 |
|
Abuse of arrest Farm suicides on
the rise |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Russy “Blitz”
Karanjia Free, frank and fearless all through life Owner-editor Russy Khurshedji Karanjia was “Blitz”. It is in the fitness of things that he died on February 1, exactly the day on which the sensational tabloid was launched in 1941. In his death at 96, Indian journalism has lost one of its most colourful characters.
Afghans yearn for
security
Watch that smile
Torture does not work Chatterati Towards a gentler
capitalism
|
|
Farm suicides on the rise The
countrywide figure of 17,060 farm suicides in 2006, released by the National Crime Records Bureau, is shockingly high and is bound to ring alarm bells. Maharashtra tops the list with 4,453 suicides in one year followed by Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. The first reaction to the news has come from Maharashtra Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh, who has claimed that every suicide cannot be linked to indebtedness and that the number of suicides in his state has gone down as has been reported in the local media. There may be some cases, no doubt, unjustly clubbed with farm suicides to claim compensation. However, it is also true that the ruling political parties tend to downplay tragedies in the fields to avoid any adverse electoral fallout. For instance, in Punjab there have been off and on reports of indebted farmers being driven to suicide. When the state was left out of the Central package for distressed farmers, NGOs and representatives of peasants alleged that the state government had not presented a correct picture of the ground reality to the Centre. All this points to the absence of an independent, reliable national agency capable of scientifically holding farm surveys. Nonetheless, there is no denying the fact that farming is no longer a remunerative occupation and indebted farmers have been forced to end their lives. To be fair, the UPA government has certainly taken steps to strengthen irrigation and improve access to farm credit, but still much remains to be done. Farm labour, unfortunately, does not figure adequately in the government programmes. A recent survey by the Punjab State Farmers Commission shows that 70 per cent of the farm labourers in the state are also under debt. The solution to farm problems does not lie in announcing piecemeal packages for particular states but in making concerted efforts, both at the Central and state levels, to accelerate agricultural growth and promote supplementary avenues of income. |
|
Russy “Blitz” Karanjia Owner-editor Russy Khurshedji Karanjia was “Blitz”. It is in the fitness of things that he died on February 1, exactly the day on which the sensational tabloid was launched in 1941. In his death at 96, Indian journalism has lost one of its most colourful characters. Many may remember the tabloid for its girlie photos, but that was only an irreverent cover for the more serious journalism that he practised, in the form of political chicanery, misgovernance and news interviews. The special brand of journalism which he had promoted – supporting Nehru and other top leaders while going hammer and tongs against others – made Blitz one of the most popular weeklies in India. Karanzia courted controversies left, right and centre but used this publicity to increase the circulation of the paper. Karanjia being the former war correspondent of a British newspaper during World War II, had named his paper Blitz after the saturation bombing during the war. Quite like a military operation, he used his journalistic blasts to telling effect and the tabloid lived up to its motto of “Free, Frank and Fearless”, often in unconventional ways. It is another matter that when he got disillusioned with the Leftist philosophy, he tried to turn the editorial policy towards Hindutva which proved to be its undoing. Despite having total control over all branches of Blitz, Karanjia allowed several journalists to make their mark in its columns, the most notable being Khwaja Ahmed Abbas whose Last Page was highly readable and P. Sainath, who later won the Magsaysay Award. Karanjia also came up with The Daily in 1980s, but it was not quite as distinctive as Blitz. Age had caught up with him. At a time when some of the even daily newspapers are going the tabloid way, Karanjia must have breathed his last with a sense of smug satisfaction over the critics following his ways. |
|
America is a land whose centre is nowhere; England one whose centre is everywhere.
— John Updike |
Afghans yearn for security
News
of the killing of the Deputy Governor of Helmand province in southern Afghanistan on January 31 comes soon after President Hamid Karzai’s accusation that the British are responsible for the mess there; London’s riposte that British troops are doing a great job; and reports by two American think-tanks that Afghanistan is a failed state and that the war on terrorism is going badly. None of this is good news. Afghanistan is the frontline state against global terrorism. The war on terrorism started here, with the overthrow of the fundamentalist Taliban regime by the US in November 2001. But that military victory turned out to be a Pandora’s box of new challenges, the first step in a protracted war on many fronts. Security and reconstruction are intertwined in Afghanistan. The Karzai government as well as NATO forces have to win the hearts and minds of ordinary Afghans. Unfortunately, a badly coordinated strategy and inadequate aid have stymied both security and reconstruction efforts. Security was the raison d’etre for toppling the Taliban. Six years later, security remains elusive — and the top priority for Mr Karzai and his NATO supporters. Mr Karzai’s writ has never run outside Kabul. Taliban violence is back to pre-2001 levels; a nexus of terrorists, opium cultivators, truculent warlords, inefficient and corrupt governance, and poverty comprise the post-2001 “insecurity” in Afghanistan. Warlords entered the power vacuum created by the fall of the Taliban and filled it with their private militia, and resisted attempts by Mr Karzai to consolidate the authority of the state. The US has kept a foot in both camps — supporting Mr Karzai but overlooking the belligerence of its warlord friends. Afghanistan today does not meet the basic criterion of a state — that a state must have a monopoly of force within its borders. Part of the reason for the mess is that NATO has not been able to coordinate its strategy in Afghanistan. Italy is responsible for justice sector reform; Germany for building up the Afghan police; Britain heads the counter-narcotics campaign; and the US trains the Afghan National Army. A related problem is that the EU itself is divided and doesn’t have a common security and foreign policy. So, the question of a coordinated strategy doesn’t even arise with EU countries. It can only be hoped that a UN plenipotentiary — whoever that may be — will be able to pull the different parties together, and to work out and implement a strategy that will address the twin needs of reconstruction and security. Reconstruction has been stymied by insufficient aid. In 2001 an estimated $ 27.5 billion was needed to set it on the path to reconstruction. Most of the aid has come from the US. EU aid has actually declined over the last six years. One billion euros were pledged for reconstruction during 2002-06, but the EC has only provided 657 million euros. The financial allocation for the period 2007-10 is 610 million euros. Meanwhile, Kabul lacks the financial and administrative capacity to carry out economic reforms. Afghanistan is ill served by a corrupt and inefficient administrative and judicial system. At present, neither NATO nor the centre can protect the people. The record opium crop of 2007 testifies to the failure of the international effort in Afghanistan. Ninety per cent of the world’s illegal opium originates in Afghanistan. But “reconstruction” and development strategies have not resulted in alternative sources of livelihood for the farmers who benefit financially from poppy cultivation. Moreover, the warlords run the opium economy. They earned $2.3 billion from it — eight times more than the government collects in tax revenues. Warlords control the routes through which opium is transported to Europe. They make money through drug trafficking, illegal transit fees and smuggling. The opium routes are also used by cross-border infiltrators financed by Saudi Arabia and trained by Pakistan, who are responsible for the surge in extremist violence over the last two years. Reconstruction and security, therefore, remain uphill tasks. Kabul and its provincial outposts must convince Afghans that the state is legitimate, representative and effective enough to provide at least some basic services in addition to security, law and order Service delivery has been hampered by the contradictory policies of the national, local and international bodies, all of whom compete to implement local development projects. Short-term projects, focusing on security, distributed by the military, often conflict with longer-term UN-supported government projects and processes. Moreover, a multiplicity of models of local governance — including traditional structures such as the traditional shuras (village councils), community development councils, and central government institutions complicate delivery and give militia commanders clout against the government, and also the chance to intimidate ordinary people. Highly centralised ministries are responsible for the delivery of most key services in the country. Some of their functions could be carried out more efficiently at the lower levels of government. That is why Mr Karzai has launched an initiative to focus on local delivery. In addition, the Directorate for Local Governance and some central ministries like the Ministry for Education have delegated tasks such as teacher recruitment to the Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs). The PRTs , organised by NATO, have been arranged as civil-military partnerships to facilitate the development of a secure environment and reconstruction in different regions. They have built clinics and schools, which are of benefit to poor Afghans. But the PRTs come from different NATO countries and report back to national capitals. They do not function well because of poor coordination and lack of funding. A much-needed police force, numbering 70,000, is being built up. But the combination of war and poor communications results in the existing police posts not being supplied with basic necessities like food, heating fuel and water. Police training methods must ensure that the police are perceived as protectors rather than bullies by citizens. Yet there is room for qualified optimism. The Taliban is not a mass movement. Afghans don’t want to be ruled again by them. But extremists cannot make headway without some measure of popular support, connivance or simply fear — and it is hard to know which of these facilitates their operations the most. What is clear is that their cruel acts can obstruct every reconstruction or military strategy, at every step. This must be stopped. People want security. In the end, the Taliban can’t give it to them. So, the crucial question is whether the US and the EU are merely seeking an exit strategy of failure, or whether they are ready to raise the resources to stay the course and defeat terrorism in
Afghanistan.
The writer is a Visiting Professor at the Centre for Peace and Conflict
Resolution, New Delhi.
|
Watch that smile A man is known by the company he keeps, it used to be said. But now, apparently, he is recognised by the smile he wears. The Oxford English Dictionary describes the verb “smile” thus: “form one’s features into a pleased, friendly or amused expression, with the corners of the mouth turned up”. But there is a lot more to a smile than the O.E.D. tells us. I read in a foreign magazine the other day that one Dr Evan Grant of Birmingham University’s psychiatry department has spent several years studying and analysing such facial contortions as twitching of the eyebrows, the lowering of eyelids and, that most revealing of all, the smile. There are, according to the doctor, five basic smiles with which we give expression to our innermost thoughts. There is, first, the “how do you do” smile, the commonest of all. In this, says Dr Grant, only the upper teeth are uncovered. He does not cite examples but I have in mind the sort of smile given by one’s mother-in-law when she arrives unexpectedly for a stay of indefinite duration. I say this because most mothers-in-law of my acquaintance wear ill-fitting dentures and, I suppose, vanity, even at their age, prevents them from showing all of them. It is also the sort of smile which accompanies an introduction to a person in whom one does not have the slightest interest. The second variety Dr Grant calls the “typically non-social smile” as when a person is enjoying some secret (and no doubt malicious) joke. The lips curve back but remain together so that there is no dental display whatsoever. I have often come across this type of smile. The first time I saw it was on the face of my headmaster when, as a lad of ten, I was caught smoking in the school lavatory. The mirthless” smile remained with him as he gave me six of the best on my posterior with a well-oiled cane. Nowadays, I see my ITO “smiling” at me in the same fashion when he does my annual assessment and he tells me that there is a substantial sum of money, including a penalty due from me owing to my having underestimated my income in the previous year. As my income isn’t large enough to engage a tax consultant to fight for me I just “smile” and pay. Thirdly, says Dr Grant, there is the “broad” smile that occurs in “situations of pleasurable excitement”. The mouth is open, the lips curled right back and both the upper and the lower teeth are clearly visible. I don’t know about you, but the description given by Dr Grant calls to my mind the picture of a vicious dog just as he is about to bury his teeth in the fleshy part of my leg. The “lip-in” smile is the speciality of coy girls (are there any?). It is similar to the “how-do-you-do” smile except that the lower lip is drawn in between the teeth. In Dr Grant’s opinion this pulling in of the lower lip implies that the smiler feels in some way subordinate to the person smiled at. Finally, there is the “oblong” smile put on when the smiler pretends to be enjoying something he or she finds distasteful. The lips are drawn fully back from both upper and lower teeth as when, says Dr Grant, a girl gets too much attention from an amorous drunk or is chased round the office by her boss. Personally, if I saw a girl baring her teeth at me in the aforesaid fashion, I would quickly put several metres between her and
myself. |
Torture does not
work
Torture
works,” an American special forces major – now, needless to say, a colonel – boasted to a colleague of mine a couple of years ago. It seems that the CIA and its hired thugs in Afghanistan and Iraq still believe this. There is no evidence that rendition and beatings and waterboarding and the insertion of metal pipes into men’s anuses – and, of course, the occasional torturing to death of detainees – has ended. Why else would the CIA admit in January that it had destroyed videotapes of prisoners being almost drowned – the “waterboarding” technique – before they could be seen by US investigators? Yet only a few days ago, I came across a medieval print in which a prisoner has been strapped to a wooden chair, a leather hosepipe pushed down his throat and a primitive pump fitted at the top of the hose where an ill-clad torturer is hard at work squirting water down the hose. The prisoner’s eyes bulge with terror as he feels himself drowning, all the while watched by Spanish inquisitors who betray not the slightest feelings of sympathy with the prisoner. Who said “waterboarding” was new? The Americans are just apeing their predecessors in the inquisition. Anther medieval print I found in a Canadian newspaper in November shows a prisoner under interrogation in what I suspect is medieval Germany. In this case, he has been strapped backwards to the outer edge of a wheel. Two hooded men are administering his agony. One is using a bellows to encourage a fire burning at the bottom of the wheel while the other is turning the wheel forwards so that the prisoner’s feet are moving into the flames. The eyes of this poor man – naked save for a cloth over his lower torso – are tight shut in pain. Two priests stand beside him, one cowled, the other wearing a robe over his surplice, a paper and pen in hand to take down the prisoner’s words. Anthony Grafton, who has been working on a book about magic in Renaissance Europe, says that in the 16th and 17th centuries, torture was systematically used against anyone suspected of witchcraft, his or her statements taken down by sworn notaries – the equivalent, I suppose, of the CIA’s interrogation officers – and witnessed by officials who made no pretence that this was anything other than torture; no talk of “enhanced interrogation” from the lads who turned the wheel to the fire. As Grafton recounts, “The pioneering medievalist Henry Charles Lea ... wrote at length about the ways in which inquisitors had used torture to make prisoners confess heretical views and actions. An enlightened man writing in what he saw as an enlightened age, he looked back in horror at these barbarous practices and condemned them with a clarity that anyone reading public statements must now envy.” There were professionals in the Middle Ages who were trained to use pain as a method of enquiry as well as an ultimate punishment before death. Men who were to be “hanged, drawn and quartered” in medieval London, for example, would be shown the “instruments” before their final suffering began with the withdrawal of their intestines in front of vast crowds of onlookers. Most of those tortured for information in medieval times were anyway executed after they had provided the necessary information to their interrogators. These inquisitions – with details of the torture that accompanied them – were published and disseminated widely so that the public should understand the threat that the prisoners had represented and the power of those who inflicted such pain upon them. No destroying of videotapes here. Illustrated pamphlets and songs, according to Grafton, were added to the repertory of publicity. Ronnie Po-chia Hsia and Italian scholars Diego Quaglioni and Anna Esposito have studied the 15th-century Trent inquisition whose victims were usually Jews. In 1475, three Jewish households were accused of murdering a Christian boy called Simon to carry out the supposed Passover “ritual” of using his blood to make “matzo” bread. This “blood libel” – it was, of course, a total falsity – is still, alas, believed in many parts of the Middle East although it is frightening to discover that the idea was well established in 15th century Europe. As usual, the podestà – a city official – was the interrogator, who regarded external evidence as providing mere clues of guilt. Europe was then still governed by Roman law which required confessions in order to convict. As Grafton describes horrifyingly, once the prisoner’s answers no longer satisfied the podestà, the torturer tied the man’s or woman’s arms behind their back and the prisoner would then be lifted by a pulley, agonisingly, towards the ceiling. “Then, on orders of the podestà, the torturer would make the accused ‘jump’ or ‘dance’ – pulling him or her up, then releasing the rope, dislocating limbs and inflicting stunning pain.” When a member of one of the Trent Jewish families, Samuel, asked the podestà where he had heard that Jews needed Christian blood, the interrogator replied – and all this while, it should be remembered, Samuel was dangling in the air on the pulley – that he had heard it from other Jews. Samuel said that he was being tortured unjustly. “The truth, the truth!” the podestà shouted, and Samuel was made to “jump” up to eight feet, telling his interrogator: “God the Helper and truth help me.” After 40 minutes, he was returned to prison. Once broken, the Jewish prisoners, of course, confessed. After another torture session, Samuel named a fellow Jew. Further sessions of torture finally broke him and he invented the Jewish ritual murder plot and named others guilty of this non-existent crime. Two tortured women managed to exonerate children but eventually, in Grafton’s words, “they implicated loved ones, friends and members of other Jewish communities”. Thus did torture force innocent civilians to confess to fantastical crimes. Oxford historian Lyndal Roper found that the tortured eventually accepted the view that they were guilty. Grafton’s conclusion is unanswerable. Torture does not obtain truth. It will make most ordinary people say anything the torturer wants. Why, who knows if the men under the CIA’s “waterboarding” did not confess that they could fly to meet the devil. And who knows if the CIA did not end up believing him. By arrangement with
The Independent |
|
Chatterati Politicians
and power come and go, but Brand Lalu is ever lasting. A candy manufacturer in Bihar has come up with an innovative combination of Lalu Prasad and Spiderman to sell his product in the interiors of the state. A mask of the railway minister dressed as cartoon character Spiderman, with the one-rupee toffee, is also available. The ‘Lalu-bane-Spiderman’ toffee is obviously a great hit among children. Well! Lalu’s name has always caught children’s fancy. Last year, a toffee called Lalu ka Khazana sold like hot cakes, packed in a colourful wrappers, which depicted two different personas of Lalu. He was shown as a politician in his typical white kurta-pyjama in one, while the other wrapper depicted him as a magician attired in a pair of jeans and jacket. Now, Lalu has been shown flying in Spiderman’s dress. So what if Lalu has had electoral setbacks in Bihar – he has emerged as the biggest brand. We already have Lalu Sattu Cola – Bihar’s answer to soft drinks – and a tobacco sachet, Lalu Khaini, that has hit the rural markets in the state. Lalu dolls became very popular among kids all over the country a few years ago. Dressed in his trademark white kurta-pyjama with his silver hair falling on his forehead, Lalu dolls were even sold at tourism fairs. He had managed to enter many a household in the country through this toy. Rajya Sabha activity We will see some “commotion” in political circles as seventy six members of Parliament are retiring from the Rajya Sabha soon. They include BJP chief Rajnath Singh, Union ministers Murli Deora, Mr Prem Chand Gupta, Professor Saifuddin Soz, Mr Prithviraj Chavan, Mr Suresh Pachouri, Janardan Pujari, former chief ministers Farooq Abdullah and Mr Keshubhai Patel, Dr Vijay Mallya and Mr Amar Singh. There are many others. The Congress is in a bit of a spot because of this. Keeping this in mind, the Congress is postponing the much awaited union cabinet reshuffle. The Congress cannot “adjust” all the retiring Rajya Sabha members as it does not have many ruling states now. In the BJP executive meet in the capital last week, it was decided that no one will get more than two terms in the Rajya Sabha. AICC reshuffle There is the AICC reshuffle, along with eight states soon going in for elections, for which the PCC presidents also have to be announced. The names doing the rounds are Suresh Pachouri for Madhya Pradesh, Ashok Ghelot for Rajasthan, S.M. Krishna for Karnataka, Saifuddin Soz for Kashmir and Dasmunshi for West Bengal. Winning the coming state elections is an uphill task for the Congress, as the organisation from the bottom is finished. And sadly, no one knows how and where to start reviving the party. The Congress worker today is lazy and spoilt while, as Rahul Gandhi himself said, ‘He has no magic wand’. |
|
Towards a gentler capitalism Every
few decades, America's business leaders change their minds about what obligations corporations and the wealthy have to society. This happened 100 years ago, when ex-robber barons like Andrew Carnegie invented modern philanthropy to address social ills, and in the mid-20th century, when leading executives stopped fighting unions and backed more generous wages and benefits. It also happened in the 1970s, when big business rejected that compact with labor, leading to the harsher free-market ethos of the 1980s and 1990s. Now, corporate leaders are shifting their thinking once more, calling for a gentler form of capitalism. The latest evidence came last week from two titans of business, H. Lee Scott Jr., chief executive of Wal-Mart, and Bill Gates, the retiring chairman of Microsoft. At an annual meeting of thousands of Wal-Mart employees and suppliers on Jan. 23, Scott pledged that the company – long one of the most ruthless firms in America – would promote energy-efficient products and improve labor conditions in its supply chain. Scott even said that Wal-Mart stores might one day generate electricity with windmills and solar panels. The very next day, Gates, whose company is still under court supervision stemming from an antitrust settlement in 2002, used a speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, to call for a new "creative capitalism" in which "more people can make a profit, or gain recognition, doing work that eases the world's inequities." Signs have long been mounting that corporate leaders are looking beyond the bottom line. Last year, nearly two dozen top U.S. companies, including General Electric, DuPont and Shell, joined to call for faster action on climate change. Google has committed 1 percent of its profits to charitable purpose; it's Google.org hybrid for-profit philanthropy issued $26 million in grants and investments this month. Scores of chief executives have hired "corporate responsibility officers" – a position that didn't exist a few years ago – to monitor their companies' records on environmental, labor and diversity issues. It is easy to be skeptical of such moves and talk. Critics have been quick to point out, for instance, that Wal-Mart is still engaged in troubling practices, such as failing to pay a living wage to many employees. And Gates' new focus on helping the poor can be seen as the predictable mellowing of an executive-turned-philanthropist who no longer needs to worry about quarterly earnings. Still, there's good reason to think that we are at another historic pivot point. Corporations, and the people who lead them, do not exist in isolation. When society adopts new values, as Americans broadly have on issues such as climate change and sweatshop labor, executives tend to go along. Sometimes the coercive pressure of unions or government forces their hand; other times (as may be the case today with Wal-Mart) they may fear falling out of step with consumers, tarnishing their brand and gradually losing market share. When Gates spoke at Davos about ways that business should serve the world's poor, he was striking the same chord that Andrew Carnegie did when he published "The Gospel of Wealth," arguing that the rich have a moral obligation to the less fortunate. Like Carnegie, Gates will likely have huge influence among his super-affluent peers. A sea change like this among the far-upper class doesn't happen often. Such a shift, if truly underway today, will have enormous political consequences in the years to come. If the consensus in the executive suites is that economic inequality has risen too much, or that too many social needs like health care are going unmet, or that the polar ice caps might really melt, the next president and Congress will have more success tackling these problems. It is far easier to get things done in Washington when Wall Street isn't digging in its heels. The very mission of corporations could change. If a focus on social responsibility begins to nudge aside the bottom-line orthodoxy, we can expect voluntary steps to raise wages, improve health benefits (as Wal-Mart has promised) and adopt environmentally sustainable practices. None of these outcomes is a given. Global competition is fierce, making it harder than ever for business leaders to think beyond their balance sheets. But as more corporate leaders proclaim their commitment to social responsibility, and as politicians, unions and activists demand that they live up to this rhetoric, a new era of a gentler capitalism may truly begin. The writer, a senior fellow at Demos, is author of "The Cheating Culture." He is writing a book on the super-rich. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
| HOME PAGE | |
Punjab | Haryana | Jammu & Kashmir |
Himachal Pradesh | Regional Briefs |
Nation | Opinions | | Business | Sports | World | Mailbag | Chandigarh | Ludhiana | Delhi | | Calendar | Weather | Archive | Subscribe | Suggestion | E-mail | |
