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Cricket under hammer Murder in the lock-up The best gift |
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Countdown for N-deal
Soldiers and officers
No easy solution to Kashmir US looking to make unilateral strikes in Pak Delhi Durbar
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Cricket under hammer IT is indeed intriguing to see the tremendous corporate interest and flow of big money to buy top cricketers from India and other parts of the world for BCCI’s Indian Premier League. Fans will be looking forward to some crackling excitement when the games are launched later this season. Twenty20 is definitely an appealing and viable new version of the classic game. While sponsors and advertisers have quickly latched on to the version’s commercial potential, cricket enthusiasts will be keenly watching how it contributes to the further development of the game. Rival Zee’s Indian Cricket League, which launched the hoopla in the first place, quickly made an impact. Not only did it spur BCCI to launch its own league, pay and benefits for cricketers shot up significantly. The same will, hopefully, happen to the talent pool as well. In fact, if there is one thing that is disconcerting about the high-profile auctions, it is the emphasis on “icons.” While it is obviously easier to draw big money with big stars, it must not be forgotten that we need icons for the future as well. Is there a single young player today of whom it can be confidently said that he will make 7000 Test runs, if not 10,000? Or take 400 wickets, if not 600? Care should also be taken to ensure that valuable new finds like Ishant Sharma are managed well and do not become a casualty to the hurly-burly world of quick-fire games and big money. Given the size and diversity of our country, the “catchment area’ for talent is large. But we are yet to fully exploit it. The recent emergence of top quality players from smaller towns in India has been much commented upon. But mechanisms to build on this trend and sustain it have to be put in place. We cannot just rely on the occasional player to just happen along. The BCCI should support the setting up of more cricket academies in different regions. We need to cast our net wider to build a core team for the future.
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Murder in the lock-up THE Punjab and Haryana High Court has fixed accountability on three officials of the Ferozepur jail for the death in custody of an undertrial. It fined them Rs 10 lakh as damages. A Division Bench consisting of Chief Justice Vijender Kumar Jain and Justice K.S. Ahluwalia has ruled that this money would be recovered from them and disbursed as compensation to the kin of the deceased. In April last year, Kewal Singh was charged with murder and lodged in the Jail. He died within a week of his arrest. The jail officials tried to hush up the incident. They claimed that he succumbed to the injuries he had received while trying to escape from the jail. However, an inquiry ordered by Justice Surya Kant revealed that he died following torture by the head warden, a warden and a havildar. Custodial deaths have been increasing in the country despite several rulings by the Supreme Court and the high courts. The Law Commission and the National Human Rights Commission have also voiced concern about it from time to time. Under the Constitution, personal liberty includes the right to live with human dignity. As there is an in-built guarantee against torture or assault by the state or its functionaries, custodial violence amounts to a brazen abuse of the rights guaranteed under the Constitution and hence totally unacceptable in a democracy. Significantly, the Bench has also found the Deputy Superintendent of Police (Jails) responsible for the horrendous incident. It has asked the DGP to take action against him. Clearly, all those involved in the custodial death deserve no mercy. The Ferozepur incident once again underscores the need for the Centre and the states to check custodial deaths. They should implement the recommendations of the Law Commission and the NHRC and bring about appropriate changes in the law not only to check deaths in jails but also punish the offenders for their barbaric action. Meanwhile, the damages awarded to the Ferozepur officials should, hopefully, act as a deterrent.
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The best gift THEY are all public figures. Ajmer Singh has been an Asian gold medalist in 400 metres. Amrik Singh Gill is a well-known agriculture expert while his wife Rajinder Kaur Gill is a biology professor. They and their friends Brig H.S. Cheema and his wife Rajinder Kaur Cheema are among a small but growing band of people who have decided to do even more when they leave the world. They have volunteered to donate their bodies for medical research. Not only that, they are motivating others also to do the same. How much this will help medical research and allow students to undergo suitable training cannot be overemphasised. There is always shortage of bodies and most of the medical colleges and research institutes have to work on unclaimed bodies which are not always in good shape. As these wonderful men point out, donating the body is not only socially responsible but also morally correct. Their laudable gesture will, hopefully, motivate many others to either donate their organs, or better still, pledge their whole bodies to the noble cause. At present, there is an acute shortage of donors of eyes and other transplantable organs because of social and religious taboos attached to the gesture. The pioneering men who are defying the illogical norms can bring about a quiet revolution. It is heartening that organisations like the Army have started a campaign to popularise voluntary organ donation. Gracious that the gesture of these volunteers with a conscience is, it has to be backed by their family members and medical institutions too. It has been found that close relatives of the diseased at times fail to inform the authorities about the demise. A delay in removing the organs can make them useless. Many of the medical institutions are ill-equipped to collect the organs in time. There are cases where family members had to virtually hustle medical colleges to collect the bodies. Such a mindset has to change quickly if the new move is to become an everyday activity.
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We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry. — John Webster
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Countdown for N-deal
ON Monday the Special Envoy for the Indo-US nuclear deal, Shyam Saran, who was Foreign Secretary when the original July 18, 2005, agreement on the subject was signed, made yet another attempt to allay the apprehensions of the deal’s critics. It was an impressive performance but it is doubtful if he carried conviction to the deal’s inveterate opponents. His speech was perhaps aimed also at mitigating the foreseeable resurgence of objections to the deal following US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s testimony to a Congressional committee. In it she had reassured all concerned that, in relation to India, Washington would not propose to the Nuclear Suppliers Group anything that ran counter to the Hyde Act. Cries have gone up that this “exposes the hollowness” of the official claim that the 123 Agreement would prevail, not the Hyde Act. Saran did not actually use these words but implicit in his presentation was the question: what else could she have said while appearing before a Congressional committee to persuade it to approve the agreement? However, he did explicitly underscore three main points. First, that the Hyde Act gives India a “clean” exemption from US laws on nonproliferation in spite of the fact that this country has exploded nuclear devices; has not accepted and would not accept full scope safeguard; and would continue its strategic nuclear programme to maintain a minimum and credible deterrent. Secondly, the Hyde Act does contain some “extraneous and prescriptive provisions” with which this country disagrees and, therefore, Indian negotiators have taken “extra care” to exclude these from the 123 Agreement. In this context his third point acquires significance. For Saran said that if the US Congress, in its wisdom, felt that the 123 Agreement in its present form did not conform to the Hyde Act, the agreement would be voted down. But once the agreement was endorsed at Capitol Hill, it would be vital to have active US cooperation in seeking the necessary changes in the NSG guidelines. Even such friendly countries as Russia and France, anxious to start nuclear commerce with India, admit that only the US has the “unique” capacity to influence the group’s 45 members. No other country has the requisite clout. Though impressively argued, the Saran thesis is really of academic interest. For, in this country, merits and demerits of the nuclear deal are no longer the issue (except between the two inflexible sections within the strategic community), and has become a football of partisan politics The general secretary of the CPM and the Left Front leader, Prakash Karat, is hell-bent on killing the deal. The government has virtually given him the veto because it is committed to signing the India-specific safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) after it has been “reviewed” by the Congress-Left Front committee. Only after that happens can the matter go to the NSG. Interestingly, the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Anil Kakodkar, has chosen this precise moment to announce that negotiating this agreement would take time because this is “the first of its kind”. If so, the delay could drive the deal into limbo. The time is unquestionably of the essence. US Ambassador David Mulford’s “now-or-never” remark is not a rhetorical flourish but a rude reality. September 30 is the last working day of the current US Congress. Then there are mandatory rules that require that an agreement such the 123 one with India must lie in cold storage for 30 days after it is submitted. Thereafter, a Congressional committee has a clear period of 45 “working days” to discuss it and fix a date for a “yes or no vote”. The voting in Congress could be preceded by a long and contentious debate. Consequently, it is evident that if the deal is not submitted to the US Congress, at the latest, by the first week of May, its chances of being voted on by the present Congress would be minimal. As for the next Congress, pronouncements by presidential candidates point to the prospect of more and more difficulties arising, particularly if the Democrats win the race for the White House. Hasn’t Mulford forecast that the earliest the next administration could revive the issue of civilian nuclear cooperation with India would be 2010? All this is obvious even to the deal’s enthusiastic supporters. Yet they are still hoping that it can be pushed through within the available time. This expectation is based on a totally different interpretation of the current developments that is being discussed avidly behind the scenes but rarely in the open. The assumption is that the government is “deliberately delaying” the conclusion of the safeguards agreement with the IAEA until it is ready to let the Left Front withdraw support from it. Thereafter, the official plan would be to dissolve the Lok Sabha and order fresh elections for October or November. Simultaneously, the government would expedite the IAEA agreement, let the US get the NSG speedily to do the needful, and deliver the 123 Agreement to the US Congress in good time. The Constitution, it is argued, gives the executive the right to enter into and ratify any treaty with a foreign country. Though plausible in theory, the purported game plan would not work in practice for several reasons. In sheer practical terms, the loss of the Left Front’s support to the United Progressive Alliance cannot be risked until the Budget is passed. This cannot happen until mid-May. A vote on account would not help because it is usually valid for only two months. It can surely be sought for a longer period. But the Left and the BJP put together would block any such move. Moreover and more importantly, several allies of the Congress in the ruling coalition are not prepared to go along with this stratagem. Several of them continue to insist that the next parliamentary poll should not be held even a day earlier than the end of April 2009, although they know that the Marxists would definitely terminate their support to the UPA at the time of their choosing. Sonia Gandhi’s speech at Agartala is an indication of this realisation. Above all, once the government in New Delhi is reduced to a minority, its moral and political authority to enter into a crucial deal on the sensitive nuclear issue would be greatly eroded, and this may well influence the American response, too. Altogether, the prospect is gloomy, not
optimistic.
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Soldiers and officers THERE are strange and yet compelling bonds that bind together troops and their officers. Perhaps these are born out of shared experiences of hardships, dangers and risks, putting shoulders to the wheel, winning a well-contested match and the joys of camaraderie and espirit-de-corps. Equally, bonds are cemented through pranks and digs at each other or simply a hearty laugh at an absurd situation. Our unit was equipped with British tanks called “Churchill.” It was fielded against the Germans in the Second World War and had taken its name from that redoubtable and dogged Britisher. Not only did the two, share a name but had many characteristics common to both. Like its name- sake it was big and heavy: tough as nuts and could withstand a lot of beating and give it back to the opponent in equal, if not in larger measure. At times the gun too looked like a big cigar. While one could put down large doses of brandy, the other was a great guzzler of high octane fuel. So petrol was never in short supply in our regiment. There always was enough of it for cleaning the engine and other parts of the tank that seem to perpetually get greasy and sticky. We were on annual field firing and were camping near Naraingarh. Our water trucks were of Second World War vintage and highly temperamental. Some time the truck would not start and if it did, the engine would just splutter and die down, or what we called, “race nahi pakarta.” When two, out of the total of four that we had, went “off road” there was acute shortage of water in the camp. One evening, as we gathered in the officers mess tent for dinner, one of the young officers, who was officiating as squadron commander of the Sikh squadron, complained to the second-in-command of the regiment, regarding the water shortage in the camp. He went on to say that his men were washing their faces with petrol and even use it for ablutions during their trip to the loo. On hearing this complaint, the second-in-command, a wizened old man and a veteran of the Second World War, had a hearty laugh and went on to narrate a story from North African campaign during the Great War. A young British officer, straight from the academy was posted to his squadron and placed in command of a tank. During a lull in the battle, the tank crew got down to brewing tea. As they sat around the stove, one of them distributed tea leaves which every one put in the mouth and swallowed the same. Though a bit perplexed, the officer did likewise. After this, sugar was distributed and the same sequence was repeated by all, including the officer. Then boiling hot water was passed around and every one dutifully and slowly drank the hot water. Seeing a look of bewilderment on the face of the officer, one of the men observed that, during battles tea is taken in this
manner!
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No easy solution to Kashmir
I WAS in Lahore when Pakistan celebrated
its ‘Kashmir Solidarity Day.’ The government declared a holiday. Practically every political leader and President Pervez Musharraf went over the exercise of expressing their support to the Kashmiris. The Jamiat-e-Islami was the only party which took out a procession to link Islam with the state. The solidarity day does not have a long history. I believe this is one of the steps taken to keep Kashmir before the people’s eye. Whether it serves any purpose or not, it is difficult to say. But during my six-day travel through Pakistan, I found people much more understandable on Kashmir than ever before. They realised that the problem was intricate and that it could not be solved through war. People anxiously awaited the outcome of the composite dialogue between New Delhi and Islamabad and they were satisfied that the talks were going on. I wish there could be more appreciation of India’s compulsions. It cannot accept the partition of Jammu and Kashmir on the basis of religion. The country is already combating against the Hindutva forces to sustain pluralism. Jammu and Kashmir, including Ladakh, has a different population complexion. While Kashmir is a Muslim-majority area, Jammu and Ladakh are non-Muslims. A hardline Muslim leader, Syed Shah Gillani, talks of Jammu and Kashmir in the same breath, knowing well that the old state has emotionally got split on the religious grounds. Like Gillani, the Hurriyat, an umbrella organization, represents only Kashmir which means the valley. None of them has ever worked politically in Jammu, nor have they done anything worthwhile for the return of Kashmiri pandits who have been languishing outside the valley for the past several decades. The state is sufi in temperament. But fundamentalists, many from across the border, have tried to Islamise the valley. How do they expect Jammu and Ladakh to come with them? A plebiscite – India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had promised it – is not feasible because the plebiscite will get reduced to an exercise of rhetoric between the Koran and the Gita. We saw the fate of the plebiscite in the NWFP before partition. Religious fervour was so high that Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, who favoured the right of self-determination for the NWFP, had to withdraw. The Muslim League had a walkover. Ultimately, the fate of Jammu and Kashmir depends on outcome of negotiations between New Delhi and Islamabad. Till some years ago the involvement of Kashmiris was not a pre-requisite for a settlement. Now it is, because thousands of Kashmiris have given their lives for Kashmir. Consequently, everybody has come to believe that it is but fair that the people of Kashmir are involved in the process of deciding their future. The problem arises when Jammu and Ladakh are not associated with the exercise to find a solution. Surely, the Kashmiris cannot decide the fate of people living outside the valley. In fact, the whole problem has come to acquire a religious edge. I wish the Hurriyat had made even half the attempts to woo Jammu and Ladakh as it has done in the valley to win over the population. The Hurriyat has Islam as its medium and begins its formal sittings with the invocation of Allah. There is nothing wrong with that. But then the Hindus in Jammu and the Buddhists in Ladakh do not feel themselves involved. Why couldn’t the Hurriyat propagate pluralism which would have also spanned its distance with the rest of India? Islamabad says that the Hurriyat is the real representatives of the state. How? It has never taken part in any election to given proof of its hold in the state. The Hurriyat says that it does not have to participate in elections held by the Indian Election Commission because it would not be fair in holding the polls. Fortunately, the Commission’s independence is not in doubt while the Hurriyat’s is. The Hurriyat can always demand that some human rights activists from the rest of India should supervise the elections. Its boycott for the coming election is purposeless. Some of its leaders have told me that they cannot swear by the Constitution of India, a pre-requisite for the participation in elections. If its leaders can sign passport forms, they can well fill in the nomination forms which require the same qualification: allegiance to the Indian Constitution. The Hurriyat leaders’ predicament is that they want to be everything to everybody. They cannot do anything which may be interpreted as pro-India. Nor can they afford to tilt towards Pakistan openly, a position which New Delhi will not accept. True, the Kashmiri would like to be independent but this demand is not acceptable to either India or nor Pakistan. Therefore, the Hurriyat has come to put all its eggs in the basket of President Musharraf who has suggested some territorial adjustments and talked about the irrelevance of the border. I believe these proposals are under discussion behind the scenes between the interlocutors from India and Pakistan. One report is that they have covered 80 per cent of the distance. I do not think this is true. However, both interlocutors should realise, if they have not done so, so far, that they have to reckon with Pakistan’s new political leadership which may have different ideas than those of Musharraf. India too is only one year away from the Lok Sabha elections. I am not sure what will be acceptable to the next government which may not be that of the Congress. Still more difficult to tackle will be the Indian Parliament where any solution on Kashmir would need a two-thirds majority, a requirement for the amendment of the Constitution. Again, even an inch of alteration of the existing border would mean a Constitutional amendment. The Hurriyat leaders are living in a world of their own, feeling satisfied over the “understanding” they have got from Pakistan if not India. They do not face the facts. The West, particularly America, can never accept an autonomous Muslim state, next to Pakistan and that too sympathetic to it. The Hurriyat leaders are cut off from Indian thought and culture. They do not cultivate even the intellectuals, much less the politicians. They expect support without asking for it. I concede that there are human rights violations galore in the state. But without exposing the government at Srinagar, the Hurriyat cannot make any progress. That means influencing mainstream Indian opinion. The status quo may not be to the liking of the Hurriyat but it should realise that it cannot move forward without reconciliation with Jammu and Ladakh. Were it to do so, its credentials would be more acceptable than today. It is a pity that the Hurriyat is going over the same exercise again and again. It should have learnt some lessons by now.
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US looking to make unilateral strikes in Pak
WASHINGTON – In the predawn hours of January 29, 2008, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone’s operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center. The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaida commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA’s dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaida’s core leadership in two years, and it involved, US officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan. Having requested the Pakistani government’s official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the US spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was under way, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities. Officials say the incident was a model of how Washington often scores its rare victories these days in the fight against al-Qaida inside Pakistan’s national borders: It acts with assistance from well-paid sympathisers inside the country, but without getting the government’s formal permission beforehand. It is an approach that some US officials say could be used more frequently this year, particularly if a power vacuum results from Monday’s election and associated political tumult. The administration also feels an increased sense of urgency about undermining al-Qaida before President Bush leaves office, making it less hesitant, said one official familiar with the incident. Independent actions by US military forces on another country’s sovereign territory are always controversial, and both US and Pakistani officials have repeatedly sought to obscure operational details that would reveal that key decisions are sometimes made in the United States, not in Islamabad. Some Pentagon operations have been undertaken only after intense disputes with the State Department, which has worried that they might inflame Pakistani public resentment; the CIA itself has sometimes sought to put the brakes on because of anxieties about the consequences for its relationship with Pakistani intelligence officials. US military officials say, however, that the uneven performance of their Pakistani counterparts increasingly requires that Washington pursue the fight however it can, sometimes following an unorthodox path that leaves in the dark Pakistani military and intelligence officials who at best lack commitment and resolve and at worst lack sympathy for US interests. Top Bush administration policy officials – who are increasingly worried about al-Qaida’s use of its sanctuary in remote, tribally ruled areas in northern Pakistan to dispatch trained terrorists to the West — have quietly begun to accept the military’s point of view, according to several sources familiar with the context of the Libi strike. “In the past it required getting approval from the highest levels,” said one former intelligence official involved in planning for previous strikes. “You may have information that is valid for only 30 minutes. If you wait, the information is no longer valid.” But when the autonomous US military operations in Pakistan succeed, support for them grows in Washington in probably the same proportion as Pakistani resentments increase. Even as US officials ramp up the pressure on Musharraf to do more, Pakistan’s embattled president has taken a harder line in public against cooperation in recent months, the sources said. “The posture that was evident two years ago is not evident,” said a senior US official who frequently visits the region. A US military official familiar with operations in the tribal areas, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to talk about the operations, said: “We’ll get these one-off flukes once every eight months or so, but that’s still not a strategy – it’s not a plan. Every now and then something will come together. What that serves to do (is) it tamps down discussion about whether there is a better way to do it.” With all signs pointing to a unique target, CIA officials ordered the launch of a pilotless MQ-1B Predator aircraft, one of three kept at a secret base that the Pakistani government has allowed to be stationed inside the country. Launches from that base do not require government permission, officials said. Some officials also emphasised that such airstrikes have a marginal and temporary impact. And they do not yield the kind of intelligence dividends often associated with the live capture of terrorists — documents, computers, equipment and diaries that could lead to further unraveling the network. The officials stressed that despite the occasional tactical success against it, such as the Libi strike, the threat posed by al-Qaida’s presence in Pakistan has been growing. As a senior US official briefed on the strike said: “Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. But overall, we’re in worse shape than we were 18 months
ago.”
By arrangement with LA Times-Washington Post
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Delhi Durbar AS many as six columnists and editors are jostling to get a Rajya Sabha seat from the BJP. Those in contention include M.J.Akbar, Swapan Dasgupta, Balbir Punj, Tarun Vijay, Sudheendhra Kulkarni and Prabhu Chawla. Dasgupta, whose proximity to BJP’s second-rung leader Arun Jaitley is well-known, is also being backed by Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi. However, BJP president Rajnath Singh is apparently in no mood to oblige their candidate and has prepared a special file containing Dasgupta’s writings in which he has poked fun at the Thakur leader. Kulkarni, who was former Prime Minister’s speech writer and conscience-keeper is hoping to get lucky as he has cosied upto BJP’s PM-in-waiting L.K.Advani for the last few years. While India Today editor Chawla is said to be working on Rajnath Singh, the RSS is learnt to have shot down M.J.Akbar’s candidature and has pulled out all his old columns in which he had lambasted the Sangh Parivar to press its point.
All due respect The recent visit of French President Nicholas Sarkozy generated a lot of media interest for all the wrong reasons, with the attention being more on the visit of then lady friend and now wife, Italian supermodel Carla Bruni. There was major discussion in the media about whether or not she would be accorded the official reception with most saying that the Government was not ready to recognise her officially. However, a high-ranking French Embassy official recently disclosed that there was nothing of this sort and there was a very clear signal from the Indian Government that they would have accorded her an official reception if she had accompanied Sarkozy.
Faridkot seat With the Faridkot parliamentary constituency set to be reserved following the government’s decision to implement the Delimitation Commission report, Shiromani Akali Dal president Sukhbir Singh Badal has to look for a new seat before next year’s Lok Sabha elections. Although it is still early to say if the junior Badal will contest the Lok Sabha polls given the speculation that he is tipped to take over from his father, the SAD leadership is giving a lot of attention to development of Batinda, suggesting that this could be one option. On the other hand, the junior Badal may just decide to focus his attention on getting maximum seats for the SAD-BJP alliance to enable him to occupy the hot seat in the
state.
Contributed by Anita Katyal, Girja Shankar Kaura and Prashant Sood
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