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Mischief undone Arjun in focus |
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Drugging deportees US guilty of serious violations REPORTS that the US government injected hundreds of deported foreigners with dangerous psychotropic drugs are shocking, to say the least. In a damning revelation, The Washington Post has established — through medical records, official documents and interviews with people who were drugged against their will — that at least 250 people of various nationalities were subjected to such cruel chemical treatment since 2003.
Futures trading in
foodgrains
“Sartaj” of the
mountain artillery
Change in China Extreme distress
driving UP ‘bhaiyyas’ out Chatterati
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Arjun in focus THE armed forces deserve the best equipment the country can get for them. No country, forever dependent on imports for complex combat platforms and technologies, can truly be a power to reckon with. On both counts, there can be no debate. Which is why it is a tragedy that the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) fails to deliver on major projects like the Arjun — Main Battle Tank (MBT) — and the Tejas, Light Combat Aircraft (LCA). Reports indicate that user trials, once again, are on in the desert, and, once again, the Army is griping about the Arjun’s failures. Everything from its weight, to its main gun, to its fire control systems, to what not are constantly being debated. Clearly, import lobbies notwithstanding, if the tank was good, the Army would be happy to accept it. The government, in an effort to support such an important indigenous initiative, has essentially committed to buying some Arjuns for the Army. It is also, evidently, going further with its T-90 MBT acquisitions from Russia. When it first became clear that the Arjun wasn’t measuring up, India went in for 310 T-90s from Russia in 2001. Another deal for 347 tanks reportedly went through in December. Comparison tests are evidently on as well. For the Army and the government, it is not as easy as fielding both the T-90s and the Arjuns, aiming to satisfying operational requirements even as it supports indigenous efforts. Indigenous projects will not thrive unless continuously supported, and without the necessary orders to keep them going. But the DRDO, too, cannot simply play the indigenous card without pulling out all stops to produce goods that no one can argue over. The ISRO is a shining example in this regard. But the failure, ultimately, is not so much that of the DRDO’s beleaguered technologists, but of the complete lack of vision and direction in engineering a massive import substitution effort. For too long, it seems, defence managers have preferred to take the easy, and selectively profitable, option of buying stuff from outside. |
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Drugging deportees REPORTS that the US government injected hundreds of deported foreigners with dangerous psychotropic drugs are shocking, to say the least. In a damning revelation,
The Washington Post has established — through medical records, official documents and interviews with people who were drugged against their will — that at least 250 people of various nationalities were subjected to such cruel chemical treatment since 2003. This is a brazen violation of international human rights laws as well as US domestic laws. It is not a coincidence that the drugging of people shipped out grew to such frightening proportions after the Department of Homeland Security’s new Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency assumed charge of deportation in 2003. The paper said that the drugs — which are meant to treat serious mental disorders — were administered forcibly with terrible effects on the victims. Often, the victims who were subjected to such illegal chemical treatment by the authorities had to be dragged to the aircraft in a comatose condition. The so-called tranquilisation of deportees appears to have been carried out more as a rule than as an exception. US laws provide for “involuntary chemical restraint” or sedation of deportees only if there is medical justification, such as serious psychiatric disorder or mental illness. In the 250 cases identified by the newspaper, the government routinely ignored its own rules which specify the conditions under which drugs may be required. This is one more transgression to be added to the growing catalogue of gross violations of human rights by the US administration in the aftermath of 9/11. Thanks to the vigilance of activists and sections of the media in the US, the brutalities are brought to light sooner or later. Such exposures need to be followed up by the home governments of the deportees through legal action for justice and reparation, and punishment of the guilty officials. |
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I’d never join a club that would allow a person like me to become a member.
— Woody Allen |
Futures trading in foodgrains THE Abhijit Sen Committee report has come as a damper on futures trading in foodgrains in India. The Finance Minister has further indicated that futures trading in oilseed and pulses may also be suspended, though the Sen Committee has made no recommendation in this direction. Although formalised futures trading in agricultural commodities has been in place since 1918-19, the futures trading in commodities through commodity exchanges, specially in agricultural commodities, in the real sense came to its own very recently. For over four decades it remained banned. A few commodities like cotton, jute, groundnut, castor, pepper, turmeric and jaggery did figure in futures trading, but the trade was mostly in the form of forward contracts. Although now futures trading is in place in the case of a large number of commodities, the derivatives trading is almost completely backed by the estimated physical availability. Before the ban, futures trading in wheat was also there, yet the futures multiplier remained only a small fraction of the total availability and the traders in India had such a sensitive informal estimation system that they kept a fairly reliable tab on the production situation of the traded commodities with respect to the area under crops, weather conditions, rainfall, temperature and natural calamities, as these visited the growing crops along with information on the commodities in the stock and the projected demand scenario. However, shortages of several commodities like foodgrains, oils and oilseeds lead the government to control or even ban the futures trading in these commodities to varying degrees. It has been the stand of the policy makers that futures trading leads to speculation and price instability in the spot market, which would go to the disadvantage of the consumers. The Sen Committee report has towed the line of the same mindset. Domestic markets in essential agricultural commodities, especially foodgrains, are, therefore, being kept almost insulated from the influence of the international/border prices, and the role of the futures market in risk management and price discovery as a reference price in the spot market is totally denied. In the case of futures trading in agricultural commodities, the availability has remained the deciding factor in the volume and performance of the commodity futures market. Since agricultural commodities cannot be stored for a long time unlike bullion, nickel, foreign exchange, etc, the futures transactions in agricultural commodities are circumscribed by the production cycles and consumption pattern projections over these cycles, depending upon the shelf life of the commodities. Therefore, the futures multiplier cannot go very high. Moreover, the value of the futures multiplier depends on the integration of national commodity exchanges with the international commodity exchanges, which is at a minimal level. Also the multiplier depends on the extent of trading and the share of the country in the world market in respect of individual commodities. For instance, in the case of agricultural commodities, the futures multiplier is in fractions because of the following factors: (i) A much smaller portion of the total production is available for trading. (ii) Futures trading is confined to a very small proportion of marketed surplus. (iii) Periods of transactions in futures do not generally exceed six months and only in some commodities nine months. Also, it is not the marketed surplus which can be considered as physical availability for futures trading; it is the marketable surplus which is much lower than the marketed surplus that would serve as the base for the futures market and its multiplier. This is the reason why the futures multiplier in agricultural commodities is very low compared to the bench mark world futures multiplier. For instance, actual futures trading in wheat at Indian commodity exchanges before the ban was only 19.74 million tonnes compared with over 72.5 million tonnes of physical production, which works out to be a futures multiplier of less than 0.28 compared to 28 as the world market bench mark multiplier. If the Indian futures market develops to the world bench mark, the futures trade in this commodity should have been more than 1,975 million tonnes. This shows that there was no speculation in the wheat futures market. These were only forward contracts based on physical delivery. The segmented market in foodgrains, so created though national policy interventions, do not permit the futures multiplier to develop to its potential. No doubt, the high value futures multiplier is prone to speculative transactions, which could distort spot and future prices considerably and would introduce a high degree of volatility in the spot market prices. Yet with a very low value multiplier, as is the case in India, futures trading leads to genuine price discovery. This provides for the reference price that helps determine the realistic spot prices, which go in favour of producer-sellers as well as the consumers’ indifferent phases of production cycles. This price discovery helps in checking price slumps in the post harvest periods and smoothens the price changes over the production cycle and helps in putting a check on the exploitation of farmers. Principally, the commodity futures market captures the total projected availability of the commodity. Changes in the government policy on the regulation of prices, support prices, procurement prices, procurement targets, physical restrictions on regional movements, restrictions on the bank credit to private players, restrictions on stock holdings, etc, and restrictions (tariff and non-tariff-related) on exports and imports do impact perceptibly on the spot and futures markets. For instance, the ban on exports, permission of duty-free imports and the ban on futures trading in wheat dampened the spot market sentiments in the post-harvest period this season, which goes to the disadvantage of the producer-sellers. The absence of effective price discovery based on the perceptions of international availability and demand factors and ad hoc domestic policy changes have led to the complete segmentation of the domestic market. Such a market functions to the disadvantage of the producer-sellers because they are not able to obtain the real price of their produce. The government may be going gung-ho on exceeding the procurement targets, yet the banning of exports, banning of futures trading, implicit and explicit restrictions on private dealers, storage restrictions, non-availability of transport and credit and uncertainty on government policies have almost totally eliminated the private trade from the wheat market. The government, instead of playing its role as the buyer of last resort at the minimum support price, has become the sole player to the disadvantage of the producer-sellers. There is a lot to be said in favour of futures trading in agricultural commodities in respect of hedging against price risks or risk management, effective international price discovery, national reference prices, price stability, rational production decisions, accessibility to credit with reliable collaterals of stored or hedged commodities, all leading to the development of infrastructure that is required for efficient conduct and performance of spot and futures markets. Yet the Sen Committee seems to have given no credence to these positive aspects with regard to future trading in agricultural commodities, and the Finance Minister is picking up the threads from weak
premises.
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“Sartaj” of the mountain artillery General
Williams, who had come to India from England didn’t have too great an opinion of the country. He remarked that “there are only three things worth seeing here — the Taj at Agra, General Gough leading a cavalry brigade and the Hazara Mountain Battery in action on a hillside”. These words are recorded by Hazara Battery’s British officers in its war diaries during the Anglo-Afghan war. This world-famous Mountain Battery, the first such unit in the world, was raised in the Royal Artillery by Maj (later General) Sir James Abbot on 18th May 1848 in the Hazara district of NWFP. It was also the first time that the British had violated their dictum of “no natives in the gun-park”. The guns (cannon) were manned by gunners of the Khalsa Army, disbanded after the Sikh defeat in the Anglo-Sikh wars. Nevertheless, in 1848 the urgency of having a dominant military capability for tackling the Pashtun tribes prevailed over such “scruples”. British faith in their “natives” however, was abundantly reciprocated and the Hazara Mountain Battery (Frontier Force), RA played significant roles in victories in Afghanistan, winning four battle honours, including that of Kabul-1879. The Anglo-Burmese wars and the two World Wars enabled the unit to add several more Battle Honours to their proud escutcheon. The post-Independence turmoil found the Hazara Battery in Nowshera (Pakistan) but allocated to India. As soon as the battery had worked its way into India, it was pressed into the first J & K war with the force tasked to open the Jammu-Rajauri axis. One troop was airlifted into Poonch, when the town got besieged by the marauders. The legendary Wg-Commander Mehar Singh, disregarding hostile machine-gun fire from the surrounding heights, landed his Dakota on the Poonch airstrip. The dismantled guns were deplaned in minutes and brought into action at the airstrip itself. Before nightfall, the machine-guns had been destroyed and Indian troops had secured the vital air-link for the beleaguered garrison. However, Mehar Singh’s Dakota had been hit and still remains on the airstrip — testimony to the dare-devil flyer’s gallantry. On 18th May 1948 Hazara Battery celebrated its centenary in splendid style by capturing the Taintrinot ridge, securing Poonch from the Northwest. Capt (later Col) Gopal Singh was awarded Vir Chakra as a saviour of Poonch. Fifty years later, on 18th May 1998, we commemorated 150 years of glorious military service by re-enacting the relief of Poonch. At an open durbar on the airstrip, with Mehar Singh’s derelict Dakota to remind us of those grim days, several old Poonchis recalled how the blazing guns had forced the Paki raiders into headlong retreat. Soon after, with the power-house in Indian hands, light had come back into their lives. Now, 10 years further down the line, Hazara Battery’s guns are ready to blaze once again in the icy battlefield of
Siachen. |
Change in China CHENGDU, China – In a system with a centuries-long tradition of austere leaders laying down the law from behind their palace walls, China’s response to the worst natural disaster in 30 years revealed a nation in the throes of political change. The China that emerged from the wreckage of the 7.9 magnitude earthquake in Sichuan province looked surprisingly modern, flexible and if not democratic, at least open. It has admitted foreign rescue experts into the disaster area and tolerated reporting by a more aggressive media. The leadership has appeared more responsive to the public, and the public in turn, reacted with an outpouring of individual initiative to help out. Premier Wen Jiabao, sounding much like a Western politician throughout the week, trudged through the mud, visited gut-wrenching scenes of collapsed schools and homes, and stroked the cheeks of crying children. Wen even echoed the words of Bill Clinton, who spoke of feeling others’ pain, as he told survivors, “Your pain is our pain.” President Hu Jintao flew to the battered city of Mianyang on Friday to show support for victims. The trip appeared to go beyond the formulaic photo opportunity. It suggested a growing recognition by the government that public opinion matters and that the people should know what their leaders are doing, particularly in times of crisis. Instead of ordering people, the government is guiding them in a manner befitting a global state in the 21st century. “The Communist government is changing its ruling ideology to become more people-oriented,” said Huang Nanping, Marxism and Leninism professor at Peking University. The Chinese people, too, have been initimately a part of the tragedy that has been brought into many of their homes through 24-hour television coverage. They’ve cheered collectively when children were rescued from under the rubble; more often they have cried when the victims were carried out dead. There has been a crush of people wanting to volunteer in the disaster area in Sichuan province -- so many that the government has worked to keep people away. Within 72 hours after the earthquake, Chinese individuals and companies had raised nearly $200 million. In almost every neighborhood of Beijing, volunteers were seen collecting money. The Beijing Municipal Health Bureau had announced that all of the city’s blood banks were full. For centuries, China has operated under a top-down system. During the height of the Cultural Revolution, Mao ordered millions of city dwellers to the countryside and upended the society, leaving individual scars that remain three decades later. But since the 1990s, economic liberalisation and a changing culture have placed far greater emphasis on the individual, creating an ever-tougher balancing act for a one-party state attempting to maintain control and stability. Rising living standards and an increasingly willful middle class have shifted vitality and initiative to the private sector and the individual. Seeing disaster in their country, their every impulse is to head out to the scene with blankets, food, medicine and drinking water. Their enthusiasm might be more helpful to the country’s cohesiveness than slogans about national unity and harmony. “It’s wonderful to see young people working together like this. Nobody’s ordering them to do it. It is all voluntary,” said a 73-year-old retired doctor, Xiang Guichen, who was strolling past the blood mobile. Also in evidence this week was a shift in the media. For decades, China’s reaction whenever there was a hint of trouble was to cordon off the affected area and squelch alternative views. The government this time made a fleeting effort to control the media; an order went out Monday that Chinese outlets should not send reporters to the damaged areas and take only material from the official news service. But the order was ignored, causing the government to loosen its expectations. “This is such a big event that none us would give up the opportunity to cover it,” said a Chinese journalist, who asked not to be quoted by name. Foreign journalists also witnessed a difference in the treatment and access provided by government officials. “Journalists? Go right on through,” said a security official at a toll booth on the road to Mianyang, waving through a foreign journalist. The security official also did not collect the toll fee. At the county emergency relief center, government officials quickly provided statistics, handouts and interview opportunities. A government that has often put up with few challenges to its authority has taken the unusual step of fielding questions online from people about why thousands of schools that collapsed were not built to be quake-safe. Another change has been admitting foreign experts to the disaster area. China has had a huge incentive, and a big opportunity, to recover some of its losses in international prestige as it prepares to host the Olympics, which open in Beijing on August 8. The Tibet crackdown, its support for Sudan in the Darfur crisis, protests surrounding the Olympic torch relay, the domestic xenophobia whipped up in response to foreign criticism and human rights campaigns by overseas activists have damaged its international reputation. The destruction caused by natural disasters, for which the government bears limited responsibility, are far easier to address and respond to openly than political unrest, environmental devastation fueled by badly administered factories, corruption and other crises, which tend to see Beijing revert to its old ways. A government rooted in authoritarianism with the world’s largest army may be in a better position to marshal relief resources and manpower than a decentralised democracy. “The Chinese government won a lot of credibility from the way they responded to the earthquake,” said Jing Jun, a sociologist at Tsinghua University. “But whether this is a turning point to China becoming a democratic society, that is a long shot.” By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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Extreme distress driving UP ‘bhaiyyas’ out People
in Ludhiana, Chandigarh and Delhi who wonder why so many ‘bhaiyas’ flock to their cities in desperate search of employment need to know more about the distressing conditions which are responsible for large-scale migration of people from their villages. Recently I visited 23 villages of Bihar and Uttar Pradesh – 11 villages in North Bihar and 12 in Bundelkhand region of U.P. to learn about the real situation of villages from where so many migrants come. In Bihar I went to East Champaram district and in U.P. to Hamirpur, Jalaun and Jhansi districts. The villages of Bihar I visited had been badly ravaged by floods while the villages of Bundelkhand (U.P.) have been devastated by drought. As one approaches Jigni village (in Raath tehsil of Hamirpur district), all that one can see is a vast stretch of barren, dismal fields with equally sad cows searching vainly for a patch or two of grass. Four years of drought have caused extreme distress to people. Waves of migrant workers have left after July, particularly after Diwali. Many village homes are locked up as entire families have left. Elderly people and many women who have been left in villages sometimes face very difficult times as migrants with many problems in cities are unable to send money back home. Even workers in poor health have migrated due to lack of earning opportunities here. Hunger and malnutrition exist on a massive scale. The overwhelming majority of people are living on staple cereals with salt and chutney. Use of pulses, vegetables and milk has declined heavily. Many of them can’t get enough of even roti and salt to be able to fill their stomach. Many of them get only one meal a day. It is in these long term conditions of under- nutrition, chronic hunger and malnutrition that the debate on ‘hunger deaths ‘ should be understood. Several hunger deaths have been reported – for example as many as seven in a single village Nahri of Banda district. A hunger death means that chronic under nutrition and malnutrition have played an important role in the death as the weakened body also becomes vulnerable to many ailments. Defined in this way, many hunger deaths are taking place in Bundelkhand, more than what is reported. All the people contacted by us agreed that particularly in the last four to five years there have been significant changes in weather patterns which have adversely affected farmers and farming. Comparing the last four-five years with the situation 25 to 30 years earlier, people say that rainfall has decreased, the number of rainy days has decreased, rain tends to be concentrated in a smaller number of days, cases of untimely rain are more common (frequently harming farmers instead of helping them). The damage caused by hailstorms, frost and storms has increased. Keeping in view the high levels of debts, the severe water-shortage and the heavy dependance on migration it is no exaggeration to say that the very survival of some villages is threatened. The distress of flood-affected villagers does not pass away with the flood waters, it stays on for a long time. The rural employment guarantee scheme is most needed for such areas of high distress, but during the last six months people of these villages got almost no work under this scheme. As Ramesh Pankaj, Secretary of Muzaffarpur Vikas Mandal, an organisation founded by Jaya Prakash Narayan, says, “Even at the time of floods, the affected people could have been provided work in neighbouring areas not affected by floods. If they had got work nearer to their homes, they would not have been forced to migrate to distant areas in conditions of high distress and uncertainty.” While conditions of high levels of distress continue to exist in thousands of villages of Bihar three months after the most devastating floods, in the case of some villages like Sundarpur (block Banjariya) the very existence of the village is threatened by relentless river erosion which has already gobbled many fields and houses of this village. The village mukhiya Habibullah says, “To some extent the entire village is threatened by erosion. Similar is the case of several other villages like Ajgarwan, Jatvaan, Khairi and Mohammadpur.” Many farmers living near river-bank are also affected very adversely by the sand deposited in their fields during the floods. They have not been able to cultivate the rabi (winter) crop and the fate of their fields is very uncertain. |
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Chatterati Youthful style The
Bachchans were all over Delhi – not Amitabh-Jaya with Abhishek in tow, but bhabi Ramola and brother Ajitabh Bachchan along with daughters Namrata and Naina – to give the city a new restaurant. While Naina is a banker, Namrata is an artist. The daughters have been a huge influence on the restaurant with their keen eye, great aesthetic sense and their youthful style. The buzz of course suggests that things have not been very hunky dory with estranged husband Ajitabh for Ramola but she is proud to carry the surname and so are the daughters. The media of course went overboard after they read the Bachchan name on the card. But given the fact that Delhi is already choc-a-bloc with restaurants, they have lots of competition. Let’s see if the Bachchan surname will work in this field. The opening saw a whole lot of Indian designers and over-worked cricketers partying, dining and wining till the wee hours of the morning. All in the family Karnataka seems to have many politically ambitious families which have huge numbers of brothers, sons, daughters and extended families in the fray. It passes all caste, communal or partisan barriers. There are about 50 dynastic candidates in the fray. The amusing fight is among brothers in Soraba, where two of former chief minister Bangarappa’s sons – Kumar and Madhu – are fighting each other. Two-time MLA Kumar is from the Congress while Madhu is contesting from his father’s party, the Samajwadi party. In Kunigal, D. Nagarajaiah of the JD(S) is taking on younger brother D. Krishnappa of the BJP. In Belthangady, Vasant Bangera (Congress) is fighting younger brother Prabhakar Bangera (BJP). Locals are enjoying the fight in Kolar district where the candidates of all the three major political parties are from the same family: N. Shivashankar Reddy for the Congress and Ravinarayan Reddy for the BJP. In Belgaum, the five brothers of the Jharkiholi family are taking dynastic politics to greater heights. Former minister Satish Jharkiholi of the Congress faces younger brother Lakhan of the JD(S) while former MLA Ramesh Jharkiholi (Congress) will fight elder brother Dr Bheemshi (BJP). That is so interesting. Fortunately there are no personal attacks. And understandably so! While the Congress is implementing the “no kin” rule as far as possible, the JD(S) is now called the “father-and-sons party” led by national president H.D. Deve Gowda and his sons – former chief minister H.D. Kumaraswamy and former minister H.D. Revanna. One of Kumaraswamy’s opponents is the daughter of Ramakrishna Hegde. The BJP, has also given tickets to many family members of powerful leaders. But it is true that money power works here and the payoff in terms of money made and assets created makes politics a very big business. Well, even the total wealth of the 80-odd candidates has increased by Rs 480 crore. This is an election where money is in abundance. Naturally people want this to be within the family. Well, the ordinary worker wishes the system was transparent and the process of selection of candidates regulated. Wonder if the US primaries and the secret ballot method of selecting candidates through coteries are better. In any case, the on-going trend does not help democracy at all. |
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