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Carry on, Mr Speaker Law on jails On astroturf |
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US-Pakistan ties under strain
Rain calling
Nuclear deal: ‘A giant step forward for India’
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Carry on, Mr Speaker THE CPM Politburo’s decision to expel Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee from the party exposes its ingrained dislike for democratic norms. In taking this decision, it did not take into account the peculiar nature of the office of Speaker. The party which believes in Stalinist-era discipline saw him as just a party MP, who has to obey the party whip, irrespective of the fact that he was elected unanimously by all the parties represented in the Lok Sabha. It is the CPM leadership which unnecessarily dragged him into a political controversy by including his name in the list of MPs the party submitted to the President while withdrawing support to the UPA government. Subsequent admission by party leader Sitaram Yechury that it was wrong to include his name in the list and that he was free to decide whether he should resign or not appears to have been for public consumption alone. All along, the party had been putting pressure on the Speaker to quit. The Politburo members seem to be piqued by the fact that the Speaker was not amenable to pressures. There is no other justification for the expulsion. Far from punishment, he deserves compliments for measuring up to the exacting standards of a Speaker. The CPM, in fact, could have shared some of the acclaim Mr Chatterjee has earned for doing his duty well. Alas, such democratic niceties are foreign to the comrades. On Monday and Tuesday when the House debated the vote of confidence, Mr Chatterjee did a splendid job to the full satisfaction of the House. Millions of people who watched the proceedings on TV were also impressed by the amiable, yet unyielding, manner in which he presided over the House. During his tenure, there has never been an occasion when his rulings could be construed as partisan. His announcement that he had no intention of contesting the next Lok Sabha elections only strengthened his credentials as virtually an apolitical Speaker. By this action, the Politburo has dented its own image, rather than that of the Speaker. The apparatchiks ought to have realised that in a parliamentary system, the democratic spirit is more important than party discipline. On his part, Mr Chatterjee should adhere to the sound constitutional requirement that he continues in office until the next House is constituted.
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Law on jails TO
improve the condition of jails in Punjab, the government is ready with a draft of the Punjab Prisons and Correctional Act to replace the Jail Act of 1894. The emphasis under the new Act will be to provide vocational training to prisoners and prepare them for a better life outside jail and introduce transparency in the jail administration. The condition of prisoners in the country in general and Punjab in particular is pathetic with the abuse of human rights a common feature. Due to space shortage, prisons are overcrowded, unhygienic and fail to provide basic amenities. Small wonder, therefore, that incidents of rioting and violence by prisoners are becoming all too frequent, the recent one being in Jalandhar, which had led the Punjab and Haryana High Court to take suo motu notice of newspaper reports and ask the state government to file a detailed affidavit on the status of prison infrastructure in the state. The government is trying to decongest and upgrade jails, but the process is irritatingly slow. Four years ago the government had appointed a committee under the then ADGP, Mr A.P. Bhatnagar, to suggest ways to reform the jail system, but its report has been gathering dust in official cupboards. The draft Act is a delayed result of that. The state cannot plead the shortage of funds as an excuse for not being able to build new jails and expand the existing ones. There is a Rs 4,000-crore Central plan to modernise jails. A state has to contribute only one-fourth of the cost. The plan redefines prisons as “correctional homes” and aims at establishing cells conforming to the UN standards with facilities for cushioned beds, flush toilets, video-conferencing, yoga, religious discourses and sports. It is not lack of resources that hamper prison reforms, but the absence of political will and administrative initiative.
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On astroturf THE fault, as every metaphorical Brutus in our politics would have discovered on July 22, lay not in them, but in their stars. Of course, the unquestionable star of the day was Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. And, rightly did he advise the BJP’s perpetual PM-in-waiting, the star-crossed Lal Krishna Advani, to change his astrologers. Mr Advani was put in a spot similar to that of a man who becomes tongue-tied on being asked “when did you stop beating your wife?” Mr Advani can neither deny that he consulted astrologers nor admit to taking their counsel. Dr Singh, who has been repeatedly taunted by Mr Advani as “the weakest Prime Minister” the country has ever known, must have immensely enjoyed the last laugh that came with delivering that deserved barb. With cutting sarcasm, Dr Singh referred to “at least three attempts” to topple the UPA government and reminded Mr Advani that he was being repeatedly misled by astrological advice. Whether Mr Advani will heed the Prime Minister’s well-meaning advice is anybody’s guess. Given the less-than-glorious uncertainties that plague the most astute of politicians, they tend to seek comfort in predictions, though they know full well that little in politics is predictable. The only predictable aspect is that politicians will continue to be guided or misguided by the predictions of astrologers, regardless of how many times the astrologer’s forecast fails to come true. Those who swear by scientific rationalism may be appalled that politicians who seek the highest executive office are not made of sterner stuff. Yet, there is delicious irony in the Left, which swears by scientific rationalism, joining hands with those who are driven by astrological advice. But then, the very exercise to dislodge the UPA government was irrational. Thus was reason wounded twice, first by the chimera-chasers and then the victims of soothsayers, before it survived the trust vote.
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A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back — but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you. — Marian Wright Edelman
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US-Pakistan ties under strain WITH the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan now coming under increasing attack from Taliban fighters comfortably based across the border in Baluchistan and the federally administered tribal areas (FATA) of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP), the contradictions in national aims of the US on the one hand and its client state Pakistan, on the other, are coming into sharp focus. These contradictions are being extensively documented both by western writers like Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott Clark and by courageous Pakistanis like Shuja Nawaz, Ahmed Rashid and Amir Mir, who are alarmed at the looming disaster the ambitious army establishment is leading the country into. The roots of the present US-Pakistan tensions lie in the alliance which was forged by the Reagan Administration with General Zia-ul-Haq in the 1980s, under which Zia and the ISI received virtually unlimited military and economic assistance to bleed and oust Soviet forces from Afghanistan. With no accounting or accountability the ISI used the aid thus provided to arm and train rabidly fundamentalist forces both in Afghanistan and in Pakistan. General Zia’s strategic aim was to create “a pro-Pakistan Islamic Government in Kabul to be followed by the Islamisation of Central Asia. In military parlance, this was Pakistan’s strategy to secure “strategic depth” in relation to India”. This strategy found use when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan and Jihadis from groups like the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and the Jaish-e-Mohammed were trained in Afghanistan, with its rulers aiding and abetting the hijackers of IC 814 in 1999. Shuja Nawaz has revealed that he was told by the then ISI Chief Lt. General Ziauddin that when the ISI approached the Taliban “President” Mullah Mohammad Rabbani in 1999, asking for 20000 to 30000 volunteers to wage Jihad in Kashmir, Rabbani smilingly said he was willing to offer even half a million Afghan Jihadis for Jihad in Kashmir to the ISI. It was largely due to American military bungling that following the American backed takeover of Kabul by the anti-Taliban Northern Alliance in 2001, the Taliban leadership led by Mullah Omar fled to Quetta, while its military commanders like Jalaluddin Haqqani along with Osama bin Laden escaped into FATA. General Musharraf, often described by Americans as their “best bet,” then took over at his duplicitous best. While on the one hand he pretended to be a staunch ally in America’s “War on Terror,” he secretly set up an elaborate network of former ISI officers to regroup, rearm and train the Taliban on Pakistan soil. The Pakistan army establishment was just not willing to end support for the Taliban, or groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, which had been cosmetically “banned” by General
Musharraf. Use of radical Islamic groups to achieve strategic objectives in Afghanistan and India remains the cornerstone of the strategic culture of the Pakistan army, irrespective of whether power is wielded by a fundamentalist like General Zia-ul-Haq, or an ostensible “moderate” like General Ashfaq Pervez Kiyani. Pakistan thus has the unique, though dubious, distinction of being the only country in the world that has attempted to use radical Islamic groups to “bleed” two superpowers in Afghanistan — the Soviet Union and now the United States. The duplicity of Musharraf and his fellow Generals in ostensibly cooperating with the US, while providing a safe haven to the Taliban has had disastrous consequences for Afghanistan, Pakistan and the US. 28 US soldiers were killed in Afghanistan in June 2008 - the largest number in any one month since 2001. President Bush said on July 15 that the US would work with Afghanistan’s intelligence services to “get to the bottom” of allegations by President Karzai of Pakistan promoting terrorism in Afghanistan, including in an attempt to assassinate him and in the attack on the Indian Embassy in Kabul. Bush added: “There is no question, however, that some extremists are coming out of parts of Pakistan into Afghanistan.” Echoing what President Bush had said earlier Senator Obama proclaimed: “If another attack on our homeland comes it will likely come from the same region where 9/11 was planned.” He added: “We must make it clear that if Pakistan cannot or will not act, we will take out high value terrorist targets like Bin Laden if we have them in or sights”. These warnings were personally conveyed bluntly when Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited Pakistan. An enraged President Karzai has repeatedly warned Pakistan of retaliatory and punitive action, calling Pakistan’s military and ISI as the “world’s biggest terrorists”. Within Pakistan, virtually the entire NWFP stand Talibanised, with barber shops, video parlours, music, cinemas and girls’ schools forcibly shut down. The Provincial Government led by the moderate Awami National Party has set “defence committees” at district level against a complete Taliban takeover. Even in provincial towns in Punjab like Bahawalpur Jihadis like Maulana Masood Azhar of the Jaish-e-Mohammed spit venom vowing Jihad against India, Israel, and United States and in Afghanistan. In early June, some 300 fighters from various Jihadi groups met secretly at a venue not far from Army Headquarters in Rawalpindi. They vowed to set aside differences and commit more fighters to Afghanistan. Toor Gul, a representative of Kashmir’s Hizb-ul- Mujahideen proclaimed that the message from the Rawalpindi meeting was that “Jihad in Kashmir is still continuing, but is not the most important one right now”. In these circumstances, American and NATO officials are saying the situation in Pakistan is “dysfunctional” with radical Islamic groups now challenging the writ of the State. The attacks on the Indian Embassy in Kabul and on Indian nationals in Southern Afghanistan are an inevitable consequence of the Pakistan army’s determination to convert Afghanistan into a client state for “strategic depth” against India. Can this situation change soon? Tragically, the answer is ‘No”. As Ahmed Rashid notes in his classic book on the “Descent into Chaos,” on Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia: “The Pakistan army has to put to rest its notion of a centralised state based solely on defence against India and an expansionist Islamist strategic military doctrine carried out at the expense of democracy. Musharraf deliberately raised the profile of Jihadi groups to make himself more useful to the United States”. There is nothing to suggest that General Pervez Ashfaq Kiyani and the military elite have the vision, will or inclination to change the disastrous course the army has adopted for Pakistan from the days of General
Zia-ul-Haq.
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Rain calling THE monsoon clouds blow grey across the skies. Sometimes they are fierce black, edged with silver. And the rains come pouring down. Rain calling again. It is when the rains arrive that we feel we should look at Bungalow No. 85 once more. The shattered old house standing at the northern most edges of the city seems to be clothed with mystique at this time. The gnarled trees in the destroyed garden hug a century’s old secret even closer. Grass and weeds grow wildly, enticingly. Something calls…something that is almost alive… And we answer. And almost everyone has a story to tell of Bungalow No. 85 when it rains. Only S has a story of the old house in the sunshine. It was afternoon, S begins, a hot, sultry afternoon with the sun beating down mercilessly, when he found himself in the vicinity of the old house. Wanting to escape the punishing weather, he strolled up the silent garden path, down the winding curve of the trees, wrenched open the front door and entered. Everything was as it should be. Sunbeams danced through the broken windowpanes, catching motes of dust. S settled down on an old chair with a grin. Nothing in the sunshine, he told himself, no sounds, no groans, no old murders being reenacted… And it was then that he began to feel uneasy. The grim old house, haunted by the shadow of an ancient crime, loomed over him. Outside there was bright sunshine. But not a leaf stirred or a bird chirped. The furniture cast shadows on the wall. Huge shadows that moved at will. “All I felt was terror,” he used to tell us at this point. “And an almost overwhelming urge to run out of the house. But I was pinned to the chair”. He could not move. Outside the city sweltered in the summer heat, but inside it grew ice cold. S. could almost see his feet being frozen to the ground. And then he heard it… a soft chuckle…an almost inhuman shuffle, somewhere close to him… “I felt the hair rise on my head”, he reminisced, “For the first and last time in my life…” Something shuffled closer…and S. flew straight out of the house and into the crowded streets. “It could have been imagination”, he mutters. A trick of the mind. Or could it? As I told you S is the only one who has a story of Bungalow No. 85 in the sunshine. Others can tell you many stories of the Bungalow when it rains. When clouds play drums in the skies and rain falls in harsh drops on the ruins of memories … When lightning tears apart the skies in purple fury. When destroyed trees holds fast ragged edges of violence…A story that begs to come alive once more… Rains bring to life many things. But perhaps some things are better left untouched, better buried in forgotten gardens…or so say the
wise.
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Nuclear deal: ‘A giant step forward for India’ Following are extracts from Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh’s reply to the debate on the Motion of Confidence in the Lok Sabha on July 22, 2008 THE Leader of Opposition, Shri L.K. Advani has chosen to use all manner of abusive objectives to describe my performance. He has described me as the weakest Prime Minister, a nikamma PM, and of having devalued the office of PM. To fulfill his ambitions, he has made at least three attempts to topple our government. But on each occasion his astrologers have misled him. This pattern, I am sure, will be repeated today. At his ripe old age, I do not expect Shri Advani to change his thinking. But for his sake and India’s sake, I urge him at least to change his astrologers so that he gets more accurate predictions of things to come. When I look at the composition of the opportunistic group opposed to us, it is clear to me that the clash today is between two alternative visions of India’s future. The one vision represented by the UPA and our allies seeks to project India as a self confident and united nation moving forward to gain its rightful place in the comity of nations, making full use of the opportunities offered by a globalised world, operating on the frontiers of modern science and technology and using modern science and technology as important instruments of national economic and social development. The opposite vision is of a motley crowd opposed to us who have come together to share the spoils of office to promote their sectional, sectarian and parochial interests. Our Left colleagues should tell us whether Shri L.K. Advani is acceptable to them as a Prime Ministerial candidate. Shri L.K. Advani should enlighten us if he will step aside as Prime Ministerial candidate of the opposition in favour of the choice of UNPA. They should take the country into confidence on this important issue. I say in all sincerity that this session and debate was unnecessary because I have said on several occasions that our nuclear agreement after being endorsed by the IAEA and the Nuclear Suppliers Group would be submitted to this august House for expressing its view. All I had asked our Left colleagues was: please allow us to go through the negotiating process and I will come to Parliament before operationalising the nuclear agreement. This simple courtesy which is essential for orderly functioning of any Government worth the name, particularly with regard to the conduct of foreign policy, they were not willing to grant me. They wanted a veto over every single step of negotiations which is not acceptable. They wanted me to behave as their bonded slave. The nuclear agreement may not have been mentioned in the Common Minimum Programme. However, there was an explicit mention of the need to develop closer relations with the USA but without sacrificing our independent foreign policy. The Congress Election Manifesto had explicitly referred to the need for strategic engagement with the USA and other great powers such as Russia. In 1991, while presenting the Budget for 1991-92, as Finance Minister, I had stated : No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come. I had then suggested to this august House that the emergence of India as a major global power was an idea whose time had come. Carrying forward the process started by Shri Rajiv Gandhi of preparing India for the 21st century, I outlined a far reaching programme of economic reform whose fruits are now visible to every objective person. Both the Left and the BJP had then opposed the reform. Both had said we had mortgaged the economy to America and that we would bring back the East India Company. Subsequently both these parties have had a hand at running the Government. None of these parties have reversed the direction of economic policy laid down by the Congress Party in 1991. The moral of the story is that political parties should be judged not by what they say while in opposition but by what they do when entrusted with the responsibilities of power. I am convinced that despite their opportunistic opposition to the nuclear agreement, history will compliment the UPA Government for having taken another giant step forward to lead India to become a major power centre of the evolving global economy. Jawaharlal Nehru’s vision of using atomic energy as a major instrument of development will become a living reality. What is the nuclear agreement about? It is all about widening our development options, promoting energy security in a manner which will not hurt our precious environment and which will not contribute to pollution and global warming. India needs to grow at the rate of at least ten per cent per annum to get rid of chronic poverty, ignorance and disease which still afflict millions of our people. A basic requirement for achieving this order of growth is the availability of energy, particularly electricity. We need increasing quantities of electricity to support our agriculture, industry and to give comfort to our householders. The generation of electricity has to grow at an annual rate of 8 to 10 per cent. Now, hydro-carbons are one source of generating power and for meeting our energy requirements. But our production of hydro-carbons both of oil and gas is far short of our growing requirements. We are heavily dependent on imports. We all know the uncertainty of supplies and of prices of imported hydro-carbons. We have to diversify our sources of energy supply. We have large reserves of coal but even these are inadequate to meet all our needs by 2050. But more use of coal will have an adverse impact on pollution and climate. We can develop hydro-power and we must. But many of these projects hurt the environment and displace large number of people. We must develop renewable sources of energy particularly solar energy. But we must also make full use of atomic energy which is a clean environment friendly source of energy. All over the world, there is growing realisation of the importance of atomic energy to meet the challenge of energy security and climate change. India’s atomic scientists and technologists are world class. They have developed nuclear energy capacities despite heavy odds. But there are handicaps which have adversely affected our atomic energy programme. First of all, we have inadequate production of uranium. Second, the quality of our uranium resources is not comparable to those of other
producers. Third, after the Pokharan nuclear test of 1974 and 1998 the outside world has imposed embargo on trade with India in nuclear materials, nuclear equipment and nuclear technology. As a result, our nuclear energy programme has suffered. Some twenty years ago, the Atomic Energy Commission had laid down a target of 10000 MW of electricity generation by the end of the twentieth century. Today, in 2008 our capacity is about 4000 MW and due to shortage of uranium many of these plants are operating at much below their capacity. The nuclear agreement that we wish to negotiate will end India’s nuclear isolation, nuclear apartheid and enable us to take advantage of international trade in nuclear materials, technologies and equipment. It will open up new opportunities for trade in dual use high technologies opening up new pathways to accelerate industrialisation of our country. Given the excellent quality of our nuclear scientists and technologists, I have reasons to believe that in a reasonably short period of time, India would emerge as an important exporter of nuclear technologies, and equipment for civilian purposes. When I say this I am reminded of the visionary leadership of Shri Rajiv Gandhi who was a strong champion of computerisation and use of information technologies for nation building. At that time, many people laughed at this idea. Today, information technology and software is a sun-rise industry with an annual turnover soon approaching 50 billion US dollars. I venture to think that our atomic energy industry will play a similar role in the transformation of India’s economy. The essence of the matter is that the agreements that we negotiate with USA, Russia, France and other nuclear countries will enable us to enter into international trade for civilian use without any interference with our strategic nuclear programme. The strategic programme will continue to be developed at an autonomous pace determined solely by our own security perceptions. We have not and we will not accept any outside interference or monitoring or supervision of our strategic programme. Our strategic autonomy will never be compromised. We are willing to look at possible amendments to our Atomic Energy Act to reinforce our solemn commitment that our strategic autonomy will never be compromised. I confirm that there is nothing in these agreements which prevents us from further nuclear tests if warranted by our national security concerns. All that we are committed to is a voluntary moratorium on further testing. Thus the nuclear agreements will not in any way affect our strategic autonomy. I wish to state categorically that there are no secret or hidden documents other than the 123 agreement, the Separation Plan and the draft of the safeguard agreement with the IAEA. It has also been alleged that the Hyde Act will affect India’s ability to pursue an independent foreign policy. The Hyde Act does exist and it provides the US administration the authorisation to enter into civil nuclear cooperation with India without insistence on full scope safeguards and without signing of the NPT. There are some prescriptive clauses but they cannot and they will not be allowed to affect in any way the conduct of our foreign policy. Our commitment is to what has been agreed in the 123 Agreement. There is nothing in this Agreement which will affect our strategic autonomy or our ability to pursue an independent foreign policy. I state categorically that our foreign policy, will at all times be determined by our own assessment of our national interest. This has been true in the past and will be true in future regarding our relations with big powers as well as with our neighbours in West Asia, notably Iran, Iraq, Palestine and the Gulf countries. We have differed with the USA on their intervention in Iraq. I had explicitly stated at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington DC in July 2005 that intervention in Iraq was a big mistake. With regard to Iran, our advice has been in favour of moderation and we would like that the issues relating to Iran’s nuclear programme which have emerged should be resolved through dialogue and discussions in the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency. I have often said that I am a politician by accident. I have held many diverse responsibilities. I have been a teacher, I have been an official of the Government of India, I have been a member of this greatest of Parliaments, but I have never forgotten my life as a young boy in a distant village. Every day that I have been Prime Minister of India I have tried to remember that the first ten years of my life were spent in a village with no drinking water supply, no electricity, no hospital, no roads and nothing that we today associate with modern living. I had to walk miles to school, I had to study in the dim light of a kerosene oil lamp. This nation gave me the opportunity to ensure that such would not be the life of our children in the foreseeable future. My conscience is clear that on every day that I have occupied this high office, I have tried to fulfill the dream of that young boy from that distant village.
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