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Managing food supplies
Pakistan on the boil |
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Assets of judges
Olympic success
Sam, the genial one
Forced vacation School days of a tyrant Ladakhi women play new roles
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Managing food supplies
Desperate
to control prices ahead of elections, the Centre has decided to sell wheat and rice in the open market. Despite a bumper harvest, the wheat prices Foodgrain prices cannot fall much as the procurement prices have been raised sharply. Besides, the manual and inefficient handling of foodgrains, costlier transportation, widespread pilferage and wastage due to poor storage facilities contribute to high prices. Much to the government’s relief, global oil and other commodity prices are on the retreat. Apart from oil, India is a heavy importer of pulses and edible oils. If the downward trend continues, this could help the government achieve its objective of bringing inflation down to a single digit by February-March 2009. Inflation, which has climbed to a 16-year high of 12.63 per cent, is widely expected to peak at 13 per cent before softening to about 8 per cent. This is an unrealistic hope. Since commodity prices in global markets are unpredictable and beyond the government’s control, it is not possible to forecast inflation accurately. As the festival season approaches, the demand for products will rise. Sugar prices have started soaring due to insufficient supplies and it is one of the major contributors to inflation. The inflation figure the government reveals every Thursday is only tentative. The actual inflation rate, based on the government’s own flawed parameters, is significantly higher. The government’s inflation battle is losing steam. The RBI has done whatever it could to tighten liquidity. It has only succeeded in slowing growth without reining in prices. Since prices are driven up largely because of food items, the government should focus on correcting the demand-supply imbalance. The government admits that crops worth Rs 55,000 crore are lost post-harvest annually. Still, there is no shortage of food in the country. Only its supply requires better management. Food has become more expensive. To make it affordable for the poor, the government should plug leakages in the public distribution system and restrict it to the needy. |
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Pakistan on the boil There is no end to the problems threatening to destabilise Pakistan. While it has succeeded in getting rid of the Musharraf factor — a major roadblock in its drive This is the only conclusion that can be drawn after the two suicide bomb attacks in quick succession outside the Wah ordnance factory complex near Islamabad on Thursday, claiming over 70 lives. The blasts occurred in a high-security cantonment area two days after the suicide killings outside the government hospital in Dera Ismail Khan in the NWFP, killing over 35 persons. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which, claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s suicide bombing in the NWFP, had warned of similar attacks throughout Pakistan if military operations in the Bajaur Agency and the Swat valley, both in the country’s tribal areas, were not stopped immediately. The militant outfit has proved that its threat cannot be taken lightly. That gives In fact, the time has come for the international community to focus its attention on the re-emergence of terrorism as a threat to peace and stability with its epicentre in Pakistan. Pakistan cannot afford to dither when terrorism needs to be confronted and eliminated. The coalition in Islamabad must not appear to be weak despite the differences of opinion on certain key issues among its main constituents — the PPP and the PML (N). Pakistan’s carrot-and-stick policy against terrorism obviously does not convey the message that terrorists will be apprehended and brought to justice. There is need for a firm policy against the growing militancy in Pakistan, not only to safeguard lives but also in the interest of the country’s security. |
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Assets of judges Chief Justice of India Justice K.G. Balakrishnan’s directive to all the chief justices of high courts to bring forth a resolution, on the lines of the one adopted by the apex court a decade ago, to make judges declare their assets is welcome. In a communication, he said that the high courts could adopt a resolution to this effect in case they don’t have a system of judges declaring their assets soon after assumption of office and regularly updating the declarations made by them. The CJI’s directive is well intended. If the judges declare their assets, they will command greater respect among the people. This, in turn, will strengthen the independence of the judiciary. Significantly, Justice Balakrishnan, in his communication, has referred to the apex court’s May 7, 1997 resolution titled, “Restatement of values of judicial life”. This serves as a guide to be observed by judges and is essential for an independent and strong judiciary. According to the list of values articulated by the apex court, the judges should practice a degree of aloofness consistent with the dignity of their office. They should make declarations in confidence to the CJI of all their assets in the form of real estate or investments (held by them in their own names or in the names of their spouses or dependents) within a reasonable time of assuming office. Clearly, the resolution, if followed by the high court judges in letter and spirit, could become the basis for the much-needed legislative action with necessary constitutional amendments. However, in trying to ensure judicial accountability, care should be taken to ensure the independence of the judiciary. Of late, reports of corruption in the higher judiciary have become a matter of public concern. To restore people’s faith in the system, it has become imperative for the judiciary itself to take meaningful steps and come forward with credible solutions. It has to devise a system of judicial accountability that will protect the higher judiciary from its errant members. The CJI’s communication can be seen as an attempt to refurbish the judiciary’s image for just and fair dispensation of justice. |
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The moral law commands us to make the highest possible good in a world the final object of all our conduct.
— Paul Ricoeur |
Olympic success Abhinav Bindra’s stupendous performance has gladdened the heart of the entire country and no praise is enough for him. But please halt the celebrations just for a few minutes. Pause to ponder what the situation would have been like if his father was not rich enough to afford the expensive weapons and ammunition for him to train for the gruelling test that ultimately fetched him the ultimate Olympic honour. Chances are that his application for importing the weapons might have still been doing the rounds of government offices or he might be begging one official or the other for sanction of sufficient ammunition. There is also the distinct possibility that he might have thrown in the towel in frustration, as many others have. Before the sports bosses come charging with their account books listing out how much money they had spent on Abhinav, let it be mentioned that we are talking about his formative years, not after he had proved his class. Make no mistake. The states and sports organisations that are vying with one another to shower awards and award money on him are doing so only to bask in the reflected glory. As far as promoting sports is concerned, they are still living by the dictum, “padhoge likhoge banoge nawab; kheloge koodoge banoge kharab” (You will become a big man if you study. If you spend your time in games, you will end up being good for nothing). It is a triple whammy for anyone wanting to take up serious sports in India. The system frustrates him when he is trying to find his feet; it runs him down when he has made it and it abandons him when he is past his prime. That is why sports has failed to become a mass movement. We can’t have enough world champions when the base of the pyramid is so small. As anybody who has engaged in competitive sports will tell you, the most trying time is when you are a beginner. That is the crucial period when you need father figures around you who recognise your talent and hone it. Unfortunately, we have a surfeit of stepfather figures, too insensitive to the needs and requirements of a budding player. Delicate saplings are left to fend for themselves against the harsh elements. Sushil Kumar, who won a wrestling bronze at Beijing, had to lead an impossible life at Delhi’s Chhatrasal Stadium where he shared his bed with another wrestler, in a tiny room which packed 20 persons. Sports talent is there aplenty. What is sadly lacking is sports culture. If at all you rise to national or international level, you do so against the current, not with the help of it. For every successful Abhinav that we produce, there are a hundred others who have to give up in sheer disgust over such insensitivity. Nurturing talent is not only about providing infrastructure, money and facilities, which, too, are in any case grossly inadequate. What matters more is the human warmth which keeps the players on course. Like artistes, sportsmen are a temperamental lot. That is why top athletes abroad have personal motivators on call. Here, the sports organisers have to play that role but they rarely do. The sportsman is reduced to the status of a bit player in the huge spectacular drama. The lead roles are all appropriated by administrators. The focus is on expanding their power and pelf. Promoting sports is secondary. When a young Kapil Dev was attending a training camp before he burst on the national scene, even he was snubbed by an official when he happened to ask for some extra diet since he was a fast bowler. Every such instance of insensitivity cuts a budding player to the quick. Even when a player has made the grade, he remains at the mercy of the bosses who may or may not choose him depending on which big man or region or zone has to be “accommodated”. Merit takes a back seat; and so do the chances of winning laurels.
It is not only necessary to back a player fully when he is on his way up, we have to also make sure that he is not abandoned once he is past his prime. Just look at how we have treated our former heroes so far. Veteran Punjab Ranji player and former coach Devi Chand Worrell died a pauper. Cyclist Paramjit Singh Kalha who represented India at the Delhi Asian Games in 1976 and won a gold medal in the 4000-metre road race in Indore in 1976, eked out a living as a security guard. Shobini Rajan, a rower from Kerala, winner of over 30 medals in national and international events, committed suicide because she could not get a job promised to her despite going from bureaucratic pillar to post. A state-level boxer of Punjab, Hari Lal, had to make ends meet as a cobbler. However, the worst was the fate of international football player Ravi Kumar who had brought laurels to the country during the 1960s and 1970s, but had to beg on the streets of Jalandhar in his last days, having lost his mental balance. The heart-rending list is almost unending and intimidates many of those who think of sports as a career option. If we cannot take care of our heroes in their difficult days, we have no right to have heroes at all. Don’t forget them after showering crores on them. Do ensure a decent life for them even after they have hung their boots.
The most important reform needed to revive sports is to take it out of clutches of the government, politicians and bureaucrats. They are doing to games but they have done to the country. How lucrative sports organisations are for them can be gauged from the fact that they contest the elections to them by spending crores. Only a person who has engaged in competitive sports can understand requirements and feelings of a sportsman. Not every sportsman may be a good administrator but there are enough among them who can do a far better job than the politicians and bureaucrats. What happened in the Indian Hockey Federation when it was under the tutelage of men like KPS Gill and Jothikumaran is there for all to see. It is high time we demanded transparency in the functioning of sports organisations. It is our right to know how much is being spent on players and how much on the sports officials who treat them as their jagir. Since the government is spending so much on these bodies, they have to be declared a public authority from which all information can be obtained by anyone under the Right to Information Act. The Punjab State Information Commission has almost done that in the case of the Punjab Cricket Association. Other organisations thriving on public money should be equally accountable.
All that sports needs is freedom to grow. Medals will come aplenty to a vibrant country of a billion
plus. |
Sam, the genial one The
term ‘bahadur’ conjures up the image of a fierce Gorkha! But ‘Sam’ was one of the most genial senior officers I found in my 35 years in uniform. In 1963, still a “one-pipper”, I was lost in the corridors of the Corps HQ at Tezpur, looking at name boards to invite two Captains personally for a regimental function. Suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulders asking ‘What brings you here?’ Turning, I saw a Lt General in a mazri shirt, with a sharp nose and peculiar moustache. “Don’t be scared young man. Tell me what you want and I will help you”. I stuttered and shivered before giving the names of Capt Batra and Parmar. He escorted me to their office and told them to give me some coffee and he was off! In 1973, as a student at Staff College on a Sunday at the Lower Coonoor vegetable market, I saw all vendors suddenly standing up with folded hands and saying: “Vanakkam, Ayya” (Salutations, Sir). My wife and I turned around and saw the Field Marshal. We moved aside wishing him; but he stopped and asked my wife her name and where we were staying. On our saying “Holmwood”, he remembered from his days as Commandant 11 years earlier and asked if we still had dry commodes there, which we did! After speaking for some more time, he wished us luck and was off! Same year he addressed us at the valedictory function, when for the first time ever, he gave out a humourous and uncensored version of Higher Direction of 1971 War: he had contempt for politicians and named a senior minister. At one stage, he moved his head to a profile and asked us to notice the similarity of his sharp nose with Indira Gandhi and said, that was the reason he was close to her! Foreign students were equally delighted as us! In 1984, when he addressed us at the valedictory of Higher Command Course and in 1988, at Staff College again (when I was Instructor), he amazed us with his razor-sharp memory by repeating verbatim the same words as in 1973. The fun was later, when all ladies wanted to have a snap with him. He said in In Nov 1989, while waiting at IA counter at Madras for Coimbatore, in a long queue, I noticed “Sam” joining 20 places behind me. I rushed and requested him for his ticket and not to stand in queue; but he wouldn’t, saying “No I will take my turn”. I compelled him, took it, rushed back and asked the counter-man if he even knew who it was in the queue. He left the window, came out and apologised. Immediately there was a rush near “Sam” with everyone producing a currency-note or boarding pass or even plain piece of paper for an autograph! He smiled at me with a mischievous wink and obliged everyone! I asked for and got two seats together in the very first row for him and me. He spoke nicely to me throughout the flight.
On my other flank, I had M N Nambiar, the quintessential Tamil
villain! |
Forced vacation The
glittering new buildings that China has so proudly displayed during the Beijing Olympics were largely the work of men like Zou Xianping. Zou, 39, left his little village, Bolin, in 2006 to weld steel for $280 a month in the high-rises going up along the capital’s fashionable Avenue of Eternal Peace, doing his bit in a $40 billion pre-Olympic construction splurge. But while Beijing is staging its Games and showing off its skyline, Zou has returned here to Sichuan province, miles from the splendor he helped create. He and nearly a million other construction workers were pushed from the city by a Chinese government eager to put on its best face for the celebrations. With their plastic hard hats and sun-burnished skin, the migrant laborers and their construction-site bivouacs did not fit with the image of a modern city that China’s leaders wanted to project.
Concerns about national image have driven a host of changes in Beijing during the Olympic Games. More than a million cars were banned from the streets to reduce traffic and improve air quality. Trucks were forbidden in the city center. Even weather was manipulated to bring on rain when it was needed to wash away pollution — or prevent it when the Opening Ceremony was held. Migrant workers were most affected by the decision to halt construction where it stood July 20. The Beijing municipal government said suspensions in some parts of town were intended to reduce pollution and noted that, without delivery trucks, there was no way construction work could continue in any case. But critics said a good part of the decision was based on a desire to keep Olympic visitors from encountering the migrant workers, whose tattered appearance and primitive, prefab dorms did not fit with China’s theme of economic progress. As a result, when foreigners at the popular Silk Alley market look across the Avenue of Eternal Peace, they see a building with an unfinished facade, along with the deserted Taiyuan Building, Zou’s glass-and-steel workplace. Those who go to admire the nearby China Central Television tower, unfinished but already stunning with its twisted shape, run no risk of running into the usual crowds of grimy construction workers with farmhand manners. Suddenly without a livelihood, many of the construction workers retreated to suburban towns to share the rent on dormitory-like rooms until their work can resume after the Paralympic Games. But many more boarded trains and spread out to the countless villages such as Bolin, 50 miles north of Chengdu, where their families and farms were there to welcome them during the forced two-month hiatus. And so it was that Zou was lying back on his bed late Wednesday morning, watching Olympic swimming on television. Until late September, he said, he will be staying here at the family farmhouse, enjoying time with his parents and his son, Zhenhua, a 15-year-old student at a nearby middle school who ordinarily is entrusted to the care of his grandparents. “Of course I watch the Games,” Zou told a visitor. “Our country is hosting the Olympics. How could I not watch it? I watch all the matches.” Zou said the work suspension back in Beijing was an unwelcome break in the family revenue stream but a price he was willing to pay for China’s role as Olympic host. “Of course it’s worth it,” he declared. The willingness to sacrifice for China’s role as Olympic host, encouraged by fervent propaganda on state-run China Central Television, has also been eased by financial help from the government. Residents of Bolin, which lies in the area stricken by May’s earthquake, were receiving about $1.40 a day and food assistance until August, when the payments were lowered to $28 a month until the end of the year. In addition, Zou said, his boss is a fellow Sichuan native and made sure that the laid-off workers were paid in full before heading home. Aroused by reports of construction companies that failed to pay workers their due, the government has cracked down in recent months, with the result that most of those who lost their jobs in July seem to have been paid their salaries on departure. Zou said he and a neighbor, Zhang Yongjun, 36, were the only ones among Bolin’s 1,000 residents who have gone away to work. The fields here have always been plentiful, Zou noted, yielding bountiful crops of rice, corn and wheat. Water has always gushed from a nearby spring, flowing limpid and reliable into the fields year after year. But pressure on the land is building as the population grows and a nearby town draws near, Zou said, and farmers have heard there may be plans to buy them out for an industrial park in the future. Even now, Zhang said, the families of Bolin have trouble making ends meet with just their farm revenues. “If we could, we’d rather stay here, with our parents and our land,” he explained. “But we have no choice. We have to go away and look for work.” More than 120 million of China’s 1.3 billion people have made similar decisions in recent years, turning into a floating population that provides low-end labor from the factories of the Pearl River Delta to the kitchens of upscale restaurants in Shanghai and Beijing. “The Chinese government is all talk and no action when it comes to delivering meaningful protection and social services for migrant construction workers,” said a recent report from Human Rights Watch, the U.S-based advocacy group. By arrangement with
LA Times-Washington Post |
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School days of a tyrant IT seemed an ordinary moment, repeated in thousands of schools worldwide. On one side, a shy boy “with puffy, red cheeks” who stammered through a translation test in the principal’s office. On the other, a tutor hired by the boy’s father to put him through his paces. But the school was in North Korea, the father was the country’s legendary founder, Kim Il Sung, and the boy was his son and future leader, Kim Jong-il. And the relationship between student and tutor would climax in a horrific denouement: the boy grew up to order the execution of the teacher’s entire family. Those are among the milder allegations made by the tutor, Kim Hyun-sik, now 76 and a research professor at George Mason University in Virginia. The story begins in 1959. The professor, who Kim Il Sung had handpicked to tutor his family in Russian, summoned Kim Jnr, then 17, to take an oral test. Flustered and “with beads of sweat on his forehead”, the boy endured the exam “without ever boasting that he was the son of the Great Leader”. Years later after he had inherited his father’s exclusive powers, Professor Kim alleges that the student would order his alma mater blown up to eliminate potential rivals to his own children. He describes Kim Jong-il as a “rather ordinary student” who excelled at nothing and made few friends. Just months after his test, Kim Jong-il’s nervous, diffident demeanour disappeared as he showed off his Russian skills in front of the school’s teachers. “As an educator, I was quite gratified,” recalls his tutor. But that pride would turn into rage. In 1991, a South Korean agent approached Professor Kim while he was in Moscow, saying he could arrange a meeting with the professor’s older sister. Like thousands of families, the Kims had been split by the 1950-53 war that had divided the Korean peninsula. The sister, long believed dead, was in Chicago and wanted her brother to join her. “I was overcome with emotion,” he writes. A day later, however, the professor was ordered back to Pyongyang after a North Korean double agent betrayed him. As a trusted insider with intimate knowledge of the ruling family who had been caught talking to the hated South, he knew returning meant one thing. “I would be killed as a traitor.” He defected to Seoul and never saw his home, his university or his family again. Kim Jong-il exacted a terrible price for that betrayal. Professor Kim’s wife, daughters and son, their spouses and “even our dear grandchildren” were apparently sent to state gulags and murdered. “To this day, I know nothing of the details of their deaths, of whether they blamed me as they perished.” Today, up to 200,000 people are still being held in the North’s gulags, according to the US State Department.
The memoir also includes allegations of Nazi-style “cleansing” of the physically disabled and the “substandard”. By arrangement with
The Independent |
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Ladakhi women play new roles Ladakh accords a position of respect and strength to women. Even ordinary chores like caring for children, rearing livestock, farming, fetching water and spinning and weaving wool call for strenuous efforts in Ladakh’s mountainous terrain and harsh winters. Women have traditionally played a prominent role in socially relevant events or cultural extravaganzas. There are no community dances, songs, social felicitations to political leaders or spiritual teachers which take place without their active participation.
Donning their finest jewellery and carrying the customary Chamskan’ or a pot of wine, women are part of such special occasions. Today, however, Ladakhi society is in transition and women in Ladakh are donning new roles, which go beyond the traditional into significant areas of socio-political life.
Men are moving out of villages in search of employment, which has been generated by a vibrant tourism industry. Villages are bereft of male presence and women have gradually moved into this space. There is a surge of women-headed households in the rural areas. Decision-making, which rested solely with men, is now becoming the domain of women.
The composition of “Goba” or the governing body in a typical Ladakhi village, which executes all the customary activities, is indicative of this transformation. Women are increasingly becoming members of “Goba”, which regulates and runs all activities like village festivals, prayers, reception’s to guests, religious or political leaders. Kunzes Dolma in Skurbuchan village in the Khalsi block in the Shyam region was the first woman to have worked on a village Goba in 2003. Tsering Yangskit of the Leh Nutrition Project, an NGO based in Ladakh working for women’s development, says that a fundamental change in attitudes towards women is imperative for them to play a much more significant role in public life. “Churpon” and “Nyerpa” are traditional customs and practices where the role of women is gaining prominence “Churpon” is the traditional system of cooperative farming where a family is nominated on a rotational basis to distribute water impartially to every villager for cultivation. “Nyerpa” is the person who organises the annual prayer held in their monastery or temple for timely snow and rain for agriculture.
There has been a move to explore new economic arenas resulting in the formation of Self Help Groups (SHGs). Women weave shawls from “pashmina” and “numbu” both fine, local yarn and make “goncha”, the traditional Ladakhi dress. Groups like these have mushroomed and are now developing innovative ways to market their wares. One of the members in Basgo village of Leh block offered space in her house, which is on the national highway, for a showroom. According to Tsering Dolker, president of the group, “To sell the products , we Women cultivate vegetables beyond domestic use and contribute to the family Tsering Nurbo, executive Councillor for agriculture of the Ladakh Hill Development Council (LAHDC), says “five tonnes of potatoes and four tonnes of peas cultivated by different women SHGs in Dhomkhar village of Khalsi block were sent to
Srinagar, for the first time.” Ladakhi society today is poised between two worlds. One is based on their age-old way of life, its unique culture, customs and social order.
The other world promises the opening up of traditional Ladakhi society with new employment avenues, ideas of women’s empowerment, opportunities for education and social advancement. The woman in Ladakh represents the face of this change, shedding past patterns and reaching out to a brave new world.
Some women leaders are still skeptical of this new-found energy and confidence in the new roles for women. Thinless Tharchin of the Ladakh Development Organisation working on women’s issues, says that the influence of women is negligible even within the village governing body.
There could be a long way to go before women actually work in partnership with men at every level of decision making but the direction of the winds of change is unmistakable. — Charkha Features |
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