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Right to abort Commitment to Kabul Alexander Solzhenitsyn |
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Third ‘historic blunder’
Decline of wisdom tooth
The
terror dividend Ludhiana’s urban chaos Inside Pakistan
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Right to abort MODERN-DAY judges do not have Solomon’s wisdom. So they have to rely on the law and the evidence to come to a conclusion. That is precisely what two judges of the Bombay High Court did on Monday when they turned down the plea of Niketa Mehta to allow her to go in for an abortion. She produced a doctor’s certificate that her 26-week old foetus had a heart problem. But the doctor was not sure whether it would not grow into a healthy baby. The judges relied on the law that a woman can terminate her pregnancy only within the first 20 weeks of conception. Thereafter she can go in for an abortion only if a doctor certifies that the pregnancy will harm her. In this case, there was uncertainty about the health of the foetus, not of the mother. Had the doctor certified that the foetus would not grow into a normal healthy baby, the verdict would, perhaps, have been different. Under the circumstances, the judges had no option but to uphold the law on legal termination of pregnancy. If the law is bad, it is for the legislature to amend it. The judiciary cannot circumvent it. The case has raised an ethical issue. Do the parents have the right to check the state of the foetus at every stage of its growth and determine whether to retain it or abort it? Tomorrow another lady can approach the court to claim that she is carrying a nine-month-old foetus which the doctors say may not be normal. There is no limit to such relaxations. Eugenics is a questionable science, whose promoters included, among others, Adolf Hitler who wanted a pure Aryan race to rule the world. If selective abortions are allowed on the basis of phoney medical advice, a time will come when parents can ask for permission to murder their baby because he or she is not beautiful or is physically or mentally challenged. After all, which mother would not like to have the perfect baby? Tinkering with nature has already created a situation whereby there are not enough brides for men who want to marry in Punjab and Haryana, to name the worst-affected states. A society can be judged by the level of compassion it shows to its less fortunate members, who, unfortunately, are not even allowed to take birth. Worse, judicial sanction is sought for what would have been a murder in the womb.
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Commitment to Kabul EVERY terrorist attack on India’s interests in Afghan-istan has only strengthened the bond between the two having a long history of friendly relations. That is what has happened after the July 7 car bomb blasts at the Indian Embassy in Kabul. The proof of this reality is the fresh aid of $450 million announced by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Monday when Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai met him in New Delhi on his way back home from the Colombo SAARC summit. In fact, Dr Singh went a step ahead and conveyed to Mr Karzai India’s resolve to fulfil all its commitments in Afghanistan, come what may. This is the best way to frustrate the designs of the anti-India forces there. The Afghans expect as much assistance from India as possible. This is natural because New Delhi has never let Kabul down. Today India is involved in a number of projects in Afghanistan like the construction of highways, power generation projects, promotion of education and creation of healthcare facilities. The Zaranj-Delaram highway project, regarded as the most prominent symbol of India-Afghanistan friendship, is about to be completed soon. India has lost some of its engineers and other personnel in the process of helping Afghanistan in its rebuilding efforts, but it has remained as steadfast in fulfilling its promises as no other country has been. The two countries have convergence of views on various regional and international issues, particularly the fight against terrorism. Both consider the menace as the biggest threat to growth and stability in the region. It is, therefore, natural for them to declare, as they did in New Delhi yet again, that they would always remain united against terrorism. Terrorists and their patrons are mistaken if they think that they can make India leave Afghanistan by using cowardly tactics like kidnapping and killing the Indians engaged in humanitarian tasks. Once the Afghans realise that the militants of the Taliban variety and others are their real enemies, it will be difficult for these forces of destruction to survive. The ordinary Afghans want nothing but the revival of economic activity in their country.
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Alexander Solzhenitsyn THE iconic Russian author has passed on. A fierce nationalist, he had a full, satisfying life. The unrelenting war he waged with words against the oppressive might of a seemingly impregnable state was not in vain. He lived to see his literary prophecy come true. The collapse of the Soviet Union was foretold in his chronicles of the crimes against humanity perpetrated by a tyrannical regime. Alexander Solzhenitsyn is reported to have worked till the last minute and died a happy man. Yet he, as much as the world that survives him, might be tormented by the “moral sickness” of our times which, he had remarked, knows no political boundaries. Beginning with his A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich in 1962, followed by The First Circle and Cancer Ward before his monumental indictment of the Soviet state in The Gulag Archipelago, Solzhenitsyn never let the world forget that if millions were killed, there were millions more who suffered a life worse than death in Soviet prison camps. Figures released after the Soviet Union’s demise reveal the number of victims to be much more than those exposed by Solzhenitsyn’s “literary investigations”. The Nobel laureate, who was stripped of citizenship and deported, in 1974, for his “anti-Soviet activities”, returned home 20 years later. Ironically, during his two decades in exile he became an embarrassment to the very western liberal establishment that celebrated his heroism against Soviet tyranny. He railed against the hedonism, spiritual weakness and decadent culture of the West, and also rejected the pro-Western reforms at home initiated by Boris Yeltsin. While he was unhappy with Russia’s spiritual decline and crass materialism, Solzhenitsyn was a stout advocate of Russian statehood. In short, he was not against the Russian state, but against its inhumanity. “We are creatures of mortal clay”, he wrote in his final volume of Gulag, “… and unless we transcend our clay there will be no just social system on this earth - whether democratic or authoritarian”. These words are no less prophetic than thousands of others in his prison narratives.
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In this world, there is always danger for those who are afraid of it. — George Bernard Shaw
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Third ‘historic blunder’
THE harsh implications of Trotsky’s dictum that “one ought not to be right against the party” are being experienced by Mr Somnath Chatterjee. But outside the CPM’s claustrophobic environs, the party’s drastic measure is likely to be seen as an obvious violation of customary procedures in polite society, which involve the serving of a show cause notice to the supposed offender before his punishment. This deviation from normal practice is all the more disturbing because, to a non-communist, the Speaker did nothing so outrageous as to deserve such unkind treatment. All that he did was to uphold the common perception of his office being above partisan politics. Had he stepped down in accordance with the CPM’s wishes, he would have only given the impression that he should not have been elevated to the post in the first place since his party expected him to follow its directives rather than the constitutional niceties. To the CPM, however, these customary decencies of conduct — or good table manners, so to say — do not seem to matter because its mind is attuned to the practices of a one-party state where the Speaker, the judges and the election officials are party men who have no business “to be right against the party”. They are neither expected to have opinions of their own, nor dare to adhere to standards of behaviour which are not approved of by the party. For them, the only valid view is the one articulated by Trotsky when he said that “one can be right only with the party and through the party because history has not created any other way for the realization of one’s rightness”. Whether history will justify Mr Prakash Karat’s “rightness” in some distant socialistic future is not known. But the chapter and verse quoted by him to explain his action seemed to be straight out of a Stalinist manual since it was by no means clear how Mr Chatterjee had “seriously compromised” the party’s position. All that could be said against him was that he had paid no heed to the party’s directive to resign apparently because he felt that its acceptance would “compromise” the dignity of the institution which he represented. But the CPM was in no position to offer any cogent explanation for its arbitrariness because Mr Karat had said that the decision to step down or not had been left to the Speaker. Having done so, it was patently unfair to first let him act on his own and then punish him for it. What these developments show is that the Left remains a square peg in a round hole since it is evidently unwilling to accept the “bourgeois” system although it has been a part of it at the governmental level in the states since the mid-sixties. If it has by and large followed the norms and conventions of the system, the reason is that, first, its majority rule in the states did not create any ticklish problems for it. And, secondly, because the Left’s leaders at the state level have almost invariably been men of moderation and not stubborn dogmatists — whether it is Mr Jyoti Basu or Mr Buddhadev Bhattacharjee in West Bengal or E.M.S.Namboodiripad and Achyuta Menon earlier in Kerala. If the hardliner Mr V.S.Achuthanandan hasn’t created any constitutional ruckus as yet in Kerala, it is the Left’s majority which evidently obviates such a need. It is when a party’s hold on the legislature hangs by a thread that its respect for fair play is tested. In Mr Chatterjee’s case, the comrades can be said to have failed the test. The episode is a reminder how tricky it is to try and accommodate a “revolutionary” party within the parliamentary system, especially at the Centre where the stakes are much higher. Since its instincts are moulded by textbook references to political upheavals in autocracies which have nothing in common with settled democratic societies, it is bound to act in ways which militate against the constitutional proprieties at times of crises. It is just as well, therefore, that the Left offered “outside” support to the UPA till recently. But the mistake which the latter made was to offer the Speaker’s position to a nominee of the Left in the mistaken belief that the CPM is just like any other party. The comrades, too, did not realise that a situation might arise when they would have to ask the Speaker to act as a party member to boost its numbers in the House, even by one. It is a lesson, therefore, for both sides. If the need arises in future to collaborate with the communists, they should be kept at an arm’s length lest their inclusion in constitutional positions bring these institutions into disrepute by the Left’s spiteful behaviour. Inside the Leftist circles, the CPM’s banishment of Mr Chatterjee may well come to be regarded as its third “historic blunder” - the first being the refusal to let Mr Jyoti Basu be the Prime Minister in 1996 and the second was to ignore Mr Jyoti Basu’s and Mr Harkishen Singh Surjeet’s advice to the party to join the UPA government in 2004. Three blunders in so short a time suggest that the party is in inept hands. This is also evident from the disconnect between the CPM’s central leaders and those in the states. For instance, the former had to suspend for some time leaders of the stature of Mr Achuthanandan and Mr Pinarayi Vijayan from the politburo for their unending factionalism. Now, another leader as prominent as Mr Chatterjee has been expelled to the surprise of virtually the entire country. As the murmurs of discontent among some of the West Bengal Marxists show, the party members are aware that Bengalis in general will not take kindly to one of their own, and especially someone as personable as Mr Chatterjee, being treated so shabbily. Questions are bound to be asked whether the party’s central leaders would have acted in so peremptory a manner if stalwarts of an earlier generation like Mr Jyoti Basu and Promode Dasgupta were still in active politics. It is not without significance that one of those who have openly voiced his disapproval of the action against the Speaker is Mr Subhas Chakravarty, a maverick no doubt, who has often been hauled up for indiscipline, but still someone who is known to be close to Mr Jyoti Basu. The latter’s dissatisfaction with Mr Karat’s arbitrary ways is no secret in Leftist circles. Apart from his “historic blunder,” Mr Basu was said to have opposed the idea of his party siding with the BJP in the trust vote. The Speaker, too, could not accept the idea. It may not be too fanciful to see, therefore, a West Bengal vs Kerala confrontation in the present affair. In 1979, Promode Dasgupta had described the CPM central leadership’s decision to withdraw support from the Morarji Desai government as the act of the Soviet lobby. Namboodiripad had then ruefully noted how the West Bengal unit had opposed the decision of the central leaders in what has come to be known as the “July crisis” in the party’s history. Ironically, the latest incidents following another withdrawal of support have also taken place in July. The fear in 1979 was the return of the Congress’s authoritarianism since the memories of the Emergency were then still strong. The fear now is the return of the BJP’s communalism with memories of Gujarat 2002 yet to
fade.
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Decline of wisdom tooth THE day The Tribune had reported that our Prime Minister had urged the people of India to take wisdom from others, I was sitting in the dental operation room of our Post Graduate Research Institute for the extraction of my “wisdom tooth” by the expert hands of Dr Vijay Rattan. The acute pain had blocked my wisdom channel and deprived me of the rich opportunity to gulp down wisdom of others and thus act upon the rich advice. This pain and suffering had reminded me of my younger days and the memory is still fresh. A similar attack had denied me of many tempting chicken preparations and other sweet dishes as nothing could be chewed and I had to be on hunger strike. However, every one else in the family was happy with the birth of “Akal Jahr” as it was then called. I was complimented and told then that with the growth of this new tooth there will no difficulty in remembering the Battles of Panipat or solving difficult mathematics problems and that I could expect miracles to happen. This was shortlived as very soon I had realised that these were optimistic assumptions rather than realistic assessments. I continued to face the rod of the teachers for not solving the problem of their satisfaction. The pain in the wisdom tooth had landed me at various dental clinics of City Beautiful as I was told that quite a few of them had the necessary skills to restore with the latest dentistry treatment. I was also worried whether I would be able to project the same bright smile giving confidence and warmth. The visits assured me that the shape of facial features, the jaw movements and natural gumline would not be disturbed. However, one visit had belied these and I completely lost faith in them. The experiments had led me to the famous PGI, which had earlier given me a new lease of life by the expert and noble doctors who happen to be the ambassadors of Almighty. While we are in the age group of 45 and above, we are in perpetual search of happiness and laughter without realising that we are slowly robbing the old age. The basic reason is a non-serious lackadaisical and partisan approach of the approaching physical changes. Many of my friends have confided in me that their past decades had consumed their identities and the rage and resentment remains. This is the time when one needs guidance and assistance about the onslaught of coming years. However, there can be exception as many might respond to the saying, “Anybody who can still do at 60 what he was doing at 20 wasn’t doing it at twenty”. Many senior citizens associations are immersed and involved in mitigating and solving various aging problems as well as providing shelter and assistance to unfortunate citizens. None seems to realise that most appropriate time to assist this withering group is when they have crossed 45. These associations can convene meetings of this age group and enlighten them of the coming dangers. These can be sponsored by life insurance companies, manufacturers of medicines etc and the parent associations can charge sponsorship fee as is done by the cricket associations and thus improve their financial position also. It has been rightly said that by the time a man realises that may be his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he is
wrong!
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The terror dividend THE corporate culture has penetrated into the life of Indian intelligence community also. “Pakistan’s foreign spying agency – Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) – seems to have ‘franchised’ its terrorism rights in India to the Taliban-Al-Qaida companies,” commented a field officer of the Intelligence Bureau, while talking about the recent serial bomb blasts in Bangalore and Gujarat cities. The ISI just sits tight back home, enjoying the ‘dividends’ it gets whenever the Taliban-trained Pakistani and Kashmiri terrorist organisations fire guns, killing innocent people across India. This is called: firing the gun from someone else’s shoulders. It seems to be a never ending ‘proxy war’ in India – ‘it is a remote controlled affair,’ as someone described. Once, on seeing, at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, Filipino Moros, Uzbeks of Soviet Central Asia, Arabs from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and Uighurs from Xinjiang in China, a Pakistan journalist had asked the ISI chief, General Hameed Gul, during the Benazir Bhutto’s regime, whether Islamabad was not playing with fire. He told him: “We are fighting a jihad and this is the first Islamic international brigade.” The brigade has now turned into a Division. The story of the Taliban’s entry in India cannot be understood without knowing the ISI’s mindset. In the words of one retired ISI officer, “Many ISI officers have become more Taliban than the Taliban.” When the Taliban captured power in Kabul in mid-90s, only three nations – Pakistan, Saudi Arab and United Arab Emirates – had recognised its regime. Successive governments in Pakistan have used the lethal capability of the ISI to shape their Afghan and India centric foreign and defence policies. At the bottom of it are vested business interests of the army, politicians, transport, and narcotic smugglers. Islamabad has always tried to install a friendly regime in Kabul so that it can open direct land routes for trade with Central Asian Republics, and get a share in the oil and gas pipelines’ lucrative business, in which India is also interested. During the Taliban regime, the border had virtually disappeared between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Pakistan does not like New Delhi and Kabul hugging each other. On March 16, 1995, after the signing of an MoU between Turkmenistan and an Argentinean oil company – Bridas (whom the CIA-supported American company, Unocal, opposed) – Benazir Bhutto’s husband, Asif Zardari told a Pakistani journalist, “this pipeline will be Pakistan’s gateway to Central Asia’s oil and gas riches…the Taliban’s control of the pipeline made it viable.” Now, Zardari is back in action. In October 1994, when the Taliban had started spreading its wings, the first convoy of the Pakistan army’s National Logistics Cell, which had been set up in the 1980s by the ISI to funnel US weapons to the Mujaheedin, left Quetta for Kandhar. On board was Colonel Rehman, the ISI’s then most prominent field officer engaged in the liasion with the Taliban. In days to come, the ISI provided a new telephone and wireless network for the Taliban, refurbished Kandahar airport and assisted with spare parts and armaments for the Taliban’s air force. Simultaneously, the Taliban’s friendship was growing with Al-Qaida chief, Osama bin Laden. When the USA asked the Taliban to hand over Osama, its top leader, Mullah Omar said, “America itself is the biggest terrorist of the world…Bin Laden is a guest, not just of the Taliban but of the people of Afghanistan, and we would never hand him over to Washington.” That friendship continues even now, and Bin Laden is still out of reach of America. The ISI stepped in, once the Taliban lost control of Kabul, helped it and Al-Qaida with money and weapons. Both old friends in return decided to show their own gesture – by helping Islamabad in achieving its goals in Kashmir and the rest of India. The Taliban cadre is extremely camera-shy. That is why, not much is known about their leaders, and the one-eyed chief Mullah Mohammed Omar – Amir-ul-Momineen (Commander of the Faithful) – continues to be an enigmatic mystery. Post Kargil developments witnessed heightened anti-India activities in Pakistan. The ISI in collusion with Islamic fundamentalist organizations such as Jamait-e-Islami, Taliban and Al-Qaida organized recruitment drives for terrorists within and outside Pakistan to escalate terrorism in J&K. Twelve major terrorist organizations were reorganized and put under the unified command of the ISI. Leading and organising the covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan had emboldened the ISI, to show ‘bravery’ in India too. It is now exploiting every possible means that can be used against India be it smuggling syndicates or terrorist groups. The first experiment of induction of Taliban type mercenaries was initiated by the ISI in 1994 when recruits of Harkat-ul-Ansar were inducted in the Doda region and the Kashmir Valley. Their presence in the region encouraged the local terrorist groups. Things were looking good till the Kargil war turned the tide once again. But the ISI, with the Taliban’s help, has once again started flexing muscles. Indian intelligence community is apprehensive that the ISI may push the Taliban or some other such political-cum-terrorist organisation to do a 9/11 act in India. “Time and again, the Indian leadership has exhibited its incompetence to hold the bull by its horns,” said a top army officer, pointing out that “we require a tit-for-tat approach.” The ISI has emerged from the shadows now and seems to be bolder then ever with ‘friends’ like Taliban-trained cadres ready to be in action at a phone call away. India too will have to be as brutal in hitting back and not soft as it continues to be since the creation of Bangladesh. (Concluded)
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Ludhiana’s urban chaos Ludhiana is a classic example of the urban settlement of Punjab heading towards a point of no return from the swamp of illegal construction, haphazard growth, non effective garbage disposal mechanism, multiplying traffic volume and shortage of funds. There is a no networking among government departments and agencies concerned to ensure a planned development or to check new slum settlements in the Manchester of India. Residents are at a total loss of words in identifying the right authority to seek reprieve from existing troubles. The city, at the moment, does not have any vision document for the future. Instead of any definite authority to seek a redressal to their problem, residents end up running around in the corridors of the construction, population, pollution, garbage disposal and traffic management wings of the administration divided among the offices of the Municipal Corporation, Deputy Commissioner, Greater Ludhiana Area Development Authority(GLADA), Town planner, and Improvement Trust, without satisfactory answers. It is worth mentioning that the per day garbage collection in the city alone has crossed 1000 metric tonnes. The city does not have any solid waste treatment plant. At the moment, the corporation manages to carry away only 63 per cent of the solid waste. There is a wild growth of illegal colonies, particularly in the periphery of the city. In just one example, on the Chandigarh road, alone, from the Samrala Chowk onwards, hundreds of illegal houses have come up within the municipal limits which are only a few kilometres from the next town, Kohara. Residents don’t even seem bothered about any action by the government agencies. “All the residents here are a major vote bank for the MLAs and even the councilors. We are aware of several cases of illegal colonies and constructions pending with the GLADA. So, why bother here? When elections come we will get the structures legalised”, Som Kumar, a resident of an illegal construction at Chhebewal village said. The master plan of Ludhiana was first published in the government gazette in 1971. The plan was, subsequently revised in 1985 and 1992. However, the revised master plans were never published. Even the amended master plans were never really implemented, which has led to unplanned, haphazard growth. The unplanned growth has already left an indelible mark on the living conditions in the city and one can only expect things to get worse. While the final plan involves a lengthy procedure, the matter was under consideration under a draft plan which has highlighted the multifarious problems of the population influx and lack of enforcement at the level of local bodies”. The local bodies , on their part, maintain that lack of staff, infrastructure and funds are the main reason for poor action on the ground.
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Inside Pakistan THE debate over the ISI’s future has taken an interesting turn. It dominated the Pakistan Senate’s proceedings on Monday, as reported by The Frontier Post. Now President Pervez Musharraf has come out openly in support of those who oppose any change in the functioning and control structure of the controversial intelligence outfit. In his opinion, the ISI is the "first line of defence" for Pakistan. But there are others who totally disagree with him. The people who oppose the Musharraf line are of the view that the ISI has caused the maximum damage to the efforts for establishing democracy in Pakistan. The agency has dabbled in internal politics (a role assigned to it in 1975 by PPP founder Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto) as much as it has played a destructive role in South Asia. Mr M. Asghar Khan, a political analyst, filed a case against the ISI in the Pakistan Supreme Court in 1999 with a view to preventing it from poking its nose in politics. But there has been no hearing of the case because, as he says in an article in The Nation (August 3), "no chief justice, including Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry, has thought it fit to hold a hearing" despite his repeated requests. Mr Khan suggests, "The right thing to do would be to place the ISI under the Joint Chiefs of Staff and limit it strictly to military functions… To allow Services officers to dabble in political matters, as has been done for over 30 years, amounts to inviting the armed forces to interfere in politics." According to Daily Times, the clarification issued soon after the July 26 notification to place the ISI under the "administrative, financial and operational" control of Pakistan's Interior Ministry cannot undo the new arrangement planned for the intelligence
agency. The paper quoted an unnamed source close to PPP leader Asif Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to say that a “new notification" can be issued soon "to explain the spirit behind this move…." Unfair to Faraz Poetry lovers, particularly those who know Urdu, will be happy to learn that Ahmad Faraz, the celebrated poet of Pakistan, is not dead as reported by the media some time ago. He is fighting for his life in a US hospital, according to an article in The News (August 3) by Masood Hasan. But this is not the end of the story. It has a painful aspect too. The plight of Faraz, regarded as Mirza Ghalib of today, has failed to stir the conscience of the rulers in Pakistan to take care of his medical treatment. Masood informs that “After great persuasion, it is said, our (Pakistan’s) new US ambassador had some flowers delivered to the ICU – someone quite conveniently forgetting that flowers are not allowed in American ICUs unlike here (in Pakistan), where both flowers and bodies can be inside any ICU on any given day in any city. “There has been a mouse-like squeak that suggests the government has agreed to take care of the medical bills for Faraz's treatment.” The neglect of Faraz is understandable because his compositions have only lampooned the powers-that-be. Some time ago he returned the medals he had been honoured with owing to the government’s unhelpful attitude. Burning schools The situation in the militant-infested Swat valley in the NWFP is getting worse. The peace deal the provincial government had signed in May with extremist leader Fazlullah has collapsed as expected. The militants are again attacking girls’ schools with a vengeance. They burnt five such institutions last week. According to Dawn of August 8, “Over the past year alone, about 50 girls’ schools have been destroyed in Swat, and the trend shows no signs of abating. The actual figure for girls’ schools that are no longer functioning ever since the Taliban threat emerged has crossed 100 and keeps rising while the number of students affected is in the thousands.” The government in Islamabad is unable to understand that the militants understand only the language of the gun. The problem may be the civilian casualties that cannot be avoided in a military drive against the law-breakers. The authorities appear to be caught in crossfire. Dawn said in an August 3 editorial, “A number of people in Swat have died in the past few days. Hundreds have fled their homes. Unemployment has gripped the area with the crumbling of the tourism industry, and inflation has worsened their (the people’s) hardship. So, obviously a military strategy has to be designed in such a way as to cause the minimum collateral damage.”
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