosmetic changes in recent years, but it remains a throwback to the days of central planning and socialist realism.