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EDITORIALS

Terror in Kabul
Dangerous situation developing in Afghanistan
T
HE killing of 41 people in a suicide bomb blast carried out by the Taliban outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul on Monday shows how dangerous the situation in Afghanistan has become. Among the four Indians who perished in the attack were a military attaché and an IFS officer.

Azad bows out
End of an experiment in J&K
T
HE fall of the Ghulam Nabi Azad ministry became certain the moment the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) withdrew its ministers from the government. By withdrawing the confidence motion he had himself moved, as desired by Governor N.N. Vohra,


EARLIER STORIES

Verdict of the sacked
July 7, 2008
Anticipatory bail
July 6, 2008
Bandhs vs people
July 5, 2008
Threat is serious
July 4, 2008
Resorting to passions
July 3, 2008
PM bites the bullet
July 2, 2008
The best way-out
July 1, 2008
Unbridled inflation
June 30, 2008
Communal divide
June 29, 2008
Bahadur Sam
June 28, 2008
Pak crisis deepens
June 27, 2008


Tariff hike in Punjab
A little more for power will not hurt
T
HE Punjab power regulator has hiked the power tariff by 8 paise per unit for domestic and industrial consumers and 11 paise for farmers. Since farmers and sections of the poor get free power, the state government has promised to foot the bill. Its record for timely payments, however, is quite poor and its unkept promises have financially ruined the state electricity board.
ARTICLE

More from A.Q. Khan
The U.S. knew of his nuclear wheeling-dealing!
by K. Subrahmanyam
D
R A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who confessed in public on the TV to having proliferated nuclear weapon technology to Iran and Libya and was pardoned by Gen Pervez Musharraf, has now spoken out. He has disclosed that his confession was made under coercion. President Musharraf had promised him full freedom but reneged on his assurance by putting him under house arrest. 

MIDDLE

Guests and hosts
by Lalit Mohan
I
S the eastern notion of hospitality outdated? During the days when food was scarce the welfare of the guest, who was likely to have arrived after a long and arduous journey, required that first his thirst be quenched and then his stomach be filled. Food was the sine qua non of good guest relations.

OPED

Power at sea
Long way to go for a credible ‘Triad’
by Premvir Das
R
ecent reports reveal that the Russians will deliver a nuclear powered submarine of the Akula class to the Indian Navy by the end of 2009. Some have suggested that with the induction of this boat, to be named INS Chakra, as a successor to the Charlie class vessel leased from the former USSR in 1988, India’s nuclear Triad would be complete.

Security a challenge at Afghan mission
by Maj Gen (retd) Himmat Singh Gill
T
HE Indian Embassy in Kabul where I was posted as the Military Attaché for the better part of four years during the late 70s and early 80s was but a bare 200 yards away from the Afghan Ministry of Interior, the fountain head of any country’s security apparatus.

Delhi Durbar

  • Changing relations

  • Singh is King

  • Good undone

Corrections and clarifications

 

 


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Terror in Kabul
Dangerous situation developing in Afghanistan

THE killing of 41 people in a suicide bomb blast carried out by the Taliban outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul on Monday shows how dangerous the situation in Afghanistan has become. Among the four Indians who perished in the attack were a military attaché and an IFS officer. Kabul is now within the striking range of the Taliban like any other part of the troubled country. The US-led international coalition against terrorism has clearly failed to control the worrying situation. President Hamid Karzai’s hold has further weakened. Some time ago Karzai himself had a miraculous escape in a Taliban attack. Sadly, the Taliban, which ruled Afghanistan for nearly five years till its government was overthrown in the wake of 9/11, continues to function with impunity as a violent extremist movement. And no one seems to have an answer.

The emerging scenario is as much disturbing for India as for the countries directly involved in the fight against the Taliban. Many Indians, including engineers, working for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, have lost their lives in Taliban attacks. India has deployed units of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police in Afghanistan but the situation is such that it cannot provide foolproof security to the Indians working on various projects, including the Zalanj-Delaram highway project, which has often been targeted by the Taliban.

The Taliban, the single major source of violence in Afghanistan, needs to be dealt with as ruthlessly as possible to ensure peace in Afghanistan and the rest of South Asia. The offer of talks to the so-called moderate Taliban factions by President Karzai has made them feel that the international coalition against terrorism has developed symptoms of weariness. Pakistan’s policy of “peace” deals with the Taliban has also emboldened its activists. The extremists on both sides of the Khyber Pass have a destructive agenda. Deals of the kind offered by Islamabad cannot make them leave the path of violence as the killings near Islamabad’s Lal Masjid on Sunday and the bomb blasts in Karachi on Monday prove it. While Pakistan needs to abandon its kid-glove approach, the US-led efforts against terrorism call for an urgent review. The Taliban and other terrorist outfits must be tamed in the interest of peace and progress in the region and elsewhere. 

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Azad bows out
End of an experiment in J&K

THE fall of the Ghulam Nabi Azad ministry became certain the moment the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) withdrew its ministers from the government. By withdrawing the confidence motion he had himself moved, as desired by Governor N.N. Vohra, the Chief Minister thought that in view of his inability to command majority in the Assembly it was better to send in his resignation to the Governor. As the Congress-PDP government had nearly completed its term, Mr Azad’s continuance as Chief Minister would not have made much difference to either the Congress or the chief minister himself.

In Jammu and Kashmir, it is a three-party situation; any two parties among the Congress, the National Conference and the PDP can join and form a government. With just a few months left, none of the three is keen to form another coalition. The rule of the Governor is the only solution. In a way, the coming months will provide the voters an opportunity to reflect on the issues facing the state. While the voters will eventually judge the conduct of various political parties, the PDP’s behaviour has been the most cussed. It was party to the decision to allot land to the Amarnath Shrine Board, may be under the influence of the previous Governor, Lt-Gen S.K. Sinha (retd). But when it found that the decision was causing trouble, it did a volte-face and demanded the revocation of the order.

As if to make its conduct even more questionable, the PDP withdrew from the ministry two days before its own ultimatum to the government were to expire. The voters are unlikely to forget the fact that while the Congress, which had emerged the second largest party, allowed the PDP’s nominee to complete its three-year term as chief minister, it did not show the same courtesy to the Congress. J&K is caught in a messy situation caused by the rival agitations over the land transfer which has rightly been undone by the new Governor. While the Valley is quiet now, reverberations of the situation are now felt in places as far away as Indore in Madhya Pradesh. It is a pity that while efforts are being made to restore an order of normalcy in the Valley, wiser counsel is yet to prevail in Madhya Pradesh and Jammu.

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Tariff hike in Punjab
A little more for power will not hurt

THE Punjab power regulator has hiked the power tariff by 8 paise per unit for domestic and industrial consumers and 11 paise for farmers. Since farmers and sections of the poor get free power, the state government has promised to foot the bill. Its record for timely payments, however, is quite poor and its unkept promises have financially ruined the state electricity board. The regulator authority in Haryana too, according to reports, proposes to make power costlier by 17 to 25 paise per unit. Himachal Pradesh raised the domestic power price after seven years on May 30 by 20 to 30 paise.

The tariff hike in Punjab has been nominal, yet the BJP and the Congress are up in arms against the move to squeeze political capital out of the emotive issue. Their final course of action will be clear only after the “review” meetings. Last year the BJP had protested the power tariff hike. Its argument was, and still is: if farmers, (the vote bank of its coalition partner) are to get free power, why should the urban consumers (supposedly, supporters of the BJP) be taxed more? It prevailed then and forced the state government to absorb the “shock”, which set the exchequer back by Rs 292 crore.

The power board seems unhappy with the “meager” hike and its top officials are indicating an appeal against the decision. This the ruling Akali Dal may not allow. The regulator has kept the hike to the minimum possible because it feels (quite rightly, it seems) the board fudges its consumption figures and exaggerates distribution losses. The board has projected agricultural consumption at 10,014 million units, which is 45 per cent more than the 2005-06 figures, though there has been hardly any increase in the number of tubewells or area under cultivation. The board is sinking deeper into the financial morass, thanks to the politics of populism and the management’s failure to resist it. 

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Thought for the day

Minute attention to propriety stops the growth of virtue. — Mary Wollstonecraft

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More from A.Q. Khan
The U.S. knew of his nuclear wheeling-dealing!
by K. Subrahmanyam

DR A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear scientist who confessed in public on the TV to having proliferated nuclear weapon technology to Iran and Libya and was pardoned by Gen Pervez Musharraf, has now spoken out. He has disclosed that his confession was made under coercion. President Musharraf had promised him full freedom but reneged on his assurance by putting him under house arrest. Today he asserts that nuclear weapon proliferation to other countries was done under full knowledge of the Pakistan Army. He cites a particular instance of Pakistan’s centrifuges being dispatched to North Korea on board a North Korean military aircraft in 2000 and points out that this could not have been done without the knowledge of the Pakistani military authorities and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).

At that time General Musharraf was the Army Chief and Chief Executive of the Pakistani government. Dr Khan’s account of Pakistan-North Korea transactions causes embarrassment not only to General Musharraf and his predecessor army chiefs but also to the US Administration which professed to accept General Musharraf’s version that Dr Khan acted alone. The version tends to give credence to the recent account of journalist Shyam Bhatia that Benazir Bhutto carried CDs of uranium enrichment technology when she visited North Korea in 1994.

Dr Khan has revealed that he visited North Korea in 1994. These disclosures may explain why Pakistan has been refusing to permit Dr Khan being interviewed either by the US authorities or by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Such access to Dr Khan might have brought out that his proliferation activities had full backing of successive Pakistani Army Chiefs.

The more important question is: how much did the Americans know? The US has not explained to the world the allegations of the former Dutch Prime Minister, Dr Ruud Lubbers, in his TV and radio interviews in September 2005 that on two occasions — in 1975 and 1986 — when Dr Khan was arrested by the Dutch authorities the CIA interceded with them to let the Pakistani nuclear scientist go free. In other words, the CIA had an interest in Dr Khan.

Former CIA Director George Tenet in his book, At the centre of the Storm, writes, “For many years, there were rumours and bits of intelligence that Khan was sharing his deadly expertise beyond Pakistan’s borders. His range of international contacts was broad — in China, North Korea and throughout the Muslim world. In some cases, there were indications that he was trading nuclear expertise and material for other military equipment — for example, aiding North Korea with the uranium enrichment efforts in exchange for ballistic missile technology. It was extremely difficult to know exactly what he was up to or to what extent his efforts were conducted at the behest and with the support of the Pakistani government. Khan was supposedly a simple government employee with only a modest salary. Yet he lived a lavish lifestyle and had an empire that kept expanding.”

Then he comes out with his apologia. He says, “Although CIA struggled to penetrate proliferation operations and learn about the depth of their dealings, there is a tension when investigating these kinds of networks. The natural instinct when you find some shred of intelligence about nuclear proliferation is to act immediately. But you must control that urge and be patient to follow the links where they take you, so that when action is launched you can hope to remove the network both root and branch and not just pull off the top, allowing it to regenerate and grow again.”

But he has no explanation to offer on Ruud Lubbers’ disclosure on CIA interest in Dr Khan going back to 1975. The question now raised by Dr Khan that such transactions could not have taken place without the approval of the Pakistani Army should have occurred to the CIA as well. Yet the US decided to accept the Pakistani story of Dr Khan acting alone.

There is a book, Deception. Pakistan, the United States and the Global Nuclear Weapons Conspiracy, by Adiran Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark which charges that the US was privy to the Chinese proliferation to Pakistan and Pakistani proliferation activities. At the end of six and a half years of war on terror, the US has not been able to get hold of the Al-Qaeda leadership, which, according to US intelligence, is in the tribal areas of Pakistan. Over the last six years, instead of winning the war on terrorism, the US and its Western allies are facing a reinforced and better equipped Taliban all over Afghanistan, a much larger poppy crop being exported to the world through Pakistan and a resurgent Pakistani Taliban attacking US forces across the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

For any competent administration this should call for a total reappraisal of its past policies and assessments and a review to find out where they went wrong. It is quite obvious that the US policy of relying entirely on President Musharraf, the Pakistani ISI and the Army has not worked to their advantage. The present disclosures of Dr Khan would tend to suggest that his confession, Musharraf’s pardon and the US acceptance of the Pakistani version are probably an agreed charade between Pakistan and the US to wind up the Libyan proliferation, apply pressure on Iran and North Korea and, at the same time, to absolve Musharraf and the Pakistani Army of all blame.

Such a charade could only have encouraged Musharraf and the Pakistanis to take the Americans for a longer ride on their alleged commitment to fight the war against terrorism while using the US aid to buy military equipment intended to confront Indian forces and having large sums (in billions of dollars) of aid unaccounted for.

Pakistan has cultivated the US intelligence, armed forces and diplomatic establishment at lower and middle levels over decades. There is a case of Richard Barlow, a CIA operative who brought out the Pakistani assembly of nuclear weapons as early 1987 and Pakistani attempts at modifying US F-16 aircraft to carry nuclear weapons. He was hounded out of the CIA and, though finally exonerated, is still to receive his dues. Pakistani officials have taken credit that they were able to influence the findings and recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and had them diluted from their original strong adverse recommendations against Pakistan.

This long-term nexus between Pakistan and sections of the US establishment at lower and middle levels has hurt US national interests very deeply. If and when there are more disclosures by Dr Khan it is bound to expose not only Musharraf and the Pakistani military establishment but the US as well. Quite a few observers have expressed concern over the future safety and health of Dr A.Q. Khan.

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Guests and hosts
by Lalit Mohan

IS the eastern notion of hospitality outdated? During the days when food was scarce the welfare of the guest, who was likely to have arrived after a long and arduous journey, required that first his thirst be quenched and then his stomach be filled. Food was the sine qua non of good guest relations.

Our mythology is replete with instances where kings and commoners sacrificed all that they had — even the last piece of bread or the last drop of water — just to please, or even appease, their guest. In fact, hospitality was elevated to such a virtue — atithi devo bhava — that any lapse on this account brought terrible retribution. Shakuntala learnt this to her cost when she ignored Durvasa as he marched into her ashram. Guests had a divine right to be boorish and unreasonable. The host had no redress.

All that has changed with the rise in living standards. Hunger is no longer an acute problem. In fact, among the upper and middle classes most people eat more than they should when they would be better off dieting. Medical opinion is very clear about this. Overeating strains the stomach, heart and several other vital organs. Eating less is healthier. At least, it causes no harm.

So, logically, if the host is genuinely concerned about the health and welfare of his guests he should not inveigle them into stuffing themselves, but should, instead, advise them to eat and drink sparingly. That never happens. Most Indian households are able to produce a spread of goodies before the guest can have his say and he is buried under an avalanche of calories, whether he needs them or not. His plate may already be stacked three storeys high, the hostess will still amble across and say: “Have something ji. Kucch to lo.”

Could she be suffering from really poor vision, or pulling her guest’s leg? But, no, she would really like him to stuff himself and thereby propitiate her ego. Is that what hospitality is all about?

Maybe, there is something in it that I am missing. A guide-book to Tashkent, where this piece is being written, advises: “When you go guesting (sic) or invite guests to your place, you may become witness to a very peculiar situation. When you offer something to eat to an Uzbekistani person, he/she tends to refuse after your first try, in which case you would probably think they do not want it. As a matter of fact, they would love to taste what you are offering. Many people here consider it to be impolite to say yes the first time.”

Such guests would need to be prodded. That seems to be the way of the east, and logic has nothing to do with it.

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Power at sea
Long way to go for a credible ‘Triad’
by Premvir Das

Recent reports reveal that the Russians will deliver a nuclear powered submarine of the Akula class to the Indian Navy by the end of 2009. Some have suggested that with the induction of this boat, to be named INS Chakra, as a successor to the Charlie class vessel leased from the former USSR in 1988, India’s nuclear Triad would be complete.

The acquisition of the submarine is, of course, to be welcomed; however, to claim that it would fill the missing gap in underwater nuclear weapon capability is highly ambitious if not outright incorrect. The Akula, though powered by a nuclear reactor, will come with conventional weapons only as, indeed, did the first Chakra twenty years ago.

It will have no nuclear weapon capability; it is naïve for anyone to have thought that the Russians, full fledged members of the NPT and the NSG could even dream of making those transfers to India. And, nuclear powered vessels are not, necessarily nuclear weapon platforms; there is a great bridge to be crossed.

There is need for us to be more accurate in looking at the military environment especially those elements which impact upon us directly. The question, therefore, that needs to be answered is what India will get out of this induction.

Induction of the Chakra in 1988 was a step in learning how to operate and maintain a vessel of the sophistication and complexity of a nuclear platform. This is how the Indian Navy entered the world of nuclear submarines.

The vessel was returned in 1991, as scheduled, but the three years of lease were a huge learning experience. People, including crews, going on board and coming off, had to undergo rigid procedures to safeguard against radiation, regular and continuous monitoring of waters around the submarine was carried out to see if discharges, howsoever meager, were not leading to contamination, plans and procedures were put in place and then exercised frequently to cope with unforeseen contingencies.

This was not enough. Mechanisms were established to review these drills and to modify and update them as necessary, and interactive structures were civilian agencies, including the port and district administration, were constituted to allay fears and suspicions quite normal in the context of nuclear reactors operating in close proximity of civilian populations.

All this was not easy. There were protests from environmentalists and other complications that had to be resolved. Meanwhile, training of crews, the first lot which sailed the vessel from Vladivostok to Visakhapatnam and two thereafter, continued apace and the efficacy of training was proved when a major accident at sea involving the reactor was successfully and competently countered.

Considerable all round expertise had been built up when the lease came to an end. In these intervening seventeen years’ much of it has withered away and been lost. We will, in effect, have to start all over again; training of some crews in Russia being only one small part of the much larger whole.

But there is, at least, the confidence that the route has been traveled earlier and when the new Chakra steams in a year and a half from now, it will be in waters that have been traversed before.

Frankly, the new Chakra does not bring in any more capabilities than the submarines in service already have. The Kilo class boats are equipped with the 300 kilometer missile and the Scorpenes will also have a weapon of the same capability.

The difference will lie in the greater endurance of the nuclear powered Chakra which will allow her to deploy at sea for much longer periods. The real benefits will, however, come elsewhere. It is more than likely that designers involved in development of our own ATV had much to learn from their association with the old Chakra and now that the programme has progressed considerably, presence of the newer and more sophisticated vessel will help them check out their own layouts and testing procedures.

Reportedly, the ATV platform could be afloat by 2010 and it will be necessary to subject the vessel to sustained and strenuous trials; data available through the induction of Chakra will facilitate this process.

Similarly, an entirely new set of technical and support facilities will need to be put in place for the submarine being acquired from Russia and these will also be useful for the vessel being built indigenously. So, it is a win-win situation.

This brings us back to the question of Triad capability. At present, delivery capability lies in aircraft of the IAF and the Prithvi and Agni series of land based missiles. Trials have been carried out with a Prithvi system fitted in a surface ship but credible sea based capability can only be provided from a submarine.

In our context, only the ATV can do this. A long range missile, with a nuclear weapon capable of being fired from below the water is needed. There have been reports that trials of underwater launch from a fixed structure have been successfully carried out. While this should be cause for some satisfaction much more remains to be done.

The Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile (SLBM) is about the most complex weapon system around and to expect that we have far advanced along that road will be naïve. In short, there is a long way to go before India will have a credible Triad capability.

Access to critical technologies, contingent upon lifting of sanctions, is essential for India to become a credible nuclear weapon state. Much more than tests of weapons which had been the focus thus far, development of delivery systems is now important. If we can have a nuclear submarine at sea with a proven SLBM in the next five years, it will be something to be very satisfied about.

The writer is a former Commander-in-Chief, Eastern Naval Command 

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Security a challenge at Afghan mission
by Maj Gen (retd) Himmat Singh Gill

THE Indian Embassy in Kabul where I was posted as the Military Attaché for the better part of four years during the late 70s and early 80s was but a bare 200 yards away from the Afghan Ministry of Interior, the fountain head of any country’s security apparatus.

During the coup to topple Noor Mohammad Tarakki, and then later when Hafizullah Amin was toppled by the Soviets during their invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, many were the shoot outs and bombardments that took place in the city of Kabul between the government forces and the Mujahadeen.

One can say safely that the job of a Military Attache in countries troubled by insurgency, civil strife and sometimes a war, is never easy.

The Indian Mission in down town Kabul, which still functions from its old location, has been hit in a terrorist bombing attack, and the country has lost four Indian nationals including the Military Attache Brigadier R. Mehta, an IFS officer, and two ITBP personnel posted in the Mission, in addition to an Afghan national.

This is, by all accounts, one of the most serious and daring attacks on one of our Missions abroad.

Afghanistan has always been a peculiarly tough country to serve in at any time and in any season. In all its history, from King Zahir Shah to Doud and then to the April 1978 Saur Revolution, which ushered in a communist bonded Afghan government, the capital Kabul has always stayed comparatively secure and peaceful as compared to the countryside.

The lack of a proper road communication network, infighting between the warlords of various provinces, the traditional Afghan custom of ‘badla’ or revenge within the feuding tribes, and an ineffective national police force, have been some of the reasons for this disparity in the security picture.

Today, when the Indian presence of field experts and workers in the road surface department, dam projects and other construction is pronounced in and around Kabul, the threat factor to our personnel has taken on an added meaning.

Those who have attacked our Mission are possibly not much concerned with the help that India is providing to the common Afghan in the rehabilitation and reconstruction of their country, and have carried out this dastardly attack.

The ongoing war where the ISAF and other American troops are heavily committed, facing at times covert assistance to the militants from some neighbouring countries, has made the task of governance at the state and capital level a Herculean one.

It is not very easy to fight a war in a country and at the same time govern it effectively. The reconstruction programme itself mounted by the Bonn sponsors and others is often seen to be lagging behind, with the desired aid not forthcoming at the appropriate time or in many cases being funneled away to unauthorised agencies.

There of course can be little doubt that as the operations of the Allied Command slow down and become sluggish at times, more and more operational load is put on the Afghan National Army, which will take some more time to stabilise as a potent force available to the Hamid Karzai government.

Long years of war and strife with a virtually non-existent agricultural and industrial base have all taken their toll.

The bombing attack has raised some serious concerns about the state of security in Missions abroad where the internal security picture is at the best of times very blurred. Any Mission is always under the protective umbrella of the interior ministry of the host country.

It remains for the Mission to evolve strict, effective and yet non-obtrusive safeguards depending on the environment prevailing.

Every Mission is provided with a station chief who looks after the intelligence matters and after some of our road engineers were killed some time back, the security at our Consulates at Mazar-e-Sharief, Jalalabad, Herat and Kandahar was obviously beefed up with the augmentation of para-military forces like the ITBP.

Is there a case for having additional and separate security for our Consular Sections? Normally it is not difficult to ensure security of personnel and weapons within a Mission, but the real challenge comes in where masses congregate for official work like in these sections.

The security in and around our Mission and Consulates must be enhanced, and a water tight liaison with our Embassy and the Ministry of Interior of the host country created at the earliest.

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Delhi Durbar
Changing relations

The new-found friendship between former bitter political foes, the Samajwadi Party and the Congress, has led to an interesting guessing game in the Capital about the ramifications of this bonding. For instance, everybody is curious to know if the new equations between the two political parties will impact relations between the Gandhis and the Bachchans.

The two parties fell out after a longstanding friendship and since then, the Bachchans have been firmly in the Samajwadi Party camp. Similarly, there is considerable crystal-gazing about another SP groupie, Anil Ambani, whose estranged brother Mukesh Ambani is a Congress favourite.

Delhi’s political grapevine is rife with speculation that the SP leader, better known as “Mr. Fix-it” Amar Singh, has already indicated to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that he expects the UPA government to treat Anil Ambani with kid gloves. It was no coincidence that Mukesh Ambani’s private aircraft were detained by the customs the day SP leaders officially communicated their support to the UPA leadership.

Most importantly, everybody is waiting to see if the “political Bharat milap” in Delhi will impact the sizzling rivalry between megastar Amitabh Bachchan and Bollywood badshah Shahrukh Khan whose proximity to the Gandhi family, especially Rahul Gandhi and sister Priyanka, is all too well known.

Singh is King

Ever since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh displayed his steely resolve to push ahead with the Indo-US nuclear deal at the risk of breaking with the Left parties, political pundits in the Capital have suddenly discovered that the the man whom they had been quick to dub as the “weakest PM” is actually made of sterner stuff.

A flurry of text messages have been doing the rounds after the Congress-Samajwadi Party sealed their pact last week. “Singh is King” read one message, while another declared, “The lion of Punjab has vanquished the Bengal tigers.”

Good undone

Human resource development minister Arjun Singh has found a way to keep the media at bay. For a fortnight now, the minister’s official engagements have not been landing on the table of his information officers.

The staff is under instruction not to send the list containing the minister’s official engagements, as was the case earlier, as Singh was very open about his official, even personal engagements. So much so, the daily list even mentioned his date with the dictaphone trainer at 7 pm every day. The old, famous, list now stands buried, all thanks to Rahul Gandhi.

When the Nehru-Gandhi scion wanted to call on Arjun Singh some time ago, the time and venue of the meeting was dutifully included in Arjun Singh’s daily list of engagements.This immediately alerted the media which landed up at the minister’s residence in droves. Wary of the overwhelming media presence, Rahul Gandhi called off his date with Arjun Singh at the last minute. Little did Rahul Gandhi know that his snub would result in a long-standing good being undone.

Contributed by Anita Katyal, Faraz Ahmad and Aditi Tandon

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Corrections and clarifications

n The headline, “India needs 300 tonne foodgrains by 2020: Economic adviser” (June 29), is misleading as the correct figure is “300-320 million metric tonnes”.

n Apropos of the report, ‘Affiliation of Gurusar B.Ed college mired in controversy’, (June 26), Malout is a subdivision of Muktsar district and not a district as mentioned.

n In the ‘Forest department’s show cause notices served on Army’ (July 1), it should have been “93 Infantry Brigade” and not “93 Infantry Division” as mentioned.

n OVI is not an acronym as the report, ‘Nokia gears up to launch OVI services’ (July 3), suggests. Ovi is a Finnish word and it means “door”. Nokia’s new Ovi service opens the ‘door’ to music download, games, maps etc.

n In the third line of the second paragraph of the middle, ‘Beasts are not rapists’ (July 1) the word should have been “perpetuate”, instead of “perpetrate”. The latter means: to commit a crime or indulge in some wrongdoing. In animals, sexual act is undertaken only for the continuation, and hence perpetuation, of the race and that too only when the females are receptive.

Despite our earnest endeavour to keep The Tribune error-free, some errors do creep in at times. We are always eager to correct them.

We request our readers to write or e-mail to us whenever they find any error. We will carry corrections and clarifications, wherever necessary, every Tuesday.

Readers in such cases can write to Mr Amar Chandel, Deputy Editor, The Tribune, Chandigarh, with the words “Corrections” on the envelope. His e-mail ID is: 
amarchandel@tribunemail.com.

H.K. Dua,
Editor-in-Chief

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