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Prachanda prevails Prices rise further |
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Scuttling justice SC fiat to HC on Uphaar fire case timely The Supreme Court’s directive to the Delhi High Court to expedite the hearing of the appeal against the two-year sentence awarded to Gopal Ansal and Sushil Ansal, the owners of Delhi’s Uphaar cinema for having compromised safety standards that claimed the lives of 59 people, is timely.
Fake currency racket
Call of the Unknown Soldier
Reactivating Kashmir Al-Qaida wages jihad in Lebanon Sex ratio improving
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Prices rise further After
stablising at below 12 per cent in the past some weeks, inflation has surged to a new high of 12.44 per cent taking policymakers by surprise. It was not altogether unexpected as only on Wednesday the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council had projected inflation to touch 13 per cent. The rise has been, perhaps, too swift. Dr C. Rangarajan, who has quit the council to join the Rajya Sabha, expects inflation to keep rising until December and then cool to 7-8 per cent by March next year. If inflation maintains its present momentum, it could surpass that figure much earlier. The latest inflation shock came the day the Cabinet cleared a 21 per cent salary hike for the Central staff. Higher salaries and lumpsum payments of the first tranche of arrears before Divali to the Central employees to be followed by similar wage increases for the state employees will fuel demand for products and push up inflation. Though Finance Minister P. Chidambaram claims the impact of revised payscales on inflation has been factored in the last Budget, he had not, perhaps, expected inflation to more than double in such a short time. The financial pressure on the Centre and the states will limit their options to take on the soaring prices. If inflation keeps rising, the RBI is likely to further raise the key rates, forcing banks to up interest rates, thus seriously denting corporate profitability and GDP growth. How inflation moves depends largely on global oil and other commodity prices. A good monsoon and the retreating oil prices augur well for the economy. For the present, however, it is more important to make sufficient quantities of foodgrains, pulses and edible oils available to people in general and the poor in particular through the public distribution system than letting the RBI further tighten money supply. |
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Scuttling justice The
Supreme Court’s directive to the Delhi High Court to expedite the hearing of the appeal against the two-year sentence awarded to Gopal Ansal and Sushil Ansal, the owners of Delhi’s Uphaar cinema for having compromised safety standards that claimed the lives of 59 people, is timely. The Association of Victims of Uphaar Tragedy (AVUT) has called the punishment as too inadequate and appealed for enhanced sentence for the accused. The CBI, too, has followed suit. In a petition, the AVUT has complained to the apex court about the inordinate delay in hearing the appeal. While the trial concluded after 10 years of the fire tragedy, attempts are now on to delay the hearing of the appeal before the High Court. The AVUT says the High Court has granted bail to the Ansal brothers and their officials on “flimsy grounds”. The clout and connections of the Ansal brothers are well known. The manner in which they are trying to circumvent justice by seeking adjournments repeatedly is disturbing. Not surprisingly, the Bench consisting of Justice B.N. Agrawal and Justice G.S. Singhvi has reminded the Delhi High Court that though the idea of day-to-day hearing of the appeal against the Ansal brothers came from the High Court itself, little was being done to expedite the hearing. It aptly observed that the people’s faith and confidence in the judiciary will get eroded if the judiciary fails to take effective steps to hasten justice in a case that shook the nation’s conscience. The Bench observed: “There is a clear evidence of criminal negligence. Priority ought to have been given so as to maintain people’s confidence in the judiciary.” Significantly, the Bench has asked the AVUT to file details of the number of adjournments sought by the accused in the case along with certified copies of the High Court orders and daily cause lists pertaining to the appeal. The Uphaar tragedy showed how public safety was compromised by many players — the Ansal brothers, the officials of the electricity board, the fire service and the municipal corporation. Every rule and regulation was flouted either for cynical private gain or sheer callousness. The ends of justice will be met only if the hearing of the appeal is expedited and the guilty punished. |
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Consciously or unconsciously we all strive to make the kind of a world we like.
— Oliver Wendell Holmes |
Fake currency racket
WHEN a thief enters a house the watchdog barks. If the inmates do not wake up, it barks again, and then again. If the inmates still do not awaken, should the watchdog stop barking? This scribe is facing a similar dilemma. According to official sources the threat of terror has reached new heights. The amount of fake Indian currency in existence today is huge. According to one national daily, in UP alone over Rs 40 crore is estimated to be in circulation. The CBI has confirmed that two sets of currency notes with the same serial numbers have been seized in branches of nationalised banks. It has claimed that the fake notes were brought into India through Nepal by Pakistan’s ISI. The CBI has also confirmed that the fake currency notes are of such fine quality that they are indistinguishable from genuine notes. That is why branches of the State Bank of India can pass off fake notes as genuine currency. But, all said, can this happen if some bank officials are not complicit with anti-national elements? Elements that use the fake currency for crime and terrorism. Every single element of this information has been written about explicitly and repeatedly by this scribe: he wrote these facts in March 2000, in June 2000, in March 2002, in July 2004 and in August 2006. All this time, the fake currency racket was expanding, but had not reached its present dimension. It was pointed out that fake currency greatly facilitated terrorism — that it was masterminded by foreign powers. Indeed, it was pointed out that the sheer volume of fake currency, indistinguishable from genuine notes, could destroy India’s economy without terrorism! It was pointed out, too, that the Reserve Bank’s admission that it could not authenticate currency notes in a particular fake currency police case meant that, for all practical purposes, there was no legal tender in the country. Finally, it was pointed out that using the same machines to print currency notes and stamp paper was a procedure followed for both fake currency notes and fake stamp paper. The money thus generated in both scams was, of course, exploited by terrorists. This scribe’s involvement in the subject originated in 1995. A section of the bureaucracy made available to him information regarding the government’s decision to purchase inferior and unreliable printing machines for manufacture of currency notes, thereby replacing machines of a tried and tested firm which had served the country well for over a hundred years. He filed public interest litigation against the RBI in the High Court of Judicature in Mumbai to prevent use of the new machines for printing currency notes. His plea was that the proven record of the new machines, Komori of Japan, endangered national security because fake notes not distinguishable from genuine notes could be easily manufactured for deployment by terrorists. To cut a long story short, the RBI accepted every single argument of the petitioner. It conceded that Komori machines presented “a risk factor” and “teething troubles”. It admitted that the earlier machines, Giori of Switzerland, which printed currency for ninety per cent of the nations in the world, were markedly superior. It confirmed that the use of Komori machines in Russia had ended in disaster. The machines had to be abandoned for printing currency. Despite these admissions, all on record, the court rejected the petition. RBI’s main argument was that the monopoly of Giori needed to be ended! Without a thought for national security, and the facts marshaled by the petitioner’s counsel, the court rejected the petition. An eminent lawyer argued for the RBI. This scribe was acquainted with him. The lawyer impertinently suggested that this scribe’s petition was in some way linked to those who were contesting the award to Komori on behalf of its Swiss rival, Giori. When the national security angle was drummed into his ears he said: “Why did you not approach me earlier?” Had that been done would he have changed his view of the case? Was that all that the case meant to him - a clash of sordid commercial interests? My respect for him fell many notches. The judiciary and the legal fraternity failed miserably in this case. The politicians fared no better. Even before the public interest litigation was filed, Parliament had discussed the government’s proposal to buy these new untried machines for printing currency. Among the several MPs who criticised the government’s move was Somnath Chatterjee. But once Komori got the award the MPs lost interest. It seemed that they were interested mainly in the commercial aspects of the case. A Kolkata based industrialist was rooting for Giori to get the award. Dr Manmohan Singh was the Finance Minister when Komori got the contract to print currency notes. He maintained silence throughout the controversy. When a few years later it transpired that fake notes with the same serial numbers as genuine notes could not be differentiated even by the RBI, rendering the notion of legal tender defunct, Yashwant Sinha was the Finance Minister. He too remained silent on this affair. So, regardless of party affiliation, the politicians as a class failed miserably in this case. During the decade or so when this scribe fought the case in court and wrote about the danger of fake currency in the media, not one newspaper highlighted the scandalous manner of awarding the contract to Komori for printing currency notes, and how this endangered national security. This scribe personally phoned and requested colleagues better placed than him, and occupying key positions in the media, to take up the matter. Not one obliged. So, in this case the media also failed miserably in this case. The National Security Adviser has revealed that there are over 800 terrorist cells operating in the country. With the kind of easy money floating around, should that cause any surprise? And with the easy attitude evident in the establishment to matters related to national security, as revealed by the fake currency scam, was not escalation of terrorism inevitable? The government took security steps to prevent exact replication of currency notes. These steps became effective after 2005. The fake currency notes therefore are dated before 2005. Politicians, experts, retired bureaucrats and media pundits favour the enactment of tougher new laws to fight terrorism. They sound pathetic. Considering the approach to fighting terror revealed by the fake currency racket, do they seriously believe that new laws would help solve the problem of
terrorism?
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Call of the Unknown Soldier Driving past Maj. Sandeep Shankla Park in Panchkula, I hazily saw certain Army and private vehicles lined up, in a thick downpour. It was some solemn ceremony going on. Army men were slow-marching with wreaths, to the bust of the officer, who gave his life in the line of duty, on August 8, in 1991. Moved and impassioned, I told my driver to take the first available U-turn. Memories of the Kargil War flashed on my mind, when I had witnessed six soldiers “brought-home-dead,” in Fatehabad District alone. Brave people of this region are known, not only to take in their stride, the loss of their men going down fighting, on borders for the motherland, but also to feel the collective pride of the sacrifice made by their valiant sons. I can recall the skies ranting with slogans of “Amar Rahe” and “Jab tak Suraj-Chand rahega, Foji tera naam rahega”. The mother of one of the soldiers, who when she saw the District Magistrate and the Superintendent of Police, offering with their salutes to be the pallbearers themselves, had commented, “O’ son, you have repaid me the debt of my milk!” None cried, albeit all around looked grim at the loss of the one who brought them glory. On his son’s last journey, the father had said, “I have the whole lineup of my sons if the country needs them!” Thousands, cutting across caste, race, colour, religion, sect and ideology had gathered at the last rites. They seemed to follow only a patriot’s religion then. Military honours done, a long lineup of mourners offered floral tributes to the departed son of theirs. Volleys of shots echoed as if from the hearts of people around and the Last Post was sounded. The pyre was lit by a three year old, the martyr’s son, when some folks seemed to have lost control over their emotions. The driver brought me back from my memory lane on reaching the Memorial site. Some civilians carried umbrellas as it was still raining. I alighted from my car to be received with dignity by a couple of smartly dressed officers. Straightaway, I was accosted to the bust. Carrying the floral wreath, which I was supposed to place at the bust of Maj Sandeep Shankla, two more men in ceremonial dress joined in ahead of me. And I too began to march. Something in me ignited my whole self. I was, as if, spiritually energised and blessed. With every step on climbing up to the bust, I felt a lifting out of myself. An alleviation of sorts! No sad thoughts in mind but those of gratitude, indebtedness and obeisance! I offered the wreath. Prayed for the man for a while. Saluted the soldier. And with matching agility, infused in me then by the ambience, I turned right to step down. Back in the car, I recalled to myself words inscribed under the bust of Martyr young Lieutenant Arun Khetrapal, who laid his life to the call of duty, having just then passed out of the Indian Military Academy, in the 1971 War with Pakistan, “When you go home, tell them of us, that we gave our today, for their tomorrow”. My driver asked me if I had personally known the soldier. “No!” I said and pondered if I’d said the right thing. Soldiers are known to generations of men and not a few of them. The call of the ‘Unknown Soldier’ can command you to “About Turn,” should you chose to forget him. Remember this! Remember
him!
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Reactivating Kashmir The
repeated violation by Pakistan of the ceasefire along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir has left many analysts in India scratching their heads over Pakistan’s strategic game plan. At a time when Pakistan appears to be engaged in a life-and-death struggle on its western frontier, logic and rationality demands that Pakistan avoid any flare-up on the eastern front with India. After all, being caught in a pincer from the East and the West has long been Pakistan’s ultimate strategic nightmare. But then logic and rationality are highly subjective concepts and what is rational for an Indian need not necessarily be rational for a Pakistani. Had this not been the case, the Kargil operation would have never taken place. At that time, India thought that in a nuclearised strategic environment military adventurism by Pakistan had become a thing of the past; Pakistan, on the other hand, felt that the possession of nuclear weapons gave it an opportunity for undertaking military adventurism without having to worry about India widening the theatre of war. The ceasefire violations must, therefore, be seen as a considered move on the part of Pakistan, one that makes a lot of strategic, diplomatic, political and military sense from the Pakistani standpoint. There have appeared reports in the Pakistani Press that talk about Punjabi jihadi groups joining up with the Pashtun Taliban in their fight against the Pakistani security forces and the American and NATO troops. Although the Punjabi and Kashmiri jihadis and the Pashtun Taliban share a common ideology and worldview, for the former Kashmir is the primary battlefield, while for the latter the primary battlefields are the Pashtun lands in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But with Pakistan pulling back on its sponsorship of jihad in Kashmir, the Punjabi and Kashmiri jihadis gravitated towards the Taliban. By reactivating the Kashmir front and diverting the jihadis to Kashmir, the Pakistan security agencies believe that they can break the growing compact between the jihadis and the Taliban. This will not only deplete the ranks of the Taliban but also prevent the Taliban from making use of jihadis networks in Punjab, which they could have used to devastating effect in both Punjab and Sindh. The Pakistani agencies have also tried using the predominantly Punjabi jihadis like the Lashkar-e-Toiba, which for all the bluff and bluster of its chief, Hafiz Saeed, is a most obedient jihadi group and does not deviate from the line given to it by its handlers, to drive a wedge in Taliban ranks. By reactivating Kashmir, the Pakistani national security establishment is also trying to send a signal to its proxies in the state that it hasn’t abandoned the Kashmir cause. Many Pakistani proxies were disillusioned by what they saw as Pakistan’s U-turn on Kashmir and were now exploring ways of making their peace with the Indian state, more so with elections in the state around the corner. Many of these people will now pull back on their overtures towards India. What is more, if violence erupts in the state, it would help sabotage the elections there. The political disturbances in Jammu and Kashmir over the Amarnath shrine land issue will only give further impetus to the agent provocateurs from Pakistan to stir up trouble in the state. For the moment, however, the ceasefire violations have been very carefully calibrated to try and ensure that things don’t deteriorate beyond a point. Perhaps, the Pakistanis are only sending a signal to India that unless India shows flexibility on Kashmir, Pakistan can quite easily ratchet up violence in the state. But even if hostilities commence along the LoC and the peace process breaksdown, the Pakistanis will not be too worried. Their calculation will be that they will be able to use the situation on the diplomatic stage against India. The Pakistanis will argue that India did not show any flexibility to resolve the issue despite Gen. Musharraf’s very bold proposals and “Indian intransigence” will be waved before the international community. What is more, there is little danger of Americans acting against Pakistan on India’s behalf especially since they are depend so heavily on Pakistan to carry out their war effort in Afghanistan. Another benefit will be that if hostilities commence with India it might make many of the Pakistani Taliban go slow on Afghanistan (something which would certainly please the Americans) and shift their attention to India. For the political establishment in Pakistan, the ceasefire violations along the LoC are a credibility test. Perhaps their domestic political compulsions will force the Pakistani political establishment to take a somewhat hard line on Kashmir. But taking a hard line on Kashmir, which can be explained as a sovereign and political right of any government, is very different from either sponsoring religious terrorist organisations or using military force against a neighbouring country in pursuit of irredentist claims. The inability or unwillingness of the civilian government to stop the violations of ceasefire and the rising intrusions by terrorists in Kashmir means that either it is powerless before the army or else it subscribes to the manufactured and coerced national security consensus that has been fostered on Pakistan by the country’s national security establishment. Quite clearly, the reactivation of the Kashmir front is a clear signal to the politicians that they should not even think of making any deal with India without taking the views of the Pakistan army into account. In other words, the army is in a position to sabotage any political initiative, secure in the knowledge that no politician can afford to take on the army on an issue like Kashmir. By reigniting the flames of jihadi terror in Kashmir, the ISI (President Musharraf calls it Pakistan’s first line of defence) and the Pakistan army are probably doing what they are doing as a part of a national security strategy that they think best serves Pakistan’s national interest. It is of course an entirely different matter that the Pakistani security establishment’s view of national interest might actually be jeopardising the country’s national security. Fires lighted in the house of a neighbour have a nasty habit of blowing back and consuming the house of the arsonist. For evidence look no further than the Islamist insurgency that is wrecking havoc inside Pakistan today. |
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Al-Qaida wages jihad in Lebanon Abdullah
got it about right. Picking his fingernails in the ticket office of the local bus station, he lowered his eyes. He had seen everything; the severed arms and legs of Lebanese soldiers, the still uniformed but headless infantryman slumped out of the window of the minibus round the corner, and the bodies of all the little people who die when bombs go off here: the old man who sold sandwiches to the troops, the lemonade salesman, the child who polished shoes. All dead, of course. "Collateral damage" to the man who left the bomb in a bag on the pavement at 7.45am on Wednesday. "We think it was either Fatah al-Islam or some unknown forces," Abdullah said. "Why do you ask?" Why indeed. Fatah al-Islam is a Salafist version of Sunni Islam, a weird al-Qa'ida satellite which held out against the Lebanese army in the Palestinian Nahr el-Bared camp north of here last year at the cost of 400 deaths and the flight of 40,000 civilians. Most Lebanese concluded that they were implanted in Lebanon's soil by Syria. But Wednesday's bomb in Lebanon's second city, the ancient crusader port of the Chateau de Saint Gilles, disfigured by massive unemployment and grotesque advertising hoardings, was of Iraqi proportions: 15 dead, nine of them Lebanese soldiers, and 50 wounded. Gunfire crackled like broken matchsticks across Tripoli yesterday as the local "martyrs" were buried. Most had been queuing for buses to the south, alongside the usual bus drivers - six of them - sipping coffee on the pavement. One of their number, Kasser Chebli, who had turned up as usual and begun to drink his morning coffee, woke up in hospital, minus one leg. On the streets, the printed funeral notes told their own story. "The Martyr Mohamed Mustapha Mrai," it said in beautifully printed Arabic script above an army identity photo of the young man. "The martyr who died in the Tripoli bomb," the funerary notice added. But who were Abdullah's "other forces"? A walk down Syria Street - and yes, that really is the name of this shattered, burnt- out, bullet-spattered thoroughfare - provides a few terrifying clues. It divides the large Sunni district of Tripoli from the tiny Alawite community. The Sunnis are generally loyal to Saad Hariri, son of the assassinated ex-prime minister whose Future Movement now forms part of the government in Lebanon. The Alawis are, as the saying goes, an "offshoot" of Shia Islam and are close to Syria for a very obvious reason: President Bashar al-Assad of Syria is an Alawi and so are most of the powerful men in Syria. The soldiers murdered in Wednesday's bomb were members of a large military force deployed after Sunni-Alawi sectarian gunbattles had killed 22 Lebanese and wounded another 68 in June and July alone. The battles still continue. Syria Street is a shameful place of ethnic cleansing, of burnt-out apartments and smashed shops, of fear and unemployment. "Don't stand here any longer because you can be shot from the top of the side road," Rabih al-Badawi quietly informed me as we inspected the wreckage. Rabih's business card says he is in "General Trading" - he is a Sunni and he sells lavatory fitings - but his "trading" took a blow this summer when he refused to pay protection money to local gangs. He takes me through his upper offices, carbonised, trashed, looted, his remaining windows starred with bullet holes. Outside, bullets crackle in the hot afternoon. It's like a return to the old Beirut of the war. "Look at these shops," Rabih tells me as we stroll down Syria Street with a grotesque display of self-confidence. "This is Alawi-owned. Bullet holes in the door. This is Alawi. The same. These are Sunni shops: all burnt out." In Tripoli, the fears of every Lebanese are brought to fulfillment; it's the cold fear of those "outside forces" that roam throughout the Middle East. Independent from French rule since 1943, Lebanon has four million people made up of numerous religious groups. The 15-year civil war ended in 1990, but the country is still deeply unstable. The worst violence since the civil war erupted in 2006 when a month-long war broke out with Israel. When President Emile Lahoud's term finished in November 2007, the dispute over his successor led to a six-month power vacuum. Finally, in May, the former army chief Michel Suleiman was chosen as President, and on Tuesday a new cabinet was approved by MPs. The country has been shaken by political assassinations since the February 2005 killing of the former prime minister Rafik Hariri. The role of Syria, which withdrew its troops in 2005 after 29 years, has been a source of conflict. But this week Lebanon and Syria agreed to establish diplomatic relations. By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Sex ratio improving The
international news coverage of the highly skewed sex ratio at birth (SRB) in India, a result of the preference for sons and the abortion of female foetuses, has been on the rise (“Indian Prime Minister Denounces the Abortion of Female Foetuses,” New York Times, April 29, 2008). And the BBC has noted that the practice is not limited to couples in India but has been observed in the United Kingdom itself (“UK Indian Women Aborting Girls,” BBC, December 3, 2007). But what has yet to be reported is that the situation in India, while still very serious, has begun to improve. This is due, in no small part, to the growing efforts of both the central and state governments to discourage the practice. In 1994, India passed the Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Regulation and Prevention of Misuse) Act outlawing the practice. The preference for sons has deep roots in India for cultural and economic reasons. Once a girl is married, she leaves the parental home to live with her in-laws and is perceived to be of little economic benefit, such as support for her parents in their old age. A common saying in India is to having a girl child is like “watering your neighbour’s garden.” Beyond that, the expenditure on dowry to a groom’s parents remains virtually universal despite laws against dowry that date to 1961. Advertisements for sex determination tests such as: “Invest only Rs. 500 now and save your precious Rs. 50,000 later” reminded parents of the future expense a girl child would bring until they were banned. A further motivation is the belief among Hindus that it is essential for a son to perform rituals at one’s cremation and every death anniversary thereafter. Sex-selective abortion is a comparatively new practice. Worldwide, the normal SRB is about 105 male babies born per 100 females. India happens to measure the SRB in reverse to the usual practice, female births per 1,000 males, so that a normal SRB in India is 950. Although sex-selective abortion was widely known, the 2001 census gave additional publicity to the issue when the sex ratio of the population ages 0-6 was shown to be 927 girls per 1,000 boys, down from 945 in 1991. The situation had deteriorated to the point where one district, Fatehgarh Sahib in Punjab state, had a 0-6 sex ratio of only 754. But what has happened since 2001? India is virtually unique among developing countries in that it regularly publishes annual statistics on births and deaths from its Sample Registration System (SRS), a monthly survey of 1.3 million households. Following the 2001 census, the SRS began publishing SRBs for India and its larger population states. The SRS data show that the SRB crisis has either begun to improve in most states or has at least stabilised. The lowest SRBs are in two of India’s wealthiest states, Punjab and Haryana, and it is there that many of the earliest efforts to combat the crisis were focused. In Punjab the SRB has improved in the SRS from 775 in 1999-2001 to 808 in 2004-2006, while in Haryana it rose from 804 in 2000-2002 to 837 in 2004-2006. While that is clearly a very long way from the desired 950, the SRS does indicate that a very long term trend has begun a slow reversal. Often, the combination of available family funds for an ultrasound test and low fertility will exacerbate the SRB problem. Punjab’s total fertility rate (TFR) of 2.1 lifetime births per woman places considerable pressure on couples to have at least one son, a pressure that will be felt most intensively by young wives in their husband’s family. It may be that the somewhat higher SRB in relatively poor and higher TFR states such as Bihar and Uttar Pradesh are largely due the fact that an average of over four children per woman in those states makes the birth of a son much more likely. Even some states whose rank in such areas as education is very high show a tendency for skewed SRBs. It may surprise some to know that the advanced southern state of Kerala has had a SRB below 900 but that state’s TFR is only 1.7. Its southern neighbour, Tamil Nadu, however, with the same TFR, has had an essentially normal SRB for some time. But Tamil Nadu has been particularly aggressive in matters of health and social welfare. Tamil Nadu has shown that it can be done. The problem of son preference is deep seated in India as it is in several other Asian countries, notably China, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. But South Korea’s SRB has been improving since 1990 to the point where it is now approaching normality. It now appears that India has begun to make progress but overturning some of society’s most fundamental traditions will be no easy task. |
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